Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe and I'm Tracy. Alliwit, So, Tracy, you know,
Speaker 1: what's something that both of us have in common? Oh? God,
Speaker 1: it could be any number of things, couldn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now it's true, there's probably a number of things. Both
Speaker 1: of us are very old. Wait, you're older than I am.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to go ahead and say, speak for yourself. Joe. Wait,
Speaker 1: you are I am? Yeah, you're like three years older
Speaker 1: than I am. Wait. Really, yes, I thought we were
Speaker 1: the same age. Oh my god. I actually I honestly
Speaker 1: thought we were the same You don't know me at all, thanks, Joe. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that if that's the case, then that makes me
Speaker 1: not a millennial. But you are clearly a millennial because
Speaker 1: I've always heard that one two or something like that
Speaker 1: is the cut off, and so you're clearly on the
Speaker 1: other side of the cut off than I am. I yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean people are about the definition of millennials all
Speaker 1: the time, but by most definitions, I am included in
Speaker 1: that much maligned bracket, and you are not. I guess
Speaker 1: I honestly never knew you were a millennial. Like I'm Sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of blown away by this because I was
Speaker 1: expecting a whole intro of like, we can't relate to millennials,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize I was co hosting a podcast
Speaker 1: with a millennial. I've hidden it, well, haven't I. I've
Speaker 1: also ruined your interest. This is blowing my mind right now.
Speaker 1: Oh God, why are we talking about millennials? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: like in the media, obviously, as you say, much maligned generation,
Speaker 1: the media has some very stereotypical ways of talking about
Speaker 1: millennials and these broad strokes. It's like millennials don't want houses,
Speaker 1: they just want to buy avocados, or millennials are only
Speaker 1: interested in investing this way or whatever it is, and
Speaker 1: it's always very embarrassing, sort of reductionist form of coverage.
Speaker 1: And you know, however, it's like we kind of have
Speaker 1: to move on. It's kind of it's there's got to
Speaker 1: be a better way. As a long suffering millennial, I
Speaker 1: completely agree with your analysis, and I would also say
Speaker 1: that one of my pet peeves is people writing about
Speaker 1: millennials as if we're somehow a separate subspecies of human
Speaker 1: beings with completely different desires and behaviors. It's still so
Speaker 1: weird to me that you said is if weird? I
Speaker 1: just was not. I'm sorry. I'm still having a hard
Speaker 1: time getting over that. It's still weird to me, but
Speaker 1: I'll get it. Yes, is if you're you and your
Speaker 1: type are a different type of human. Yes. So anyway,
Speaker 1: as you say, we should probably rethink it, totally bust
Speaker 1: up these impressions that we have about this subspecies called millennials,
Speaker 1: and the ramifications of this are huge because of buying power,
Speaker 1: economic cloud, political cloud. Every time there's a new generation,
Speaker 1: things are going to change, so we should probably try
Speaker 1: to get it right. I completely agree. Um, so how
Speaker 1: are we? First of all, can I just say I
Speaker 1: totally distrust you, as a non millennial to represent our
Speaker 1: best interests. So it's going to be up to me
Speaker 1: in this podcast. Who are we having on them today?
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about our guest. His name is Malcolm Harris.
Speaker 1: He's a writer, and he is the author of a
Speaker 1: recent book called Kids These Days, Human Capital and the
Speaker 1: Making of Millennials, which, if I sort of interpret that
Speaker 1: title correctly, may imply that a lot of making of millennials,
Speaker 1: that there's an element of a sort of social construct
Speaker 1: here that the way we talk about millennials is somehow
Speaker 1: forced and artificial, and maybe there is a a better
Speaker 1: way of understanding this generation millennials as a construct of
Speaker 1: global capitalism. I love it already, Malcolm, Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for johning us. Thanks for having me. John. So
Speaker 1: I've mentioned in the intro that there is this sort
Speaker 1: of cliche way in which the media talks about millennials.
Speaker 1: I joke and you know, said, you guys all want
Speaker 1: to your millennial, right, I am. We have a number
Speaker 1: you now on this podcast, definitely a numbered on the podcast.
