The Recession Generation
January 12th, 2010From the article below:
The situation could get even uglier if, as many predict, a depressed post-crisis landscape forces Americans to let go of the mythology of upward mobility.
Oh the horror.
Things will get worse if people live within their means and refuse to buy crap that they don’t actually want or need?
This can only be a problem in Fiat Currency Hell.
Via: Newsweek:
Those entering the workforce now will likely make less and save more—not just in the short term but for the rest of their lives.
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Unemployment and the specter of instability it creates will really shape the behavior of Generation Recession. A weaker dollar will make all Americans feel poorer by raising the cost of goods, but the young generation graduating and going to work now may actually end up poorer in real terms. Unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. is more than 15 percent, compared with the nationwide average of 10 percent, and statistics show that for every percentage point in higher unemployment, new graduates take a 6 percent pay cut—an effect that lasts for decades. Skills loss could be a huge issue, too, especially because the average duration of unemployment has increased. Although wages in the U.S. have been relatively flat since the 1970s, Generation Recession may be the first in 30 years to see theirs actually fall.
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The situation could get even uglier if, as many predict, a depressed post-crisis landscape forces Americans to let go of the mythology of upward mobility. As Brookings fellows Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins point out in their new book, Creating an Opportunity Society, this myth hasn’t been true for some time: by international standards, intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. has been falling since the 1970s, and is lower than in countries such as Britain, Sweden, and Denmark. As everyone from de Tocqueville to the producers of MTV Cribs has observed, Americans generally have a high tolerance for inequality. Yet that tolerance may wane as we enter a new age in which young graduates can’t expect to do better than their parents—and one in which Wall Street is perceived as being able to continue business as usual while Main Street struggles. “Americans are OK with inequality,” says Reich, who believes we are at a tipping point, “as long as they feel the system isn’t rigged.”
MaoMart announced layoffs (1500). Imagine if the sheeple can’t buy cheap junk even if they want to.
Imagine, millions of corpulent couch potatos rolling in the streets demanding gov’t garunteed lead-laden clothing and melamine fortified pork rinds.
Bin Laden will declare final victory and laugh all the way to a Saudi Bank.
I spoke with a young man recently hired in my office in the past week – $39 thousand of college debt, and he says he is de minimus in debt compared to his friends. At the hospital tonight, the LPN said she would have to spend twenty years to become a doctor, and would have $500 thousand in debt! Half a million dollars! For what! Upward mobility?
However it has come to be, I don’t know. But a culture that accepts debt as part of upward mobility sounds like a mighty strong brainwash.
Ever enslaved to debt isn’t bin laden. That’s crap. Its the US monetizers leading the way waving their freaking flag.
There’s that movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze – and that guy who kills the PS character for his password to do a bum fraud job. I like to think what happens in that movie is what happens to the rest of these creeps who by hook or crook are going to make money off of debt. Good riddance. And go to a hell of your own making.