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Generation Wrecked
Ryosen writes "Fortune magazine has an interesting article discussing how members of Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975) have been damaged by the fall of the economy and the life-long ramifications of the dot.com boom-bust, stating 'No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this.' Particularly disturbing is the statement 'Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.'
Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?"
I missed all this crap!
WHoo hoo! I'm living the high life like it was 1989!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
But, those of us who didn't blow every paycheck on toys and assorted junk are doing ok. I drive a modest car, live in a modest apartment and don't live beyond my means. I have 0 credit card debt and 8 months of salary saved away.
Michael Loves Me!
Gen-X'ers, (including me) may have to admit that the lifestyle we got used to from 1996-2001 was a mirage, and we really can't afford a county club house and two BMW's in the garage. Here in Northern VA we are starting to see people selling their $500K McMansions and downsizing to a house more in keeping with their current income levels. For those of us that have been working in the dot com environment the last few years, I think its necessary to assume you will make less money the next couple of years, and adjust your lifestyle accordingly.
Andrea Tinker, professor of Social Gerontology at King's College, London recently published the results of research into the way that the changing age distribution of the population is affecting different generations. Her conclusion is that today's under 30s are the first generation who can expect lower living standards than their parents. In this writeup, I will present some British demographic statistics, and my own hypothesis as to the underlying reason for Professor Tinker's conclusion.
Fewer children are being born: 91 live births per 1000 women in 1961, dropping to only 55 in 2000. In the 25-29 age group, the drop is even more dramatic, from 178/1000 in 1961 to 95/1000 in 2000.
It is clear that the trend is towards fewer taxpayers supporting more pensioners. I believe that this is no coincidence, rather that the generation(s) born since 1970 were systematically and deliberately set up by the policy makers of the so-called "baby boomer" generation.
They set up a system for healthcare and pensions under which taxation is immediately paid out to recipients, rather than being invested for growth and the purchase of an annuity in a real pension system. They did this at a time when they knew that their own contributions would be minimal, given the population's age distribution at the time. Quite cynically, they decided that it would be easier to levy punitive taxation on their own children and grandchildren than invest for their own futures.
The money they saved by doing so, they poured into the housing market, driving up prices and placing mortgages out of the reach of many first time buyers. This created massive inflation in property prices - almost 20%/year at present - which they benefitted immensely from, already being owners of at least one property.
The state education system has been systematically wrecked. Grammar schools and the Assisted Places Scheme which sponsored children to attend fee-paying schools have been abolished, as the baby boomers further try to pull the ladder up after themselves. These same baby boomers, who once swore never to trust anyone over 30, are now in positions of responsibility and have carefully structured corporations to ensure that today's under 30s cannot enjoy privileges such as a job-for-life that the baby boomers enjoyed. They are scrapping defined-benefits pension schemes, after making sure that they got them for themselves, at the expense of those currently paying into employer's pension funds - us.
We are also paying the price for their disasterous social experiments. Soaring crime rates and falling literacy rates originate in the pseudo-liberal ideals of the baby boomers, who knew that they would escape scot free while their children and grandchildren would pick up the pieces for them. Rather than being the unfortunate result of a well-intentioned experiment than didn't work out, it is indicative of the baby boomer's defining attitudes: firstly, that nothing matters to them more than instant gratification, and secondly that they will never have to face any consequences for their actions.
What can we do? It may be too late; huge damage has already been done to the economic and social fabric of our country. The only hope is that when those of us born since 1970 are in power, that we use that power wisely: to ensure that not a penny of our our generation's money is wasted on or by those that came before us. Let them live on the pensions that they knowingly intended for us, with the standards of healthcare and accomodation that they intended for us, and let us invest our own money in our own future and our own children.
"Age 32 and piercing-free, Karen Doss . . . has just $5,000 in a 401(k) and $20,000 in home equity. Ideally, someone her age should have at least $100,000 stashed away." Fuck me, $100,000 by age 32? I'm about $100,000 behind, then.
"Gen Xers managed to survive in that environment by denouncing long-held workplace tenets like corporate loyalty. " Did we eschew loyalty, or did they treat us like "human resources" and fire us and lay us off? I loved my first computer job , and would still be there if they weren't evil bastards.
"The Campbells' luck dried up in April, when Alex was laid off, rehired as a contractor without benefits, then rehired yet again as a full-time employee but at a lower level. " Well, sounds like all he needed was company loyalty, huh? I've said for a year this shit was intentional, that the whole "tech downturn" was an intentional ploy to lower our salaries and benefits.
"So is Karen prepared? On this subject, she does her best slacker impression. " They call people our age "slackers" several times throughout the article. Sorry, I thought we were working? The article says how we keep working jobs, the economy sucks, etc., but it also keeps calling us slackers. How are we different than our parents and grandparents? We work, pay the bills, try to do better, etc. The author of this piece is torn between wanting to tell how fucked up things have been for a lot of us, and wanting to insult us.
I mean come on this is like saying being overweight is bad, or shooting heroin can cause problems down the road.
However, that being said my income has risen every year except one when I moved from Dallas TX to Norman OK and now I make more than I did in Dallas. I guess it all depends on the opportunities you create for yourself. I knew several people in college that dropped out because with their MCSE they could get a 50 to 75K job in Dallas overnight. I decided to stay the course and get a broad education in both business (both MIS and Finance degrees) and technical learning (I began working with linux in '95 as well as Windows based systems).
Having a wide area of knowledge only helps. I've saved my company 10s of thousands of dollars by implementing Linux based solutions instead of MS solutions at my full time job and we are a MS shop only (not anymore).
I guess it's all in how hard you worked toward tangible goals when things were going good as opposed to taking the easy way out.
