My in-laws still try to give young people advice, especially when they’re struggling. Their greatest hits include, “downgrade your phone” and “stop spending so much money at Starbucks.”

我的岳父岳母仍然试图给年轻人建议，尤其是当他们在挣扎的时候，他们最热门的说法包括“别老玩手机”和“别再星巴克花那么多钱”

They’re like many so-called boomers. They prefer to attribute everyone’s problems to their personal shortcomings.

他们就像许多所谓的“婴儿潮”一代一样，喜欢把每个人的问题都归咎于自己的缺点。

They grow uncomfortable when you talk intelligently about how much our politics and economics have changed over the last 30 years, and how little they understand the world now.

当你睿智地谈论我们的政治和经济在过去30年里发生了多大的变化，以及他们现在对世界的了解是多么少时，他们会感到不安。

They get defensive, and that leads to preaching.

他们会为自己辩护——“布道”开始。

They tell you how hard they worked when they were your age, and they use their own children as counter-examples to prove it’s still possible to thrive during this century, ignoring larger trends and the general erosion of the middle class. My own dad sometimes holds me up as an example, citing my PhD and 6-figure income, completely dodging how many hours I work between various jobs and side hustles. I’m not allowed to mention that because it’s viewed as “complaining.”

他们告诉你他们在你这个年龄时是多么努力地工作，他们用自己的孩子作为反例来证明在这个世纪仍然有可能兴旺发达，而忽略了更大的趋势和中产阶级的普遍腐蚀。
我自己的父亲有时拿我举例，说我有博士学位和6位数的收入，完全不顾我在各种工作和兼职之间工作了多少个小时，我不能提这个，因为这被看作是“抱怨”。

In reality, I can literally see the guilt creep over my relatives’ faces when I describe my life with a hint of honesty.

事实上，当我带着一丝诚实地描述自己的生活时，我可以看到亲戚们脸上的内疚感在蔓延。

A lot of successful millennials simply lie to their parents.

很多成功的千禧一代只是在对父母撒谎。

I do. So do most of my friends.

我知道，我的大多数朋友也知道。

We do our best to present a cheerful facade, making everything look easy and breezy. Amongst ourselves, we ask why they “just don’t get it.” The truth is simple. You know, maybe they don’t want to.

我们尽最大努力呈现一个快乐的外表，让一切看起来轻松愉快，我们经常会问他们为什么“就是不明白。”，事实很简单，你懂的，也许就是他们不想。

It’s also possible that nobody has ever distilled for them exactly what has changed and to what extent.

还有一种可能是，从来没有人为他们提炼出到底发生了什么改变，以及改变到什么程度。

Here’s an attempt.

我们可以尝试一下。

The cost of living has outstripped our incomes.

# 生活费用超过了我们的收入
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Our parents and grandparents are fond of telling us they had little to no trouble buying a house, investing, and saving money for retirement. They could live easily on roughly $50,000 a year.

我们的父母和祖父母喜欢告诉我们，他们买房子、投资和为退休存钱几乎没有任何困难，他们每年可以轻松地靠大约5万美元生活。

A lot has changed since then.

但从那时起，很多事情都发生了变化。

According to CNBC, the cost of living has skyrocketed, even beyond inflation. Housing prices have gone up enormously. In 1990, the average cost of a house was about $79,000. In 2010 the price had gone up well over $220,000. Now, the average reaches above $360,000 for a standard, four-bedroom house. Average mortgage and rent payments range anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 per month. If you live in a smaller city like I do, then you might enjoy a lower cost. It still eats through a third of our monthly income.

按照CNBC财经频道的报道，生活成本飞涨，甚至超过了通货膨胀，房价大幅度上涨。
1990年，一套房子的平均成本约为7.9万美元，2010年的价格已经远远超过了22万美元，现在，一套标准的四居室房屋的平均售价已经超过了36万美元，平均每月的抵押贷款和租金从1000美元到2000美元不等，如果你像我一样住在一个小城市，那么你可能会享受到较低的成本，但它仍然要消耗我们每月收入的三分之一。

From there, it gets worse. According to Fox Business, groceries for a family of four average almost $900 a month. By the time you factor in other basic necessities like car payments and internet, you’re looking at monthly expenses around $3,000 for the average family.

