WEBVTT - Why The Entire Way We Talk About Millennials Is Wrong 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:12.240 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:16.560 I'm Joe and I'm Tracy. Alliwit, So, Tracy, you know, 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.800 what's something that both of us have in common? Oh? God, 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.239 it could be any number of things, couldn't it. Yeah, 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:26.000 now it's true, there's probably a number of things. Both 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.520 of us are very old. Wait, you're older than I am. 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.520 So I'm going to go ahead and say, speak for yourself. Joe. Wait, 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.479 you are I am? Yeah, you're like three years older 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.400 than I am. Wait. Really, yes, I thought we were 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.200 the same age. Oh my god. I actually I honestly 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:43.960 thought we were the same You don't know me at all, thanks, Joe. Okay, 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:46.640 so that if that's the case, then that makes me 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.920 not a millennial. But you are clearly a millennial because 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.440 I've always heard that one two or something like that 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:56.560 is the cut off, and so you're clearly on the 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.160 other side of the cut off than I am. I yeah, 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:01.720 I mean people are about the definition of millennials all 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.280 the time, but by most definitions, I am included in 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.440 that much maligned bracket, and you are not. I guess 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.240 I honestly never knew you were a millennial. Like I'm Sorry. 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:12.840 I'm kind of blown away by this because I was 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.480 expecting a whole intro of like, we can't relate to millennials, 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:17.920 and I didn't realize I was co hosting a podcast 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:21.319 with a millennial. I've hidden it, well, haven't I. I've 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.000 also ruined your interest. This is blowing my mind right now. 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:28.680 Oh God, why are we talking about millennials? Well, you know, 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:32.240 like in the media, obviously, as you say, much maligned generation, 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.199 the media has some very stereotypical ways of talking about 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:41.000 millennials and these broad strokes. It's like millennials don't want houses, 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:45.520 they just want to buy avocados, or millennials are only 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:50.600 interested in investing this way or whatever it is, and 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.640 it's always very embarrassing, sort of reductionist form of coverage. 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:57.720 And you know, however, it's like we kind of have 0:01:57.760 --> 0:01:59.920 to move on. It's kind of it's there's got to 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.320 be a better way. As a long suffering millennial, I 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.600 completely agree with your analysis, and I would also say 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:08.960 that one of my pet peeves is people writing about 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:13.480 millennials as if we're somehow a separate subspecies of human 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:18.280 beings with completely different desires and behaviors. It's still so 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:20.000 weird to me that you said is if weird? I 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.359 just was not. I'm sorry. I'm still having a hard 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:24.920 time getting over that. It's still weird to me, but 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:27.400 I'll get it. Yes, is if you're you and your 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.000 type are a different type of human. Yes. So anyway, 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.000 as you say, we should probably rethink it, totally bust 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:40.680 up these impressions that we have about this subspecies called millennials, 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.680 and the ramifications of this are huge because of buying power, 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.200 economic cloud, political cloud. Every time there's a new generation, 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:52.119 things are going to change, so we should probably try 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.560 to get it right. I completely agree. Um, so how 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:57.480 are we? First of all, can I just say I 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:00.320 totally distrust you, as a non millennial to represent our 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:01.960 best interests. So it's going to be up to me 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:06.760 in this podcast. Who are we having on them today? 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.519 I'm very excited about our guest. His name is Malcolm Harris. 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.200 He's a writer, and he is the author of a 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.720 recent book called Kids These Days, Human Capital and the 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:20.120 Making of Millennials, which, if I sort of interpret that 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:24.720 title correctly, may imply that a lot of making of millennials, 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:28.200 that there's an element of a sort of social construct 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:30.880 here that the way we talk about millennials is somehow 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:35.400 forced and artificial, and maybe there is a a better 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.560 way of understanding this generation millennials as a construct of 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:48.040 global capitalism. I love it already, Malcolm, Thank you very 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.520 much for johning us. Thanks for having me. John. So 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:54.440 I've mentioned in the intro that there is this sort 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.920 of cliche way in which the media talks about millennials. 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:02.119 I joke and you know, said, you guys all want 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:06.200 to your millennial, right, I am. We have a number 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:10.480 you now on this podcast, definitely a numbered on the podcast. 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.040 You want to spend all your money out avocados instead 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:16.880 of buying a mortgage, instead of getting a mortgage. But 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:21.880 I'm curious, you know, when you think about how millennials 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:26.479 have been constructed, what you mean by that specifically, Well, 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:28.599 it's interesting. One of the first the first thing you 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:32.799 said when you said millennials right, was buying power. And 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:38.160 because the easiest data we have for any cohort period 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.880 is purchased data, It's really easy to get information about consumption. 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:46.039 It's really hard to get information about anything else, and 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.520 it takes years of scholarship, and it's not as flashy, 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:53.720 but consumption data is really easy, and there's an incentive 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.560 for people who are selling things to have these consumption profiles. 