Honoring the past.
Archiving the future.
Edition 2
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Tuesday, November 02, 2010 - FORTNIGHT 1 OF 6
THE STORMY PRESENT
THE STORMY PRESENT
OVERSCHEDULED AND UNDEREMPLOYED, OURS IS A GENERATION WITHOUT SAFE HAVEN. A NASCENT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SCHOLAR, GRAHAM
DESCRIBES THE IMPASSES INCUBATING AN ORIGINAL COHORT.
read the essay now >>
OVERSCHEDULED AND UNDEREMPLOYED, OURS IS A GENERATION WITHOUT SAFE HAVEN. A NASCENT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SCHOLAR, GRAHAM
DESCRIBES THE IMPASSES INCUBATING AN ORIGINAL COHORT.
read the essay now >>
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The national unemployment rate stands at 9.5 percent, the highest rate since the early 1980s. And for our generation in particular, the statistics are staggering: 37 percent of those 18 to 29 are unemployed. Only 14 percent are still looking for work. And even for the college-educated 18- to –29-year-olds, the unemployment rate stands at 5.5 percent—the highest level for that demographic ever recorded. With that kind of a job market, just working up the nerve to apply for anything at all can be daunting. And if an opportunity arises, we’re likely to take it, no matter how soul-crushing or uninspiring the job may be. Traditionally, we accepted jobs we hated to pay the bills and for the health care they often provided. But now the bills we’re paying are less those of a rent and living expenses type, and more that of paying back our student loans. With millions and millions out of work, our generation is at the bottom rung for hiring practices, and no one seems to care. The same loans we took out to pay for our education that would enable us to work in interesting fields are instead forcing us laterally into hourly-wage barista and retail work, if we can find jobs in even those fields. Our visions |
of success are self-defeating. With a national average student debt of $19,593 and a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour we often have no choice but to defer our dreams. And everyone knows what happens to a dream deferred. That’s just for those of us lucky to get any job at all. With millions and millions out of work, our generation is at the bottom rung for hiring practices, and no one seems to care. Even staunch supply-sider Ronald Reagan described early 1980s unemployment as a “crisis,” and announced programs providing unemployment benefits and comprehensive job training in his 1983 State of the Union speech. The reaction to our current state of unemployment is devoid of any urgency, when it is in fact mentioned at all. When the issue of unemployment benefits is addressed, it’s treated as yet another lazy, get-rich-off-the-government scheme. It’s been asserted that no one will work until their unemployment runs out, that the meager aid doled out “saps the can-do spirit out of the poor.” As if one could just get any job if they cared hard enough. And at the same time, the pushback against extending benefits is one more symptom of the horribly misguided push for austerity measures, a virtually guaranteed recipe for prolonged misery. While this could all be blamed on Republicans, Democrats deserve equal blame |
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for accepting the premise in the first place. One party is insane, the other spineless. Both upwards and lateral mobility have been severely curtailed by the bleak prospects of finding another job, and the specter of lost benefits. In the summer of 2009, as a freshly-minted college graduate, I found myself working part-time at a Lego retail store. God bless the Scandinavian model—as a minimum-wage employee I still had a 401K and health benefits, all because Lego is run by the Danish. Both upwards and lateral mobility have been severely curtailed by the bleak prospects of finding another job, and the specter of lost benefits. One of the few truly positive measures to come out of the health care bill passed this year was allowing young adults to remain covered by their parents’ health care plan until the age of 26. The provision took effect last month, and it is a step, however small, towards allowing us greater mobility and the confidence to take on new jobs.Obliquely, that represents a further change in how the ‘family unit’ is constructed. It’s more of a reversion to old norms, or, as Adam Meyer puts it, “the experience of immigrants.” No longer is it taboo to live at home after graduating college, but in fact, the home serves as a base for several |
generations living under one roof at the same time. He writes: “For decades, strong family networks have allowed immigrants to the U.S. to become ‘upwardly mobile’ despite all sorts of disadvantages from lack of English fluency to discrimination. Now…familial and community support networks are making a strong comeback out of financial necessity – and probably for the better.” Like the unemployment benefits debate though, this is not to say that we’re perfectly content to live at home with our parents for the rest of our lives. But for several reasons, it’s a perfectly sensible thing to do for at least a few years. I entered graduate school this past year to, in part, delay a job search that promised nothing but disappointment. For those of my generation who ‘entered the real world’ and were hunting for a job, that continued year of nothingness seemed to mark a turning point. Gone is the traditional model of a lifetime “career” at a particular company, steadily advancing and with a pension at the end. We are required by circumstance to be flexible in our jobs, ready to take on a new portfolio or to jump to another employer all together, yet the absence of steady employment makes us less likely to give up whatever small position we may have achieved. |
