Are you guys as worried about the Millennials as I am? Lately, they’ve seemed, I don’t know, kinda down. Maybe they’re depressed? Getting their collective generation-wide period? All I know is that you can’t throw an e-cigarette-shaped dart without hitting another handwringing study wondering what will happen to them: Will they survive? Will they be HAPPY? But more importantly, will they get every single thing they want in this crazy new world with the flexibility, modernity, comfort and built-in technology they’re demanding? Or will they weep silently into their Tumblr book deals, never acquiring the wealth and success of previous generations, because they are too self-absorbed to care correctly. Relax, Millennials. For one, you’ll last longer. For two, I know just what you’re going through.
But OK — first, the latest in the round of how-fucked-are-you comes from a piece asking “Do Millennials Stand a Chance in the Real World?”
It’s not much you haven’t heard: You don’t have a lot of money. You’re not buying a lot of stuff. Never mind that lots of people in lots of generations don’t and aren’t either. But because you’re in your twenties, I guess your economic anxiety is more intrinsically interesting by virtue of having more casual sex mixed up in it. But I’m sorry to say you don’t have the monopoly on that anxiety. As a counter piece in the Atlantic points out:
As we’re all too aware by now, it’s been a raw decade for young Americans. The job market still has a giant, recession-shaped crater in it. A college degree is more expensive yet more essential than ever. Wages are stagnant.
All of this adds up to a single sad possibility, according to the New York Times’ Annie Lowrey: Today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings may never end up as rich and financially secure as their parents. Lowrey’s story points to a recent study by the Urban Institute, which suggests that Americans under forty, financially wracked by student debt and the housing bust, have saved up much less wealth than the generations before them. Because wealth compounds over time, there’s a strong chance they won’t ever catch up.
But the Times misses something key, I think, which is that not everybody under 40 is in the same boat. As this graph from Urban Institute’s study shows, it’s mostly Americans in their thirties who have seen their net worth collapse compared to 30 years ago. The quarter-life set are actually doing a bit better.
That’s in part because it’s thirtysomethings who bought houses right at the financial collapse, whereas twentysomethings weren’t in house-buying positions yet. Thirtysomethings have more houses underwater, the piece argues, a financial strain that will have a deeper, more lasting effect than merely taking longer to make that first-time home purchase in the first place. To say nothing of our suffering of a massive loss of wealth.
But my point is not that, if we’re going to compete, some older folks are more fucked than you. My point is that everyone at some point in their lives will be more or less fucked and susceptible to the economic/intersection forces. And that stories about the new and exciting ways in which you are like to suffer more or less IN COMPARISON to generations whose experiences you can’t possibly co-opt/absorb via osmosis/know innately aren’t really going to help you do what you have to do: Be in the world at your intersection on earth and exist the best you can, in spite of this collection of forces working for/against you.
A little journalistic disclosure: Surprise, I’m not a Millennial! Whew. Thank God for that. Barely dodged the bullet, too. No, see, I’m a classic Gen-X-er, in case you hadn’t noticed from my general apathy, bad attitude and the immense pleasure I take in needling you. Sure, fuller disclosure, I dated a Millennial once and all I got was this lousy attitude, but that doesn’t mean I’m biased per se. What it means is I’m just enough older to have had to sit through years of this Millennial hoo-ha, after years of having to sit through years of Gen-X hoo-ha. And I want to help.
In other words, I was you once. OK, I wasn’t YOU-you, I was me-you, but I was the generation that was being studied and courted by marketers at the time, and boy were the proclamations about me/us equally hilarious/stupid. For instance, I grew up my entire life being told mine was the first generation that wasn’t going to be as well off as their parents (sad trombones were launching left and right and we didn’t even know what an MP3 was yet. Cool moment).
And that was on top of all the other stuff the olds were always telling us about us, what with their God-like understanding of our unique nuances and deficiencies and their ability to predict our futures: That we were too politically apathetic, that we were too busy watching video games, rotting our brains with MTV, and hanging out in chat rooms to do anything important with our lives. Did I mention that they said we were really fucking lazy? That’s right. We were slackers who’d just as soon roast a bone in the quad than, you know, do something important, i.e., exactly like whatever it was our parents would have done. Protested Vietnam? Our deficits glaring, however would we all turn out? wrung the hands of the universe. All signs pointed to LOSER.
Nevermind that we were also the most diverse, tolerant, open, experimental, norm-challenging folks to ever grace planet earth yet, but I’m sure that was probably just a function of us being too lazy to care enough to be better bigots, or at least as good as the generations before us. But you know what? We didn’t give a fuck. It was the 90s.