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:00.680 And so the first voices we hear to finding any 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:05.800 generational cohort these days are marketers who are basing their 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:11.440 ideas off of consumption patterns. That's not how I think 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.760 of generations. It's not I think how generations are most 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:20.160 usefully understood as aggregates of purchasing power. So instead of 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:23.400 going just by you know, it's sort of like generational 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.760 bucket and arbitrary generational bucket that's chosen by marketers, what 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:32.320 do you base your definition on them? So when I 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:36.839 went to look at what is structuring this cohort of workers, 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:39.280 which is how I look at you know, most members 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:43.080 of this cohort accurate as as producers, not as consumers. 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:47.120 And so I was looking at, first of all, the 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:52.839 research into what differentiates generations empirically in terms of they're 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.680 like personal characteristics, their attitudes towards the world, and a 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:00.000 lot of that was about the social environment, the political, 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:04.360 social economic environment, and not you know, quick changes. It's 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:07.839 not like nine eleven, you know, had a psychological effect 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:12.440 that has constructed this generation. Necessarily, it's about long term 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:16.640 secular shifts in the economy. And so the biggest one 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.000 and the one that I think defines this generation more 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:24.680 than anything, is this divergence between compensation and productivity that 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:29.159 emerges exactly when we start being born and has continued 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:34.560 expanding since then. Before we get into sort of diving 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:38.760 into your framework, I find that just your point to 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.640 be both really interesting and simple, Which is this idea 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:43.919 that yeah, marketers come up with all these things and 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:47.960 then they get to define the rules of what aspects 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.680 are most important, and of course they care about spending patterns. 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:56.280 Is this new in the sense that previous generations where 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.040 they defined by marketers as well, or is this because 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:03.200 of the emergence of a marketing class that now Millennials, 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:07.520 Generation Z, every generation will now sort of be defined 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.760 by characteristics that maybe people didn't think about as much 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.280 in prior generations. Yeah. I think that starts with Gen X, 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:17.520 which is a generation that's may be characterized by its 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.800 being targeted by marketers for the first time, and that 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.880 was a marketing term as well. But if you look 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:27.440 at the baby boomers, right, that's not about consumers necessarily, 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.040 that's about their demographic effect. Right, if you look at 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:34.480 the greatest generation, you know some real great self branding there. Uh, 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.080 that's about fighting in a war and defeating fascism and 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:40.200 building a country or whatever. It has nothing to do 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.640 with selling them stuff. Whereas millennials was created by marketers. 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:48.360 We've got marketers right now fighting desperately to name this 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.520 next cohort. Jean TWANGI is one of the the leading authorities, 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:55.120 as they say, named her book Igen, which is also 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:59.200 the name of her consulting firm Igen, trying to sell 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:02.800 things to Igen, or trying to sell companies on how 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.640 to sell things to Egen, or even just the name Igen. 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:11.720 So it's generational analysis is full of that kind of 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.840 marketing chicanery. Wait, I want to hear more about how 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:21.840 my compensation doesn't match my level of productivity. Yeah, Joe 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:23.720 wanted to get us off that. I wonder why, of 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.000 course he did. He's not millennial, right, Um. Yeah, So 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.720 this is I think the most important thing about you know, 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.760 data point over the past three or four decades is 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.960 this diversions that starts and really does about late seventies 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:44.120 early eighties, where medium compensation starts to level off for workers, 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:48.800 and productivity keeps increases, and we've seen recently that productivity 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.920 itself start to level off as well. But that gap 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.560 is not closing, and there's no sign that it is 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:59.120 going to close. And neo classical of economics doesn't really 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:03.000 have a term for that divergence, but Marxism does, and 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:05.959 it's called the rate of exploitation, and that rate of 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:10.280 exploitation is what characterizes, I think the millennial experience more 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:13.320 than anything else, certainly more than buying things. Let's talk 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:18.920 about how that plays out the question of stagnant wages. 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.319 The chart showing the gap between productivity and wage growth, 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.240 I think there's a fair amount of understanding of that, 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.720 or at least facets of it. But the sort of 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:34.760 translation or maybe the transmission mechanism between this pace of 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:39.360 wage growth. Uh two, cultural values and cultural definitions and 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.600 what defines this generation. What are the sort of second 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:47.040 order effects of that. That's a great question. So in 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.480 a society in which the stakes are higher, because that's 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.000 really what we've seen is the difference between making it 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.120 and not making it is greater now than it used 0:09:57.120 --> 0:09:58.960 to be. It used to be you could do okay 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:03.200 and do okay and that's not the feeling that young 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.160 people have growing up in America anymore. Um and not 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:10.360 not that everyone always did, but there is an increasing 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:14.400 feeling that if you don't make it, life is not 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:16.959 going to be easy. Life is going to be hard, 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:22.440 and so to make it requires more work, younger, earlier, 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:26.400 higher stakes, younger earlier than it has in past generations. 