Speaker 1: You want to spend all your money out avocados instead
Speaker 1: of buying a mortgage, instead of getting a mortgage. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, when you think about how millennials
Speaker 1: have been constructed, what you mean by that specifically, Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. One of the first the first thing you
Speaker 1: said when you said millennials right, was buying power. And
Speaker 1: because the easiest data we have for any cohort period
Speaker 1: is purchased data, It's really easy to get information about consumption.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to get information about anything else, and
Speaker 1: it takes years of scholarship, and it's not as flashy,
Speaker 1: but consumption data is really easy, and there's an incentive
Speaker 1: for people who are selling things to have these consumption profiles.
Speaker 1: And so the first voices we hear to finding any
Speaker 1: generational cohort these days are marketers who are basing their
Speaker 1: ideas off of consumption patterns. That's not how I think
Speaker 1: of generations. It's not I think how generations are most
Speaker 1: usefully understood as aggregates of purchasing power. So instead of
Speaker 1: going just by you know, it's sort of like generational
Speaker 1: bucket and arbitrary generational bucket that's chosen by marketers, what
Speaker 1: do you base your definition on them? So when I
Speaker 1: went to look at what is structuring this cohort of workers,
Speaker 1: which is how I look at you know, most members
Speaker 1: of this cohort accurate as as producers, not as consumers.
Speaker 1: And so I was looking at, first of all, the
Speaker 1: research into what differentiates generations empirically in terms of they're
Speaker 1: like personal characteristics, their attitudes towards the world, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that was about the social environment, the political,
Speaker 1: social economic environment, and not you know, quick changes. It's
Speaker 1: not like nine eleven, you know, had a psychological effect
Speaker 1: that has constructed this generation. Necessarily, it's about long term
Speaker 1: secular shifts in the economy. And so the biggest one
Speaker 1: and the one that I think defines this generation more
Speaker 1: than anything, is this divergence between compensation and productivity that
Speaker 1: emerges exactly when we start being born and has continued
Speaker 1: expanding since then. Before we get into sort of diving
Speaker 1: into your framework, I find that just your point to
Speaker 1: be both really interesting and simple, Which is this idea
Speaker 1: that yeah, marketers come up with all these things and
Speaker 1: then they get to define the rules of what aspects
Speaker 1: are most important, and of course they care about spending patterns.
Speaker 1: Is this new in the sense that previous generations where
Speaker 1: they defined by marketers as well, or is this because
Speaker 1: of the emergence of a marketing class that now Millennials,
Speaker 1: Generation Z, every generation will now sort of be defined
Speaker 1: by characteristics that maybe people didn't think about as much
Speaker 1: in prior generations. Yeah. I think that starts with Gen X,
Speaker 1: which is a generation that's may be characterized by its
Speaker 1: being targeted by marketers for the first time, and that
Speaker 1: was a marketing term as well. But if you look
Speaker 1: at the baby boomers, right, that's not about consumers necessarily,
Speaker 1: that's about their demographic effect. Right, if you look at
Speaker 1: the greatest generation, you know some real great self branding there. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's about fighting in a war and defeating fascism and
Speaker 1: building a country or whatever. It has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with selling them stuff. Whereas millennials was created by marketers.
Speaker 1: We've got marketers right now fighting desperately to name this
Speaker 1: next cohort. Jean TWANGI is one of the the leading authorities,
Speaker 1: as they say, named her book Igen, which is also
Speaker 1: the name of her consulting firm Igen, trying to sell
Speaker 1: things to Igen, or trying to sell companies on how
Speaker 1: to sell things to Egen, or even just the name Igen.