Being labelled a "slacker" by the "me generation" is such a crock of shit. Their only concern seems to be that they're not screwing me enough by getting me to work 80 hours a week to fund their fat salaries and Lexus payments. The current generation always seeks to undo the excesses of the previous generation. Maybe we actually want to spend some time with friends and family and "live life like we mean it."
Gen X has the highest contribution to their 401(k) of any generation -- why? Because instead of fixing social security, money is getting doled out in a tax cut to benefit the "me generation" so that we can fund 14 retired people when we're at 50. And we have the highest rate of vounteerism. Slacker, my ass.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
Yep. Personal responsibility is not trendy. It requires integrity and effort. "Groupthink" is in.
Yes it's true: my career is getting chainsawed by the dot-com bust. I went from AI programming to mainframe programming (and took a $10,000 pay cut) and was told a little while ago that, barring a miaracle, my position is going to be eliminated in February. The good news is I have four months to find a new job before I start collecting unemployment; the bad news is that computer jobs are scarce and I may end up just packing groceries or something.
Are the best years of my life behind me? No.
For the first time in my life, I have more friends than I can count on both hands, a girlfriend who loves pizza and beer and horror movies, a positive reputation in the circles that matter to me, and all the comforts I've ever wanted. My biggest concern if I end up packing groceries is health insurance.
As for computers: I can still do computers for fun. Well-documented, professionally-designed free software builds resumes. I can still take courses toward a Masters' degree in CS. If the field ever recovers, I can get a job. If it doesn't, I have a fun hobby.
What about the future? I admit I didn't plan on being a security guard for the rest of my life. Ultimately, however, a career is two things: an opportunity to do what you love, and a tool for getting the things you want and need. I can do the one and I have the other. Let the career get chainsawed.
The best years of my life are here, and are still to come.
Finding God in a Dog
In order to reasonably support the people expected to make social security claims over the next thirty years, taxes would have to be doubled at a minimum.
In other words, it is only a matter of time before social security breaks. The only things that can save are an incredible development in the economy that drastically increases real wealth in a short period of time, or massive immigration to increase the number of paying (but not deducting) parties by a huge amount. Its just turned into a pyramid scheme at this point, and that really is what drive most immigration policy.
In a recent paper Wolff notes that young households lay claim to a smaller percentage of total U.S. wealth than they did in 1989.
I thought that we had an aging population with fewer and fewer young people. Of course they represent less wealth of the total economy! Statements like this seriously diminish the credibility of the article.
I was born in 1968. I almost flunked out of two colleges and worked in food service to scrape through school. I ran up a bunch of debt on my credit cards while in college and in the first few years afterward.
I finally decided to grow up. I began spending less money than I was making. Reducing your standard of living is no fun, but it _is_ possible.
I now have no debt. I own a modest house - with a ton of equity thanks to the current real-estate market and my accelerated payment schedule, I have two cars - both paid for, and I have a decent amount of short and long term savings.
Don't give me that crap about it's because I'm white and I'm college educated.
After all, the family from El Salvador living next door can do it. The husband has two jobs, the wife works, they have three kids, their parents live with them and they rent out the basement of their 1400 square foot house so make ends meet.
This idea that the good life is over for GenXers is just FUD.
Get real. Get responsible. Quit carping about how hard your life is. Ask your grandparents about living through WWII - rationing of food, metal, gasoline - no place to live, no furniture was being made, there were so many men involved in the war effort that the only way that that ware materiel could be manufactured was for the women to find child care and go to work building planes and bombs.
We sit in our air-conditioned cars with CD changers, on our way to our air-condintioned homes with cable, DVDs, PCs and dishwashers and think that life is tough.
We're rich. Life is EASY in the US.
Don't believe me? Try living in India, China, Sudan or any other of dozens of poor nations.
Quit complaining and just do the work necessary to be successful in this economy.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I almost made the mistake of missing a broad education until my employer told me in 1992, after working for him for 2 years on hiatus from Univerity of North Texas, "If you had a degree I'd have to pay you twice what I pay you now." I enrolled that month in University of Texas at Arlington and graduated in 1994 with a BS-InfoSys. Now I'm married, two kids and am the CTO of a small pharmaceutical. I run on Linux where possible and Windows when it makes business sense. My salary has also gone up, steadily, every year since college--but I avoided the easy money and harsh lifestyle of dot-com startups. A series of choices.
You wanna know about a real, bonifide wrecked generation that was born between 1966 and 1976? Try Cambodia. My wife was born in 1967 in Cambodia and her entire culture, livelyhood, and many of her family were lost to the Khmer Rouge communists and genicidal elitists. Awwww. . .our portfolios are wrecked. . .damn. What about the Killing Fields? Yet, instead of whinning like spoilt brats, my wife's family (a mother and 4 children; her father was killed) immigrated to the US out of a refugee camp in Thailand. Now all the children are successful professionals (the youngest is finishing college) and productive members of society.
What a stupid generation I belong to. Thinking that the baby boomers wrecked it for us and we're worse off than all that have gone before us. Yet, I think not everyone in my generation whines and complains. It's just that we're too busy making good, or at least, careful choices to be noticed.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The article says how we keep working jobs, the economy sucks, etc., but it also keeps calling us slackers. How are we different than our parents and grandparents? We work, pay the bills, try to do better, etc. The author of this piece is torn between wanting to tell how fucked up things have been for a lot of us, and wanting to insult us.
Amen.
The baby boomers were the most well educated, richest, most spoiled generation in the history (of the United States, at least). What did they do with all this wealth, all this privelege?
They did some great things. They rebelled against the establishment and ended institutionalized racism (and the social acceptance of common racism in most circles, despite the nagging existence of a few ethnocentric throwbacks in populations of every ethnicity). They rebelled against the establishment and won the right for a woman to choose the fate of her own body. They rebelled against the establishment and won a large degree of gender equality and sexual freedom.
