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The First Generation to Never Know American Prosperity?
When AOC uttered this ridiculous sentiment, I asked myself whether millennials were likely to look at the phone on which they were likely reading this tripe and say: Really? This looks pretty prosperous to me.
I thought it unlikely, but I should know better than to paint an entire generation with such broad strokes. Here is a little ray of sunshine by a 26-year-old I saw referenced on Rush Limbaugh:
Published in GeneralYet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why? The answer is this, my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.
Unfortunately, a disturbingly large percentage of the current generation of young do not recognize how prosperous they are. They are so far removed from any real difficulties, and so poorly taught by the “education” system that they don’t recognize how good they have it.
It takes work to keep in mind how good we have it. Even I (mid baby boom) have to consciously remind myself that I have more material stuff and material comfort (including food) than did virtually all people throughout history, or even living today elsewhere on the planet have.
I had a disturbing discussion with a young man a few months back. He was upset that he could not keep a job, make money, pay for his kid. Kept railing about how easy we had it since we were established and how his generation couldn’t make it work. Was completely convinced how bad the world is and how it needed to change.
The lack of gratitude is coincident with a decline of religion and a corruption of public education. Religion gives us perspective on life, a connection with the past, and inculcates a sense of thankfulness. Can the Millennials turn it around?
I’m 35. While some in my generation underestimate how materially well off they are, a certain amount of anexity may be warranted. For the last year I have watched public employees in my state – the most vocal amoung them being screaming, obese baby boomers – fight any change to the current pension system tooth and nail. I have a vague suspicion that my generation will be caught holding in the inter-generational game of hot potato we have been playing since the new deal.
That very well may be. But it seems some millenials are equating prosperity with freedom from fear and anxiety and some sort of guarantee that everything will be OK, no matter what. Sorry, no one gets that. Even the “screaming, obese” baby boomers have had their crosses to bear, Vietnam being one of them. I do think public pensions are a sword of Damocles hanging over all our heads. So fight the good fight.
I’m no fan of whats her name Cortez, but she may be on to something here. We have bountiful stuff and food, to be sure. Great cars and TVs and clothes. My mother endured childhood malnutrition in Minnesota during the depression, and made her way to California by begging used motor oil and tires for the jalopy along the way like the Joads in Grapes of Wrath. I know that without sufficient stuff life is nasty and short. But there is more to prosperity than stuff. The cost/benefit calculations for education, healthcare, and especially housing have been moving in the wrong direction for quite some time. I’m a boomer. I graduated from UC Berkeley without debt and with a real education, having attended it virtually for free, and live in a Bay Area house once bought by a mailman that now requires a $400K income to buy and would rent for $4K to $5K per month. Stuff was minimal and barely adequate and had to be frequently repaired by the owner in the 60s and 70s. But the insecurity and debt young people live with is real and in no way compensated by affordable Apple products.
True. But is this more than in the Depression where people lost everything to the banks and had no Apple products? A life free from insecurity is not possible. When we had economic security for a few decades after the war, we were just as fearful and insecure, if you ask me. Pollution. Nuclear War. We grew up in the prosperous 60’s with Vietnam. Then the 70’s with its hyperinflation and disruption of traditional industries in the Northeast. Our magnificent brains, which let us project into the future, will ensure that the sky will always have a reason to fall. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be grateful for what we have now.
More than a little anxiety is warranted. The alleged prosperity of the last 40 years has been fueled by ever-increasing debt at all levels – personal, family, corporate, municipal, state and federal. The numbers are so staggering at this point that they no longer mean anything to anyone. And while people talk of gridlock in Washington, there is a broad consensus on financial policy: Keep the spending and debt increasing until we simply can’t do it anymore.
It’s the reason for the false feeling of economic prosperity, like someone who feels like they are doing well in life while they keep taking out new credit cards and maxing them out. Sure, you have a lot of stuff like new iPhones and look outwardly like someone with real wealth, but your “prosperity” is grounded in an illusion that will eventually be dispelled. That’s where we are. (Some) millenials sense the hollowness and are right to be worried they will be the primary victims. We will all be victims but the younger generation will have it the worst, since they haven’t had the opportunity to accumulate any capital, while we older folks have been able to do it (if we were smart).
I was thinking of writing something similar, perhaps as a separate post. People talk about the national debt as if the money was thrown into a hole, but it paid salaries for public employees, purchased weapons and services from private contractors and engineering firms, provided funds for below-market SBA loans, added to the local grocery store’s bottom line through food stamps, and so on an so forth.
It reminds me of the scene in It’s A Wonderful Life when there is a run on the bank. George Bailey explains that the money isn’t actually there but in the houses of the various people standing in the bank. Where is the National Debt? It’s in your house and your house and your house. It’s ironic that so many people complain that government policy makes it harder and harder for middle class people to get by (it does, but leave that aside) but fail to realize that much of the advance of the middle class – particularly I suspect the lowerish upper middle class – was achieved through debt and government make work (both publicly [direct government employment] and privately [having a job in a compliance related field that would not exist sans government regulation].)
I don’t exempt myself from this as I hold a job in a compliance related field, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing the truth of it.
