15 Replies to “The Fate of America’s Entitlement Generation”

  2. We could see this coming years ago. Mobile, free-lance professionals, the more diverse and adaptable the better, might be the only ones capable of flourishing economically in such an adversely-devolved free-enterprise system. Bottom-line profits are where it’s at, and humanity is shuffled off to the outer margins. Good people falling through the cracks is now the norm. Prosperity is out the window, along with a lot of lost dreams. No such thing as job security. Paths of education are followed with good intentions but no guarantees for the aftermath. These trends in these times, with this administration, now seem unstoppable.

  3. In other words all that we (the baby boomers) believed is not working anymore. the economy has been destroyed and we are looking at the end, and I really mean the end, of our prosperity and living standards. I truly believe that my kids will not have the life style or living standards i enjoyed.

  4. OK So lawyers and financial councilors are doing badly.
    Mr. Bloomberg, how about the auto mechanics, plumbers, electrical fitters and welderes, etc.?

  5. Colleges and professors being sued because they lied about the wonderful job opportunity’s for their faithful followers.
    Sheepish eating their Shepherds.

  6. (What) we (the baby boomers) believed is not working anymore.
    Respectively disagree..
    My son in law has an online degree in computer technology and web design and is making about $85,000 per year, NC.
    My pension and SS is less than halve that amount,
    when I need extra monies I call him.
    Hey Son,
    Send Money !

  7. Once again, a little Macluhan-style analysis yields a lot of insight. (ET, you can ignore the rest of this comment, since you don’t understand a word the man wrote.)
    “The medium IS the message”. The message of the Internet is NOT contained in any single email, web page, or file transfer. It is not the CONTENT that matters; it’s what the Internet medium makes possible, which, in its simplest form, can be called “disintermediation”.
    This blog – and a thousand, a hundred thousand others – are perfect examples of the process. I don’t watch any of the TV national news programs anymore; I watch the local CITY broadcast for weather and traffic news, and the sports. I no longer subscribe to a newspaper or cable TV; I get all the stuff I want over the net. People like Kate, Drudge, and Tyler Durden do the work of finding stuff I find interesting, and then giving me the privilege of interacting with others on a daily basis.
    As the net erases most of the limitations of time and space, jobs that once depended on someone being there can now be farmed out to distant services. Call centres were obvious targets, but the architects noted in the article are another. Why pay a draftsman $80,000 to live in NYC when you can ship the files in seconds to Grand Rapids, MI, where you can pay someone $40,000 to do the same thing? (And where, BTW, they’ll enjoy a higher standard of living on $40k than they would at $80k anywhere in the New York area.)
    But the biggest impact is on education. Techniques and technology – what we used to call “know how” – are now available virtually everywhere. 200 years ago, if you wanted to learn to make china, you went to Delft; now, you don’t have to leave your mother’s basement. That has the effect of making the salary pyramid both higher and flatter at the same time.
    It becomes higher because the very best can now offer their services to virtually anyone in the world, and so the bidding naturally goes up. However, it becomes flatter because many of the intermediaries are no longer necessary. The best way to visualize it is to think of the sides of the pyramid being ‘squished’ down and in. That’s the sound of the disappearing middle class.
    Now, blaming Bambam for this is as stupid and futile as blaming GWB. It’s like blaming Nixon or Carter for the demise of Main Street USA, when the culprit was the Interstate system. Bambam couldn’t have stopped this process any more than Canute could have held back the tides; unfortunately, lacking Canute’s self-awareness, Bambam thinks he can. Wait for a ‘middle class’ czar, coming soon.

  8. This really is a stupid generation. They are going to be devoured by the real Entitlement Generation: old people. Medicare and SS are out of control.

  9. My nephew’s been out of college 2 1/2 years. Still no real job. He voted for Obama in 08 and i think last month too. That he and others his age can’t see the damage that O has wrought is maddening.

  10. They then gloat when their black magic in chief takes time away from the golf course to spend his “Happy Holiday” in his 35 million dollar mansion in Hawaii. Guess it helps the practice swing getting away from the Chicago or Washington mansion winter blues and back onto some green.
    What a bunch of suckers.

  13. When talking to Obama supporters I now ask them how much is an acceptable level of debt? Just how much do they think Obama should borrow? They always avoid the question so I just keep asking it. They will answer with the usual Bush bashing or blame it on the wars but I just keep asking for a specific number, is it $8 trillion? $10 trillion? $20 trillion? At what point will Americans call it quits?
    I have absolutely no sympathy for Generation Y and the enormous debt they will be shouldering. If you are stupid enough to vote for a spendthrift because you think he’s cool you deserve to struggle your entire life.

  14. It seems quite bizarre to be reading about the jobless problem in the US when I’ve got far more work than I want and don’t have time to spend the money I make. Another 14 hour day at the hospital and get to be on call for the upcoming week. Talking to another doc today and his son just quit his white collar job to drive a truck at the oil sands for $240 K/year. A machinist patient of mine left for Alberta for a $25 K/month position with free room and board at the camp.
    Where I’m living now people are doing very well, but they’re mainly in various trades. There’s no recession here and a friend visiting from the US commented that store prices were roughly double what they are in the SE US. Yes, we also have snow and short days but I never thought I’d see the day when Canada was considered a more capitalist economy than the US.
    Agree with KevinB that we’re seeing a major realignment of the economy and people who are flexible will be able to take advantage of it whereas those who believe that they’ll work in what they’ve been trained to do are delusional (unless they’re in a trade). There are too many lawyers in Canada and far more in the US. Lawyers are finally sinking to a level closer to their actual worth to society. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to live in a large city as any intellectual work can be performed anywhere there’s a fast internet connection. Soon cities like New York and Vancouver will be the playgrounds of the very rich whereas wealth creation will take place in small towns and the countryside.
    In a truly capitalist society, this type of change would bring prosperity to all, but in the increasingly bureaucratized US, it’s just going to bring stasis with ever decreasing incomes and steady growth of government. The system, as it exists is exceedingly fragile and will likely collapse in the very near future. I highly suggest reading Nasim Taleb’s latest book, Antifragile to see what type of steps we should be taking. The results of a truly capitalist society would result in the type of jobs that Neal Stephenson wrote about in The Diamond Age.
    What is curiously absent from the article are the stories of unemployed physicians, nurses, plumbers, electricians and mechanics. People who fix things (and I include meatware in that category) will always have work. The people who are currently jobless probably do have a case against the educational industry as they were lied to. Again, was reminiscing with another doctor today about how we used to be able to work for the summer and get enough to live for a year at university in the 1970’s. Of course the jobs involved hard labor in remote areas, but when tuition was $500/year, $6000 earned during a summer job bought a lot of beer after one had paid ones tuition.

  15. The problem is that thanks to the dumbing down of America (include Canada) … there are way too many people with ZERO useful skills. They can all VOTE if they want and the ones that do vote have proven that they will vote for things that make their lives easier.
    Too ignorant to know about consequences and too stupid to listen when when warned.
    They will drag everyone down with with them.
    I worry about my own kids being able to survive this social decline. But as others have noted real skill are always in demand….

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