And they engaged in excesses that proved to be a little less positive, such as excessive drug experimentation in the 60's, arguably excessive sexual experimentation in the 70's, excessive conservatism and reactionsim in the 80's, and excessive dishonesty in the 90's.
They took all the freedoms they inherited and enjoyed, abused some of them, and then took those same freedoms away from us in the name of their 'knowing better', they systematically and deliberately inundated us with incessent marketing from the day we were born, tempted us with easy credit, pounded into our heads the compulsion to use that credit to buy their products and enrich them, then blamed us for our irresponsiblity when many of us succumbed to their repeated conditioning and actually did what they were telling us to do, an average of 10 minutes each hour (of television viewed or radio heard), and countless other times as we innocently walked or drove down the street to work.
Do we bear some of the responsibility for our alleged lack of self control? Sure. Do the generation of our parents and grandparents, who have orchestrated the incessant advertising that conditions us into submissive little shoppers and consumers, often as unable to resist a shiny new object as we are unable to join a protest for a cause we are forbidden, by that very same conditioning, from feeling strongly about? You bet they do.
There is enough blame for everyone to share, but no generation ever engaged in as much excess, or stripped their descendents of as much freedom and constitutional protection, not to mention financially mortgaging their children's future with unprecendented government deficits and ponzai retirement and real estate schemes than did the generation of our parents.
So while they may condemn us of our weaknesses (and they are real, valid weaknesses we must address if we are to survive), they would be well advised to check out beam in their own eyes.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Interesting though the article was, their sampling could have been a little better. "Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans." Art therapist? Well duh! Everybody knows the big money is in pet psychiatry.
I'm in my 20's, and steadily employed with a job that is pretty much "guaranteed". I make a nice living, and don't PLAN on retiring. (The concept of it bores me.) But will be able to at a decent age, and expect to be able to live nicely after that.
Don't include me in the 'generation', either. The 'generation' that is refered to, for the most part, is all the guys who thought they could learn HTML and have a porsche-mansion-gorgeoussupermodelwife by the time they were 25, and retire at 30 to travel the world.
Yeah, some hard workers and brilliant minds got/are getting burned, but such is life... And for the most part, they realize "such is life". The ones doing the loudest complaining are those who wanted to retire after only working 5-10 years, and spent those 5-10 years buried in booze, women, and various electronic play-toys. I've got a few friends like that, and they spend all their time complaining and don't even look for a job now that they're unemployed. The world was "supposed" to do them a favor, and it didn't.
I hate people who got into tech stuff just because they wanted to become rich. It's like the doctors who don't give a damn about anything but their wallet. I'm happy the market crashed, it weeded out a bunch of the people who were just trying to get rich quick off of vapor-skills.
-Sara
You cannot even *BEGIN* to compare this to the Great Depression.
See http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/Timeline.htm
Unemployment in 1933 was 24.9. 24.9 percent!!! GNP dropped 8.5 percent in 1931 and 13.4 in 1932.
Unemployment is 6-7% and our GDP rose by 1.2% last quarter. We are not in any sort of hardship by any means. Hardship is not being able to eat. Not being able to afford a new PS2 is not hardship.
For example, look at the quote "Salesclerks became programmers; coffee slingers morphed into experts in Java (computerese, that is)" So basically the dot-com bubble burst and things are getting back into reality.
And I love this one: "Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans". Hmm, maybe racking up $50,000 in student loans for an unmarketable degree was not a good idea. Who would have thought?
It might be a "recession" for *most* folks, but for techies it is an outright "depression". Techies are living in the same situation that our grandparents used to tell us long annoying stories about.
Basic "service" jobs (drivers, cash register operaters) are all there is out there right now if one is job hunting. These activities keep a company afloat. Programmers don't, except for a few to fix occasional high-priority bugs. In the short run, you don't need techies. Most techies do things that are "change oriented". For example, upgrading the network, upgrading desktop OS's, making the ultimate Management Info System to track widgets, etc. When things slow, companies PULL THE PLUG on these expansion or "investment" endevours and keep things as-is. AS-IS == Slim_techy_jobs
Intellectual-intensive jobs tend to be like this. It is the bone-head jobs of physically moving thing A to box B that stay afloat during slow times because those are the basal metabolism of a company. The brain shuts down most higher functions.
Ironic how the bone-head jobs have the most job security these days.
Table-ized A.I.
In my case, my parents basically made sure I had a job since I was 11, starting with a paper route. I had to learn in that time, how to budget my money and not to overspend or I had to wait until it was time to go collecting and then I had to figure out what I owed back to the newspaper and what I got to keep. While they helped a lot with the accounting, it did teach me early on how things work and how if you want something (Back then it was a Super Nintendo), you have to save for it and only buy it when you have enough money saved up so that you can buy it and still have a bit left over in case of a crisis.
In high school I got a job at a grocery store and also got a bank account. Now I had a little more spending power but by this time, I knew how to be conservative with my money and to keep a close eye on my accounts, using software to track my spending and keep track of checks I had written.
By the time I got a credit card, I knew well how to live within my means. I made sure to ALWAYS pay off the card in full each month unless it was an absolute emergency expenditure that I couldn't cover with one months pay. I also make sure not to have more than 2 credit cards and to try to never use more than one each month. I also make sure I can pay them in full each time unless its an extreme situation.