This is exactly right.
Trade and robots reduce jobs for more purchasing power. Those three have to go down too if it’s goin to work.
You can thank modern central banking.
In this era, the real issue is purchasing power and the difference between what you make and what it costs to live, not wage growth.
I predict there will be zero leadership in this sense.
That is true regarding education, healthcare, and housing for the last few decades. But my parents told me that they had 2-3 families living under the same roof, the majority of them never went to college nor indeed could afford to finish high school (they had to drop out to help support the family) and a single illness could ruin the family. That was the reality for most generations of Americans, I suspect. Yet, they felt themselves prosperous and looked with hope to the future. Is hope truly lost? Are there no paths to success? I don’t think that is true. Is it easy? No. Was it ever, maybe every now and then, but not reliably.
Why is socialism and populism growing?
With all of the cheap labor and robots coming on board I am very skeptical that all of this can keep working. The whole financial system and government is dependent on constant inflation, but robots and global trade is deflationary. Home prices have to go down, but that will break the government and the financial system. You can’t tax purchasing power increases and the whole system is dependent on debasing debt. This will end badly.
Young folks with this mentality generally didn’t see their parents struggle, even though said parents almost certainly did (because that’s what young folks do (or did) when their lives are starting out). So all they remember is the good times. Well, the good times have ended for many – rent, cars, and all that are expensive, and their barista jobs don’t afford them the standard of living they desire. Barista jobs that they might have college degrees and struggled to have gotten. They were promised a lot, if they would get that degree, and they didn’t materialize. They were lied to, and they’re upset. They don’t understand who lied to them, though, so they blame it on the evil employers, the capitalists, the Republicans, when it’s mostly the opposite.
Agreed.
We don’t practice capitalism. We need to start.
All of the debt metrics and unfunded liabilities are out of control.
I can see that. They should be blaming higher education.
Capitalism and prosperity are unnatural. Noticing what is bad is natural. So of course millennials follow their nature and vote socialist. That’s what advanced apes do.
This really is true. Listen to Deirdre McCloskey interviews. Listen to as many as you can.
She is an Austrian, too.
https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/liberalism-10
You made the case that I was setting up to tackle. I can only think of one thing to add.
Some young people are entrepreneurs and will use their imagination and their know how to create a way to generate wealth. For a while, designing new apps could make a young person well to do overnight.
But for everyone else, I have some sympathy. When I was 19, in 1970, my apartment cost me $ 75 a month, and my annual college tuition cost was around $ 1800. It is true I only made $2.41 an hour, but times were much easier. Unless of course, you were a guy and got drafted and then sent over to Vietnam.
Fish through this, when you are alert.
The Repubs and capitalists are guilty of some of that lie.
In fact, this entire op is based on one of those lies.
But what, exactly, is prosperity? Sure other generations had to work hard. That’s what life is. But they did see compensation for that work in a growing standard of living.
When we talk about debt contraction and an economic bubble burst, you are going to see loss of standard of living. Even if that standard being lost is HUGE, it doesn’t mean it’s not a loss.
Our economy has been growing, in spite of set backs like the depression and wars, since our founding. It seems a law of physics (and borne by history) that what goes up must come down.
And in the soil of our growth was planted the seeds of the fall. Yeah, your kids and grand kids are most likely going to be the ones left with the mess. And millenials are not at all prepared to deal with it and I think they know it.
So what do you call it when your standard of living goes down in your lifetime? Prosperity?
What do you call it when your parents failed to teach you how to not be slaves to your largesse?
Yeah. That’s my job. To teach my kids how to handle a life without the good things they got now. Cuz they might not have it in their lifetimes.
You are preaching to the deaf here.
That’s sort of what that article recommends at the end.
And their parents.
Bill King: It’s Time To Hedge Yourself For Political Turmoil – McAlvany Weekly Commentary https://mcalvanyweeklycommentary.com/bill-king-hedge-political-turmoil-central-banks-control-revolution/
Was just going to sit down and compose a comment to this effect. Where I really feel for the millenials is not that their standard of living will go down relative to their parents. I don’t necessarily think it will, but if it does, well, throughout history, such has been the case, and each generation deals with the hand they’ve been given. And, given the standard of living we enjoy today, it is still remarkably free from the scourges that have plagued biological organisms from time immemorial.
But the second point is the tragedy. The parents, and our generations before have discarded or undermined all of the tools that we used to pass on to each generation about how to deal with adversity: marriage, family, religion, fortitude, gratitude and so on. How to moderate our own wants despite the presence of abundance. The fact that you are entitled to nothing, and responsible for your own decisions, regardless of what a college recruiter or mortgage lender says. So they are frightened and unprepared. Many do not know their own strength.
However, I believe that the attitude expressed by the young lady in the article I referenced is a requirement for resilience. The gratitude for the advantages that you have that give you the foundations for facing what is to come. Because something will always be coming. Otherwise, it is all despair. And what was the one thing that Pandora spared us? Loss of hope.
Here’s my question. If this country is so bereft of opportunity for those who have not already made it financially, why do millions of people from all around the world want to leave behind everything they have known and make the U.S. their home?