Ah, those addictions. Demand being nurtured. Mine are, coffee, taking supplements (although this counts towards personal health), and some pot from time to time to sooth the mind. I already quit drinking alcohol altogether.

I'm hugely in favour of UBI, but I don't think it's without its serious problems, for example, how are we going to get all the less desirable jobs done? Who on earth would opt to clean sewers just to get a bit of extra spending money?

Yeah, as Michael's quote captures, it's this idea of 'self-reliance' that is seen undermined by initiatives like UBI; the question of 'dependency' and the apparent correlative danger to 'freedom' is also one of the big motivators against it. I'd say that such arguments trade on incredibly thin and entirely unrealistic conceptions of freedom and individuality, but that's the general tenor of the argument against it, I think. Hannah Arendt once argued that freedom began where the concern with the necessities of life ended - a UBI would be a nice step on the way to securing something like an Arendtian freedom, which I find incredibly attractive.

The biggest danger with UBI I think isn't the idea itself: it's the fact that it can be leaned upon as a excuse to shut down other areas of public investment, and perhaps act as a spur to unnecessary privatization as well. While I do think any UBI should be leveraged to cut down on other social security initiatives, any such trade-off would need to be carefully calculated and weighed against specific circumstances. The worry is that UBI will be used as an excuse for what would amount to a public firesale. That would be awful.

I don't have the same attitudes towards replacing social security with UBI.

It is true that government handed cash has been shown for people to use it to support themselves rather than just waste it indolently. But it is also true that a program that serve as cohesive support for certain needs rather than forcing individuals to make responsible choices for themselves in allocating their resources can be much more liberating for the individual.

This is obvious for most people with regards to children (having a parent dictate the direction their children will develop rather than have them make decisions for themselves gives the children more freedom to enjoy their lives and develop their capabilities. Of course things like Tiger Parenting can be deleterious to their development and happiness, but that's a different story.) but it is also true to a large extent to human beings in general. That's one of the empirically proven arguments given for the benefits of social security (having a system behind you save funds for you automatically) and against voucher programs like charter schools (highly astute and responsible parents are required)

This is also because Social programs are designed to specifically help certain types of needs, which are deemed as a legal right (right to health, right for children to get proper schooling, right to retire comfortably) so politically, the lines are much more clear how much funds are to be allocated for each program when successfully passed. I suspect that with respect to universal basic income, there will be constant political opportunities to squander about how much income should be given, giving excuses for them to be cut and shortened, or for there to be legal barriers & requirements that citizens have to take to acquire more of their income. This happened with food stamps among other things. It's much more effective for society to dictate that certain needs need to be guaranteed directly.

That's my take on it, here's something I read recently that presents another interesting and much more technical case against UBI about how it'll potentially affect the economy.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/12/universal-basic-income-inequality-work

P.S. Kurzgesagt has great videos, but I don't trust everything on it. From what I remember, the Basic Income video came after as a rejoinder to their videos about robots taking over jobs, which is pretty much a lousy myth.

I'm active in the Greens in the UK and we've had a universal basic income as policy for a long time. At the last elections other parties started talking about it and I think that's partly the role of the Greens here and in other countries, even if far from power: to seed policies that will take root elsewhere.

I think the arguments, many outlined earlier in the thread, of simplicity, resilience in the face of job losses, especially adaptability in the face of technology change, and the end to a whole range of benefits one has to 'deserve' are strong ones. There are supplements in most proposals, however, for disability, for being pensioner age, and a rate for children.

Some of the devil is in the detail. The Greens costed a proposal for the UK 2017 elections which had a nil cost to the government, but when you do that, the initial income is meagre. To me an incoming government with a one-off generous beginning to such a scheme would be the best way of introducing it.