Speaker 1: So it's generational analysis is full of that kind of
Speaker 1: marketing chicanery. Wait, I want to hear more about how
Speaker 1: my compensation doesn't match my level of productivity. Yeah, Joe
Speaker 1: wanted to get us off that. I wonder why, of
Speaker 1: course he did. He's not millennial, right, Um. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this is I think the most important thing about you know,
Speaker 1: data point over the past three or four decades is
Speaker 1: this diversions that starts and really does about late seventies
Speaker 1: early eighties, where medium compensation starts to level off for workers,
Speaker 1: and productivity keeps increases, and we've seen recently that productivity
Speaker 1: itself start to level off as well. But that gap
Speaker 1: is not closing, and there's no sign that it is
Speaker 1: going to close. And neo classical of economics doesn't really
Speaker 1: have a term for that divergence, but Marxism does, and
Speaker 1: it's called the rate of exploitation, and that rate of
Speaker 1: exploitation is what characterizes, I think the millennial experience more
Speaker 1: than anything else, certainly more than buying things. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about how that plays out the question of stagnant wages.
Speaker 1: The chart showing the gap between productivity and wage growth,
Speaker 1: I think there's a fair amount of understanding of that,
Speaker 1: or at least facets of it. But the sort of
Speaker 1: translation or maybe the transmission mechanism between this pace of
Speaker 1: wage growth. Uh two, cultural values and cultural definitions and
Speaker 1: what defines this generation. What are the sort of second
Speaker 1: order effects of that. That's a great question. So in
Speaker 1: a society in which the stakes are higher, because that's
Speaker 1: really what we've seen is the difference between making it
Speaker 1: and not making it is greater now than it used
Speaker 1: to be. It used to be you could do okay
Speaker 1: and do okay and that's not the feeling that young
Speaker 1: people have growing up in America anymore. Um and not
Speaker 1: not that everyone always did, but there is an increasing
Speaker 1: feeling that if you don't make it, life is not
Speaker 1: going to be easy. Life is going to be hard,
Speaker 1: and so to make it requires more work, younger, earlier,
Speaker 1: higher stakes, younger earlier than it has in past generations.
Speaker 1: And so when we talked about when I went into
Speaker 1: this project, I felt very critical about sort of the
Speaker 1: helicopter parents archetype. But as I did more research, I
Speaker 1: found out that they're responding to real, actual situations that
Speaker 1: the risk of their children having a much harder life
Speaker 1: is higher. And so when parents are working harder and
Speaker 1: most of these parents are not you know, rich, because
Speaker 1: most people aren't rich. These are mostly working class parents
Speaker 1: who are taking on extra work to try and make
Speaker 1: sure their kid has the best shot they have in
Speaker 1: a world where if they don't make it they could
Speaker 1: really suffer. And so I developed a lot of sympathy
Speaker 1: for that during the course of the project. It sounds
Speaker 1: like there's a certain winner take all on this about
Speaker 1: how millennials see the economy, or millennial parents as you
Speaker 1: put it, in which you can make it and do
Speaker 1: phenomenally well. And there are obviously people who have, but
Speaker 1: as you say, it's not as easy to just do
Speaker 1: okay and do okay. So the possible paths, the successful paths,
Speaker 1: are perhaps fewer and maybe greater, and then there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of bad paths. Yeah, and that competition is
Speaker 1: very useful for employers and not useful at all for employees.
Speaker 1: Kevin Russ for The New York Times is a great
Speaker 1: book called Young Money where he's talking to young stockbrokers,
Speaker 1: you know, Goldman analysts, right out of college. And these
Speaker 1: are the people who have never lost at anything in
Speaker 1: their whole lives. And they're recruiting, you know, only out
Speaker 1: of Ivy League schools. And they take these kids who
Speaker 1: have never lost any things in their lives and they
Speaker 1: just pit them against each other. And they don't have
Speaker 1: to know anything about finance or whatever. It's just about
Speaker 1: this competition and winning and losing. Because employers harnessed profit
Speaker 1: from that, that is an engine of productivity for them,
Speaker 1: whereas for us not so much. So they encourage that
Speaker 1: kind of competitive behavior just to play devil's advocate for
Speaker 1: a second, because as a millennial, this is often the
Speaker 1: response that I hear from people when this type of
Speaker 1: conversation crops up, it's that our definition of making it
Speaker 1: has shifted. So yes, there's a lot of urgency to
Speaker 1: make it in the workforce because otherwise life will be bad.
