College student dunks on boomers to show how millennials have it so much worse. Except she screwed up her numbers.

This witless college student is going viral on TikTok because she claims to have proven just how bad millennials and GenZ have it while dunking on the boomers.

Except, she’s so smart she actually screwed up the numbers.

She writes in the caption: “sorry but i’m just so over people projecting their lived experiences from 1980 onto me thinking it’s super relevant to today’s reality.”

@cataloguing sorry but i’m just so over people projecting their lived experiences from 1980 onto me thinking it’s super relevant to today’s reality #college #student #postcollege #job #employment #boomers ♬ original sound – Cat

What she’s specifically whining about is that her parents say that young people expect too much right out of college, they’re entitled.

So she starts in with this anecdote about an older person hiring people that claimed she made $36,000 as a starting wage out of college as a bank teller in 1980.

She then calculates what the wage she is seeking today, $50k a year, would be in 1980 dollars, and finds that it is about $16,500. So that means, working backwards, that the older person made more than $100k in today’s dollars value.

But this is based on an anecdote that is almost certainly false.

This is pointed out by Jeremy Horpedahl, an economist associate professor.

“This very viral video is based on false statistics. She claims that new college grads were making $33,700 in the early 1980s, and then adjusts this for inflation to $102,000,” he tweeted.

“But the $33,700 was already adjusted for inflation! It was $15,200,” he added.

Horpedahl points out that the median income for 1980 among people aged 25-34 was only $11,000.

“The video is especially funny because it is framed as her trying to explain some common misconceptions about inflation and incomes today versus 1980. She is adding to the pool of confusion!” he says in another tweet.

Amazingly, the genius college student never checked her numbers, she just assumed that this woman was remembering her wages correctly from more than 40 years ago.

She *says* she looked it up, but it appears that she looked up inflation adjusted numbers, and then adjusted them again for inflation. Which is, not correct.

“I think boomers just have such a hard time conceptualizing this because they never had to fight for jobs,” Cat says. “They were at the upswing of technology, they were at the upswing of big business, capitalism was booming, and then they look at us and they’re thinking…entitled. I’m not saying anyone’s like in the right or in the wrong, it’s not their fault like they just don’t know.”

Of course, this garbage was picked up by the Daily Dot, and they published without checking any of the numbers. Why do they do this? They know it will be retweeted and reposted by every single lazy entitled young person who whines to their parents that they had it so much easier than times are now.

She goes on to whine about other numbers but her main point is obliterated by her abject ignorance on her main point.

It’s really worth going through the comments to Horpedahl’s tweet with anecdotes from people who actually lives through the 80s:

Spot on. My first job offer in 1980, with a BS, was for $15,600. That felt like soooo much money, I had a hard time turning it down to go to grad school. It ultimately proved to be a good move to continue my education, but that salary was really good.

Here’s how she finishes her dim-witted tirade:

“I think that if you go to college you deserve to be able to make enough to live comfortably. I think if you don’t go to college you should be able to make enough to live comfortably,” she says. “Regardless of your major, regardless if you chose to go to college or not, you deserve to live comfortably.”

Uh right, someone with a worthless degree that no company finds value in should have *exactly* the same wages as someone with a degree that provides a marketable skill. And of course, she’s so ignorant she doesn’t realize that some people without college degrees are doing fantastically because they have skills that are in high demand, like welders and plumbers and others.

This is exactly what Karl Marx bases his theory on – that all work should have the same value instead of being determined through the free market.

I’m not saying she’s a commie, necessarily, I’m saying she’s stupid. Not sure which is worse.