It's an issue that doesn't divide neatly between left and right. To some it sounds like socialism. But it does mean less government, as the bureaucracy of tax and benefits is greatly slimmed down. The Adam Smith Institute for instance is a free market neoliberal bunch, but they've just endorsed the idea.

https://www.adamsmith.org/news/rising-evidence-basic-income

There are experiments in Ontario and Finland. I think a major country will introduce a version of it in the next few years, but I'm terrible at forecasting.

how are we going to get all the less desirable jobs done? Who on earth would opt to clean sewers just to get a bit of extra spending money? — Pseudonym

It's not a job that appeals to me, but surprisingly, the job gets done. Question: Why do people work for civil engineering companies and municipal agencies that deal with sewers? Answer: The rewards are high enough. Or, as they say in civil engineering offices, "Your shit is our bread and butter." There are companies that do nothing but deal with sewers and sewage treatment plants up close and personal

As late as the victorian period there was a substantial demand in London (and elsewhere) for people to manually scoop out the pits beneath outhouses and haul the crap away. The job was paid twice: first, a fee for the cleaning, second the sale of the human manure to farmers for fertilizer. It was most definitely NOT a high status job. In western society, a certain amount of status accrues to technically sophisticated jobs. We don't have very many people scooping out feces from pits, but we do have people applying technical tools to keeping the sewers open and working.

Urban explorers like to go down into big sewers -- the ones that are big enough to stand up-right walk around in. There are numerous risks, some of them mortal: drowning, severe injury, and disease. Sewer workers are vaccinated against all sorts of diseases, urban explorers are not. Still, most urban explorers (and civil engineering workers) survive their time in sewers without much calamity.

Status and adequate pay will get the jobs done now, where as in the victorian period, the attraction was mostly pecuniary, and maybe not much career choice.

I'm honestly torn on this issue. I think it would make a great replacement for current welfare systems, especially going forward into the age of robotics; but I think practically speaking it would most likely be larded on top of current welfare systems, and that would be bad.

When the Guaranteed Basic Income was last seriously considered (during the Nixon administration) robotics wasn't a big issue. Then proposals were dropped. Now, 40 years later, robotics are THE major reason for thinking about how people who are not completely redundant will live.

I don't think the US can really afford both GBI and the existing welfare systems. Besides, GBI shouldn't be so little that many people would still need welfare, or so much that no one would ever need income supplements. For instance, a single person might not be able to afford housing on the GBI. If for some reason they can't find work, they may find that their income is not enough to afford rent. As a result, public housing programs will still be needed. The same will go for some families, many elderly, and disabled individuals.

Status and adequate pay will get the jobs done now, where as in the victorian period, the attraction was mostly pecuniary, and maybe not much career choice. — Bitter Crank

That's what I meant, without UBI we can get these jobs done for a pittance, with UBI we're going to have to pay people more and improve their job satisfaction in order to get them done. Both of these things cost a lot of money, so that cost needs to be included in the calculations. It's no good just using the simple payments as our only expense in the process. Where are the millions we now have to spend on street cleaning, waste handling etc going to come from, because people certainly aren't going to do them for a bit of extra pocket money?

The problem is not the basic wage it is what other folk charge those on the basic wage, what should be deemed unlawful amounts.. In the UK changing a patio door barrel lock, for instance, sets one back at least £110, cheapest quote, £75 minimum. of which is for labor. The operation of doing it takes at the very outside thirty seconds. Killing wasps up to £120 ,max duration on the job around two minutes, and cost of chemicals about two pounds.. It is only dangerous should one or two stings be dangerous. When you employ daily labor their rate is a constant but the number of hours in their working day is on the decline. When one tries to run a small business of their own charges on it are through the roof, it is treated as though a business which may well be in the red is some kind of a gold mine.. Improve pay and the greedy will likely grow still greedier. The problem is less that some people get paid too little and more that some people, many thousands of them, get paid too much, some far too much.. They wont complain that they are being paid too much so it is down to the rest of us to do that for them.

without UBI we can get these jobs done for a pittance, with UBI we're going to have to pay people more and improve their job satisfaction in order to get them done. — Pseudonym

And why would we not want to improve pay and job satisfaction? Millions of people devoting the better part of their waking hours to an unrewarding job (low pay, no satisfaction, and lots of stress) is a bad thing for the individual and society as a whole.

You are quite right that there would be knock-on costs above and beyond the pay out. The floor of acceptable pay and working conditions would rise, and should rise. Who can live working full time at the $7.25 minimum wage? That's about $15,000 a year, just $3000 above the federal poverty level for one person, and below the medicaid eligibility level, assuming the job was full time, which it probably isn't. Granted, people do eke out survival on wages that low, but in much of the country, and in most urban areas, it would be a grueling project.