On top of that, I also set a "Paranoia level" on my Savings account. What that means is I choose an amount, in my case $5000 (started at $500 when I first got my bank account all those years ago) and I go VERY conservative on spending if I go below that until I've built it back up to above that level. So far that has saved me from every major disaster (car breaking down expensively, sudden big bill or need to buy something expensive like furniture) I've had in the 10 years I've had a bank account. It also reduces the need to use the credit card to cover sudden needs, as I do not like spending money I don't have at all.
Because of that, and driving a modest car ('95 Grand AM) and eeking out the most time I can from my computer (using a 5 year old Mac G3) rather than blowing it all on the latest and greatest every 6-12 months, I have managed to get a $120K home just this June and maintain over 5k in savings since then. I am going to try to raise that up to 10K soon as well as start cautiously getting into investing (maybe should have sooner but after the latest rounds of disasters in the financial world, glad I waited).
The main thing is to learn how to budget, keep a paranoia level of cash in the bank and don't spend money you don't have when you can avoid it (i.e. no credit card debt or loans unless necessary).
If you do that, you should be able to weather all but armageddon or the next great plague.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The article mentioned that we should have all been set for life by the dot.com era. What kind of blinded logic is that? I guess all of the GenX social workers, construction laborers, accountants, bank tellers, etc. dropped everything and became programmers? I suppose the boomers temporarily filled in those positions until they came back? Newsflash. The majority of jobs are not tech jobs. The dot.com boom and bust had no direct affect to most of us.
However, many of us did go to college because it was a basic requirement to get a decent job. The Boomers got the same jobs without going to college. Here's the difference - we have to pay $50,000 up front to enter the job market where the Boomers got in for free. As a result, we can't save early enough for interest to compound and work in our favor. It used to be that parents paid for their child's college education but the Boomers have figured out that divorce works for them at the cost of their children's future irrevocably damaged. I am not knocking divorce. Some people genuinely need it. It is, however, a symptom of some sort of selfishness (i.e. adultery, substance abuse, gambling, spousal abuse, etc.) by making yourself feel good - however temporary - at the expense of others.
I'm a 33 year old GenXer with two kids. I have no credit card debt. My wife drives a '93 Lumina and I an '89 Civic. We have massive payments on student loans. We have a mortgage on a $60,000 condo. There was no freakin' way we could have saved $100,000 by now. She's a teacher and I'm a CAD technician. I am sick of people on this site telling us it's our fault we won't have enough for retirement. It's not. The rules have changed and we're trying to adapt to them the best we can.
Meanwhile the Boomers are threatening to break into the Social Security "lockbox". Our money, not theirs. Theirs is already guaranteed. Boomers aren't called the "Me" Generation for nothing.
Ach, I'm rambling and venting and none of it matters.
The starting pay absolutely blows. If I were to have 100k "stashed-away" by the time I am 32, I would have to save 1/4 of my earnings for 10 years. Now, explain to me how you are supposed to: buy a house, pay for your car, keep out of debt, and still fucking have 100k saved by the time you are 30s?
... the norm for most entry-level jobs. Do not be loyal to an employer who pays you so little -- my initial mistake at the time -- but rather, get the experience you need, then find a proper paying job with someone willing to pay you appropriately).
If only someone had sat down and explained to me how things work when I was in my twenties.
You need to sit down and understand how compound interst works. Seriously. You need to run the numbers, until you understand exactly how modest savings over time, invested wisely, will compound into wealth by the time you hit retirement. Calculate the numbers for yourself over 10 years, over 20 years, over 30 years.
One of the surprises you will find is that, if you start saving $100/month at 20, you will live better than someone who starts saving $1,000/month at 30. Time is the most important ingredient in saving, and if you are only 24, you still have a good amount of time on your side.
Yes, your beginning salary sucks, and yes, you should probably be putting as much extra cash away now as you can reasonably afford. My first job paid only $20,000, so little that the minimum payment on my college debts exceeded my takehome pay. I obvously only worked that job for as long as I needed to find a much better one
And this brings me to my second point: you will not be making such miserable wages for the next 6 years. Put away as much as you can afford now, because time will grow that money remarkably over the next decade, and time is the most potent ingredient in the mixture (assuming, of course, you are earning interest that exceeds inflation. Modest interest will do, you do not need to be making 10% annual returns, and as I pointed out, $100 put away today will do more for your retirement than $1,000 put away ten years from now).
Compound interest is something everyone who participates in a capitalist economy should have an intimate understanding of. The only good debt 'interest' is real-estate interest, because of the tax savings it creates (which reduces the real interst to a very small amount) and the equity in your (likely) improving property value, plus the fact that if you weren't paying it you'd be paying rent and flushing your entire monthly payment down the drain with no benefit and no asset to show for it, and you have to live somewhere.
Other than your morgage, you want to be on the positive side of the compound interest equation, and that means saving and investing, even modestly, while avoiding debt otherwise. If you are on the positive side of that equation and do nothing, you will eventually become wealthy. If you are on the negative side of that equation, there is a good chance you will become impoverished despite working your ass off.
When I was in my twenties I thought I understood compound interest because I'd had a couple of business and economic classes, and because I knew what the words meant. It wasn't until I ran the numbers, and pondered what the results meant (like the surprising result I mention above) that I realized how little I understood the concept's implications in our everyday lives, much less its impact on our retirement. I wish to hell I'd known 10 years ago what I know now, and can only reiterate my advice: run the numbers, study and ponder the result. Understand what the implications are, and start saving and investing, even modestly, now.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I have to agree with you 100%. Every time I hear someone bitching and moaning about the job market; that they can't make $100k/year doing HTML and Javascript I can't help but snicker. Yes, some good people have fallen on hard times, but mostly I see alot of lazy/unmotivated people that expected everything to fall in their lap.
...for "weird."
... technologies that may make our political system obsolete, just as mass-produced guns made feudalism obsolete.
