patrick.net

Randy H says

Roll back 25 years and the exact same arguments were shifted by -1 generation

Disagree. My parents and my friends parents, in 1987, were well off, nice houses, no money worries, many didn't complete college, some were in jobs that were eligible for pensions (non-goverment organizations).

I don't see how you can say that the "New Normal" arguments of today could come anywhere near applying at that time.

Philistine says

Randy H says

Roll back 25 years and the exact same arguments were shifted by -1 generation

Disagree. My parents and my friends parents, in 1987, were well off, nice houses, no money worries, many didn't complete college, some were in jobs that were eligible for pensions (non-goverment organizations).

I don't see how you can say that the "New Normal" arguments of today could come anywhere near applying at that time.

Your evidence is anecdotal. Strauss and Howe, among others, spent 40 years compiling data that disagrees with your nostalgia.

Philistine says

Randy H says

Roll back 25 years and the exact same arguments were shifted by -1 generation

Disagree. My parents and my friends parents, in 1987, were well off, nice houses, no money worries, many didn't complete college, some were in jobs that were eligible for pensions (non-goverment organizations).

I don't see how you can say that the "New Normal" arguments of today could come anywhere near applying at that time.

Why, I remember back in the good old days them colored folk had their own drinking fountains and everything. Everything was obviously better back then. Hell, I bet you would be pretty hard pressed to find a white boy that even knows what a noose is these days, let alone how to tie one. I guess the education system was batter back then, too.

/poorly aimed nostalgia

In the good old days I could buy foie gras in California. :(

The Baby Boomers have pretty much fucked over every generation to come after them: Gen X, Millennials, and the kids of today.

Dan8267 says

The Baby Boomers have pretty much fucked over every generation to come after them: Gen X, Millennials, and the kids of today.

Don't worry, someday you'll have your chance to screw the young'ns too, probably by living to 130 and making them change your diapers for 50 years

bmwman91 says

The fact is that millennials are screwed if they expect the same material quality of life for the same amount of effort as their parents. They will either have to work harder for it, or settle for less.
........
Maybe it sounds like I am making excuses for "being too lazy to fight for the good life."
.......
Work hard enough to keep your options open and have some fun, but beyond that you run the risk of letting all of your dreams evaporate.

Really your post comes off as trivializing the situation that the millennials are facing today and more neoliberal "BOOTSTRAPS" talk. Sure the boomers and the older generation is having to scale back their retirement...but at least they have a 401K and a retirement to worry about.

Its looking more and more like the millennials will not have that luxury, irregardless of how hard they work. And they're starting to realize that too, so of course they're going to get angry and depressed when they get not only get no sympathy from older generations but get told to essentially "shut up and work harder for less".

And to argue that they should just work as hard or harder than their parents or grand parents while accepting less in return is absolutely terrible. This isn't about being able to afford a bigger TV or a boat, people can't even afford to buy homes anymore or afford schooling or afford healthcare often even with insurance. Which is hardly shocking news, its been talked about here for quite a while now.

The extent to which some people have bought into the neoliberal FIRE framing of reality is absolutely amazing and incredibly horrible. I really do fear for the future if bmwman's post is the attitude that people in general want to take towards the whole economic situation for our younger generations.

bmwman91 says

The fact is that millennials are screwed if they expect the same material quality of life for the same amount of effort as their parents.

Of course. They must expect to exceed the quality of life of their parents. This is how progress is made.

Articles like this are how the neoliberals plan to dismantle both Social Security and education funding. They'll tell boomers that unless they allow education cuts, their Social Security will be at risk and then they'll tell millenials that if they don't cut Social Security, their student loan interest rates will have to increase and they'll have to get rid of Pell Grants all together. It's just a divide and conquer scam. We've fallen for the liberal vs. conservative division, but that is loosing its steam, so generational shifts are the new 'culture war'.

New renter says

Dan8267 says

The Baby Boomers have pretty much fucked over every generation to come after them: Gen X, Millennials, and the kids of today.

