The World Socialist Web Site, publication of record of the ICFI (SEP), on May 24th released a report about the grim situation many millennials face:
The stock market is booming, and President Donald Trump is boasting at every turn that the unemployment rate is lower than it has been in five decades.
However, the working class, the vast majority of the population, is confronting an unprecedented social, economic, health and psychological crisis. The same processes that have produced vast sums of wealth for the ruling elite have left millions of workers on the brink of existence.
Perhaps no segment of the population reflects the devastating consequences of these processes so starkly as the generation of young people deemed the "millennials," those born roughly between the years 1981 and 1996. More than half the 72 million American millennials are now in their 30s, with the oldest turning 38 this year.
A recent exposé by the Wall Street Journal noted that millennials are "in worse financial shape than prior living generations and may not recover." The article, "Millennials Near Middle Age in Crisis," [paywalled] concludes by stating that people born in the 1980s are at risk of becoming "America's Lost generation."
Selected bullet points from the WSWS article:
The report concludes, "Far from becoming the 'Lost Generation' predicted by the Wall Street Journal, this generation of workers carries within it an enormous source of revolutionary potential."
[Ed. Note. I debated whether or not to run this story given the partisan source for the article, but the list of references suggested it was more than a simple opinion piece. So, are things really as grim as portrayed here? I'm too old to be a millennial, but have both personally experienced as well as witnessed many others facing the same trends listed here. Where do things go from here?]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:09AM (1 child)
Someone once said, may decades ago, that half of being successful in life is just showing up.
I used to own a small manufacturing company in a college town. I hired actual college students who could not read a tape measure. I hired a guy with a masters in architecture for a $10/hour machine operator job. I hired military vets too. And I hired people with criminal records.
Of all of them, the two stand-out best employees I ever had were an ex-con and the architect guy. None of the vets were worth it. They stole from me more than anyone else. Seriously, the ex-con was smarter than any of the college kids I hired. (We did CNC work with XYZ coordinates, including offsets and translations. Should be simple as high-school graphing. It was alien script to most people.)
I was in business for 20 years. Biggest lesson learned-- running a business is great except for two things, employees and customers. Everybody wants everything to be easy, free and for someone else to be responsible.
What I'm teaching my own kids-- Don't ever run a business unless someone else's money is behind it, and then make sure you get a fat percentage. You'll earn most of it just by showing up and the rest by giving a shit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 28 2019, @09:54AM
You're doing them a disservice then. Sure owning a business is a huge pain but it's a pain of your own choosing instead of taking whatever's handed to you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.