The Entitlement Generations

We have all heard candidates and office holders rail against so-called "entitlements".  We have all heard debates about these "entitlements".  We now even hear pundits, moderators, and journalists use this famed GOP buzzword to refer to many programs to which citizens contribute by paying into them money which they earn by working.  Entitlements indeed!

We have also heard the youngest generation of adults - meaning those in their twenties and perhaps a bit older - referred to as an "entitled" generation, one that whines about the lack of opportunities today and one which feels as though it is entitled to something better than a $10/hr job after obtaining a degree or two.  We hear that that same generation moves back in with its parents, has no aspirations, and wants things handed to them.

Really? Is that what is happening?  Let's look at some facts.

When the housing bubble burst and the markets tanked under  George W. Bush, during  the 2008 campaign, and before  the 2009 inauguration, some one who is 25 years old today would have been an undergraduate in college.  Now, if you want to look more at the culture of greed and corruption that lead to this whole mess, another big marker was the Enron scandal of 2001.  At that time, the same 25 year old would have been, at best, 13.  Finally, if you want to look at the advent of the culture of "greed is good" and "government is the problem" which has brought us to this golden era in our political and economic history, you would have to look at the Patron Saint of Specious Arguments and Rewritten History, Ronald Reagan.  Some one who is 25 today would have been born, most likely in the last year of Reagan's two-term presidency.

Add five or even ten years of age to the hypothetical person above to see where a 30 or 35 year old today would have been at these times, and you will see that young adults - and even young-ish adults, had literally nothing to do with the mess we are in today.  They just are in the enviable position of having to enter their theoretically most productive years of life during its aftermath and cleanup.  Suddenly the pessimism and living with the parents has a different context.

Now let's look at the people who caused the mess, sat by and were complacent during the mess making, and/or now get paid to comment on the mess.  While we're at it, let's look at the people who, though private individuals who never have been on television news shows, feel compelled to give unsolicited and condescending advice to those younger than them.  Let's look at them all.  And since no feelings were spared by the individuals at whom we are now looking, none will be spared here.

For those who contributed to - and indeed now professionally comment on the current economic mess - there really is not much to say that has not already been said.  Matt Taibbi has given us more research, analysis, and eloquence in his take downs of the excesses of Wall Street and the culture of corruption than I could ever dream of doing, and for that I am grateful.  What I will say is simply this: these few elite individuals are disgusting, have caused  the citizenry's faith in the federal government and private institutions to fall to the lowest levels in a century, and would be in prison if federal laws were not tailored to their socio-economic class.  Permitting them to continue their reckless behavior in the financial sector and to allow their accomplices to comment on the matter on nationwide news and opinion shows only adds insult to injury.

For the regular people of the two generations preceding the dubiously dubbed "millenials", there are some very simple facts which are all too often ignored and which we can ill afford to forget.  Because of this forgetfulness and/or ignorance, discussions are frequently far off center and miss the point.  To be absolutely clear, these are often individuals who had nothing to do with the creation of this economic mess.  However, they have availed themselves of every possible benefit the economic system and the federal government have to offer, and have then rebuked their children and grandchildren from hoping to do the same.  This begs for a rebuttal. 

First, if we are to use the current definition of "entitled" as enjoying government programs and services meant to better the lives of individuals and families, the people who enjoyed life between the end of World War II and the "Reagan Revolution" have been the absolutely most entitled people in American history.  Period.  No wait, correction: the white people who enjoyed life during that time enjoyed more government benefits than any other generation in American history.  Selective use of the G.I. Bill and discriminatory housing practices made damn sure it was those generations of white people who benefited. The same people who rail against "immigrants" or "the poor" or "these young people" in news site comment sections and on national television opinion shows are the same who had their lives, from birth to retirement, from public education to pension, planned and provided for them.