...when the full set of artificial organs are available? ...when anyone can afford the boost into orbit? ...when computers stop sucking and start working?
For all the advances in science and technology, we're still basically living the same lifestyle of the 50's. Stuff works a little better, people live a little longer, we have nicer toys, some irrelevant fashions continued to evolve, that's it. We still drive cars at about the same speed, not many people live to 100 years old, hardly anybody goes to space, and most things are still mass-produced in big, expensive factories.
When today's toddlers grow up, some seriously weird technologies are going to start kicking in
What happens when factories are no longer necessary to provide complex goods?
I have to admit that things look pretty bad right now but I am still optimistic. Life is hard, no doubt about it. You have to work your ass off and every strategy that you try is not going to be successful but I'm not willing to give up just yet.
The recession in '92 taught me some valuable lessons and this latest bust has reinforced those lessons and validated my strategies. I'm glad that these events happened while I am still relatively young.
1. Work for a company that is making money (as an employee or a businessman). If the company is not making money, find one that is. Don't wait, it will only get worse.
2. If the company isn't making money and your department isn't making the company money, your days are numbered. Get out.
3. Live lean. Keep your fixed expenses as low as possible.
4. Avoid debt at all cost for non-appreciating assets. If it is going to be worth less after you buy it, then pay cash. If you can't pay cash then do without it.
5. Use credit cards for convenience only and always pay them off every month.
6. Keep a war chest. You must have 1 year's expenses in cash if you are going to have any options in a pinch. There is nothing worse than having all of your options limited because you need a paycheck in 2 weeks to cover your rent.
7. When times are good, save your money. It won't stay that way. It NEVER does. The business cycle isn't going anywhere.
The biggest mistake that I saw people make during the last boom was planning as if everything would stay optimum forever. They took shortcuts, they loaded up on debt and expenses so when things took a downturn, the house of cards came falling down. If you can't be smart then you have to be tough.
Things seemed simpler in the past. Most of our parents probably worked for the same company for 30 years and retired with a pension that can sustain them for the remainder of their lives. The price that they paid was fewer choices in life. They couldn't start their own company and work out of their house. They didn't have portable pension plans that allowed them to change jobs or even careers. Many of them didn't have the opportunity to get a college education because there were not as many grant and student load programs. Given the choice, I would rather have things the way that they are now. More choices and thus more opportunity.
I still think that we will end up being better off than our parents in the long run.
I can relate because I'm financially in about the same boat. Little retirement funds, house but little equity (yet), and little confidence that those greedy boomers will leave anything for the rest of us. Don't get me started about our recent tax cuts (not to be US centric, or anything). I'm not whining (or a 'winger' to quote our friend from down under), but I am hopping mad about all the greed.
Fortunately, I have about 20 years experience in the right technologies, and my earning potential is excellent even if it isn't as good recently. I'm well aware that the squeeze is a lot tighter for some, but it is also clear that the outlook is bleakest if you follow the conventional wisdom. Find a way to express your creativity and take care of yourself. Reduce your needs while you take the road less travelled. I'm constantly seeing people who did this, and have been richly rewarded. Not always in money, but they have what they need.
If things keep going the way they have, I'll still be working at 70 to pay the bills and I won't be able to afford to retire, but that's fine with me as long as I can still do it, and I am doing something that interests me. I'm not that worried.
A guy I worked with who is a bit older was trying to convince me that we are in for a long term downturn when the boomers start to retire in large numbers during the next 10-20 years. The argument is that there is a big loss of experience, and there just aren't enough coming up behind to take up the slack. I say hogwash, let them go. Sure, you are going to lose some very talented people, but I think the generations that are coming on are a lot more clueful about the important shifts that technology and the new social networks made possible. If Gates retired now, we would all be a lot better off, and that goes for most of the leadership of large corperations.
He may have a point about the other end of the size scale, and I think there will be tremendous opportinity in small to mid-sized businesses. IMHO, the way out is to start now to empower people working in these organization to use their vision to keep up with all the shifts. The best business people will do this no matter what generation they come from, and the ones that don't will mostly fail and be replaced by new businesses with vision long before they get a chance to retire.
My claim is that the dotcom bust isn't what it first appears, a conventional bubble (although, it was that too). You have to look more closely at the survivors, and you have to be careful about what conclusions you draw. Sure, Gates and company are still making a fortune, but it is on a dead business model. IBM was making a fortune still when I was in school on the same dead business model and it didn't save them. If I'd learned Cobol (actually, I did, but I knew not to go that way) I'd have had a good year or two leading up to Y2K and I'd be desperately trying to catch up now.
It is an open future, and those that understand the importance of creativity and its relationship to freedom are going to shape it.
I've always liked this phrase, and I think it applies here: "When the going gets strange, the wierd turn pro". I think I've just found something to put in my sig.
My story in brief: At this point in my life (b. 1969), I'm doing very well and in a stable situation. I'm earning a very comfortable salary for this area, have a wife and child, live well within my means. My house is appropriately priced for the salary I earn, I have no credit debt to speak of other than my mortgage. My parents didn't give me a financial boost, as they were always middle class and lived in a poor city (Flint, MI).
However, my job could evaporate and I'd be fine because of a diverse skillset which I'm always improving and savings. I'm well insured so if something happens to me my family will be fine. It's all a matter of having good survival skills. I have friends in the same age group that are doing just as well. As I look around those that are doing badly, they've almost always made poor choices. The themes are similar:
- They overextended themselves. It doesn't matter if it's credit card debt or college loans. When you take on debt you have to realistically think about how you're going to pay it back.
- Trusted their employer. The age of Corporate Loyalty has been over with for 30 years. Get over it. And the personal word of a company officer is wasted breath.
