According to surveys, millennials are the most optimistic generation ever.
I.Q., Interrupted
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
19 Comments. Leave new
Since when did optimism become a bad thing?
I guess there is a difference in believing that the future will probably be great, and merely hoping the future will be great.
Why shouldn’t they be? The unraveling of so many so-called “social programs” will lift a huge burden off their shoulders. Granted, they won’t be living lavishly on credit, but they’ll be all the better for it.
Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. If anything millenials should be faulted for the latter and not the former.
Anyone who trusted their hard earned 401K money to Wall Street deserved what they got. Both millenials and boomers entrusted their money to con men with no way to earn a living besides playing the system and every incentive to pump and dump loser investments on novice investors. What did they expect would happn?
Billy,
You ever heard of Public Workers Unions? You ever heard of the lavish retirement programs they’ve been guaranteed at the expensive of tax payers?
US 395,
Yes, I have heard of Public Workers Unions. Public sector workers trade lower salaries for great benefits. More power to them if they can actually collect on the latter.
If we want to save money, we should do it by refusing to pay for bank bailouts. We can also cut back on the number of grown men we send to play decade long games of cops and robbers in the middle east and central Asia. Stripping teachers and postal workers of their pension is not just unethical, its small potatoes.
Funny, US 395, you act as if the existence of AFSCME is some sort of deep, dark, secret, like a conspiracy that only a select few know about.
Why does everything turn into union bashing? What maybe “lavish” to you 395 might be normal for union workers because they fight for more shit than the non-union workers.
Public sector workers trade lower salaries for great benefits.
Wrong, public sectors workers now get earn average 60k vs 45k for non-public workers.
I didn’t bash any union workers. I do bash their leadership, and the corrupt Democratic party that get’s paid off by the unions then passes pro-union laws.
Buceph,
“social programs” are a drop in the bucket compared to military spending. As far as the real social programs go, I have the following to say to you.
you can’t at the same time tout western Europe as the “most developed” while at the same time denying how they got there. (hint: Austrian School-influenced economic policy is not included).
US395. Average yearly wage in the US 60 years ago was about 1/3 the median house price. Now it is about 1/10th.
So, I guess you should instead be complaining that public sector jobs are not paying 100k on average.
Angelo,
I don’t tout anything of the sort: Europe got there during the 19th century, through industrialization, division of labour and diversification of the economy: good ole’ capitalism. That, and a post-war baby boom is what made so-called welfare affordable. For so long. Those chickens are going to come home to roost though, and every bureaucrat from Stockholm to Madrid knows it (and that’s why some of them see immigration from the Third World as a way out, at least temporarily). So should you millennials, but I guess most do indeed know.
Of course I agree with you that, compared to military spending and corporate bailouts, “social security” is small potatoes. At least it serves some useful purpose, unlike those two other boondoggles. That’s why a responsible path towards phasing it out should be supporting people who came to be dependent on it, while simultaneously letting young folks opt out.
—–1950—–
INCOME = $3000
HOUSE = $7,000
—–TODAY—–
INCOME = $30,000
HOUSE = $200,000
CHECK SOURCES (links open in new window)
median house prices 1950-present:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html
median personal income today:
http://www.census.gov/const/uspricemon.pdf
income in 1950:
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-009.pdf
Buceph,
You did tout Europe as the pinnacle of development here.
You said that the more developed a country becomes, the lower the population growth rate becomes. You then cited Europe as an example. Now you are saying Europe owes its development to a baby boom.
Europe did not develop during the 19th century. The way development is measured is by examining the well being of the average individuals within the system. That is, can they afford the basics?, Do they have lives outside of work? Are they educated? Every country can say this for small portions of its population. To be considered developed, most of the citizens need to be developed.
Buceph, you turned a discussion of the collective intelligence of one age group versus another into a spin session to spew talking points from a failed and collapsed rightwing perspective about a government program that in these troubled times can be privatised so that the richest few at the top can make of like Mongol Khans whilst the rest of us spend our old age in penury. You stink, your arguments stink and even your Goddamned nickname from that of Alexander the Great’s horse stinks.
Angelo, please don’t fight these people to try and see sense. Beat them into the verbal ground with a talking stick. That’s the only language rightwingers understand.
And the reason millenials are so positive is that they will get to witness the death of the baby boomers on their watch. An anti-boomer Gen X-er like Ted should understand that.
Try as might, I did not find the word “pinnacle” in that post. What I did say was that Europe’s population would be shrinking, were it not for immigration. And what I said previously was that the welfare programs were only affordable in post-war Europe thanks to the baby boom. There’s no contradiction in any of those. You should try reading terser prose than leftist pamphlets, it’s affecting your comprehension.
You may take your beef with historians. All the measures you allude to were significantly better in 19th century Europe than in previous centuries. As per education, by which I think you mean public schooling, it also got kick started in the 19th century, observe Bismarck’s Germany.
“I do bash their leadership,”
Oh, so you just bash the leaders who make the union possible for the workers, but not the workers who benefit from their leaders.
“and the corrupt Democratic party that get’s paid off by the unions then passes pro-union laws.”
What laws? Democrats have been sitting on the EFCA for years and haven’t passed it. Even if the Democrats did do everything the unions told them to, SO FUCKING WHAT? Unions are the backbone of labor and it’s no coincidence that as anti-union laws get passed in Orwellianly titled “right to work states”, wages go down and the economy suffers. Unions used to represent over 30% of the private sector, now it’s around 10%, unions need to be empowered if the economy wants to improve.
That’s the only language rightwingers understand.
Correction: that’s the only language you can speak.