Some states have minimum wage levels that are significantly higher than the federal level. Massachusetts and Washington have $11 MW. Some cities have set the minimum wage at $15, and some states are scheduled to reach $15 in a few years -- that's about $31,000 a year (if full time). There are, of course, places in the US where $31,000 is not enough to live well -- New York City, for instance, where rent for a small apartment can easily be more than $30,000 a year.

So, the UBI will affect the wage scale at the bottom. This will affect some industries much more than others, depending on what their pay structure is.

Most municipal and civil engineering workers are paid much more than a pittance to maintain the city: pick up garbage, maintain streets, keep the water and sewer working in good order, etc. A UBI would not come close to matching their wages and benefits.

There are many jobs that do not pay well, do not have good benefits, and have little or no security. Some of these are city, county, state, or federal government positions, but not many. Most of these are in the private sector. The temporary-work industry would be rather severely affected, I would think. So would child-care, retail, many non-unionized jobs, etc.

This sounds more like a sociology come politics mix rather than anything remotely philosophy? — celebritydiscodave

Paying people enough to live on is a matter of ethics. Isn't one of the topics in philosophy "the good life"? Do you think a good life can be better led in poverty than something better than poverty? How much do people need, want, deserve...?

Sounds like philosophy to me.

I think the great advantage of UBI (from my own pro-capitalist point of view) is that entrepreneurial adventure is more likely to spontaneously develop.

If your basic income that keeps you alive and kicking comes without strings attached, then you can relax, and when you get bored with doing nothing, you are then free to gradually cobble together and tailor your own supplemental income as you fancy. You can save, you can incrementally take risks. And that's going to encourage people to fill in all sorts of economic micro-niches. It's really a much more suitable form of welfare for the modern age, precisely because it ditches the fiction of "lifetime employment" and encourages people to take responsibility for their lives; to stop thinking of work as being employed by someone else, and start thinking of self-employment as the norm.

It's also likely to re-awaken the development of more localized, intimate, resource-pooling solutions to welfare too (family, church, various new, at present unforeseeable kinds of small-scale socialistic and self-help types of social structures). This would have the added advantage of "de-atomizing" society to some extent.

IOW, from a pro-capitalist point of view, if you're going to have a welfare system at all, then negative income tax or a UBI is the way to do it. Milton Friedman said it ages ago: just give people some money with no strings attached, and ditch the vast, costly bureaucracy.

But as I say, it would be disastrous if it were just laid on top of the existing welfare system, and I fear, given the tendency of the State (and dependency on the State) to keep expanding, that's what's likely to happen.

I think the great advantage of UBI (from my own pro-capitalist point of view) is that entrepreneurial adventure is more likely to spontaneously develop.

If your basic income that keeps you alive and kicking comes without strings attached, then you can relax, and when you get bored with doing nothing, you are then free to gradually cobble together and tailor your own supplemental income as you fancy. You can save, you can incrementally take risks. And that's going to encourage people to fill in all sorts of economic micro-niches. — gurugeorge

Yes, I think that's why people like Friedman favored it, in addition to it being simpler and cheaper to administer.

it would be disastrous if it were just laid on top of the existing welfare system — gurugeorge

I agree. We can't afford both systems.

In some ways, the social service welfare system is an employment program, NOT for the recipients of services but for the employees who deliver and administer it. I'm not suggesting that people who work in these programs are parasitical drones who do nothing. Many of them are intelligent, hard-working, well educated professionals who take their work very seriously. The problem is that what many recipients of services need is... MORE MONEY and not more services.

I don't want to push that point too far, because there really are people who need social services above and beyond needing more money, and they would need social services even if they were rich.

My first job after college was in VISTA, the domestic peace corps, 1968. I worked at a job corps on the east coast. We had about 100 corpsmen and the budget for the place was roughly a million dollars. The corpsmen were there for about a year, costing $10,000 each, or roughly $70,000 in today's dollar value (using the Federal Reserve Chained CPI calculator).

It was a very good program with talented, hard-working staff. But fully remediating the deficiencies of the corpsmen would have taken several years -- maybe 4, or $280,000 in todays money, or $7000 a year for 40 years--about what a UBI would have given them.

The Job Corps staff were well paid; the facility made a nice contribution to the local economy. It was a very interesting place to work. But whether, on balance, it was worth it financially, I'm not certain.