- Trusted the government to rescue them. The best you can hope for is that the government will get out of your way and let you do your business.
- Planned their careers poorly. The IT industry is cyclical, always has been. Over the long curve it's grown since the 50's, but it has downtimes. The only defense against cycles is diversification, and if you're a 1-trick pony (open source or proprietary) you're vulnerable.
- Stayed in school too long. There is a point at which it's better to bail from school, get into an entry-level job, and start clawing your way up than to stay in school and hope for a better job later. Thinking that "the market is really good, but if I just take another 18 months to finish this 4-year degree I'll be all set with a better salary" is just stupid, especially if you're piling up debt to do it (see previous point).
To the rest of my generation: take care of your own business and stop yer whining. Please. I'm sick of hearing about it.To be honest, the only thing I resent the Boomers for is eating up Social Security at an alarming rate. Every time I look at my paycheck stub I resent the elderly and their voting block -- and despise GenX's fake politics (all talk and slack, no votes). For now I pay the tax, expect no returns, and vote for anyone willing to change the system to my pesonal benefit.
Get off my lawn.
Flame suit on here, because this certainly isn't true of everyone, but people on /. tend to flame first and think later...
/., is an extremely vocal majority of the pool of tech workers who only had jobs because of the bubble. In the peak of the internet craze, the quality of your average tech worker was in the toilet. These coffee-slingers-come-Java-developers were still only really qualified for coffee slinging. Every joe-blow who sent out a resume because they read HTML For Dummies wasn't a qualified web developer. As we all saw, every tech visionary wasn't a qualified CTO. There were an order of magnitude more unqualified people in high paying positions than there were qualified people.
There was a certain size population of well-off, well-paid tech workers in existance well before the dot-com explosion. Tech work at that point took a reasonable amount of experience and skill. Not necessarily formal education, but skill sets were generally acceptable, and people were well paid.
I don't think the number of people in those positions is any lower now than it was pre-bubble. In fact, I think the number is quite a bit bigger. There are hundreds of thousands of tech workers right now who are not feeling the pinch of a "depression" or "recession".
What you see, particularly on places like
When the bubble burst, there were a lot of people who thought that a position they once had was still owed to them because of their "experience" and "history". But, the fact is that when push comes to shove, they didn't have real marketable skills. Anyone who has hired anyone in the last year or two has seen that -- 100 B.S. resumes come over your desk for every qualified one, and for the most part those qualified people are not having any problem finding jobs.
Now, again, before people start to flame like crazy, thats not true of everyone. People who were truely talented web developers, for example, are still having a hard time. Companies can't easily pick the gems out of the rest of the dirt, and some of the people who really are qualified aren't going a good job networking with people who know that, or selling themselves. But most of my friends who have lost their jobs in the last two years and haven't been able to find anything, honestly aren't as qualified as they think they are. One or two are, but they are in the vast minority.
Thats the real shock that most people are having -- that they really aren't as good as they and others spent four years telling them. They don't understand that you 99% of people can't be a senior anything with just two years of experience... They still are shooting way too high in their job search, and aren't realizing that there are people out there who are looking (and finding with little trouble) who *are* qualified.
Bone head jobs have the most job security because they aren't filled with people who think they are more important than they are.
http://www.inthe80s.com/dynamic/child8e.shtml
"watching MTV (some things havent changed in 20 yrs)"
Except that 20 years ago, MTV played videos, now it's just a bunch of really low-mentality "Stuffed morons at the beach" type shows. WTF happened?
I find it pathetic that middle age is being viewed as, "prime spending years", as if being able to buy a lot of shit is the sumation of my being. (I'm not middle age, but the ramafications on society are disgusting.)
What about those of us that are younger - 20, for instance? Some of us have gotten into the work world early, having trained ourselves. In many cases, we're much more skilled and tallented at what we do that people 5, 10 years older than we are. Things look equally as bleak, with no resurfacing of the economy forseen, for those still in college, even. Especially with all the war and conflict going on.
The people of my generation are an unseen, lost generation. Generation X is several years our senior, and Generation Y is approaching high school still. Sure, we have a lot of nice whiz-bang gizmos, lots of entertainment, and various other benefits. But to what end? There's a large degree of unemployment in most of the desireable job markets, and the markets that are open, are undesireable - a lot of low-end, dead-end jobs that nobody would enjoy doing in the first place.
In the eyes of many people of my generation, there are very few exciting, challenging, new things in this world left to do. National Geographic has the whole 'exploration' thing down pat. Computers and technology are passe, nearing the point of being transparent - simply another entertainment device.
Even in simple living, things don't look good - pay is distributed in a horrible arc curve, distributing most of the wealth to a small percentage of society. What little most people can earn is leeched from them from the upper crust through taxes, credit, lawyer and doctor fees - people that scratch each other's backs, further increasing the differential of wealth. Combine these factors with all of the social decay and unpleasantries going about (STDs, divorce, decay of the atomic family, etc), things are downright depressing.
Even the decay of America's core is occuring. The DMCA and all the various laws like it, destroying our freedom, get overlooked by the populace, while commercials rage on TV telling us to "value our freedom as Americans". The strongarming of foreign countries isn't improving America's international status much, either. The economic benefits that were protecting the US from attack in the past are slowly being whittled away.
It's times like this that even a patriotic American starts to wonder about the future of his country, and whether he should take drastic measures, such as make a new life as a Canadian.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Every argument (in the article) seems to try to blame the dot-coms, the economy, and everything else under the sun, each argument always goes back the underlying problem....debt.
Servicing debt is the least effecient way to use money, and the quickest way to make you broke. Most of the debt "Gen Xers" have is college, or related to college (i.e. the computer and books you bought on credit during school).