Don't worry, someday you'll have your chance to screw the young'ns too, probably by living to 130 and making them change your diapers for 50 years

The difference between Baby Boomers and the other generations is that when we get the chance to "screw the young'ns", we won't.

Dan8267 says

The Baby Boomers have pretty much fucked over every generation to come after them: Gen X, Millennials, and the kids of today.

Don't worry. The baby boomers will get theirs in the end. Gen X, Millennials and others will be buying their houses for 10c on the $$.

Randy H says

Philistine says

Randy H says

Roll back 25 years and the exact same arguments were shifted by -1 generation

Disagree. My parents and my friends parents, in 1987, were well off, nice houses, no money worries, many didn't complete college, some were in jobs that were eligible for pensions (non-goverment organizations).

I don't see how you can say that the "New Normal" arguments of today could come anywhere near applying at that time.

Your evidence is anecdotal. Strauss and Howe, among others, spent 40 years compiling data that disagrees with your nostalgia.

Ahhh yes. I just read an article on this the other day. Interesting stuff! Not sure if I came across the link to this from pat.net but here it is anyway....but first a snippet.

"In the 1990′s, William Strauss and Neil Howe published two books, Generations and The Fourth Turning, which set out a bold and fascinating theory: that the generations of history change in a regular cycle, just like the seasons of the year — that the ancients were on to something with their cyclical view of time after all.

Strauss and Howe argue that the last five centuries of Anglo-American history can be explained by the existence of four generational archetypes that repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern every 80-100 years, the length of a long human life, or what the ancients called a “saeculum.” These generational archetypes are: Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist. Each generation consists of those born during a roughly 20 year period. As each generation moves up the ladder of age and takes a different place in society, the mood of the culture greatly changes:"

http://artofmanliness.com/2012/07/12/the-generations-of-men-how-the-cycles-of-history-have-shaped-your-values-your-place-in-the-world-and-your-idea-of-manhood/

They also wrote 13th Gen (or was it Gen 13?) about Gen X before 4th Turning.

Anyway, their prediction was that GenX is the "Nomad", and will be the generation that suffers the worst from the cyclical unraveling. Millennials are the "Hero" gen, and they'll suffer the biggest losses, most likely from a war or other great historical event that requires they rise to the challenge like the GI Gen heroes from the previous cycle. Unlike the Nomads, the Heroes will be rewarded later in life with all the subsequent generations for the next cycle honoring them and organizing the society around making sure they are mostly looked after throughout their elder years. Nomads, on the other hand, will be mostly discarded and even despised by later generations.

I will admit to being a Gen X who believes many of these archetypical predictions are likely close if not dead on. I don't see Gen X doing well in our elder years except for those few who were ruthless enough to assume they had to do whatever it takes to take care of ourselves. There will be no social institutions or societal generosity extended to us. The "Prophet" Boomers will have consumed whatever is left before they're gone, and the Gen Xer role will simply be to decompose the decay. For that, we won't be largely rewarded by the +2 and +3 generations. We'll have to rely on ourselves and the occasional sympathy of Millennials.

The problem that I have with such "archtypal" predictions is that they're based on a past where we a)had plenty of land open to move into or at least take from a weaker country or society, b)plenty of resources were available on top of that, c)had several sea changes in technology that drastically improved the standard of living and production, d)mostly based on US history and doesn't really pan out when compared to European or Asian history.

IMO "4 Futures" is a better article on the likely possibilities for the US and the rest of the world.

http://jacobinmag.com/winter-2012/four-futures/

Peter P says

Of course. They must expect to exceed the quality of life of their parents. This is how progress is made.

Umm, when I was in high school in the early 1980's I already know that my standard of living wasn't going to be as high as my parents, and that was going to be pretty normal.

zzyzzx says

Umm, when I was in high school in the early 1980's I already know that my standard of living wasn't going to be as high as my parents, and that was going to be pretty normal.

Congrats on being one of the first to know that then.

Most everyone else was told otherwise though, and rightfully expected better too, even if they didn't get it in the end.