Speaker 1: But the critics of millennials say that our expectations of
Speaker 1: what making it actually looks like have grown exponentially and
Speaker 1: in some cases unrealistically. So making it to us is,
Speaker 1: you know, traveling all the time and posting photos on
Speaker 1: Instagram and affording a really nice apartment and a big
Speaker 1: house that we can show off to our friends and families,
Speaker 1: and yes, eating avocados all the time as well. What
Speaker 1: do you say to those people? I think they're they're
Speaker 1: somewhat misinformed, and they might be misinformed by young people
Speaker 1: in their own lives who are working hard to reassure
Speaker 1: them that they're okay. And I hear this from young
Speaker 1: people all the time that a lot of their like
Speaker 1: curating of their digital lives and making themselves look good
Speaker 1: is not just for their friends to make their friends
Speaker 1: think they're doing well, but for their parents and older
Speaker 1: people to make them think that, like, you know, their
Speaker 1: life is going okay. I think in reality, our expectations
Speaker 1: are standards. And I I've actually just been reporting on
Speaker 1: this about in my line of work, freelance writing, where
Speaker 1: the nominal pay has decreased, just straight up gone down,
Speaker 1: and you can see this across industries, and the jobs
Speaker 1: we have now are worse, and that's not particularly controversial
Speaker 1: if you look at the numbers. I would like to
Speaker 1: address the idea of expectations or entitlement to life getting easier,
Speaker 1: because that's a criticism we hear about young people. Millennial
Speaker 1: was a lot, but it was also supposed to be
Speaker 1: the premise of capitalism, right like a hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Kane said, in about a hundred years, we should solve
Speaker 1: this whole economic problem thing, and then we can spend
Speaker 1: all our days doing art and being creative and eating
Speaker 1: great food and you know, taking pictures of avocado tift.
Speaker 1: That was supposed to be the deal. We haven't seen
Speaker 1: that at all. We haven't seen any even movement in
Speaker 1: that direction where the proceeds of this mode of production
Speaker 1: become more shared and our state of living increases. So
Speaker 1: I think people should feel entitled to a better life.
Speaker 1: I got a question and one of the talks I
Speaker 1: was giving about the book where a college student asked me,
Speaker 1: if housing prices are always going to go up, then
Speaker 1: when is life's supposed to get easier? And that's a
Speaker 1: totally valid question that I think, you know, economists need
Speaker 1: to be answering if things are supposed to get more
Speaker 1: expensive continually forever, when does life get easier for people
Speaker 1: on this planet. One of the areas that I don't
Speaker 1: think is particularly controversial in terms of the way millennials
Speaker 1: think about the world and think about sort of state
Speaker 1: of things is the lack of trust. And so we
Speaker 1: hear a lot about millennials don't trust politicians, they don't
Speaker 1: trust the stock market, they don't trust their employers, that
Speaker 1: all of these institutions have to some extent failed them,
Speaker 1: and whether that's true or not, that seems to be
Speaker 1: a real thing. I'm curious what your take is on
Speaker 1: this sort of trust collapse idea. And it's not just institutions,
Speaker 1: it's also other people. And that's one of the biggest,
Speaker 1: most qualitative gaps that I think defines the generational cohort
Speaker 1: if you look at compared to recent cohorts, is social trust.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that most people can be trusted to
Speaker 1: be honest, which was not huge for Gen X either,
Speaker 1: But we're I think ten points lower down to I
Speaker 1: think nineteen or something. So four out of five millennials
Speaker 1: don't think most people can be trusted. And that again
Speaker 1: goes back to that higher stakes economy where if you're
Speaker 1: constantly competing with other people, of course you're not going
Speaker 1: to trust them. You'd be an idiot to trust them.
Speaker 1: They don't trust you either because they're in competition with you. Fundamentally,
Speaker 1: that is their relation to you as another person, and
Speaker 1: that didn't used to be the case. I don't think,
Speaker 1: especially for younger people. When we're learning concepts of social trust,
Speaker 1: the level of competition between young people was just lower,
Speaker 1: so I we shouldn't be surprised. So how much of
Speaker 1: the blame for the current situation, this intense competition, low compensation,
Speaker 1: for the productivity that you're actually giving to your employer.