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That’s not to say that we always want to change jobs: while Labor Department statistics estimate that we’ll have held 10 jobs by the time we turn 38, on average we expect to stay with an employer for 8.9 years. The high cost of low living makes picking up stakes and moving to some random spot much less of an option than it might have been in the 1970s (my parents graduated in the thick of that recession, and my dad somehow managed to make a decent living as a musician in Portland, Maine). Even the “settling” necessary for disillusioned young adults in the past has dropped several rungs. Aspiring documentary director Lelaina in 1994’s Reality Bites has to suffer the indignity of instead working as a production assistant. A position which since then has increased its selectivity quite a bit, to say the least. We have fewer options and more competition than ever. And the government has at this point proven entirely unreliable, incapable and unwilling to help. We are the most praised and encouraged adult demographic in the history of the United States, told from birth that we can be anyone and do anything that we want. |
Pundits bemoan our “apathy,” our “disinterest” in the process of democracy, but is it any real mystery when time and again our greatest aspirations are dashed by the generations before us? A major study from the Pew Research Center gave numbers to the obvious: the 81 percent of the “Greatest Generation” holding “old-fashioned values about family and marriage” drops to just 60 percent among our generation (the “Millennials”). We are consistently pro-safety net, pro-equal opportunity, almost entirely supportive of interracial dating, and more supportive of affirmative action than any other demographic has ever been. But as long as we’re stuck behind our parents’ generation in terms of advancement and thus, influence, we have no say. Oddly enough, we are also more likely than any other generation to agree that “business corporations generally strike a fair balance between making profits and serving the public interest,” an attitude I would assume is trending downward sharply. And yet, despite the sheer size of our generation—come this fall, those 18 to 29 years old will be a larger constituency than everyone over the age of 65—we’re routinely ignored. Issues like student debt and unemployment benefits for the young are ignored in favor of whatever the AARP deems the day’s priority. The most tangible |
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improvement to the lives of twenty-somethings to come from the Obama Administration was the dependents-until-26 provision of the health care bill. But as with most things signed into law, it’s a mere stopgap measure that may prove irrelevant all too soon. This is the start of something new, and the continuation of an ancient process. While the free market may be the primary engine of our economy, for decades the federal government has been able to provide assistance and even employment to millions of young Americans. Opportunities to serve the country were ample. But this is all changing. Nothing is reliable. The steady hiring that the federal government engages in has attracted far more applicants than in the past, and the former ‘safe havens’ of academia and government service are now unattainable for the average graduate. But even though these have been trends for at least a decade, they still manage to take us by surprise. We are the most praised and encouraged adult demographic in the history of the United States, told from birth that we can be anyone and do anything that we want. That everyone’s a winner. And that our country is there for us. A Wall Street Journal piece from October 2008 (which optimistically refers to the economy of then as “in a slump”) describes a career consultant asking a |
group of twenty-something college students how employees view them. She hints that the word starts with a ‘E’. “Excellent” is wrong. So too are “enthusiastic” and “energetic.” What she’s looking for, it’s revealed, is “entitled.” We are dubbed “the trophy kids.” And that, too, is why our economic picture looks particularly dismal. Not only is it objectively bad to begin with, but now we also suffer from diminished expectations; crude reality has intruded on what we all imagined our future to look like. It feels worse than it is, but things are pretty bad to begin with, resulting in a nexus of negativity. Doom and gloom is the flavor of the day. Between economists like Nouriel Roubini (“Dr. Doom”), a glut of apocalyptic fiction and film, and the rise of a significant survivalist militia movement, it’s pretty clear that the end is on our minds. Last year Slate even ran a series on “The End of America,” with tens of thousands of readers using the “choose your own apocalypse” feature to predict a coming collapse. The fascination with the end of the world, or at least America, has led to finger-pointing and accusations of nihilistic tendencies run amok. But it actually appears that except in certain cases, that’s not the correct explanation. |
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It’s actually a fitting complement to our loss of control, our being shut out from any kind of process. But aside from serving as a vehicle for our rampant speculation, is it not possible that our fascination with the decline of America is actually preparing us for the future? For all the talk of individual nations collapsing, what’s actually been set in motion is nothing less than the decline and end of the nation-state. It seems like a preposterous assumption, but we only need to look at the foundations of governmental legitimacy—the consent of the governed—in order to realize how drastically they’ve eroded (for the most part, economically). Futurists such as John Robb put it in relatively simple terms:
The 20th century's central struggle was between the ideological systems that advocated governmental control of the economy and those that relied on market control. The market-based systems won … As is often the case, the emerging victory of the market-based system created yet another problem/struggle. Specifically: is it better to trust that individuals empowered with growing salaries/wages will make the best investments for future economic success -- or -- is it better to grow corporate profits (at the expense of wages/salaries) and let capital markets invest the excess?