There is most definitely nothing "normal" about working hard or harder than your parents and getting less for it though, certainly not in what is still surprisingly one of the richest countries in the world.

tts says

There is most definitely nothing "normal" about working hard or harder than your parents and getting less for it though, certainly not in what is still surprisingly one of the richest countries in the world.

It IS normal when we continuously give away our industry and technology to the Chinese. The only "economy" that remains here is financial/RE speculation, loan sharking, fast food, and sick-care.

tts says

There is most definitely nothing "normal" about working hard or harder than your parents and getting less for it though, certainly not in what is still surprisingly one of the richest countries in the world.

(some of this is also in response to your previous response to my other post)

If you look at much of the rest of the world, this is entirely normal. In general, Americans have been worked far less hard for far more material wealth than much of the rest of the world. The gravy train is going to come to a halt at some point, and Americans with an entitlement mentality need had better get ready to live like the rest of the world. I don't LIKE the fact that it is going away because it has been nice to live a life of relative leisure and have opportunity present itself to me simply because I was born here. I will miss it. I don't know where people get the idea that Americans are entitled to the highest quality of life anywhere, and that their kids are entitled to be richer than their parents. It has only been possible because the rest of the industrialized world was rubble in 1945 and we were able to use military power to keep energy costs low. The way way of life that was established in the 1950's and has been carried to today is going away as energy costs rise and other nations work harder and longer in pursuit of the material wealth dreams that America put in all of their heads.

You can label this whatever you want it, but it seems like the reality that is coming. You can face it kicking, screaming and whining or you can accept that America's golden days are drawing to a close and adapt. Personally, this whole notion of never-ending growth is ludicrous. How many generations will be better off then their parents? It certainly cannot keep up forever. What would the ultimate outcome of that be? After 100 generations all kids are born with $1B to their name, 5000 houses generating rental income and 100000 acres of prime farmland that all of their own food comes from? There is absolutely no such thing as limitless growth, at least not on something as finite as our small planet.

Should my generation be pissed that we are not going to live as well as our parents? It depends on whether they think that they are entitled to. Personally, I see so much unhappiness and strife coming from the BB generation, largely due to their fixation on accumulating stuff and maximizing money, that I am perfectly fine living a simpler life. The idea of "owning a home" as we have it now is a total joke. If there was still unsettled land out there that could be claimed and truly OWNED, the sure, it would be something to aspire to. Saying that millennials are being screwed because they can "never afford to own a home" is BS. Nobody "owns" one anymore since it will always be taken away unless you pay some fees every year, and at this point we should be encouraging the next generation to see debt as dangerous and stop telling them that accumulating 30 years of debt is something to aspire to. If you want to argue that they can't afford it in that they have to pay with loans rather than cash, then I am 100% with you. Affordability is obviously super low when nobody can buy a house without leveraging themselves 5:1 or more.

I will concede that I was trivializing some of my generation's difficulties. Thousands of kids finished college with some degree that may or may not be useful, but did so because they were told that it would guarantee them a life as good as that of their parents. Now they are stuck with a piece of paper and a bunch of debt, and virtually no way to pay it off. I have friends in exactly this boat. They are working their assess off to get grad degrees to try to be competitive enough to get a job in their field, bit even that is completely unknown. It sucks, and truly I have no idea how things will turn out for them in the next 3-5 years. It's messed up, and with the economy contracting, I really wonder how things will turn out for all of us.

bmwman91 says

It has only been possible because the rest of the industrialized world was rubble in 1945 and we were able to use military power to keep energy costs low. The way way of life that was established in the 1950's and has been carried to today is going away as energy costs rise and other nations work harder and longer in pursuit of the material wealth dreams that America put in all of their heads.

Well put.

Unless we're willing to bomb the rest of the world into the Stone Age, our quality of life will continue to go down, big-time. Globalization only accelerates this decline.

I don't understand why anyone thinks US real-estate will "recover" beyond the rate of inflation. A few areas close to centers of Crony Capitalism (NYC, DC) might keep rising.

bmwman91 says

Personally, this whole notion of never-ending growth is ludicrous. How many generations will be better off then their parents? It certainly cannot keep up forever.

bmwman91 says

There is absolutely no such thing as limitless growth, at least not on something as finite as our small planet.

