The gap between the generations.
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GENERATION D
Neil21 is watching the generational divide too – this time from France in this essay from the Financial Times:
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A real ‘ancien regime’ social model is a scam for baby boomers to cling to advantages, says Gaspard Koenig (a novelist and the director of Generation Libre, a Paris-based think-tank):
… It is a story common to other countries. On one side, we have the baby boomers born shortly after the second world war who control most of the country’s structures; the average age of a French MP is 60. They had it all: sexual revolution, complacent neo-Marxist ideology, easy employment, rising property prices, generous social transfers, free and high-quality health services and a generous retirement. They are designing a society that looks like them: fearful, risk-averse and inward-looking …
On the other side of the argument is the “deficit generation”, or Generation D. Given that the last time the French government passed a balanced budget was in 1974, anyone born after that point should qualify. We have been living with the prospect of ever-increasing debt, while being excluded from a two-tier job market. Unemployment among under-25s has reached 25 per cent, the sort of level that helped trigger recent revolutions in the Arab world. We cannot dream of climbing up the property ladder. We expect little from public health services or from the state-run pension system, which will both be bust long before we reach the age to really need them.
Meanwhile, we are told to pay for our parents’ lavish way of life. …
We feel angry but we are certainly not navel-gazing. We are emigrating, not just to the UK (there are more French citizens living in London than in Nantes) but also to Canada or Australia. According to a recent poll, half of all French people aged 18 to 24 would like to live abroad.
The D in Generation D also stands for DIY, or, as we say in French, débrouillard. We are used to taking care of ourselves. We take advantage of the loopholes in the system, like the tax-efficient auto-entrepreneur (“self-employed”) status, which is overwhelmingly used by under-35s to create businesses. We increasingly distrust civil service careers.
We feel European and speak globish. We are not that politicised: we are just waiting for the Leviathan to crumble. …
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MAKING CITIES MORE ATTRACTIVE TO MILLENNIALS
Katharine Frase in HuffPost Tech:
From the point of view of a city leader, Millennials are ideal residents. They generally pay a growing amount of taxes while imposing few demands on the city for services. Many don’t have school-aged children yet. They generally have few health care needs and they bring enormous energy to a city, embracing new trends, enlightening others with creative ideas, and boldly looking for ways to do things better. The cities that are most attractive to Millennials, then, are also the ones most likely to thrive.
While jobs are the biggest draw for mobile Millennials, cities can make themselves more attractive to the demographic in five ways:
–Affordable housing and right-sized living options are important, especially for young adults entering the workforce. …
–Cities must be accessible. Quick, reliable, public transportation is a necessity, but access to real-time information about transportation should be available as well. …
–Public safety really matters. Cities that lay out new approaches, using predictive analytics and the participation of community groups and businesses to curb crime stand out as places where highly skilled individuals and companies can feel more secure.
–Progressive cities should ensure ubiquitous bandwidth for everyone. Cities can improve public spaces by providing fast, free WiFi almost everywhere. …
–Cities should openly engage citizens and harness the power of social media to make their communities better places to live.
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LESSONS FROM HIPSTERS
Kai Nagata is a consultant, commentator and fourth-generation Vancouverite who wrote this op-ed in The Sun as a lead-in to the SFU Public Square’s Community Summit (Sept. 28 to Oct. 4). Details here.
…. My generation is on the wrong side of some grim mathematics. … Growth is ending, and that’s OK. Economic opportunity remains limited only by imagination. Wealth is taking on new definitions. People will always find ways to thrive. But perpetual growth is neither desirable nor physically possible. Talk to young people, and you’ll find this is pretty intuitive. …
I suggest we take a few lessons from a much-derided group: hipsters. Yes, those young people on vintage bicycles with the tattoos and the haircuts. Here’s a secret: Their avant-garde hobbies hold clues to what our province should think about on a much larger scale.
Take thrift shopping (as celebrated by rapper Macklemore), sharing houses and cars, fixing old machines, or composting. These are natural activities for people without a lot of income. But they are also a reaction to the waste built into the consumer economy. Like how 40 per cent of food is thrown away. Or how three-quarters of trips in B.C. are made by car, and three-quarters of those drivers are alone. As margins tighten, there will be huge incentive for businesses to find the embodied value lost in current supply chains. …
It’s time to abandon the idea that we can extract ever-expanding profit from the same ecosystems we depend on. Or that there will always be other places to settle, over the horizon. …
Our job is to be nimble enough to make the most of the coming transition. One more time, B.C. is lucky. Our diverse society, top-notch education system and strong First Nations cultures will combine to produce some of the world’s best innovators and problem-solvers. We’ll be in good hands. Meanwhile, if your kid would rather plant heirloom tomatoes than toil as an unpaid busboy, that’s a good sign.
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