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Between World War II and 1974, while still engaged in a bitter struggle with Communism, the US hedged its bets on that question. Both individuals and the capital markets received an equal share of the benefits of productivity growth. Incomes rose mightily and we became broadly wealthy, mirrored by generous growth in the capital markets, relative to the start of the century. As a result of this shared decision-making system, smart investments in infrastructure, industry, education, and much more made America the economic powerhouse of the world. In short, we prospered.
However, the shared decision making system ended. From 1974 onwards, the rewards of productivity growth (economic expansion) went exclusively to the capital markets and not into income growth for individuals. It’s hard to believe that the 1970s may actually be the high-water mark for American society and private-public equality, but looking at the borderline piracy of the corporate world over the past three decades, it becomes an increasingly obvious conclusion to draw. This rejection of the New Deal social contract has not led us to be that "city on a hill," but has left us more incapable and more unequal than ever before. It has become more difficult than ever for duly elected officials |
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to effectively manage – and provide for – their citizens, and the ensuing collapse of faith in representative governments is leading us down a road to the end of the 'nation' all together. Our parents and our grandparents decided to let the market take care of itself, but in doing so abdicated government responsibility in virtually every aspect of civil life. This erosion of the nation-state, you see, is not only the result of an ineffective and largely corrupt government. It’s because the actual levers of power are not controlled by elected representatives as they once were. The influence of capital in Washington is unimaginable. A feedback loop has begun that will be difficult to end, as pro-business nominees to the Supreme Court—think John Roberts and Samuel Alito—consistently vote in the interests of big business, resulting in decisions like Citizens United v. FEC, which merely make it easier for corporations to get their chosen candidate elected, thereby enabling further pro-business nominees, and so on, ad infinitum. I believe in capitalism... I also believe in floors and ceilings, minimum standards and limits on excess. |
Perhaps most significantly, we’ve had little say in determining the next half-century. Our generation voted massively for John Kerry and Al Gore, but of course, they didn’t win. So it doesn’t matter that we disagree with Bush court nominees, even though we’ll be the ones living with the consequences long after those who nominated them have died. Those justices will serve a lifetime. So will we. But while we'll outlive even them, the decisions they make will surely outlive us. I believe in capitalism. I believe that markets have been responsible for some of the most important innovations in human history. I also believe in floors and ceilings, minimum standards and limits on excess. And much as I believe in capitalism, I know for a fact that corporations aren’t people and money isn’t speech, distinctions seemingly lost to history and the present day alike. Marxism is no longer the “young man’s disease” it once was – with most of us born either towards the end of the Soviet Union or in the post-Cold War era, our moment in history has come at a time when communism and the other great twentieth century ideologies have been utterly discredited. For us though, the unavailability of those alternatives leaves us with little choice other than capitalism, and to see it fail us as it has despite our attempts to play by the rules has been tremendously disheartening. |
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To save social security—and the Boomers—it’s very likely that the retirement age will have to be raised. The last century has seen fantastical medical advances, more likely than ever to preserve and prolong life. And thus we run into the “Prince Charles problem”: that the aging workers ahead of us in seniority will continue to stagnate in their positions, creating a bottleneck and preventing any serious upward mobility for a long, long time. But that doesn’t address the more fundamental problem regarding those at the top. Is this a world for us? Or by us? Right now it appears to be neither. And by the time we’d reach the ages when we’d run for political office, it seems to me increasingly doubtful that this current system will still be in place. Preposterous as it may sound now, I truly believe that we’re headed for the ultimate decline and fall of the nation-state as a concept. Corporations further consolidate their power every day, the government grows increasingly inept and dysfunctional, and while we all rail about the two developments, we seem to ignore their sheer scale. This is not only a 'bad thing' or even a process that stands a chance of reversal. We're on the cusp of a brand-new world paradigm, and there's nothing we can do about it. It’s a bit of a stretch to go from talking about the horrors of the job market to railing against a |
corporate kleptocracy in America that threatens to undermine its very legitimacy. And considering many of us are applying for jobs with these same companies, it’s even more difficult to engage in serious criticism of them while simultaneously asking them for a salary. But right now our generation is faced with a genuine choice—to continue following in the footsteps of our parents and grandparents in a desperate attempt to preserve a system that’s already proven its inadequacy at providing us any kind of stability or prosperity, or to break from that legacy and forge a new kind of society. Daniel Suarez brings up the traditional choice that we’ve always been presented with: to live off the grid as hippies in a commune, or to agree to play by the rules and join technologically advanced society. But this is a false binary. There is a third way (and a fourth, and a fifth), and that’s where our concern with the environment and “sustainability” can serve us as a tremendous asset. The kind of sustainability needed for the post-national world isn’t merely that of recycling and water recirculation; it’s entire self-sufficient communities. Our sustainability for the 21st century is building ourselves what we need, but now thanks to decentralized, empowering technologies like micro-manufacturing and small-scale alternative energy, it doesn’t entail a life of |