Just don't tell any of that to the Global Capitalist Utopia crowd. They never take the "zero sum game" factor into account. They actually think that the "pie gets bigger" as the economy "expands." Sure, if resources are relatively abundant, then the pie gets bigger.

Resources were "relatively abundant" in the New World after the Europeans slaughtered the natives and took their land. That's probably why the capitalist narrative worked so well here in America as opposed to Europe, where resources were much more scarce (or owned by permanent aristocracies).

wthrfrk80 says

Unless we're willing to bomb the rest of the world into the Stone Age, our quality of life will continue to go down, big-time. Globalization only accelerates this decline.

That's basically how I see it. Again, I don't LIKE it, but it seems futile to think that it can be fought against.

I kind of see the quality of life or wealth distribution in the world like the thermodynamic concept of entropy. It takes a lot of effort to concentrate a really high quality of life in one place with everything surrounding it being lower. There will be a natural tendency for everything to even out across the board as poorer places try to become richer and the rich places either get complacent or don't fight hard enough to keep poor places poor. Since all humans have the same basic needs and drive to prosper, there will always be a tendency for wealth to be redistributed, although it can obviously be slowed or reversed with enough force (which costs a lot and it looks like it costs more than it brings in, in the long run...which is a pretty good analog to entropy).

On top of that, maintaining a high-end civilization still requires grunt workers, but high-end societies don't encourage people to do grunt work, so they sort of sow their own undoing unless they are set up to use slave labor (some class of people with no rights as humans). Right now America has Mexicans to do all of the jobs that nobody here really wants to do since it is easier to collect a free government check every month. It can't keep up forever though.

bmwman91 says

I kind of see the quality of life or wealth distribution in the world like the thermodynamic concept of entropy. It takes a lot of effort to concentrate a really high quality of life in one place with everything surrounding it being lower. There will be a natural tendency for everything to even out across the board as poorer places try to become richer and the rich places either get complacent or don't fight hard enough to keep poor places poor.

I like your entropy analogy. I can tell you're a mechanical engineer too!

I suppose our only saving grace is natural resources. Sure, our industry and technology can be sent overseas, but our abundant farmland and coal cannot. So as long as we can maintain a decent military to defend these resources, we might be ok. Also, the natural "moat" of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans helps.

Unfortunately we've already depleted most of our oil. So we have to make Saudi theocrats rich in order to get it. But of course you can't eat oil, so we're probably better off than the Saudi's in the long run.

That assumes Global Warming doesn't kill our farmland with drought.

bmwman91 says

That's basically how I see it. Again, I don't LIKE it, but it seems futile to think that it can be fought against.

Wait you make a distinction between what you WANT to be true and what probably IS true?

I can't believe you're really from California. ;-)

wthrfrk80 says

Wait you make a distinction between what you WANT to be true and what probably IS true?

I can't believe you're really from California. ;-)

LOL

Well, there are many reasons why I am looking at leaving. I grew up here and the place seems to be getting nuttier and nuttier, however improbable that may be. Maybe I am just noticing more as I get older though.

wthrfrk80 says

But of course you can't eat oil, so we're probably better off than the Saudi's in the long run.

Without energy, all our crops will rot in the fields - think Mad Max.

bmwman91 says

Why, I remember back in the good old days them colored folk

That's a bit tacky, given how unrelated to the topic your sarcastic remark is. It's not about nostalgia; all I can tell you is my parents and my friends' parents had it much easier to make a nice living. Globalization has changed all that--because it was false prosperity. I don't think globalization is going to reverse, so it would follow that we will not revert to those principals which allowed the world of 1987 to exist.

This is why I don't buy the 4-cycle theory--it no longer applies beginning with the generation that followed the Boomers because globalization did not exist in human history until the last 20 years. Yes, internationalism existed in the 20th century, but that is hardly the same thing.

dunnross says

Without energy, all our crops will rot in the fields - think Mad Max.

