Posted on 12/10/2023 9:25:20 AM PST by FarCenter
The younger generations seem increasingly crazed. A worrying proportion of the young sympathises with those who launch terror attacks against Israel, supports the immediate elimination of fossil fuels or demands the wiping out of gender distinctions. All these positions are troubling in themselves, but they also reflect a deeper malady – a mostly apolitical breakdown of social norms, personal interaction, literacy and logical thinking.
No single issue has catalysed Gen Z, as the Vietnam War did for the Baby Boomer generation. Boomers were angry but did not generally despair about their futures, which turned out reasonably well, buoyed by the creation of new jobs, rising property and stock prices. In contrast, most younger people dread almost everything that lies ahead. The majority of them, according to a Lancet study, see the entire planet as doomed by climate change.
This negative take on the future shows that the young are being poorly served in numerous ways, notably by the economy. Only 36 per cent of voters in a new Wall Street Journal / NORC survey say the American Dream still holds true, a feeling that is even more pronounced among younger people. Currently, less than half of millennials are doing better financially than their parents were at the same stage in life. This is the first time a generation has fallen behind its elders in recent history. About seven in 10 Americans think that young adults today have a harder time than their parents’ generation when it comes to saving for the future (72 per cent), paying for college (71 per cent) and buying a home (70 per cent), according to a 2021 report by the Pew Research Centre.
The decline in homeownership – which nearly three in five young people see as an essential part of the American Dream – is especially damaging. Homeownership roots people in their community, forces them to mature and is closely tied to the desire to start a family. According to US Census Bureau data, the rate of homeownership among young adults at ages 25 to 34 was 45 per cent for Generation X. This has dropped to 37 per cent for millennials, the generation that should now be starting to have families. In the UK, house prices hit a record high last year, while the rate of homeownership among people under 35 halved between 1997 and 2017.
The trends are similarly worrying in the world of work. Despite labour shortages that are likely to get worse, real wages have not surpassed costs for most people living in the US, the EU, Japan and the UK. In the US, men’s labour participation is now lower than in 1940, when unemployment was three times higher. Labour-participation rates for young men have suffered a particularly steep drop from over 80 per cent in the 1980s to barely 60 per cent now.
Well, at least they were equally miserable. the top 1% of the ‘in-crowd’ Politburo oligarchs,were comfortable.
35, actually.
This is the part that is true. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.
This part is pure BS. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
Did they "build that"? Of course they did. With a bit of help from parents and siblings.
But it is also true that others put the systems in place that gave them a place to build.
And other people are maintaining those systems. A big part of the problem is many citizens are checking out of their responsibility for system maintenance. Go look at any civics clubs. They are dying because the members are dying. These were the people who did the charity work and civic work that the government did not do. They did yard work for things like libraries, did book drives, ran a free taxi service for the disabled, set up and took down booths at town events.
Now those things are not being done, community is vanishing because it is now all the big impersonal government doing things.
Or how many times on FR have you seen people bragging about how they "got out of jury duty"? You will see them on other threads bitching about how the system is "broken". Of course it is. You are not doing your part to keep it going.
Who goes to the public school meetings and holds the public schools accountable to the public? They don't. "I don't have kids" they proclaim. As if that makes any difference. You are paying for it.
Do you think Western Civilization just descended like dew from heaven? The rain that falls on the just and the unjust?
It did not. Lots of people worked very hard for that to happen. Lots of people are still working very hard to keep it happening. And where it is crumbling is because liberals do not even know the systems are there. And conservatives, let's be honest, to many of them see things the way you do. How dare someone suggest that I owe a debt to those who keep the systems going? Or should even be involved in doing my part? I pay taxes so it should all work. And why is the government involved in everything?
Why indeed.
Numbers 1 and 2 were good!
In the GenZ era, number 3 is bad! GenZ screw-ups are at community college level. Let them go to community college—any who are mature enough to work at a REAL university level can go on with college!
If they want to demonstrate for BLM or Hamas, let them do so in community colleges. That might be interesting!
This is the story people are missing. Gen Z is the least white American generation ever. These brown and black Gen Z'ers, the children of immigrants --or themselves immigrants, have zero attachment to the ideals of the Founding Fathers or Western Civilization.