These are the people who, though employed at a grocery store or public utility, came to own real estate (don't understand the reason for my emphasis? Google the terms "feudalism", "Gilded Age", "Railroad Company" among others to see how land and property had previously been divided and handled)! How did these common citizens come to such great fortune? Hard work?  Well, in part, sure! They showed up and worked every day.  Then again, so did a miner fifty years before then and so does a Wal-Mart employee now.  Neither is a landowner for sure.  So how did the shopkeeper or electrician come to own a house after 1945?  How did little one-family houses pop up by the millions across the country? Answer: government programs like the FHA, the hands-on extensions of an overarching federal policy of homeownership set in place after the Second World War.

Homeownership was not the only government-backed and (at least partially) government-funded policy enacted for the public good after World War II.  Public education was still actually publicly funded, even at the university level and brand-spankin' new superhighways were built across the United States.  What was amazing about all of these was that they were open for everyone to use - and indeed almost everyone did, even those who say they did everything for themselves.

It is against this backdrop that two generations built lives, raised families, and acquired wealth.  It is thanks to this government foundation that they were able to build their personal and professional successes.  And though I am sure millions of people felt like they were given nothing and were going it all alone when they spent weeks pounding the pavement looking for their first job or searching for their big break, they must remember that there was at least fresh, new, even pavement to pound in the first place.  They were not hitting the now-proverbial, once-very-real dusty trail, nor were they tripping over the potholes and frost heaves of our crumbling infrastructure as we would do today.

I write this not to bash an entire generation or two, not do I do it to slam an entire social class.  Far from it.  I write this to expose, in very plain terms, the hypocrisy of certain individuals and groups within the past couple of generations.  They do not comprise the entirety or the majority, however, their numbers are great enough that they attract a great deal of attention.

So the next time you see a harsh comment on a news story, hear an ageist critique on television, or endure a snide remark made in person, do not get angry, and do not dispair.  Rather, just remind yourself that the person making such remarks is in possession of an incredible lack of perspective, and has little to no grasp of modern - or even personal - history.  Take comfort in this fact, and realize that nothing you can say or write will change it. 

Take a deep breath, and move on.

Legal lunacy

This is a scary story I just saw being shared on social media this afternoon.  The Supreme Court has apparently ruled yet again in favor of Monsanto, the corporation which sued a farmer for planting second generation seeds, some of which were descendants of their patented crop.  To hear the farmer's attorneys tell his side of the story, it went a little something like this:

"...he bought some ordinary soybeans from a small grain elevator where local farmers drop off their harvest. ... He knew that these beans probably had Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene in them, because that's mainly what farmers plant these days. But Bowman didn't think Monsanto controlled these soybeans anymore..."

Aside from rendering me hopelessly angry, this article also reminded me of a sobering conversation I had a year ago with a good friend of mine.  We talked about how, especially after the dreadful Citizen's United decision, the center really began to bottom out in this country's political culture, and that for the first time in either one of our lifetimes, the left and right in this country began to sing the same tune - not about the economy, immigration, or issues of race - but about their feelings toward the increasingly callous and distant federal government in Washington.  We both saw that people from opposite ends of the political spectrum agreed that it is now often difficult to defend the legitimacy of the federal government's institutions when they will rationalize anything to suit an agenda, especially when that agenda always puts the public good in second place.  Perhaps no institution is more guilty of this right now than the Supreme Court. Looking to examples such as the State of Montana enforcing their own election laws despite Supreme Court rulings (taking a you-and-what-army? approach) we agreed that the ramifications of the federal government undercutting its own democratic legitimacy could take years to come to fruition, but could be quite frightening in their intensity and scope.

To be clear, we discussed things we observed and our fears regarding their logical outcomes.  We did not discuss things we desired to see occur.

This particular story is just one of many in recent history in which a corporate entity could take what it wanted with the government's blessing, and it is still unclear how much farther these absurd decisions will go.  For that matter, it is unclear how much farther I could go in writing this, but I will stop now so that you may read the actual news story in question.  I just hope that in the meantime Mick Jagger doesn't drag me to the Supreme Court because I bought Goats Head Soup used from the record store when I was in high school.