I was assuming human (slave) labor would do it. By that time, whites will be a minority. Who do you think the slaves will be? Hint: it won't be the blacks.

Why have "slaves" when you can convince them that they are employees?

Peter P says

Why have "slaves" when you can convince them that they are employees?

Good point. They could be forced to live in company houses and shop at the company store.

Philistine says

That's a bit tacky, given how unrelated to the topic your sarcastic remark is. It's not about nostalgia; all I can tell you is my parents and my friends' parents had it much easier to make a nice living. Globalization has changed all that--because it was false prosperity. I don't think globalization is going to reverse, so it would follow that we will not revert to those principals which allowed the world of 1987 to exist.

This is why I don't buy the 4-cycle theory--it no longer applies beginning with the generation that followed the Boomers because globalization did not exist in human history until the last 20 years. Yes, internationalism existed in the 20th century, but that is hardly the same thing.

You and I are 100% agreement about the false prosperity enjoyed by the BB generation. That's a great, succinct way to describe it.

I am also with you on not buying the various cycle theories. I don't really see the logic in saying that our way of life is cyclical. Our way of life is/was a first, and while many societies throughout history have parallels, at no point in history was the entire world so "small." Most of the cycle-theories look to me like theories that were written and then historical evidence was selected to support them.

The cycle theories are utter BS. The world isn't so simple. Let's hear these cycle theorists predict the future if their models are so accurate.

The mass-consumption of fossil fuels and associated mega-prosperity has never happened before. When the fossil fuels run out, it's back to the dark ages. That's assuming humanity doesn't destroy itself before then.

tts says

There is most definitely nothing "normal" about working hard or harder than your parents and getting less for it though, certainly not in what is still surprisingly one of the richest countries in the world.

Actually it is pretty normal and that was how it worked in most of the world for a very long time. The only exceptions that I can think of are right after some of the plagues when workers could earn more money due to a labor shortage and when people were moving to the new world.

For example, for a long time in Europe, farmers used to subdivide their land to their ever increasing number of children, so that each successive generation inherited less land. This stopped when the farms became too small to subdivide, then the eldest son would inherit it an nobody else inherited anything. They had to become craftsman, soldiers, sailors, etc. Once The Americas were discovered they could move here and get good land cheap, so they did. I have seen documentaries where an entire town in Germany moved to the US for land, since they were all sharecroppers.

But since we have already over populated the "New World" there is no place for people to go for cheap land create their fortunes again, so unless someone gets that StarGate working, it's just not going to happen again anytime soon (unless another plagus comes along).

zzyzzx says

But since we have already over populated the "New World" there is no place for people to go for cheap land create their fortunes again, so unless someone gets that StarGate working, it's just not going to happen again anytime soon (unless another plagus comes along).

True. Maybe Avian Flu isn't such a bad thing after all.

Philistine says

globalization did not exist in human history until the last 20 years.

Human interaction over long distances has existed for thousands of years. The overland Silk Road that connected Asia, Africa and Europe is a good example of the transformative power of international exchange. Philosophy, religions, language, arts, and other aspects of culture spread and mixed as nations exchanged products and ideas. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans made important discoveries in their exploration of the World ocean and in beginning cross-Atlantic travel to the "New World" of the Americas. Global movement of people, goods, and ideas expanded significantly in the following centuries. Early in the 19th century, the development of new forms of transportation (such as the steamship and railroads) and telecommunications that "compressed" time and space allowed for increasingly rapid rates of global interchange.

finehoe says

Human interaction over long distances has existed for thousands of years.

True, but there was no internet or instant communitcation. Past global trade is nowhere near the modern concept of "globalization."

bmwman91 says

If you look at much of the rest of the world, this is entirely normal.
.....
I don't know where people get the idea that Americans are entitled to the highest quality of life anywhere, and that their kids are entitled to be richer than their parents.

Except the rich keep getting richer while everyone else gets poorer. Infinite growth is obviously impossible but we can also just as obviously still grow the national and global economy quite a bit before we start hitting the wall.