Speaker 1: How much of that can you weigh at the feet
Speaker 1: of uh, let's say the older generation. I don't think
Speaker 1: about that quite in generational terms. You can, there's a
Speaker 1: way to think about it if you're using generational conflict
Speaker 1: is your main frame, but that's not really how I
Speaker 1: look at it, I would blame the ownership class of
Speaker 1: that generational cohort in particular. And I think if you
Speaker 1: look at Bruce Gibney's book, and he's the most he
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Generation of Sociopaths that is about
Speaker 1: the Boomers, that is straight up that argument, just like
Speaker 1: the Boomers did this to us, uh, And I think
Speaker 1: he's a gen X guy. At the beginning, he excludes
Speaker 1: non white and non American born Boomers just from the jump,
Speaker 1: and you know it, that doesn't make for as good
Speaker 1: of a title, but you have to do that in
Speaker 1: order for the analysis to make sense. So the idea
Speaker 1: of blaming boomers itself is I think kind of faulty.
Speaker 1: It doesn't stand up. Speaking of gen X. I like
Speaker 1: a lot of gen X people are pretty upset these
Speaker 1: days too, Right. Isn't there a sort of theme that
Speaker 1: the gen xers feel no one ever talks about them
Speaker 1: that so much interest is on millennials and the boomers
Speaker 1: and then gen X which sort of felt, maybe in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, like their lives were all gonna be
Speaker 1: awesome and everyone was gonna get rich, and they just
Speaker 1: had this very brief moment and they've forgotten about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing about generational analysis is not everyone is born
Speaker 1: at an equally important time, and that's that's nothing personal
Speaker 1: to to gen X, but and it also means no
Speaker 1: one is going to hold them ultimately responsible for the
Speaker 1: state of the world and the way that I think
Speaker 1: millennials will be that's yeah, so you could. I would
Speaker 1: take that deal if I were you guys, to be honest,
Speaker 1: for what it's worth. I think I'm also not gen
Speaker 1: X because I was born in and I always so.
Speaker 1: I kind of like you're given the generation between millennials
Speaker 1: and gen X well, and that gets too. I think
Speaker 1: an important point about the way I'm doing generational analysis,
Speaker 1: which is that it isn't about a year cut off.
Speaker 1: It's about the kind of life you have, right, Jared
Speaker 1: cushed there's a millennial, but he doesn't live that way.
Speaker 1: That's not that question. I'm curious about um to defining
Speaker 1: things if I guess events in the last fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty years, and that is the Iraq War and also
Speaker 1: the Great Financial Crisis, and the extent to which those
Speaker 1: have informed millennials view of the world. There were war
Speaker 1: is an interesting one because it definitely for a lot
Speaker 1: of us myself included was our first introduction to political participation.
Speaker 1: UM I started protesting the Iraq War before it's protested
Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan. But um at the same time,
Speaker 1: the impacts of that constant state of war have been
Speaker 1: cordoned off from most of society in a way that
Speaker 1: we've never really seen with war. And so a large
Speaker 1: effort for the Iraq War was to insulate the population
Speaker 1: from its effects or even the knowledge that it was ongoing.
Speaker 1: And so you don't see millennials influenced by the Iraq
Speaker 1: War at the same um rate volume that you know
Speaker 1: Vietnam and impacted that generation. At the same time, we've
Speaker 1: been at war that our entire lives and it's the
Speaker 1: war that's been fought by young people. UM, so there
Speaker 1: are a lot of veterans out there. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it's a not a infantry intensive war in the same
Speaker 1: way that we've had past wars. So the impact of
Speaker 1: the Iraq War has been been very complicated. The financial crisis,
Speaker 1: I think is probably a little bit more direct and
Speaker 1: a little bit more visible, and the bailouts I think
Speaker 1: is also part of the financial crisis. As part of
Speaker 1: that whole sequence is understanding that firms would lie and
Speaker 1: cheat and steal and get away with it, and that
Speaker 1: this was the condition of our politics and our economy,
Speaker 1: and that they had the rest of us hostage, and
Speaker 1: that they could take the whole thing any day and
Speaker 1: we had to, you know, appease the bondholders or else
Speaker 1: we were all going to die, and that this was
Speaker 1: the condition of our political existence. That's disheartening. So if
Speaker 1: millennials are constructs of capitalism, and mostly constructs of the
Speaker 1: downsides of capitalism, it sounds like what can possibly be
Speaker 1: done to improve the situation for our cohort of people?
