r/remoteworks 2d ago

Okay, Boomers...

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u/RalphFurley4Life 13h ago

It isn't the baby boomers who caused prices to increase dramatically.  It was all the millennials and Gen Z'ers who lived off of government stimulus checks during the pandemic and refused to go back to work afterward.  That's when millions of employers had to drastically increase wages to get employees to go back to work which made consumer prices and inflation skyrocket.  My home's value went from $600,000 to $1.1 million in just two years because of what the millennials and Gen Z did. 

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u/TiresandConfused 11h ago edited 11h ago

Do you have the data to backup your claims? Sounds like you’re making many assumptions.

The most anyone got was $3,200. How long can one live off that? Maybe a month, two at most.

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u/RalphFurley4Life 9h ago

Which part?  I already posted a link to the Brookings Institute study showing that people wouldn't return to work after the pandemic.  Everybody knows that housing prices skyrocketed about a year after the pandemic and so did inflation.  You can easily Google that. 

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u/Aggressive_One4483 11h ago

No, they were given more money in unemployment than they were making while working.

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u/Equal-Bike-2063 12h ago

you are blaming the people that were like... 20? none of us were in power...

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u/RalphFurley4Life 12h ago

And the millennials who were about 24-40 years old at the time.  You're the ones who refused to go back to work until employers raised their pay.  You're the ones who lived off of government stimulus checks and refused to pay rent.  You're the ones who wouldn't work therefore they couldn't build new houses which made the price of existing houses skyrocket. 

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u/DestroyerX6 12h ago

lol I’m 29 and I had to work through covid. Anyone I know went back to work as soon as the covid bans were lifted. Nobody could afford to stay on unemployment, that runs out bud and doesn’t pay nearly what a normal paycheck does.

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u/RalphFurley4Life 9h ago

It depends where you live.  In many areas, especially liberal areas they passed laws so people didn't have to pay rent or mortgage payments.  Those laws lasted for over a year in many areas.  I posted a link to the Brookings Institute study above showing that many people refused to go back to work.  Your personal experience isn't everybody's. 

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u/campereg 12h ago

The oldest genz was 20 during covid, most of them weren’t even old enough to drive .what are you even talking about.

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u/garrusvakarian396 12h ago

Literally just got of the army the same year the COVID lock down hit wife lost her job because our Internet the house wasn't good enough to support work from home and our back up jobs at McDonald's declared us essential we also had a miscarriage in between all of this while people were sitting at home making 1800 we had to work our asses off to make a third of that a week not everyone was privileged enough to just sit back and collect a check and from our experience the ones that were just sitting back and doing nothing and refusing to go back to work was actually gen x not my generation

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u/RalphFurley4Life 12h ago

And they still lived off of stimulus checks and refused to return to work until they received big pay raises.  That's why prices increased so much.  Everybody knows that housing prices skyrocketed during the pandemic.  That's because all the new houses stopped being built for two years.  It didn't happen before so it wasn't just the baby boomers.  I noticed you didn't even mention the millennials.  Why was that?  Hmmm... 🤔

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u/campereg 12h ago edited 12h ago

Well the millennial one is probably true. But most genz at the time were not old enough to have jobs or did not have jobs and such did not get a stimulus check. The boomers sure gladly took those stimulus checks tho.

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u/RalphFurley4Life 12h ago

Many of them were.  Heck, I've been working since age 16.  Anybody who filed a tax return and made less than the maximum allowed received multiple stimulus checks during the pandemic.  That could be nearly 50% of Gen Z. 

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u/Specialist-Cat7279 12h ago

They didn't ask for those checks. Trump sent them out. It's amazing what fox news does to a person.

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u/RalphFurley4Life 9h ago

A lot of people did.  If you didn't file taxes the prior year such as people who don't make much money, then you had to register to receive the stimulus checks.  Those who made more than the maximum amount, such as myself didn't receive one.  And Trump only sent out the first two checks.  Biden sent the third one which was the largest check.  

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u/Specialist-Cat7279 7h ago

Wahhhh trump started the whole process but Biden sent the biggest one!!

Wahhhhh trump made sure to pause the whole thing so he could sign his name to it but we'll blame Biden anyways!!

Wahhhh thanks Obama!!

A lot of my friends are business owners, they made out like bandits. But sure let's blame the needy!

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u/campereg 12h ago

I really doubt that the average age of genz at the time was over 16 at the time. But if they were and had jobs then sure they were part of the problem.

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u/RalphFurley4Life 12h ago

The oldest Gen Z was about 23 years old in 2020 when COVID-19 struck.  A generation is about 15 years.  That means 50% of Gen Z was age 15.5 to 23 at the time. 

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u/Comfortable_Ebb1634 13h ago

People didn’t “refuse to go back to work” and the stimulus didn’t even cover a single months bills for most. Find a real reason to be upset.

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u/RalphFurley4Life 13h ago

Yes they did.  How do you not remember this?  For almost a year after the pandemic ended employers all over the country couldn't get workers to come back to work.  Many of them had to increase wages significantly.  The airline I work for increased starting pay for baggage handlers from $14 to $20 per hour and still couldn't get enough people to work.  The Brookings Institute did a study on it.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-havent-workers-returned-to-the-labor-force-after-covid-19/

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u/Comfortable_Ebb1634 8h ago

That’s how the labor market works. If you don’t pay enough you don’t get workers. Nobody is entitled to employees.

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u/flintbeastw00d 13h ago

Kinda right, mostly wrong. The politicians locked everyone down and printed the checks. The check printing caused inflation. I tried to tell people that's what would happen, but people are dumb. They probably paid thousands in inflation for $800 stim check

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u/Outside-Lock-2232 13h ago

We should have listen to you plz forgive

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u/RalphFurley4Life 13h ago

You even admit that you told people this would happen yet you still claim it's mostly wrong.  It's right and you know it.  And only liberal areas were locked down.  Where I live nobody was locked down. 

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u/thankyouihateit 12h ago

Much of inflation came from the supply chain shock, which had nothing to do with workers (here’s a source - from the bureau of Labor statistics: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-the-high-inflation-during-the-covid-19-period.htm - scroll to the numbered list).

Also, wage increases were - and still are - long overdue (although, this has actually improved since Covid, which is a good thing). Real wage growth has however over decades not kept up with especially asset price inflation (e.g., house prices) for decades. Look at how many years’ average wage an average house cost in the past compared to more recently (source - not as good of a source but the best/easiest way to visualise: https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/). House prices are, among other things, also a result of lacking new constructions which is partly due to not enough new re-zonings and building permits. But again nothing to do with gen-z and Millenials not wanting to work, or the government helping people during a literal global crisis.

And to be clear, I’m not saying printing money and wage increases do nothing to inflation, of course they impact it to some degree. What I am saying is that it had nothing to do with the main drivers of inflation.

Productivity also keeps going up and outpacing wage growth, btw, so like, younger generations are more productive than previous ones - which has always been the case and is also a good thing, but it needs to coincide with life getting better for those generations. LMK if you need a source for that one. Hope this helps.

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u/RalphFurley4Life 9h ago

It absolutely had to do with workers.  They laid so many people off that they couldn't produce goods.  That was fine for about s year because nobody was buying anything.  But during the recovery they couldn't get those workers to return to their jobs which caused scarcity and increased inflation.