DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

Megan McArdle attempts to restore a little perspective.

I spent quite a lot of time on the “We are the 99%” website last night and this morning.  There’s been a considerable amount of carping about it from the conservative side, and to be sure, some of the stories strain plausibility (the percentage of people in the sample who have either taken up prostitution, or claim to have seriously considered doing so, seems rather high, for instance, and as far as I could tell, not a single person on the site had been fired for cause).  Many of the people complaining made all sorts of bad decisions about having children, getting very expensive “fun” degrees, and so forth.

But quibbling rather misses the point.  These are people who are terrified, and their terror is easy to understand.  Jobs are hard to come by, and while you might well argue that any of these individuals could find a job if they did something different, in aggregate, there are not enough job openings to absorb our legion of unemployed.

There’s nothing like not knowing where your next meal is coming from to concentrate the mind. These people have never been in that position, and it scares the shit out of them — perhaps rightly so.

I think it’s hard to read through this list of woes without feeling both sympathy, and a healthy dose of fear.  Take all the pot shots you want at people who thought that a $100,000 BFA was supposed to guarantee them a great job–beneath the occasionally grating entitlement is the visceral terror of someone in a bad place who doesn’t know what to do.  Having found myself in the same place ten years ago, I can’t bring myself to sneer.  No matter how inflated your expectations may have been, it is no joke to have your confidence that you can support yourself ripped away, and replaced with the horrifying realization that you don’t really understand what the rules are.  Yes, even if you have a nose ring.

On the other hand, taxpayer-funded benefits have never been so pervasive and easy to get, so I’m not really sure what their gripe is. Yeah, you won’t be living on the Upper East Side, but you won’t be starving in a doorway, either. Their grandparents didn’t have that assurance.

I’m not sure that this constitutes the seeds of a political movement, however.   For all the admiring talk about bravery and perseverance, it’s not really al that difficult to get young, unemployed people to spend a couple of weeks camping out somewhere.  They have a low cost of time, they’re in no danger, and yes, I have to say it, demonstrating is fun.  No, don’t tut-tut me.  I was at the ACT-UP die-ins, the pro-choice marches, the “Sleep Out for the Homeless” events and the “Take Back the Night” vigils.  It’s fun, especially when you can see yourself on television.  This is not the Montgomery bus boycott we’re talking about here.

Indeed. Compared with facing fire hoses, truncheons, and police dogs, not to mention the very real possibility of firebombs or a shallow grave on some back country road in Mississippi, this is rather a plastic playground revolution.

Of course, in this country a traditional option for young people without prospects is to join the military. (Quit laughing.) I think I can safely predict that, even if they were starving in a doorway somewhere, not one of these kids would even think of it, much less seriously consider doing it … which says, to me, something very sad about our culture these days.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2011 at 19:59 and is filed under Think about it.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.