Watching our kindergartners engaged in a game of musical chairs, we nudge them along mentally, past the gaps, hoping they end up in the right place, at the right time.
The music stops. Ten kids scramble for nine chairs. Nine land safely; one panic-stricken kid is left standing, squeezed out of the game. When it's our kid who has no place to sit, our hearts break just a little.
And so we baby boomers watch, with trepidation, as our grown children scramble for their spots in the middle class, with its tricky dance steps, its new rules, its ever-dwindling number of chairs. We observe their progress, nudging them forward, helping where we can, hoping they're in the right place, at the right time.
If they're lucky, they approach the game with all the basic tools - a solid upbringing, an adequate education, a firm work ethic, a pocketful of emotional intelligence, a head screwed on straight.
Getting a toehold
Maybe they are fortified with degrees from good schools. Maybe they are ambitious, or charming, or lucky. Maybe they know somebody who knows somebody with an employment opportunity. Maybe they are blessed with perfect timing.
Or maybe they are just more resumes in tall stacks on the unoccupied desks of people who were downsized -- more college graduates with big student loans and big dreams on hold, struggling to get a toehold in the world.
They piece together part-time jobs that may, or may not, turn into something bigger. They work outside their fields. They roll with the punches -- downsizing, pay freezes, unpaid furlough days. If they are fortunate, they accept bare-bones health insurance grudgingly bestowed up them by tight-fisted employers; if they are not so fortunate, they pay for their own insurance, or go without it. They scrape. They stay alive.
A different script
We've been inclined, for some time now, to wonder if our children will ever duplicate our standard of living -- a standard built on steady, if unspectacular compensation, good health, rising real estate values, and the prudent use of readily available credit.
We rose above our parents, economically, following the script of the American Dream. Is that still a viable model? Will the next generation rise above the previous one? Mounting evidence says it won't.
Everywhere you look these days Arianna Huffington is talking about her book, Third World America, in which the Huffington Post creator lays out a convincing case for the disappearance of the middle class in this country.
Huffington is hardly the first person to notice the growing gulf between rich and poor, and the erosion of the middle. Consider just one piece of the crumbling puzzle: A record 2.8 million U.S. households got foreclosure notices in 2009, and the wreckage could be even worse this year.
Will our children own their own homes? Will they find jobs, and keep them? Will they be able to give their children the advantages they, themselves, enjoyed? Will they figure it out? Will they find a chair when the music stops?
Email John Schneider at jschneid@lsj.com.
This post originally appeared on September 12, 2010 in the Lansing State Journal.
Brent Green: Spark Another Revolution in 2011: Baby Boomers and the Power of Social Networking
I rent in the (relatively speaking) nicer area of a city that was often featured on "COPS" and periodically get the windows of my 10-year-old used car smashed in. I paid my student loans when I graduated with a 4-year liberal arts degree a decade ago, but the "career" in Human Resources I fell into never worked out - I was laid off 5 times in 8 years due to the bumpy economy. I'm currently going to nursing school paying for COBRA and feel very lucky that I had enough savings to do so. I'm married but don't have any children, I couldn't afford that anyway.
So yeah... I don't think I (and countless others) live in the same charmed America that my parents grew up in.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-two-decades-greed-unraveling
Poverty is also on the rise in this country. And we now have the most concentrated wealth and the worst wealth inequality in the history of our country - not even the gilded age of the robber barons compares. 1% of Americans now control more wealth than 95% of all other Americans combined.
And it isn't that Americans haven't produced wealth these last few decades. In fact a recent study has shown we are still the most wealthy country in the world, despite what right winger propoganda will have you believe in regards to our current debt. The problem is - the massive amount of wealth is now unfairly and immorally concentrated in the hads of a relatively few, while the average working American hasn't had a real pay raise since 1974 - the most wealth have tripled their income since then.
As the American dream is being crushed by the Elite class in this country - very real class warfare IMO that they have been waging - we all suffer, including our children and their own hopes and dreams for a better life.
Without applying all we are doomed.. some left, some right politically.. but bottomline need everyone of these too happen if we are too survive as a nation!
* Cut the military spending in half.
* "Cut and Run" in the middle east, Korea, Japan, Europe, etc.
* Eliminate welfare of all kinds for able-bodied, able-minded people.
* Pass a constitutional amendment to force a balanced budget.
* After the amendment, raise huge new taxes on fossil-fuels.