The real culprit seems to be outrageously inflated college tuitions. Look at the past 10 years; college tuition increases have outstripped GDP growth, inflation, and wage rates. With 60% of american students going to college, is it any suprise that this generation is servicing record debts? My dad got a 4 yr. college degree for $8000.00. One year of college cost me more than that.
America needs to get college tuitions in check, and we also need a national health care system. These are two of the biggest burdens on American consumers....if we accomplish both of these goals, we will be poised for long term growth.
-ted
Ironically, this is one of the few articles I've read that don't lump GenX into "everyone under 40". In that sense, it's accurate - but that's where it stops. "Most productive earning years behind them"? What? I was born in 1967, I'm 35. I'm certainly HOPING that my best earning years are ahead of me. /. comments for this pretty funny because they reinforce what I'm saying. In my experience GenX'ers tend to be more characterized by a "leave me alone to live my life" philosophy (mischaracterized by older and younger generations as apathy).
Generally, I find the tenor of most of the
Living in the the demographic slump after the baby-boom has, for most of us, meant that we are not catered to in any way - by the media, by advertisers, by the markets, etc. Never have been, don't really want to be. Douglas Coupland nailed the ethos of the generation. (That and The Breakfast Club.)
We were too young to be hippes or protesters in the late 60's and early 70's - we've merely been saddled with the rubble therefrom (drug abuse, AIDS, etc.).
We grew up post-Watergate, so government has NEVER been something trustworthy. We matured under the shadow of Reagan and Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernyenko/Gorbachev. When I walked into senior high the day of the Challenger disaster, I was RELIEVED to find out it was "only" that the shuttle blew up. The pale faces and utter silence of the commons made me fear the balloon had gone up (remember that quaint phrase?).
In the 80's, we watched all of our older borthers, sisters, and cousins who had railed against "The Man" and "Corporate America" put on their suits to go rape the economy in corporate takeovers. So all these 'paragons' of idealism are as totally corruptible as anyone else.
Now in the 90's, we saw all these tainted idealists who made a giant pile of money in the 90's, settle down in their cozy 5000 sqft homes, have their one child name Zoe, drive gigantic vehicles in some pursuit of safety-through-egotism and become the "family" that they also said was hopeless back in the 60's.
Finally, now that they are staring old age in the face, now they're all joining churches like mad. HA HA HA. Still looking for God that you couldn't find in drugs/sex/money/domesticity?
As Generation X'ers, THAT'S what we've witnessed, that's what's formed our views of the world. Every decade since we were tots the generation ahead of us has said "we know the true way to happiness!" and been wrong EVERY TIME. We're not "Generation Wrecked". But we're forced to step over their wreckage to live our lives.
-Styopa
NO one will probably read this since there are already a million posts on this story but anyway...
several people have summarized this story as being about gen-x'ers whining. but it isn't. it is about a baby boomer who wrote a story and tried their best to make gen-x seem worse than their genreation. really, how many gen-xers read fortune in comparison to their other readers? their target demo is not gen-x but baby boomers. this is an article to make the baby boomers feel better, "Look how great we are compared to these damn kids." does anyone REALLY think that our best earning years are over? no. not a chance.
it's not gne-xers whining, its baby boomers looking for a story.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I'm 30. I worked through the dot com explosion at a conservative finance company. I hear all the old fart executives laugh at the failure of the computer age. Daily I hear this. Usually because I am the one hooking up their laptop to the presentation system. I am the one showing them how to load that power point presentation that their secretary designed. I am the one who helps them sync their PDA with their laptop. I am the one who is suggesting what computer they should buy their daughter now that she's going away to school. I'm the one showing them how to use Nextel direct connect. Yeah, the computer age is over. My job is in jeopardy and my pay is getting smaller all the time... hardly. The Chicken Little's can complain all they want. I have my geriatric providers right where I need them: Hooked on my technology and convinced that it does not rule them.
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
Ye gods! Why? How? Where?
I'm 34 and I don't think I know _anybody_ my age with '$100,000 stashed away'. Hell, I'm not at all sure it's a good thing to have that kind of money 'stashed away'. I make stuff- I have made a bunch of CDs (at ampcast.com, above), I make guitar DI boxes, I even make costume tails. That in spite of the fact that I live on a little more than $5000 a year- it's about budgeting, handling money responsibly, doing without and working hard on things (depression-era values?)
Money doesn't come from the money fairy, people- though I can understand 'Fortune' magazine not understanding this. It's exchange value for goods and services- it's to do things with, not to 'stash away'. From my perspective, as someone who tries to do and build things rather than 'stash away', these mythical people with '$100,000 stashed away' (a HUNDRED thou? not even ten thou, a freaking hundred?) are the PROBLEM.
Where does that money go? Typically not gold, or bank notes in a mattress. No, that money was expected to go straight to Enron- woops, I mean WorldCom- woops, I mean Microsoft. Do we see the problem?
These people are crazy. I can't even feel inferior to their expectations because they seem to have no clue that what they expect is what will RUIN this country. For how many years have people 'stashed away' in this way, and see where it's got us? The answer is not to make it safe to stash away investment in Wall Street and multinational corporations again.
Get out there and do stuff. Build, create, do- within your means, but I'm talking ALL your means, no 'stashing away'. If you get hit by a truck next week you'll have been happier to have been engaged with a real life- you'll be building abilities that are better than any corporate-wall-street-speculation-policy as insurance for your future- and the money you spend in pursuing your plans and interests is money that CIRCULATES, rather than getting 'stashed away'.
Honestly, what IS this shit? I think some people still believe in the money fairy, and it isn't Slashdotters or Gen Xers, it's Fortune Magazine. You'd think one Enron, one dotcom implosion, would've taught them.
