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: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:39AM
wealth concentration is unavoidable.
Compared to the living standards of the early 19th century, it would take close to 400 slaves PER HOUSEHOLD to produce everything that we consume today. (I did the math myself as part of an economics degree). In other words, we are all rich. So what's the problem? It's this -- percentages.
Society/civilization is a lot like a super-organism. It's a well known metaphor. Some cells (heart, brain, etc.) get more resources than others (bone, bowels, skin...) But what happens in an organism when a small group of cells takes too many resources for themselves, and away from the greater organism? It's called a cancer, and it is usually fatal.
Today the richest 1% has a monumentally larger fraction of the total wealth than the rich did in the 19th century or any other period of human history prior to 1950. People, we have a cancer. You know what to do. It has to be cut out. I know, I know, it's going to be painful. It's a violent thing to do. But it's the only way our civilization will survive.
But if it doesn't survive, all is not lost. Our dystopian future will eventually grow a new civilization out of the scraps and pieces. As the bible says, the meek shall inherit the Earth... In other words, those 1%'er rich people are going to die one way or another. Don't fret about how it happens.
Fortunately, I'm pretty old. I'll probably miss all the fun. Good luck out there.