Generational Notes

The constant babble from the Millennial media is the sad story that Millennials are working more for less than their parents. I don’t know who these parents are, but I know the Millennials I know aren’t even in the game with the Boomers I worked beside in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Obviously, the children of the 1% are the same useless, entitled, lazy, boring brats they’ve been since humans started farming, serving the ruling class in various armies, and working until we can’t and get tossed into the rubbish heap. The working class has put in 60-90 hour work weeks for generations and the most recent batch of working class kids has deluded itself into believing that a degree in social studies, English or some foreign language, history, music, art appreciation, or any of the so-called “liberal arts” qualifies them for a life gazing into the distance from their corner office. Four extra years of studying your navel is not a qualification.

A friend, whose 20-something son still lives in Mom’s basement doing nothing useful, says, “This generation wants to start off where their parents ended up.” I’ve noticed that, too. After working, usually as waiter or boutique store clerk, for a year or two way too many of these over-age children “come home” and stagnate in their parents’ basement until . . . we don’t know what these bozos think they’re going to be doing when the parents die. If they are planning on an inheritance from their X-gen parents, they have been paying no attention at all to popular economic forecasts. With that in mind, the Millennials are really deluding themselves if they think their X-gen parents are going to pass on the inheritance they receive from the Boomer grandparents. Honestly, all of this depressing financial grasshopper “planning” makes me glad that my own life expectancy is fairly limited. I don’t need to be around to watch the sky fall on yours and my goofy grandkids.

And it is going to fall.

American worker income has fallen in all areas since 2000 (Bush-Cheney, if you are historically deficient) and there is nothing on the horizon to indicate that will change anytime soon. In fact, it’s probably likely nothing will change for the better in the country’s near future. All signs point to a gradual-to-rapid decline in American world influence, industrial strength, citizen education levels, wealth, quality of life, and practically every other marker with which we and the rest of the world use to indicate who’s who on the international organizational chart. The chart (at left) pretends to explain why going into debt for college is so important, but it’s not that convincing. Mostly, it demonstrates why kids who live in their parents’ basements are pretty much useless and, to no one’s surprise, incapable of producing an income. The majority of the “less than high school diploma” and “high school diploma” kids are the video game, social network, YouTube obsessed crowd or the usual street bangers who have been off of the economic grid for decades. The are certainly not manual laborers, skilled or semi-skilled. The reason that many of those jobs go to “foreign workers” (In the USofA, that is probably the silliest oxymoron of all.) is that too many young US citizens do not qualify as “workers” in any sense of the word. They barely qualify as warm bodies.