从那以后，情况变得更糟，根据福克斯商业频道的数据，一个四口之家平均每个月的食品开销接近900美元，如果算上汽车贷款和上网等其他基本生活必需品，你会发现一个普通家庭的每月开支大约在3000美元左右。

Here’s a look at groceries alone:

下面就来看看食品杂货：


Meanwhile, the average income has gone nowhere. Most of us are still making $50K a year. Sometimes, we’re making much less. In fact, wages have actually dropped by 9 percent since 2006.

与此同时，平均收入却毫无起色，我们中的大多数人仍然每年赚5万美元，有时候，我们赚得更少，事实上，自2006年以来，工资实际上下降了9% 。

So when you look at the economic data, it becomes clear why younger Americans can’t afford to live like their parents did on the same salary. Often, members of a household have to combine their incomes. They also have to find jobs that pay well above the average. If they have kids, then a third of that second income goes toward childcare.

因此，当你看看经济数据，就会明白为什么年轻的美国人无法像他们的父母那样靠同样的薪水生活。
通常，一个家庭的成员必须合并他们的收入，他们还必须找到工资远高于平均水平的工作，如果他们有孩子，那么第二份收入的三分之一就花在了照顾孩子上。

To enjoy the same lifestyle our parents did, we work two and three times harder — often at multiple jobs.
为了享受和父母一样的生活方式，我们付出了两到三倍的努力ーー通常是做多份工作。
It makes us a little bitter.

这让我们有点痛苦。

Student debt has left us broke.

# 学生贷款让我们破产了

Millennials grew up with the notion that college held the keys to their prosperity. Our culture reinforced this myth from every angle. Employers made degrees a requirement, even for entry-level jobs.

千禧一代从小就认为大学是他们成功的关键，我们的文化从各个角度强化了这个神话，即使是入门级的工作，雇主也要求学位。

We had no choice.

我们别无选择。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


To make matters worse, everyone told us that the prestige of our university mattered. If we wanted the best jobs, we had to graduate from competitive schools. So we enrolled in the best we could. Many of us didn’t have wealthy parents to fund our education. If scholarships didn’t cover full tuition, we took out loans and worked low-wage jobs.

更糟糕的是，每个人都说我们大学的名气很重要，如果我们想要最好的工作，我们必须从竞争激烈的学校毕业，所以我们尽我们所能报考名校，我们中的许多人没有富裕的父母来资助我们的教育，如果奖学金不能支付全额学费，我们只能贷款，做低收入的工作。

The price of college has gone up astronomically over the last 20 years. Because wages have remained flat, the average teen now has to work more than 2,200 hours in order to afford a single year of college. At a public institution like Michigan State University, you’d have to work 60 hours at minimum wage just to afford a single credit hour. A year of college is typically 30 credit hours, so the math comes to 1,800.

在过去的20年里，大学的学费已经涨到了天文数字。由于工资一直保持平稳，现在的青少年平均工作时间超过2200小时，才能负担得起一年的大学学费，如果是上像密歇根州立大学这样的公立大学，你必须以最低工资工作60个小时才能获得一个学分，一年的大学时间通常是30个学分，所以算起来总共是1800个学分。

So to afford tuition alone, you’d have to work full time for 4 years, and you’d have to save every single penny you earned.

为了独自支付学费，你必须全职工作4年，并且你必须存下你赚到的每一分钱。

For most of us, that’s impossible:

对我们大多数人来说，这是不可能的：


Prior generations were able to afford college because it was cheaper. Textbooks didn’t cost as much. There were more scholarships and grants available, and the money went further.

前几代人能够负担得起大学学费，因为大学学费更便宜，教科书也没那么贵，还有更多的奖学金和补助金，资金也更充裕。

Our parents enjoyed these benefits, then they spent the next 30 years electing politicians who systematically defunded higher education, forcing institutions to shift the cost onto us. They also stood by while CEOs weaseled their way onto university boards of trustees and forced cutthroat business thinking onto a largely nonprofit enterprise.

我们的父母享受着这些好处，然后他们花了30年的时间选举那些系统性地放弃资助高等教育的政客，迫使高等教育机构将成本转嫁到我们身上，当CEO们混进大学董事会，把残酷的商业思维强加到非营利机构时，他们袖手旁观。

All the while, we were told college was worth the investment. Billionaires like Steve Jobs and Oprah gave commencement speeches about how, even though they didn’t go to college, it was still a great idea. In private they mocked formal education as something “for bozos.”

一直以来，我们被告知大学是值得投资的，像史蒂夫 · 乔布斯和奥普拉这样的亿万富翁在毕业典礼上发表演讲说，即使他们没有上过大学，但这仍然是个好主意，而私下里，他们嘲笑正规教育是“傻瓜才会接受的教育”。

The average American now carries roughly $33,000 in student loan debt by some estimates, for a degree that’s almost worthless.