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:27.960 And so when we talked about when I went into 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.440 this project, I felt very critical about sort of the 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:36.440 helicopter parents archetype. But as I did more research, I 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:39.720 found out that they're responding to real, actual situations that 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.400 the risk of their children having a much harder life 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.560 is higher. And so when parents are working harder and 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.959 most of these parents are not you know, rich, because 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:52.880 most people aren't rich. These are mostly working class parents 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.480 who are taking on extra work to try and make 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:58.960 sure their kid has the best shot they have in 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.920 a world where if they don't make it they could 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:05.040 really suffer. And so I developed a lot of sympathy 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.880 for that during the course of the project. It sounds 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.160 like there's a certain winner take all on this about 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.280 how millennials see the economy, or millennial parents as you 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.080 put it, in which you can make it and do 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:22.200 phenomenally well. And there are obviously people who have, but 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:24.800 as you say, it's not as easy to just do 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:30.600 okay and do okay. So the possible paths, the successful paths, 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:34.840 are perhaps fewer and maybe greater, and then there's just 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.400 a lot of bad paths. Yeah, and that competition is 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:41.920 very useful for employers and not useful at all for employees. 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:44.880 Kevin Russ for The New York Times is a great 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.800 book called Young Money where he's talking to young stockbrokers, 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:51.559 you know, Goldman analysts, right out of college. And these 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:54.280 are the people who have never lost at anything in 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.120 their whole lives. And they're recruiting, you know, only out 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.120 of Ivy League schools. And they take these kids who 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:01.760 have never lost any things in their lives and they 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.200 just pit them against each other. And they don't have 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:06.640 to know anything about finance or whatever. It's just about 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:12.080 this competition and winning and losing. Because employers harnessed profit 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.040 from that, that is an engine of productivity for them, 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.880 whereas for us not so much. So they encourage that 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.120 kind of competitive behavior just to play devil's advocate for 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:24.880 a second, because as a millennial, this is often the 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:28.480 response that I hear from people when this type of 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:34.320 conversation crops up, it's that our definition of making it 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.680 has shifted. So yes, there's a lot of urgency to 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:41.080 make it in the workforce because otherwise life will be bad. 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:45.200 But the critics of millennials say that our expectations of 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:49.880 what making it actually looks like have grown exponentially and 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.080 in some cases unrealistically. So making it to us is, 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:55.880 you know, traveling all the time and posting photos on 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:59.080 Instagram and affording a really nice apartment and a big 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:01.440 house that we can show off to our friends and families, 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:05.720 and yes, eating avocados all the time as well. What 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:08.280 do you say to those people? I think they're they're 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:12.240 somewhat misinformed, and they might be misinformed by young people 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:14.880 in their own lives who are working hard to reassure 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.439 them that they're okay. And I hear this from young 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.720 people all the time that a lot of their like 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:24.199 curating of their digital lives and making themselves look good 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:26.800 is not just for their friends to make their friends 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.840 think they're doing well, but for their parents and older 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:32.840 people to make them think that, like, you know, their 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:37.000 life is going okay. I think in reality, our expectations 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:39.920 are standards. And I I've actually just been reporting on 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:43.800 this about in my line of work, freelance writing, where 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.120 the nominal pay has decreased, just straight up gone down, 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:51.280 and you can see this across industries, and the jobs 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:55.360 we have now are worse, and that's not particularly controversial 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.240 if you look at the numbers. I would like to 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:03.800 address the idea of expectations or entitlement to life getting easier, 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.040 because that's a criticism we hear about young people. Millennial 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:09.480 was a lot, but it was also supposed to be 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:12.560 the premise of capitalism, right like a hundred years ago. 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.800 Kane said, in about a hundred years, we should solve 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.840 this whole economic problem thing, and then we can spend 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:23.000 all our days doing art and being creative and eating 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:25.920 great food and you know, taking pictures of avocado tift. 