In some ways, the social service welfare system is an employment program, NOT for the recipients of services but for the employees who deliver and administer it. — Bitter Crank

I think there's a bit of that, yes, and it's a huge cost.

Another major factor is the ideological factor - welfare systems are sometimes the result of socialist ideologues pushing socialistic demands as far as they can within the checks and balances of a democratic system. That being the case, there's this peculiar "stickiness" or mired quality, or sclerotic quality, to the systems - they're fought for to be maintained and expanded because they have a sacrosanct symbolic meaning for people. Meanwhile the real effect - whether they're really helping people, or whether the system could be designed to be more efficient and helpful without the ideological agenda - seems to be a secondary consideration.

Or sometimes they're attempts from the Right to defuse socialist agitation (as per Bismarck's original welfare state system) - and that's where you get the odd connection to morality, you know, the welfare system has have moralistic strings attached, or it's connected to ideas like "the deserving poor."

I think the road less travelled is what I mentioned: instead of State-run welfare, what we should really have is a thriving patchwork of spontaneous self-help solutions using pooled resources. People naturally came up with things like this during the 19th century - unions, friendly societies, co-operatives, etc. Education too was something that was done out of pooled resources.

You'd think that socialistically-minded people would be pleased to encourage and help along people's spontaneous efforts at self-help like that - and I think some did. But unfortunately socialism went in another direction, and such organizations were co-opted as the supposed vanguard of Marxist revolution, and their original home-grown functions fell by the wayside.

I really envision something like a parallel system that runs alongside capitalism, where instead of buying insurance like well-off people do, poor and disadvantaged people pool what resources they have and create their own organizations and social structures (even do things like invest, etc.) to see them through tough times and protect themselves against capitalist "bad weather." This would be much better for people's dignity and self-respect too - they're not getting "handouts", they're active in their own protection.

Even if you're talking about people with "mental illness," (I don't like that term, but what the hey) this would be a better solution. My friend works in music therapy, and I've helped him out with events. From observation, I think the mentally ill get better when they are able to direct their own lives as best they can, when they can feel a sense of agency instead of solely being objects of help and pity. There are so many people who are "broken" in some way whose lives would be helped much better by people helping them to help themselves, rather than them being swallowed up in bureaucratic machinery, State-run psychiatric systems. etc.

I wish socialists in the best sense (people who genuinely want to help) instead of agitating for stupid, unworkable economics and trying to take over the system top-down, would actually get their hands dirty and help people set up things like that. It would be more rewarding for them too.

I wish socialists in the best sense ... would actually get their hands dirty and help people set up things like that. It would be more rewarding for them too. — gurugeorge

Have you read much of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American Transcendentalist? In his essay, Self-Reliance he says,

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

There is a tradition in American history of doing exactly what you propose: There were various communities in the 19th century, surviving into the 20th, that did what you suggest. The Shaker communities were one such example, now extinct (they believed in celibacy). The Amish self-insure themselves: the community contracts with a hospital in their area to provide health care at a specified price, and the community collectively pays the bills.

Elsewhere, the Grameen Bank loans money to self-help groups. The loans are very small (maybe... $100). They are designed to be seed money for individual projects in this world countries. Maybe the project is to collect plastic bags and wash, sew, or melt the bags, and make the plastic bags into some other kind of product. A few women can start a micro-business of making something useful that can be sold, earn money, pay the little loan back over time, then borrow slightly larger sums, and so on.

Farm Cooperatives have been useful organizations to help small farmers store and manage the sale of commodity crops.

On the other hand, because the US was a very, very big place, and undeveloped people spread out as they moved west and weren't close enough to each other to do a lot of cooperation until later on. Small school districts might include 20 families who built the famous "one room school house" and hired a teacher to educate their sons and daughters. These small very diversified school districts lasted up until the 1950s-maybe 1960 at the latest. Then they were consolidated.

One of the motivations behind the New Deal programs during the Great Depression. like Social Security, unemployment, and so on was to lessen the risk of revolutionary activity in the working classes (which was, is, most people).

The Shaker communities were one such example, now extinct (they believed in celibacy). — Bitter Crank

The line of the year.

Good info there, thanks.