Will all people who actually believe that generationalist crap please go stick their head in a bucket and go away!
/. by people who should know better). Let's try to answer it, shall we?
Everything which is said about the so-called 'Gen-X' is said by the media -- first advertising slime, then editorial slime, followed by stereotyping lazy journalist slime -- not by the members of this nebulous and meaningless 'group'.
What is this article saying? That it looks like younger people are going to have a really crappy time for the forseeable future, probably the rest of their lives. And that despite the crapulous stereotype fostered upon a generation by fiat, "This time they have reason to whine." (think about that byline. It means that according to them 1: all Gen-Xers whine and complain, and 2: at all times except for this one, any complaints are trivial and meaningless and can be ignored safely. Who decides?)
Why is this bullshit continuing? Why are 'Gen-Xers' going to do so badly? (A question which is not even asked on the Fortune article, and is answered by "because they are all whining shits" here on
For a start, lets use the term 'Gen-X' merely as a reference to the people who happened to be born in that time period, and not say anything about their personal habits, merely the opportunities they (...'we', I should say) have).
Gen-Xers have been around to take up and ride the greatest explosion in technology since the Industrial Revolution. A few have even managed to become senior programmers and sysadmins. Where to from there? The people who run the companies are still from generation older -- lets label them 'Baby Boomers'. As generations, we -- Gen-X -- have watched them -- Baby Boomers -- profit from wealth and progressive social policies from the sixties to the late seventies -- and then systematically dismantle those things behind them. Here in Australia we used to have free (government-funded) Universities. Student fees were introduced in the early eighties. They have been increasing steadily since, and it now costs between tens- and hundreds-of-thousands of dollars for a degree. And the people who are most shrilly declaiming that fees are still too low and students don't know how good they have it are precisely those who recieved most benefit from free education.
And then there is the Reagan/Thatcher economic model, which says that selling off your country and renting it back from whoever could afford to buy it somehow makes good economic sense. Gee, that does work! Just ask anyone with a privatised Electricity Company! or Water. or Prison System.
Governments now have the same or higher debt than they used to have, but there is nothing left to sell off. Except maybe the citizenry as slave labour.
The Baby Boomers, as a group, are statistically the greediest and most selfish for a hundred years prior, and certainly since. They (that is, those members of that group who have had unfettered access to the pension funds) have squandered the pension money, but do you think there will be any willingness to forego the best care in their dotage? And what will be left after the largest retired population -- by proportion, and absolutely -- in the history of mankind has gone? SFA is my bet. It will be up to us to fund our own retirements, if we get any.
But wait! There's more... those of Gen-X who have managed to find $100,000 pa jobs are statistical freaks. Most have been dumped on the streets after the bubble burst. There used to be a path of promotion to a point where you could set company policy. How many of you are in that position? How many are under 35? How many of your peers are over 40-45? What about superiors?
Or the media -- where are the Gen-X journalists? Don't include MTV, or anyone whose only task seems to be reporting on skateboards and rap music. Where are the Gen-Xers interviewing Rumsfeld or Rice? Where are the Gen-Xers reporting in Afghanistan? Or hosting a talking-head show? (Conan O'Brien Doesn't Count).
When you think about it, this comes down to the powerful members of one generation saying to their children "We will tell you what you are. You are dissapointments to Us. You will never live up to what We were and what We did. We therefore will not give up the world until We cannot hold on with Our palsied hands one moment longer, and We will then expect you to take the best possible care of Us no matter what the cost to your own future."
And you wonder why those children are pissed!
P.S. I am not saying that all Boomers are consciously subduing all Gen-Xers, but I am saying that the social structures dismantled by one generation has amounted to pulling up the ladders set up by their parents before the next generation can make its own way up. Any who have climbed the wall on their own, or slipped into the fortress through a fortuotous (sp?) crack, more power to you. But don't forget the increasing crowd still locked outside the gates.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Why is it that Generation X is being called a bunch of slackers? I know GenX-ers (older than me) who work longer hours than my parents ever did. Meanwhile, the company they work for allows executives (members of the Boomers) to do things like spend $500 on "dinner with a client" or take a day off of work to play a round at an exclusive country club AND EXPENSE IT.
.com thing was a scam, yes... but the Generation X CEOs who were part of the scam were being strung along by venture capitilists... who were mostly (surprise)... Baby Boomers.
It is members of the Boomers who get to fly around in the company jet, get to stay in fancy hotels in business trips (which the company pays for), and so forth.
Then the GenX-ers at the company are asked to work more than 8 hours a day, plus weekends... and are called slackers for wanting to do things like "spend time with their families."
To top it off, it is members of the Boomers who are "cooking the books" to give themselves fat paychecks. Who suffers when the company goes bankrupt? The GenX-ers who were working at the company.
And it isn't looking very great for people who are graduating from college now. Not only do we have to compete with LAID OFF Generation X members with Masters Degrees and PHDs who are being forced down into what would normally be entry level positions, but some of us face even greater debt from school.
(I'm luck that I don't have any debt from school, but plenty of my friends have tons...)
The government is _encouraging_ the GenX-ers to go into debt by "going shopping" to fight terrorism at the same time. Great idea!!
I talked with someone from the DEPRESSION generation a few months ago at a picnic.
The economy entered the discussion.
They said that they don't understand how younger people can even survive today with the damage that the _Baby Boomers_ are doing.
The
I'm not trying to bash all Boomers here. I know plenty of Baby Boomers who are having just as much trouble as the Generation X people are. But it is just really kinda messed up when Generation X is being called a generation of "slackers," when most of the damage is being done by people from the Boomer Generation who are purposefully doing things that are hurting the economy and hurting the Generation X people so that they can get more money that they don't even need.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah