Good news everyone: wage increases are slowing, raises are getting smaller, layoffs are beginning to happen, and inflation is all your fault. And you should be grateful about all of this, according to a series of recent headlines from the economic and political press.
“Millennials are to blame for sky-high inflation,” a CNBC tweet recently read. Politico ran an article titled “Pay raises are getting smaller. That could be a good thing for workers.” The premise was quite simple: inflation was being driven by wage growth, inflation is hurting workers, slowing down wage growth will help workers eventually. Politico later changed the headline to “There’s one hopeful sign for the Fed on inflation. Really” after backlash but the core thesis remained the same.
As debates over who or what is to blame for inflation and the looming threat of a recession, commentators have begun to focus on millennials again and the way they should (and shouldn’t act) in the current moment.
In the CNBC article, Smead Capital Management’s chief investment officer, Bill Smead suggested millennials were to blame for inflation for spending years saving money instead of buying homes and cars.
“So we have in the United States a whole lot of people, (aged) 27 to 42, who postponed homebuying, car buying, for about seven years later than most generations,” Smead told CNBC. “But in the past two years they’ve all entered the party together, and this is just the beginning of a 10-to-12-year time period where there’s about 50 percent more people that are wanting these things than there were in the prior group.”
Click for the full article at Vice