* Cut corporate income tax rates to Irish levels (12.5%).
* Raise the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare to 70.
* Impose reciprocal, structural trade barriers on "cheater"
nations like China and Japan.
* Increase legal immigration and punish illegals with near-slavery
(we'd have to give them about 12 months of warning first).
* Tort (lawsuit) reform.
* Restrict the power of labor unions.
* Break the balls of Wall Street. Give them Canadian-style regulation.
Of course they won't. That's the whole point in today's politics... isn't it? Separate those sniffy, clean rich from those "nasty, unwashed, scrounging-for-jobs poor"...isn't it? (And make it as difficult for the working-poor, Middle Class to get a leg up as possible--right?)
To wit: my bank: Bank of America for 30 years. Who this month began charging "fees" on former free checking and savings accounts. You just have-ta keep a set amount in those accounts to absolve those "fees." Who in the name of God's-Green-Earth, on Unemployment, can "keep a set fee" in their checking account (forget Savings...who in Chr!st's name has savings when every cent goes toward mortgage, meds, food...?)?
Sickening. Destroying. Unbelievable.
Much soul searching that has been going on about the deadly events which have been occurring since Obama took office has been accompanied by puzzled expressions and a resigned “who knew” which still hasn't become “we know.” Not so in the case of Susan George, a political scientist and scholar who has been studying the long term rightward shift in American culture that has been underway since at least the 1970's. She knew then, and she knows now.
.In her book on the subject in 2008 “Hijacking America: How the Religious and Secular Right Changed what Americans Think” she gives a detailed .account of how the belief system of this culture was patiently constructed to permeate all of American society .She reveals in what should be a Nobel or Pulitzer Prize study, the means whereby “Neoliberals” and Neo Conservatives or “Neocons” captured America and subjected them to the deadly policies arising out of belief in the myth of ”the free market.”
The main fallacy which has already destroyed great swathes of the planet and addled the brains of the true believers can be summed up in the following equation::
More Money – Value Exchanges = More Market Growth = More Basic Values
which means that there is no culture superior to the money values of the free market and that the only game in town is turning leveraged money into more money for private possessors with no life standards whatsoeve
The "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton was ridiculed for talking about is not a myth afterall.
Yes, progressives have been naive to think that the values war was won .... in some things maybe, but not overall by a long shot.
We are not turning back the technology or international trade clock. The Chinese want to be rich like us, on average and they'll fight like crazy to compete. Are the youngsters in the under 30 generation up to the fight? We'll see. Many will be and others will complain about the unfairness of it all.
As impossible as it seems that ordinary Americans could be convinced to believe our President was some kind of illegal alien Muslim Jihadist who was intent on destroying our way of life...it looks like it is actually having an effect. Now I know what scared people are capable of doing, and what they are incapable of doing, like thinking for themselves.
So this middle-class Boomer has bought a large family compound in New Mexico for me and ALL my middle-class kids and my grandkids to safely ride out this storm of ignorance, and the coming Tea Party induced Depression, with solar and wind energy, a self-sustaining farm and ample arms, means, and training to protect ourselves from thieves, Tea Baggers, and Republicans.
This economy has been hard on everybody.
Abraham Lincoln knew that.
Of course, he's only a President so I'll use a well-known corporate figure: Bill... Whoops, sorry, why would I lie about him? HENRY FORD knew the value of living wages and treating employees right.
Many young Republicans seem to believe the best scapegoat for their fears about the future is the boomer generation, without any explanation. They just call them "entitled". SS will be there for you, and you are entitled to all of the money you are able to save in your career from SS as benefits, or as your retirement savings.
If my kids are any measure, this generation will definitely do things differently. They are not going to be the wage-slaves their parents are. The fear of losing their jobs is the norm not the exception. There isn't any security. I think they will try to spend more time with whatever kids they have rather than beaver 60 hours/week in a cubicle for an employer that will probably lay them off anyway. I think we'll see more shared and multi-generational housing situations. If our kids buy houses, it will be because they want to a dog and the ability to play their music loud....not as an nest egg investment.
As the baby boomers are based in a different reality than those who grew up in the Depression, so will our kids be different.
can we get some of the corporate welfare back?
It's time to think about the so-called "entitlements" for those at the top.
And why does our government keep subsidizing them with taxpayer money? That's been going on for DECADES... http://www.ctj.org/html/corp0402.htm