据估计，普通美国人现在平均背负着大约33,000美元的学生贷款债务，而获得的学位几乎毫无价值。

We’re told this is our fault.

我们被告知这是我们的错。

We can’t invest in the stock market.

# 我们不能投资股票市场
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Three out of four millennials don’t own stock of any kind. They cite various reasons. The most common one is simple:
They don’t have the money.

四分之三的千禧一代没有任何股票，他们列举了各种各样的理由，最常见的原因很简单：
他们没有钱。

Let’s put that argument aside for a minute and ask a different question: Why would a millennial invest in the stock market? Every day, we read stories about ordinary people getting defrauded and tricked into making bad investments. We remember what happened to our parents during the 2008 recession. While a handful of people managed to recover, many never did. They had to delay retirement and take out loans just to survive. We know it could easily happen to us.

让我们暂时把这个争论放在一边，问一个不同的问题: 千禧一代为什么要投资股票市场？
每一天，我们都会读到一些故事，关于普通人被欺骗，被骗去做一些糟糕的投资，我们还记得2008年经济衰退时父母的遭遇，虽然少数人设法恢复了过来，但许多人从此再未恢复过，为了生存，他们不得不推迟退休、借贷款，我们知道这很容易发生在我们身上。

We’re not lazy or dumb.

我们既不懒惰也不蠢。

We’re scared. We don’t invest because we’re skeptical of the stock market, for good reason. We know it’s run by speculators and hedge fund managers. We know we’re missing out, but we also know the extreme risk involved with investing even a little bit of money at a time in our lives when we have almost none in the first place.

我们很害怕。
我们不投资是因为我们怀疑股票市场，理由很充分，我们知道它是由投机者和对冲基金经理运作的，我们知道我们错过了什么，但是我们也知道在我们一开始几乎没有钱的时候，在我们的生活中投资哪怕是一点点钱也是极端的风险。

A single chart shows how much we’ve suffered:

一张图表显示了我们遭受了多少痛苦：


Charts like this make us angry, because we work practically all the time, and all we want is a financial future that doesn’t depend on us risking our livelihoods on apps like Robinhood.

这样的图表让我们感到愤怒，因为我们几乎一直在工作，我们想要的只是一个财务上的未来，而不是依赖于在像 Robinhood 这样的APP上拿自己的生计冒险。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


People keep giving us platitudes like “don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose,” or “make enough to withdraw your original investment.” This advice is infuriating because it assumes we have something to lose.

人们总是给我们一些陈词滥调，比如“不要投资你不能承受损失的东西”，或者“赚足够的钱来收回你最初的投资”，这样的建议令人恼火，因为它假设我们会失去一些东西。

We don’t.

我们没有。

As the above chart makes painfully clear, most of us have nothing.

正如上面的图表令人痛苦而清楚地表明，我们大多数人一无所有。

Moreover, interest rates on debt often rival stock returns. So on a practical level, we have to decide what’s smarter. To a lot of millennials, it doesn’t make sense to invest if you’re paying hundreds of dollars a month on loans, none of which even goes toward the principal.

此外，债务利率通常与股票回报率相当，所以在实际的层面上，我们必须决定什么样的做法才是最聪明的，对于很多千禧一代来说，如果你每个月要偿还数百美元的贷款，而这些贷款甚至没有一个是用于本金的，那么投资就毫无意义。

Millennials simply don’t want our futures tied to the whims of Wall Street. We’re tired of being told it’s the only way.

千禧一代只是不希望我们的未来与华尔街的反复无常联系在一起，我们厌倦了别人告诉我们这是唯一的办法。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


We want something else.

我们想要别的东西。

We have no choice but to “side hustle.”

我们别无选择，只能搞搞“副业”。

Our entire lives, millennials were told to find meaningful, fulfilling jobs instead of pursuing mere employment. We were told to chase our “passions,” and not to worry about money so much.

在我们的整个生活中，千禧一代被告知要找到有意义的、令人满意的工作，而不是仅仅追求就业，我们被告知要追逐自己的“激情”，不要过于担心钱的问题。

We listened to that advice and followed careers in fields like teaching and social work. We became nurses and paramedics, or doctors and veterinarians. Maybe we became artists or writers. Thanks to a deregulated economy, companies can hire us as freelancers and contractors — so that’s what they do. All of that led to our current state, where we contribute a lot to society but make very little money from doing it.