A possibility I see coming is a population spread away from cities, even away from suburbs, to a more country/villagey lifestyle. The advent of the internet means it's possible to earn a living doing sophisticated intellectual work without having to do too much physical person-to-person networking, and I think given the increasingly dystopian nature of cities, that option is going to be more and more attractive, to all income brackets. Perhaps then we'll see a return to the kind of lifestyle that's most intrinsically satisfying to most people (not all, but most - bell curve again) - out in nature, knowing intimately a small group of people. That will be a good context for those older forms of self-help and mutual aid to make a return.

Cities in the future will probably be a mixture of poor urban areas (although probably much better off than today), robot factories, gated communities and city centers where young people hungry for success in professional fields where face-to-face networking is important will congregate. But the city as a human nexus is losing its raison d'etre (or perhaps better to say, its costs are starting to outweigh its benefits for most people).

I agree, and disagree. There is some outward movement into the "exurban" territory beyond the outer ring of suburbs. True. The internet facilitates tele-commuting, so that business can sometimes be conducted in high decentralized groups, degrees can be earned on-line, Amazon... On the other hand, some companies are finding that it really does work better when people are in the same room together. While internet commerce is growing, 90% of commerce is still conducted face to face, in brick & mortar settings.

given the increasingly dystopian nature of cities — gurugeorge

I strongly disagree with this view. I grew up in a rural town of 1800 people, and was immensely happy to get the hell out of there when i finished high school. There are, indeed, good points about small villages, but the treasures of civilization both dwell in, and depend on The City to exist.

Granted, some people do not like the city, and not because it is dystopian. They dislike 1-way streets, a lack of large flat free parking lots, dense traffic at rush-hours, and stuff like that. Mostly what they dislike is the "urban core" or the central business district. Many people also dislike the higher level of diversity one finds in the city. The city, of course, allows for, sometimes enforces, anonymity. Anonymity is one of the things that thrilled me about large cities: Now that I am getting old, I'm not quite so thrilled about anonymity, but it still is better than the "everyone knows you" small town.

There are sort of dystopian areas in the city. Those are caused either by poverty (the slums, shootings, etc.) or too little street traffic, which is what a lot of downtown cores become by about 6:00 in the evening. "Street life" which makes a city core interesting generally involves lower value real estate. Cities often wreck themselves by trying "urban renewal" where high-value buildings replace low value buildings (the kind that house restaurants, art galleries, porn shops, bars--all the stuff that leads to an interesting street.

"Block E" was the middle of a very lively stretch in downtown Minneapolis. There were 2 regular bookstores, a few cheap cafes, a couple of porn shots, a couple of questionable bars--all that sort of thing. The city's mothers and fathers thought it was disreputable; it attracted too many people for the wrong reasons. So, it was leveled and replaced with more respectable entertainment and nightclub 'center'. It bombed miserably. On another street, a perfect arrangement of used book stores, coffee shops, restaurants, art galleries, a few nice bars, and so forth had formed. It was there for about 10 years, then it was replaced by several office towers. More dead streets.

its costs are starting to outweigh its benefits for most people). — gurugeorge

But urbanization is a long-term trend that hasn't reversed. By a large majority, maybe... 60% to 70%, most people in the world are living in cities, and much of that on the coasts. Cities are much more efficient than having people distributed across the countryside, doing what they do in the city. Cities are more energy efficient too.

Efficiency isn't everything, but with 7.3 billion people heading for 8 and 9 billion fairly soon, efficiency counts for a lot. Better to have good agricultural land remain agricultural, and cities be dense.

Cities often wreck themselves by trying "urban renewal" where high-value buildings replace low value buildings (the kind that house restaurants, art galleries, porn shops, bars--all the stuff that leads to an interesting street. — Bitter Crank

Yeah I agree with that. But I stand by my prediction, although neither of us will probably be alive to see whether it comes true or not! :)

I stand by my prediction — gurugeorge

Somebody will just have to wait and see. I'm hoping to get out of here relatively soon, like... 10 years from now, preferably. 80 will be old enough.

I understand and agree with what you're saying in respect of cities, although from my perspective, it is specific to the US. Here in the U.K. The situation is quite different, every city can be reached within a day's travel. Certainly in the southern half of England, all the main cities are within a couple of hours, or so, travelling time from each other and many people live in the countryside between cities and commute into town. Indeed this is the trend for the more affluent, many cities are populated with people living in relative poverty, crammed into small houses, flats, council estates, where there is an air of hostility, dirt, lack of social infrastructure, sink estates etc. The cities and large towns are compact and restricted for space, as there are green belts around most urban areas and a severe housing and real estate crisis. Around each city are affluent commuter/dormitory towns and villages, in which any sense of community has been stripped out. With the indigenous/local population often swept out of the way and living in Council estates, or trailer parks, largely hidden from view. Country villages where everyone knows everyone else are rare and are mostly in the most provincial extremities of the country.
I think the situation on the ground is different in each country in the world due to geography and cultural development.