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:28.760 That was supposed to be the deal. We haven't seen 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:31.880 that at all. We haven't seen any even movement in 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.760 that direction where the proceeds of this mode of production 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:41.160 become more shared and our state of living increases. So 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:43.720 I think people should feel entitled to a better life. 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.080 I got a question and one of the talks I 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:49.120 was giving about the book where a college student asked me, 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.360 if housing prices are always going to go up, then 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.800 when is life's supposed to get easier? And that's a 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.880 totally valid question that I think, you know, economists need 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.960 to be answering if things are supposed to get more 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.240 expensive continually forever, when does life get easier for people 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.200 on this planet. One of the areas that I don't 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:15.400 think is particularly controversial in terms of the way millennials 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.600 think about the world and think about sort of state 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:21.000 of things is the lack of trust. And so we 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:25.760 hear a lot about millennials don't trust politicians, they don't 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.880 trust the stock market, they don't trust their employers, that 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:33.120 all of these institutions have to some extent failed them, 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:36.640 and whether that's true or not, that seems to be 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.360 a real thing. I'm curious what your take is on 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.880 this sort of trust collapse idea. And it's not just institutions, 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:46.040 it's also other people. And that's one of the biggest, 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:51.400 most qualitative gaps that I think defines the generational cohort 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:54.880 if you look at compared to recent cohorts, is social trust. 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:58.080 It's the idea that most people can be trusted to 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.360 be honest, which was not huge for Gen X either, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.400 But we're I think ten points lower down to I 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.960 think nineteen or something. So four out of five millennials 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:12.200 don't think most people can be trusted. And that again 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:16.160 goes back to that higher stakes economy where if you're 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.280 constantly competing with other people, of course you're not going 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:21.120 to trust them. You'd be an idiot to trust them. 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:24.760 They don't trust you either because they're in competition with you. Fundamentally, 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.200 that is their relation to you as another person, and 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:29.880 that didn't used to be the case. I don't think, 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:34.400 especially for younger people. When we're learning concepts of social trust, 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:38.280 the level of competition between young people was just lower, 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:44.440 so I we shouldn't be surprised. So how much of 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:50.120 the blame for the current situation, this intense competition, low compensation, 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:53.160 for the productivity that you're actually giving to your employer. 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:56.120 How much of that can you weigh at the feet 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:01.280 of uh, let's say the older generation. I don't think 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:05.560 about that quite in generational terms. You can, there's a 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:09.800 way to think about it if you're using generational conflict 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.800 is your main frame, but that's not really how I 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:17.040 look at it, I would blame the ownership class of 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.080 that generational cohort in particular. And I think if you 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:22.720 look at Bruce Gibney's book, and he's the most he 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.200 wrote a book called Generation of Sociopaths that is about 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:29.000 the Boomers, that is straight up that argument, just like 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.720 the Boomers did this to us, uh, And I think 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.880 he's a gen X guy. At the beginning, he excludes 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:40.600 non white and non American born Boomers just from the jump, 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.000 and you know it, that doesn't make for as good 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.600 of a title, but you have to do that in 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:48.920 order for the analysis to make sense. So the idea 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.159 of blaming boomers itself is I think kind of faulty. 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:56.600 It doesn't stand up. Speaking of gen X. I like 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:58.480 a lot of gen X people are pretty upset these 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.080 days too, Right. Isn't there a sort of theme that 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:04.399 the gen xers feel no one ever talks about them 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.680 that so much interest is on millennials and the boomers 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:11.520 and then gen X which sort of felt, maybe in 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:13.520 the late nineties, like their lives were all gonna be 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.080 awesome and everyone was gonna get rich, and they just 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.359 had this very brief moment and they've forgotten about. Yeah, 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.840 the thing about generational analysis is not everyone is born 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.640 at an equally important time, and that's that's nothing personal 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.840 to to gen X, but and it also means no 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.199 one is going to hold them ultimately responsible for the 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:34.200 state of the world and the way that I think 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.680 millennials will be that's yeah, so you could. I would 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:39.639 take that deal if I were you guys, to be honest, 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:41.720 for what it's worth. I think I'm also not gen 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.520 X because I was born in and I always so. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:47.919 I kind of like you're given the generation between millennials 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:50.800 and gen X well, and that gets too. I think 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:54.240 an important point about the way I'm doing generational analysis, 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:56.240 which is that it isn't about a year cut off. 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:59.680 It's about the kind of life you have, right, Jared 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:03.520 cushed there's a millennial, but he doesn't live that way. 