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Luddite austerity. We can have our autonomy and the Internet. Stuff is pretty cool. I’ve never been the earliest adopter, but I certainly appreciate technology and gadgets. Smartphones, HDTVs, gaming consoles, Blu-Ray, they all make our lives easier and if not more fulfilling, perhaps slightly less boring. But “Mac or PC” is again a false choice we’ve been presented with. The United States used to be a nation of makers, inventors, garage tinkerers. We built things. But now we’re in stagnation. We choose which things to buy, and that’s it. Consumerism is a passive activity that reduces our willpower to an illusory choice: “the weakening of man’s free agency.” Not only that, it ignores consequences. We choose this and we select that, but rarely do we consider what comes after we’ve made our choice. While we may be blessed with a mind-boggling range of consumer electronics, music, clothes, and other such niche items to purchase (thanks to the ascendancy of the ‘long tail’), it has been unfortunately through those very material goods that we’ve defined ourselves. Look at the main subcultures of our time: hipsters, emo and goth kids, even “riot grrrls” – all of which can be categorized, or joined, by virtue of consumption. The clothes we wear, the music we listen to, and even the beer we drink place us within one characterization or |
another. Rarely does it have anything to do with actual thought or ideology. We're already more of a producing than a consuming generation when it comes to media – look at the rise of blogging, social networking, and YouTube as proof that we're more than just passive receptors for whatever passes through a corporate filter. The limited decision-making we’ve been ingrained with has trickled over to some of the most important areas of our lives. Politically, we no longer look at a problem and devise an appropriate solution. Instead something is proposed and is either accepted or not. The two-party system itself represents a neutered “choice.” Electoral politics are all-or-nothing. And politics itself is no longer concerned with ideas, but rather “Democratists” and “Republicanists” concerned merely with winning for “their team.” It used to be that you ran in and won elections in order to enact policy; now the converse seems true. What politicians propose and how they vote is determined primarily on what will ensure reelection.We Millennials have our internal disagreements, but like it or not, we are a “big tent” generation. |
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By virtue of sheer patience, we’re tolerant of intolerance but impatient for real progress. While we’ve voted overwhelmingly Democratic, that’s by no means as firmly etched in stone as the chattering classes would insist. Right now, the Democratic Party just represents our interests more. As soon as another party comes along that can do even better, we’ll switch to that. We’re not tired of partisanship, per se – believe it or not we like it when a politician actually has views and fights for them – but rather of the stupid, inane “nontroversies” that seem to dominate political discourse. And somehow, despite the odds and the tsunami of doom threatening to break just as we set out from shore, we remain optimistic and absolutely certain that good will come. We face a difficult slog ahead. And America seems fundamentally to be at some sort of crossroads. It is increasingly clear, as Abraham Lincoln said, that “the quiet dogmas of the past are inadequate to the stormy present.” But the question is: how do we reject the current state of affairs? Politically we are important, but not nearly an influential-enough bloc to seriously affect the course of human events. Economically – as is – we are at the mercy of potential employers. But that would explain our streak of entrepreneurship, of forging a separate path. Our willingness to hop from job to job should be |
aided by the new health care benefits situation, allowing us to jump ship and take our talents elsewhere if we’re not making full use of them. And make no mistake; we have talent, and a desire to use it in new ways. There are already murmurs of rejecting consumerism within our generation; ideally that will continue to grow. We’re already more of a producing than a consuming generation when it comes to media – look at the rise of blogging, social networking, and YouTube as proof that we’re more than just passive receptors for whatever passes through a corporate filter. We’ll do it our own way, thank you very much. It’s one of the loudest criticisms of the Millennials: that we’re impatient and inattentive, that we cannot stand waiting nor do we appreciate the virtues of waiting for our chance. That in turn explains our disappointment in politics for not moving fast enough. Sometimes it seems like we’re just twittering our thumbnails, waiting for older generations to die off. It’s a time for bold action, and I truly believe there will be a moment in the near future when a real choice is available, thanks to us. With even the utility of college called into question, we may soon return to a more vocational pattern of education and careerism, but is that not the most efficient allocation of resources? The more alternatives we |
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| create, the more independence we achieve, and the faster the world will evolve. For it is evolving, but as we adapt to new conditions we quicken the pace of that evolution. We revolt ourselves right into the next revolution, but as long as we can stay in the driver’s seat, it will be one which benefits us all. |
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