To sit back and look at the situation as it exists today and say, "STFU and deal with it, anything else is whining or whatever you want to call it LOLOLOL" is just disgusting.

There is plenty of historical evidence in the US that there is indeed something we can do about all this, all you have to do is read up on the Great Depression years and the efforts that labor unions went through to get us such things as a 8hr work day which are now taken for granted. The rich have so much power these days in part because organized labor basically doesn't really exist in the US anymore. Not like it did back then anyways.

zzyzzx says

Actually it is pretty normal and that was how it worked in most of the world for a very long time.

You're talking about specific points in time here, in some cases in the far past. There are periods were labor got screwed (as in quasi slave serf levels of screwed) and then there are periods when labor prospered quite well (starting with organized labor in the form of guilds where the journeyman system really got started up). Either which way it doesn't have to be that way today or in the future.

We don't have a problem with growing the economy, we have political problems which are creating the wealth disparity.

Today wealth isn't so tied to land, certainly not in the US. Historically in the US having open land that was available to move into was more of a pressure relief valve on society than anything else. What we've seen since then is the creation of the suburbs and even exurbs today to act as a pressure relief valve on society to escape the cities...which has created all sorts of new problems but that is another topic altogether.

That is also to some extent a political issue too, and its fixable as well. Which is why its so awful for you guys just to sit back and say, "all of this is inevitable" because it isn't, not even vaguely.

wthrfrk80 says

Unless we're willing to bomb the rest of the world into the Stone Age, our quality of life will continue to go down, big-time. Globalization only accelerates this decline.

This is pretty depressing that you can only see bombing whole countries back the stone age as a possible solution.

You guys realize that if people were better paid demand would rise which would grow the economy for the US and most other countries right?

And we already talked about nuclear energy before, the US and world doesn't have to depend on oil or coal. Thorium is available everywhere cheaply and can work in a modified CANDU style reactor, which apparently India is already working on. Its taking them a long time to do it because of the politics of nuclear but its quite possible to build them faster than noted in the article. I think France built about 6-7 a year when they were transitioning over to nuke back in the 60's.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/india-thorium-nuclear-plant

Like many other things today the problem with getting mass produced thorium reactors going is political.

tts says

The rich have so much power these days in part because organized labor basically doesn't really exist in the US anymore. Not like it did back then anyways.

tts says

We don't have a problem with growing the economy, we have political problems which are creating the wealth disparity.

Correct. Because the "working class" hasn't had any real representation since 1968, when the "New Deal Coalition" was destroyed by the "New Left."

tts says

This is pretty depressing that you can only see bombing whole countries back the stone age as a possible solution.

It may be depressing. But that doesn't mean it's not correct. The American labor unions had a "monopoly" on global industry until the rest of the world rebuilt their industry. As we all know, that monopoly is long-gone. And slave-labor sweatshops are back, at least in China and other "developing" countries.

tts says

You guys realize that if people were better paid demand would rise which would grow the economy for the US and most other countries right?

Are you talking about Americans? Chinese?

Good luck getting China, where "life is cheap" to go along with that.

If Americans are better paid, that just means more demand for Chinese sweatshop labor. Which might increase wages there, perhaps.

How are wages going to rise? Will we raise the minimum wage? Unionize? March on Washington?

Remember, neither party represents the interests of average Americans. Democrats are the party of rich urban and university pseudo-intellectuals. And the Republicans represent corporate interests and the top 0.1%.

wthrfrk80 says

The cycle theories are utter BS. The world isn't so simple. Let's hear these cycle theorists predict the future if their models are so accurate.

The mass-consumption of fossil fuels and associated mega-prosperity has never happened before. When the fossil fuels run out, it's back to the dark ages. That's assuming humanity doesn't destroy itself before then.

There are many cycle theories that are well supported empirically. War cycle among the lead. Whether that translates to generational theory I have more skepticism. But you do realize that Strauss and Howe were uncannily accurate with the 4th Turning predictions thus far. So much so I have to withhold judgement until more data and time pass.