Speaker 1: That's the hundred million dollar question, I guess. Thankfully, we
Speaker 1: we have one example recently, what was the West Virginia
Speaker 1: treat teacher strike, um and labor strike. Labor actions which
Speaker 1: a point I'm making the book, have been basically banned
Speaker 1: since we over the course of millennial development, strikes have
Speaker 1: been marginalized as a practice, so much so that everyone
Speaker 1: sort of forgot that even that they were illegal, I
Speaker 1: feel like, and that they could repress them. And so
Speaker 1: the West Virginia teacher strike, which was illegal, was also
Speaker 1: successful and victorious and earned them a wage increase, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people saw that, especially teachers
Speaker 1: and around the country. We're going to see the impact
Speaker 1: of that so um lawbreaking, mostly lawbreaking labor action. If
Speaker 1: it's not breaking laws, it's probably not going to be
Speaker 1: very useful. I think at this point, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought that up, because I'm curious, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: in the world that I kind of inhabit New York
Speaker 1: City media. I used to work for a digital or
Speaker 1: strictly digital media company. We've seen a number of unionizations
Speaker 1: of newsrooms recently. I think, uh, places like Fox Media
Speaker 1: and Vice Media have recently unionized. Is this a phenomenon
Speaker 1: that is okay, this is liberal leftist journalists in New
Speaker 1: York City are sort of getting into the idea of
Speaker 1: lay for action. Or is this a phenomenon that is
Speaker 1: taking root in a in your view in a broader way,
Speaker 1: because I have a hard time telling what's just the
Speaker 1: bubble of the people I follow on Twitter or my
Speaker 1: colleagues versus the larger cohort, and this is something that's
Speaker 1: started to change. I think since I wrote the book,
Speaker 1: actually that the numbers when I was writing the book
Speaker 1: is that millennials were less likely to join unions even
Speaker 1: when they were available in their workplace, those numbers might
Speaker 1: be different now. I do think we've seen maybe an
Speaker 1: excess of attention on the media space because it's the
Speaker 1: media space. We we do control the media, the media
Speaker 1: controls the media. But I do think this West Virginia
Speaker 1: teacher strike is going to have a big impact because
Speaker 1: it's been so off the table for so long. Um
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that that just labor organizations
Speaker 1: have been weakened, the leadership is not necessarily acting in
Speaker 1: the best interests in the rank and file, which again,
Speaker 1: this West Virginia teacher strike as a wildcat strike at
Speaker 1: a certain point where the leadership was ready to go
Speaker 1: back in and the rank and file stayed out. And
Speaker 1: so I think more than just the question of labor action,
Speaker 1: it's the the type of labor action, the kind of
Speaker 1: labor action that we're going to see that's led by
Speaker 1: you know, Facebook memes rather than union bureaucrats, and that
Speaker 1: seems more effective at this moment. I for one, can't
Speaker 1: wait for the millennial revolution. I do wonder how much
Speaker 1: of the reluctance to join unions is part of that
Speaker 1: competitive culture that has essentially been bred into millennials in
Speaker 1: the workplace. You know, you talked about that winner takes
Speaker 1: all environment. It's kind of hard to be the one
Speaker 1: joining a union if you think that you also have
Speaker 1: to set yourself apart from the rest of the group
Speaker 1: and basically do whatever your employer wants from you in
Speaker 1: order to get ahead in life. I think that's absolutely true,
Speaker 1: that crucial point. We saw this with the the Gawker union. Actually,
Speaker 1: back when there was a a Gawker union, they negotiate
Speaker 1: did an at will higher contract, which is insane. If
Speaker 1: any union person looked at that contract, they, you know,