我们听取了这些建议，并追求从事教学和社会工作等领域的职业，我们成了护士和护理人员，或者医生和兽医，或许也成为艺术家或者作家。
由于经济放松管制，公司可以以自由职业者和个人承包商的名义雇佣我们作为——他们就是这么干的，所有这些都导致了我们现在的状况，我们为社会做了很多贡献，但从中赚取的却很少。

Everyone takes advantage of us, justifying our low pay with neoliberal philosophies and free market ideology.

每个人都利用我们，用新自由主义哲学和自由市场意识形态为我们的低收入辩护。

To get ahead, most of us put our talents to work through side hustles, making extra money through platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans. Or we start blogs and podcasts. This might sound interesting, even fun.

为了获得成功，我们中的大多数人都将自己的才能投入到副业中，通过Patreon和OnlyFans这样的平台赚外快，或者我们发博客和播客，这听起来可能很有意思，甚至很有趣。

We certainly make it look that way.

我们当然会让它看起来像那样。

According to another article by CNBC, 64 percent of millennials report having a side hustle. Some of us sell goods and services, while others sell their bodies through erotic content. On average, it brings in roughly $11,000 a year. It’s not always extra spending cash.

根据CNBC财经频道的另一篇文章，64% 的千禧一代说他们有副业，我们中的一些人出售商品和服务，而其他人通过色情内容出售他们的身体，平均而言，它每年带来大约11000美元的收入，但这笔收入并不是额外的消费款项。

A third of us need that money to get by:

我们中有三分之一的人需要这些钱来维持生活：


In some ways, it’s not fair or accurate to call it a side hustle or a gig. And while the work can be rewarding, that doesn’t change the fact that we’re forced into this situation because our employers refuse to pay us what we’re worth, for no other reason that their incessant greed. So we work 40 or 50 hours a week at one job, and then we spend another 20 hours on a side hustle. As an added insult, we’re taxed for the extra money we earn.

从某些方面来说，把它称为副业或零工是不公平的，也不准确，尽管这份工作可能是有回报的，但这并不能改变这样一个事实：
我们被迫陷入这种境地，是因为我们的雇主拒绝支付我们应得的薪水，除了他们不断的贪婪之外，没有别的原因。
所以我们每周在一份工作上工作40到50个小时，然后再花20个小时在兼职上，更糟糕的是，我们还得为多赚的钱交税。

That’s why we’re exhausted.

这就是我们筋疲力尽的原因。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Millennials are tired of the constant gaslighting.

千禧一代已经厌倦了持续不断的“煤气灯效应”（译注：一种心理操纵的形式）

Obviously, not everyone in our demographic is struggling. Most of us know someone who’s doing well. Their parents were able to pave a smooth path for them into financial independence. They work at Fortune 500 companies, and life doesn’t feel that difficult for them.

显然，并不是我们这个年龄段的每个人都在挣扎，我们大多数人都知道有人做得很好，他们的父母为他们的经济独立铺平了道路，他们在财富500强公司工作，生活对他们来说并不困难。

That’s not the point.

这不是重点。

Privileged millennials might as well live on a different planet. They inherited their parents’ value systems, and they don’t spend a minute thinking about what life is like for the rest of us.

享有特权的千禧一代生活在另一个星球上，他们继承了父母的价值观，他们从不会花哪怕一分钟的时间去思考我们其他人的生活是什么样的。

These people and their parents respond to our plights with a stunning lack of empathy and intellect. Instead of listening and trying to understand, they immediately fall back on faulty arguments and bad logic. They call us lazy, and tell us we don’t know how to save money. They lecture us like we’re 12-year-olds who never took an economics course.

这些人和他们的父母对我们的困境的反应是惊人的缺乏同情心和错误，他们不会倾听，不会去试图理解，而是立即回到错误的论点和糟糕的逻辑上，他们说我们懒惰，说我们不知道如何省钱，他们对我们说教，好像我们是从来没上过经济学课的12岁孩子。

Either they don’t get it, or they don’t want to.

要么他们是真不明白，要么他们是不想明白。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


While the social and economic system currently works well for a handful of people, it’s crushing the rest of us.

虽然社会和经济体系目前对少数人运作良好，但它正在压垮我们其余的人。

In general, millennials expect a lower quality of life in several regards, ranging from spending power and net worth to relationships and self-perception. They’re more vulnerable to just about everything, including health problems and substance abuse.

总的来说，千禧一代在消费能力、净资产、人际关系和自我认知等几个方面对生活质量的预期较低，他们更容易受到伤害，包括健康问题和滥用药物。

Most millennials never have a chance to get ahead, because they’re always falling behind. The minute we manage to save a few thousand dollars, an emergency expense comes along to wipe it out. Then we start over. The pandemic has made everything worse for us. Our support structures have withered, and many of us have been left to fend for ourselves. To pretend otherwise is nothing short of gaslighting.

大多数千禧一代从来没有机会获得成功，因为他们总是落在了后面，一旦我们设法节省了几千美元，一笔紧急开支就把它给毁了，然后我们又重新开始。
大流行使我们的一切变得更糟，我们的支持结构已经萎缩，我们中的许多人不得不自谋生路，装模作样无异于自欺欺人。

As Anne Helen Petersen deftly argues, it’s insulting to be constantly reminded of your shortcomings, and then blamed for your hardships when politicians have spent decades stripping away the tools for social mobility that helped our parents get where they are. It hurts to see so many of our parents applaud these politicians, telling us leaders like Donald Trump have done a great job with the economy simply because the stock market continues to rise, creating a fantasy bubble for brokers and investors.

正如安妮 · 海伦 · 彼得森巧妙地指出的那样，不断地提醒自己的缺点，然后为自己的困难而自责，这是一种侮辱，因为政客们花了几十年时间剥夺了帮助父母走到今天的社会流动性的工具。
看到这么多父母为这些政客鼓掌，我们感到很伤心。他们告诉我们，像唐纳德 · 特朗普这样的领导人之所以在经济方面做得很好，仅仅是因为股市持续上涨，给经纪人和投资者制造了一个幻想中的泡沫，这让人伤心。

It’s irritating to listen to retirees gloat about how they earned their wealth completely by themselves, refusing to acknowledge even for a moment that government programs and policies helped them achieve a solid foundation first, many of which don’t exist for us.

听退休的人幸灾乐祸地吹嘘他们的财富是如何完全靠自己赚来的，令人恼火，他们甚至一刻也不承认政府的计划和政策首先帮助他们建立了一个坚实的基础，而其中的许多基础对我们来说并不存在。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


We’re tired of it.

我们已经厌倦了。

Most millennials want out of capitalism.

# 大多数千禧一代想要脱离资本主义

Our parents tell us to spend less money on coffee and phones, but they forget one crucial component of capitalism.
Consumption drives the economy.

我们的父母告诉我们少花钱买咖啡和手机，但他们忘记了资本主义的一个重要组成部分：
消费推动经济。

If everyone suddenly stopped eating out and going to movies, businesses would shut down. The stock market would spiral. In fact, that’s exactly what’s happened over the last year. We’ve stopped consuming, and now unemployment has soared.

如果人们突然停止外出就餐和看电影，企业就会倒闭，股票市场将会螺旋式上升，事实上，这正是去年发生的事情。
我们已经停止消费，现在失业率飙升。

You can’t brag about your son’s 6-figure income at a marketing company, when it’s his job to convince people to buy things they don’t need. That makes your advice to “consume less” hopelessly naive.

你不能吹嘘你儿子在营销公司的6位数收入，他的工作就是说服人们购买他们不需要的东西，这让你“少消费”的建议变成了无可救药的天真。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Besides, many of us do pinch pennies. Millennials have less disposable income than any other demographic. We simply don’t have the cash to spend, and we don’t have the time. Most of us yearn for a simpler life, away from the ouroboros of capitalism. We want nothing to do with a financial system that depends on someone else always losing. We’re tired of the zero-sum games. We want fulfilling jobs where we actually contribute something to society, other than personal brands and marketing plans.

除此之外，我们中的许多人确实精打细算，千禧一代的可支配收入比其他年龄段的人都少，我们根本没有钱花，也没有时间。
我们大多数人渴望更简单的生活，远离资本主义这条衔尾之蛇。
我们不想与一个依赖于总是亏损的其他人的金融体系有任何关系，我们厌倦了零和游戏，除了个人品牌和营销计划之外，我们希望参与为社会做出贡献的工作，能让我们感到满足的工作。

We despise the system our parents created and then forced us into. We want to tear it down and replace it with something fair.

我们鄙视父母创造并强迫我们进入的体系，我们想把它拆掉，用公平的东西取而代之。

We’re tired of being punished for that.

我们已经厌倦了为此受到惩罚。

We’re tired of being judged.

我们厌倦了被人评头论足。

We want out.

我们想退出。