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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:
- Millennials have taken on 300 percent more student debt than their parents' generation. [Source: The College Board, Trends in Student Aid 2013]
- By 2014, 48 percent of workers with bachelor's degrees are employed in jobs for which they're overqualified. [Source: Labor Economist Stephen Rose, published by Urban Institute.]
- The number of workers in the United States participating in the gig economy is expected to triple to 42 million workers by 2020, and 42 percent of those people are likely to be millennials. [Source: Freshbooks]
- Between 1978 and 2017, according to the EPI, CEO compensation rose in the US by 1,070 percent, while the typical worker's compensation over these 39 years rose by a mere 11.2 percent.
- In the 40 years leading up to the recession, rents increased at more than twice the rate of incomes. [Source: Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.]
- One in 5 millennials say they cannot afford routine healthcare expenses. Many of these millennials are uninsured because of the cost. An additional 26 percent say they can afford routine health-care costs, but only with difficulty. [Source: Harris Poll]
- Men and women in their thirties are marrying at rates below every other generation on record. [Source: The Atlantic, "The Death (and Life) of Marriage in America"]
- It is predicted that most millennials will not be able to retire until age 75. [Source: NerdWallet analysis of federal data]
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:48PM (11 children)
My, my, my...such ignorance! Type "human trafficking statistics" into your favorite search engine and prepare to be both educated and amazed.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday May 28 2019, @04:08PM (10 children)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:53PM (9 children)
Oh, really? The people caught up in it might beg to differ. But, on the off chance you might have a point: care to educate all and sundry on the difference?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 29 2019, @05:01AM (7 children)
Because he says it's not and he needs it not to be for his worldview not to crumble into itty bitty little pieces. Guy's as self-centered as a gyroscope in a black hole.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Wednesday May 29 2019, @11:47AM (6 children)
I see you're projecting again.
My view is that illegal human smuggling is severely conflated with human trafficking and slavery, and thus, the latter two are grossly inflated. It's just another anti-immigration excuse. They're being "exploited" and thus, we're helping by keeping them out. I think it's telling that the Trump administration, for example, is pushing [dhs.gov] this narrative hard.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 29 2019, @04:14PM (5 children)
A close friend of mine, with whom I am now living (don't ask...) was an underage sex trafficking victim. I don't know how she's still alive. That was slavery. She wasn't even allowed to drink water without permission and was usually beaten if she asked, had to service any man and as many men in any way they demanded at any time, and did I mention this started when she was 12, during the Reagan years? And this is still going on across the country and across the world. You have no conception, *none,* of the horrors that occur daily outside your notice.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 30 2019, @12:46PM (4 children)
A slave is human. Is a human thus a slave? See the fallacy?
Human trafficking can fall way short of slavery. Sorry. Sure, transporting people around and enslaving them falls inside the category of human trafficking, but so does a lot of stuff that doesn't meet the standard of slavery.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 30 2019, @01:26PM (3 children)
Ah, I get it, you want them to papercut your skin off with the pages of several dozen dictionaries and then burn you in the pile of papers when you get to hell. Sure, do your thing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 31 2019, @03:49AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 31 2019, @07:17PM (1 child)
Keep it up, Hallow. Anyone with a working brain can tell you what "undocumented labor" really amounts to. You're gonna burn on a huge pile of those dictionaries you seem to love so much.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday June 03 2019, @04:23AM
I did already. The exercise didn't go in your favor. This is yet another of your fantasies.
Truth remains an absolute defense against your bullshit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 29 2019, @11:37AM
Bullshit. The problem here is that human trafficking for the purpose of enslaving people or transferring enslaved people around is conflated with illegal human smuggling - the former is far smaller than the latter. It's basically a rationalization for embracing anti-immigration memes without appearing to embrace anti-immigration memes.
I grant that actual slavery still exists even in the developed world, but it's grossly dishonest to claim that capitalism is in the least dependent on this slavery as a result.