Speaker 1: slap that Gawker negotiating team right in the face because
Speaker 1: that terrible contract. But it was motivated by this idea
Speaker 1: that I think had been bred into all of them
Speaker 1: of competition. You know, we don't want to protect the
Speaker 1: jobs of people who aren't pulling their weight. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you a question that is perhaps
Speaker 1: anathema to you, but let's hear it. No, but let's
Speaker 1: let's say, and maybe this has already happened, because people
Speaker 1: are smart, this would have already happened. But you know,
Speaker 1: someone at PEPSI or Procter and Gamble or something came
Speaker 1: across your book kids these days about millennials, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we should get that guy Malcolm Harrison to teach us
Speaker 1: about millennials and how we're all taking this very naive
Speaker 1: view of them. That's and how we should be thinking
Speaker 1: about them more than just a bunch of checkboxes of
Speaker 1: consumption patterns. We really need to learn more. A has
Speaker 1: that happened and be you know they bring you in
Speaker 1: to give a talk, would you tell them? So? The
Speaker 1: only one where that happened was for the twenty one
Speaker 1: century Fox off site before they sold the whole company. Basically,
Speaker 1: they asked if I wanted to come talk about young
Speaker 1: people at the twenty one century Fox off site in
Speaker 1: like Palm Beach. So I got some email about that
Speaker 1: and I wrote back, you know, being a good Marxist,
Speaker 1: how much? And at that point I think they sold
Speaker 1: the company. So that was the closest I've I've come
Speaker 1: to corporate consulting. I think I would have done that
Speaker 1: just to go to Paul Meach, to hang out with
Speaker 1: Lachlan Murphy Murdoch and see what the al Right, so
Speaker 1: what let's say, let's say they had hit your bed
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, we you know, come down and talk
Speaker 1: to us. And I love I just love that vision,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you down there. But let's say
Speaker 1: they had, you know, they had come back with an
Speaker 1: adequate number for you, and they're like, okay, so what
Speaker 1: would you What would you tell them, assuming you were
Speaker 1: trying to saboteger to them roll them? Sure? If I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Laclamurphy, Well, it's hard because the
Speaker 1: honest things I have to say to them are not
Speaker 1: ones they'd want to hear. Right, I'd say, your father
Speaker 1: dies happy and you will die in the street surrounded
Speaker 1: by lots of angry people. And I think they are
Speaker 1: aware of that possibility right now. Right was the head
Speaker 1: of Cardier the other day was like, I you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of uprising keeps me up all night every night,
Speaker 1: and I think partly that's what they want to hear. Right.
Speaker 1: They get a some sense of excitement over knowing their
Speaker 1: position is somewhat precarious, but it's it's true. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't have anything that I think they would find useful.
Speaker 1: They know what their strategy is in terms of labor exploitation.
Speaker 1: Maybe they can clarify it by reading the book if
Speaker 1: they want, but I'm not inclined to give them any
Speaker 1: advice about it. I'm not like Jean Twang, where I'm
Speaker 1: going to go talk to the American Petroleum Institute about
Speaker 1: how you can sell cars to millennials, and no one
Speaker 1: has reached out to me to do something like that.
Speaker 1: I think we should call this episode. Do you hear
Speaker 1: the millennials sing that should be it? Malcolm? How much
Speaker 1: do you think the pressures that we're talking about that
Speaker 1: are on millennials? How much do those get eased as
Speaker 1: the older generation leaves the workforce? And dare I say
Speaker 1: it actually dies off and maybe leave some money to
Speaker 1: their children, um which we can all inherit, and also
Speaker 1: relinquishes their voting power and their influence in US politics.
