Don't let the Scout become a status symbol; why $60k misses the point of the Revival

[tomgillotti]

The problem that I have with your posts is that you have chosen to focus your ire on this one corner of industry while completely ignoring history and the basic cause and effect of economics. Economies go through long term debt cycles. They always have and they always will, because people. I'm going to assume you are a Boomer. You were lucky to be born when you were. Millennials and Zoomers, as a cohort, literally cannot do what you did, no matter how hard they try (it is not because they are lazy as so many Boomers love to accuse). The cost of everything as a percentage of income is way higher than when you were younger. When you were a kid, people could put themselves through college by spinning pizzas. That is impossible now. Your parents (and likely you as well) could buy a house and raise a family on a single income. That is impossible now.

The US government embarked on structural (ie permanent) deficit spending starting in the 1980s. That extra, unearned, money went into the pockets of the private sector (this is an accounting fact). Your income was subsidized (increased) by debt that you will never pay back. Also, interest rates went down for 40 years. This allowed companies (and people) to borrow more and more money with the same payment. This increased prosperity (spending) at the time with promises to pay it back sometime in the future. Well, the future is now. The US govt is entering the endgame that afflicts all empires. Military spending and other entitlements are crowding out productive spending. The government has no choice but to print money to cover the shortfall. This results in the value of the currency falling.

You continue to look at unaffordability as a price problem when in fact it is a currency/debt problem. Prices for things have not gone UP, the value of the dollar has gone DOWN. Wages have not kept up as we have been continuously outsourcing jobs for decades. Look at this chart of Labor vs Capital's share of Gross Domestic Income:

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Look at where the lines were when you were working and look at where they are now. And if AI actually works like they say it does, those lines will get even further apart.

Are you personally responsible for where we are today? Of course not. You were born when you were born and you had no control over that. We must play the hand that we're dealt societally and genetically. I don't hold you personally responsible and I'm actually glad that you feel some anguish for what the later generations are going through. But when you come in here and state that one tiny car company that is billions in debt can somehow undue decades of bad economic choices, it says to me that you do not have a firm grasp on the overall situation.

The bottom line is that we have to get those lines back together. That can be done by raising the blue line (increasing wages) or lowering the red line (decreasing the value of financial assets). You can guess where the various generations/classes land on those different options. That picture also explains why we have Trump and Mamdani. The next few years will be interesting. But trying to stop what's happening is like trying to stop a hurricane. All you can do is try to protect yourself and your family until it passes and then rebuild. As the parent of 2 teenage children (one Zoomer and one Alpha), I am glad that I will be able to weather the storm for them and they will be able to come out the other side - into a world that needs them to rebuild it and all of the opportunities that entails. So my message is doom for the next 7-8 years, then hope.

I appreciate the deep dive into macroeconomic history and fiat currency, but your entire essay rests on a single, fatal assumption.

I am 41 years old. I am an elder Millennial.

You confidently stated that my financial path—saving a massive portion of my income on an enlisted military salary and investing in real estate—is "literally impossible" for Millennials because we "cannot do what you did, no matter how hard they try."

Yet, I navigated the exact same economic landscape, housing market, and inflation charts you just posted. The ability to live below your means isn't a generational privilege; it's a choice. It required immense discipline, not "Boomer luck."

Blaming macroeconomic debt cycles to justify the normalization of $80,000 depreciating assets is exactly the kind of financial fatalism that keeps people broke. If the vehicle market has outpaced wages, the solution isn't to accept it as an inevitable symptom of the US debt cycle; the solution is to simply refuse to finance an $80,000 truck.

The math works the same regardless of what year you were born.