In the second and third books of the series, there is a special Martian prison built like a wheel to rotate around an axis, by the prisoners each pulling on a chain in their cells. It takes one Martian year for the prison to make a full rotation, revealing the entrance to each prisoner as their cell makes the full rotation. Each prisoner must do his share to pull the prison around, or nobody gets to leave.
In a sense, what you (in the ubiquitous sense) describe as "community" and "western civilization" is the same as Burroughs' prison:
And other people are maintaining those systems. A big part of the problem is many citizens are checking out of their responsibility for system maintenance. Go look at any civics clubs. They are dying because the members are dying. These were the people who did the charity work and civic work that the government did not do. They did yard work for things like libraries, did book drives, ran a free taxi service for the disabled, set up and took down booths at town events.The metaphor of the Martian prison follows the handoff of civilization from one generation to the next. Taking just the teacher as an example, that teacher was taught by a teacher, who was taught another teacher, and so on. Today's teachers are "checking out," or they are corrupting the curricula for the next generation, thereby breaking the wheel.
Now those things are not being done, community is vanishing because it is now all the big impersonal government doing things.Or how many times on FR have you seen people bragging about how they "got out of jury duty"? You will see them on other threads bitching about how the system is "broken". Of course it is. You are not doing your part to keep it going...
Lots of people are still working very hard to keep it happening. And where it is crumbling is because liberals do not even know the systems are there.
The systems have become more complex, with more "single points of failure." Each sub-system has to self-perpetuate, train its own next generation of workers so that sub-system can feed the next sub-system, and so on. When today's generation stops seeing the worth of their own contributions (aka their obligations to the whole), when they stop trying to participate, the prison stops turning and eventually everybody dies.
-PJ
I certainly didn’t agree with # 3....I see it as an outgrowth of 1 & 2 when the mythology/mentality developed which believe that each and every kid was destined to go to college.
We would have happier, healthier, more prosperous and less frustrated workforce if 2/3 or more of the high school graduates went to a trade school a/o trade school supplemented with community college.
Many community colleges are trade schools!
Too many of them have no idea that the systems are there at all.
Let's look at a very simple one that I consider one of the foundations of civilized life. Plumbing. In it's most basic form it is quite simple. Liquid flows down hill. So you want waste and water to flow away from where you are to some place you are not.
But while the idea is simple doing it in such a way that, (a) it works all the time, (B) it works for a lot of people (c) it does not make the people else where really mad at you, not so simple. And requires a lot of people who are consonantly maintaining the system.
Because people do not know how the systems work they break the system by putting things down the toilet that do not belong there. Some times this is deliberate, more often it is sheer ignorance.
Human poop goes down the hole so what I scooped out of the cat box should go down just as easily.
And I spend a great deal of money getting a plumber to go to your apartment on a holiday weekend so the problem does not get worse. Also a great deal of internal screaming when he tells me what he found and you get a whopping bill because that was not a normal wear and tear.
It seems to me that the problem is that we are not teaching people about the systems that keep everything going, the basics of how they work and why it would be a good idea not to break those systems.
On the one hand, too much is being drawn out the back-end to charge the cars with not enough going into the front-end to keep the system flowing.
On the other hand, Gen Z is trying to restrict or stop the raw materials from going into the front-end in the first place. The electricity will just automagically be there when they need it.
And on the third hand, they don't want to (or are incapable of) studying the professions required to keep the grid going. They fail to realize that even Utopia needs plumbing and energy to survive.
Somebody is turning the wheel now, but as they enter their cell (adulthood) and refuse to pull the chain, the prison stops turning.
-PJ
Western civilization has turned on itself. It thrives on change and when it stopped growing and striving, it turned against itself.
I have occasionally said sarcastically on the EV threads “because electricity comes from fairies dancing in the woods”. I am no long going to say that because too many people seem to believe it.
-PJ
Elon Musk realizes that. We need a new challenge. Building a base on Mars is a good challenge that would reinvigorate us.
Please. I beg you.
Marxist brainwashing in schools is quite effective.
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