Speaker 1: Is that the point where things start getting better? No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, because that one, I have no
Speaker 1: idea when that's going to happen, and they sure have
Speaker 1: invested a bunch of time and money into prolonging it
Speaker 1: as far as possible. It's like Western civilization, right, It's
Speaker 1: like a nice idea boomers retiring, but also that they've
Speaker 1: set up the next millennial leadership cohort is not any
Speaker 1: better than the boomer leadership cohort. Again, people like Jared Pushner.
Speaker 1: All Right, these these folks are already in place, and
Speaker 1: they are responsible to an even smaller number of people
Speaker 1: than their fathers were. So I'm not looking forward to
Speaker 1: our millennial over here, Malcolm Harris. The book is Kids
Speaker 1: These Days, Human Capital and the Making of Millennials. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining. Thanks so much for having
Speaker 1: to Tracy. I know you like that episode. I definitely did.
Speaker 1: It was so good. I feel empowered as a millennial,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm going to go out and start
Speaker 1: the revolution. And I know that Malcolm, as he said
Speaker 1: multiple times, he doesn't really think that the straight up
Speaker 1: generational warfare lens is exactly the correct one, But I
Speaker 1: do know that nothing gets you more excited about anything
Speaker 1: ing that sort of any sort of vague whiff of
Speaker 1: generational warfare, because it has been a constant theme of
Speaker 1: your writing. Well, come on, I think there's more than
Speaker 1: a vague wif to be fair, but I also think
Speaker 1: if you pin it just on the baby boomers, of
Speaker 1: course that is oversimplifying things, but just to broaden it
Speaker 1: out and not be a completely self centered millennial and
Speaker 1: play to that stereotype. I do think there's an important
Speaker 1: aspect to this conversation, and a lot of it you
Speaker 1: can apply to the broader workforce. Right, we talk in
Speaker 1: markets and economics all the time about that elusive wage growth,
Speaker 1: why hasn't it happened? And a lot of what we've
Speaker 1: been discussing about companies sort of holding all the cards
Speaker 1: in the battle between corporations, capital owners, and the labor
Speaker 1: force when it comes to millennials, you can apply that
Speaker 1: to a much much broader section of the workforce. I think, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I think there's there's a lot of themes to
Speaker 1: unpack here, including and increasingly less controversial viewpoint that the
Speaker 1: concentration of corporate power among a smaller and smaller number
Speaker 1: of winner take all companies has put downward pressure on wages.
Speaker 1: I think this lens is absolutely, as you say, very
Speaker 1: useful for a much broader conversation as well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I like the part where Malcolm said that you weren't
Speaker 1: born in an important time. I know I've come to
Speaker 1: realize that and I just accept it now that it
Speaker 1: makes me a little bit sad. The one other thing
Speaker 1: I really liked is the idea of, you know, when
Speaker 1: we're talking about the strikes, and the idea of maybe
Speaker 1: the sort of labor action in the future will be
Speaker 1: people in a Facebook page sharing memes about labor action
Speaker 1: rather than some sort of centralized union leadership. And it's
Speaker 1: a good reminder that the next wave of things may
Speaker 1: not look like the old things. And so we might
Speaker 1: have this view like, Okay, we're watching for the re
Speaker 1: emergence of a more powerful labor movement, and we key
Speaker 1: looking at union membership or something like that. But it
Speaker 1: could just be ideas taking ideas taking root, or some
Speaker 1: sort of more horizontal coordination. Sort of a good idea
Speaker 1: to remain open to how these things could look different.
Speaker 1: It could be something as simple as millennial employees talking
Speaker 1: to each other about what their actual salaries are and
Speaker 1: then going to their bosses and figuring out how to
Speaker 1: make those higher. Absolutely, I'm a little bit worried that
Speaker 1: maybe the revolution is going to play out on Instagram. Um,
Speaker 1: but we'll we'll find out, We'll say, alright. This has
Speaker 1: been another edition of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: The Stalwart, and you can follow Malcolm on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Big Mean Internet. And you should follow our producer Topur
Speaker 1: Foreheads on Twitter at forehead t, as well as the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Head of podcast, Brincesica Levy at Print. Just good today,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.