In the current economy if you do not have a job, you do not have money (except by welfare). If you do not have money, you cannot buy food, pay rent or meet even the basic necessities of life. There has been a fairly rapid disappearance of middle income jobs with good benefits and future retirement. We now have the well educated, skilled and well paid and the less educated less skilled and poorly paid.
This is not good for the society and particularly not good for democracy.

It may be that the economies of the future will not be capable of generating enough good paying jobs to allow their citizens to meet their basic needs much less support a lifestyle where the "pursuit of happiness" has any meaning. It is hard to be happy when you they turn your electricity off, shut off the water and evict your family into the street and there is no food to eat.

It is no longer necessarily true that if you are wiling to work hard you can get ahead. Social mobility in the United States is decreasing. Many 40 hour or longer manual labor jobs pay minimum wage and those who feel no empathy should try living on the minimum wage. This is not to mention those who can find only part time work with no benefits, no regular hours and thus no reliable steady income.

In this situation, providing a minimum income (or negative income tax) may be the best solution to the problem allowing all citizens to at least have a dry warm place to sleep, clothing to wear and food to eat. In fact it might not only be the ethical and moral thing to do but a way to assure the survival of the culture and society as a whole. Some countries (Scandinavian where social democracy has a strong hold) are already experimenting with this concept.

The biggest skepticism and contention I have with UBI is that it's frequently used by libertarian-types to substitute and replace services the government provides with a cheaper alternative that, because it's not directed towards particular public or individual needs, are less useful.

Somebody will just have to wait and see. — Bitter Crank

Just a suggestive addendum to our conversation. From https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-screwed-millennial-generation-gets-smart?ref=home?ref=home

"Despite endless talk about millennials as the group triggering a “back to the city” movement, census data shows that their populations in many core cities are stagnating or declining. In April 2016, the real estate website Trulia found that millennials were rushing out of expensive cities, with the group making up roughly a quarter of the population in New York and Washington, D.C., but accounting for half of all departures from them."

Interesting article.

One always has to be cautious about the glib generalizations of journalists who, more often than not, do not accurately represent the groups they are covering. The idea of the various generations (whether it be "the greatest generation, the baby boom generation, their children, their grand children the millennials, and generation X) having these very unique characteristics seems to me to have the ring of baloney.

Sure, there are generational differences because economics and culture change, but watching TV on the internet instead of over-the-air broadcasting is not a revolutionary act. Or not driving a car and owning a home because you can't afford it isn't a radical act of rebellion.

In general, people tend to strongly resemble their parents. They cluster with their peers. People who grew up in the suburbs are likely in the long run to return to live there. People move to urban cores for various reasons, among which are being possible to live without a car, rental housing is easier to find, services are closer, and there is more anonymity and diversity in the urban core which makes it easier for odd balls to fit in.

Some cities, and some parts of cities, are too expensive for any but the well established to live. It isn't a choice, it's economics. That goes for suburbs too; some suburbs and exurbs are just very expensive, and intend to stay that way.

Millennials aren't the first generation to have difficulty getting established in their 20s. I don't think it has ever been easy to get established in one's 20s. If one married at 18 or 20, had children, took the kind of jobs that were available in one's given time and place, had the usual good and bad experiences typical of being alive, then life was going to be tough sometimes for the first 15 to 20 years, until the children grew up and went out on their own. Later, one's income would be greater and expenses would be lessened and one could enjoy life more. Only the lucky few can start out in life with plentiful money.

All that being said, many people in the post-baby-boom generations haven't done as well as previous generations -- not because their values were different, but because of changes in the economic operation of the country. Ordinary people in the middle of the working class have experienced less favorable economic conditions that began around 40 years ago. It became more difficult to get ahead. Certain groups like professionals, entrepreneurs (if they were successful), the very well educated and highly skilled have done very well, but that is not a huge slice of the population.