Thursday, September 12, 2013

Shit Is Fucked Up And Bullshit

I'll never be a real writer, because I would have condensed this down to about 3 sentences. Something like:
Economy is screwing millennials. They didn't grow up hearing from Republicans and Democrats about how awesome Reagan was and how government sucks. They want more.

It's a similar point to what I was making here, or maybe a good example of that point. I wasn't talking about millennials. I was talking about people like Peter Beinart, people my ageish, who are now more open to recognizing that shit is fucked up and bullshit than they once were. I see plenty of eventhenewrepublic types subtly or not so subtly shifting leftward on their domestic economic policy preferences. You gotta be really rich to send a couple of kids through an elite college. Those 401K balances aren't exactly as high as they're supposed to be. There's a reason the New York Times runs their neverending series on the "plight of the not quite rich enough." That's the "younger" generation and themselves. That's their cohort.

The point is that even among the pretty damn successful, life is harder than it should be and maybe they're starting to extrapolate from that just a bit. I don't like to play the generational war game, because it isn't about blame, but those that came up a bit earlier did, in many ways, have it better. Stable careers, defined benefit pensions, cheap college for their kids, and much cheaper health insurance/care. From what I see, too many of the "olds" don't actually understand that.

This is a class thing, of course. Poverty has been with us forever. I'm not talking about the poors, though hopefully we do spend a bit more time talking about the poors. I'm talking about the people who have succeeded quite nicely by any measure, yet still can't quite afford that nice vacation every few years. The people who thought they'd be on top, yet are discovering things are not nearly as easy as they were supposed to be.