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:08.600 That's not that question. I'm curious about um to defining 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:13.679 things if I guess events in the last fifteen or 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.720 twenty years, and that is the Iraq War and also 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.479 the Great Financial Crisis, and the extent to which those 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:27.920 have informed millennials view of the world. There were war 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:30.199 is an interesting one because it definitely for a lot 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.640 of us myself included was our first introduction to political participation. 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:39.360 UM I started protesting the Iraq War before it's protested 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.880 the war in Afghanistan. But um at the same time, 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:47.280 the impacts of that constant state of war have been 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.119 cordoned off from most of society in a way that 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:55.919 we've never really seen with war. And so a large 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.520 effort for the Iraq War was to insulate the population 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:02.720 from its effects or even the knowledge that it was ongoing. 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:07.560 And so you don't see millennials influenced by the Iraq 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:13.080 War at the same um rate volume that you know 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:18.240 Vietnam and impacted that generation. At the same time, we've 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.760 been at war that our entire lives and it's the 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.960 war that's been fought by young people. UM, so there 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:27.280 are a lot of veterans out there. At the same time, 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.400 it's a not a infantry intensive war in the same 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:33.520 way that we've had past wars. So the impact of 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.159 the Iraq War has been been very complicated. The financial crisis, 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.080 I think is probably a little bit more direct and 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.880 a little bit more visible, and the bailouts I think 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.800 is also part of the financial crisis. As part of 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:50.680 that whole sequence is understanding that firms would lie and 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:52.800 cheat and steal and get away with it, and that 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.120 this was the condition of our politics and our economy, 0:20:56.160 --> 0:21:00.760 and that they had the rest of us hostage, and 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.159 that they could take the whole thing any day and 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:05.760 we had to, you know, appease the bondholders or else 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.479 we were all going to die, and that this was 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:13.760 the condition of our political existence. That's disheartening. So if 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:18.520 millennials are constructs of capitalism, and mostly constructs of the 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:23.720 downsides of capitalism, it sounds like what can possibly be 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:28.720 done to improve the situation for our cohort of people? 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:34.320 That's the hundred million dollar question, I guess. Thankfully, we 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:37.479 we have one example recently, what was the West Virginia 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:42.680 treat teacher strike, um and labor strike. Labor actions which 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:45.720 a point I'm making the book, have been basically banned 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:51.480 since we over the course of millennial development, strikes have 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:55.119 been marginalized as a practice, so much so that everyone 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:57.240 sort of forgot that even that they were illegal, I 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:01.359 feel like, and that they could repress them. And so 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:05.399 the West Virginia teacher strike, which was illegal, was also 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:11.040 successful and victorious and earned them a wage increase, and 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:13.440 I think a lot of people saw that, especially teachers 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:15.480 and around the country. We're going to see the impact 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:21.719 of that so um lawbreaking, mostly lawbreaking labor action. If 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:23.680 it's not breaking laws, it's probably not going to be 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:27.080 very useful. I think at this point, I'm glad you 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.360 brought that up, because I'm curious, you know, like you know, 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:33.120 in the world that I kind of inhabit New York 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.800 City media. I used to work for a digital or 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.840 strictly digital media company. We've seen a number of unionizations 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:45.960 of newsrooms recently. I think, uh, places like Fox Media 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:49.920 and Vice Media have recently unionized. Is this a phenomenon 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:56.320 that is okay, this is liberal leftist journalists in New 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:59.600 York City are sort of getting into the idea of 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:03.439 lay for action. Or is this a phenomenon that is 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:06.240 taking root in a in your view in a broader way, 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:08.840 because I have a hard time telling what's just the 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:10.800 bubble of the people I follow on Twitter or my 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:15.640 colleagues versus the larger cohort, and this is something that's 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:17.960 started to change. I think since I wrote the book, 0:23:18.000 --> 0:23:20.920 actually that the numbers when I was writing the book 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:24.440 is that millennials were less likely to join unions even 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:29.560 when they were available in their workplace, those numbers might 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:32.920 be different now. I do think we've seen maybe an 0:23:32.920 --> 0:23:35.919 excess of attention on the media space because it's the 0:23:35.920 --> 0:23:39.280 media space. We we do control the media, the media 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:42.639 controls the media. But I do think this West Virginia 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:44.720 teacher strike is going to have a big impact because 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:48.800 it's been so off the table for so long. Um 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:51.960 part of the problem is that that just labor organizations 0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:56.320 have been weakened, the leadership is not necessarily acting in 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:58.080 the best interests in the rank and file, which again, 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:01.000 this West Virginia teacher strike as a wildcat strike at 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:03.040 a certain point where the leadership was ready to go 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:06.159