TerribleTom

When most Baby Boomers entered the workforce, the United States was experiencing one of the most incredible postwar economic booms in human history. One could feasibly raise a large family on a single income from a job that did not require a college degree. The period from 1950 to 2000 (-ish) was basically unprecedented in terms of economic growth, leading to lots of risky expenditures like state pensions that were basically counting on huge market returns forever to stay solvent. I’m not saying life was easy, but in many ways it was simpler, and certainly less expensive. Capitalism obviously worked, and we showed those goddamn Commies who was boss! Now, however, things are...different. Wages have stagnated, economic growth is pretty good but the biggest gains have been seen at the top of the income spectrum. Decades of easy-to-get and arguably predatory student loans have turned the four-year college degree into little more than a filter for even the lowest-level jobs. The wealth gap is wider than ever before and growing, and the younger generations entered the workforce right before or after the 2008 crash, which will likely affect their wages for the rest of their careers. Things are just very different, and to many young people, capitalism just doesn’t seem as promising as it did to their parents and grandparents. Lots of unfulfilled promises and finger-pointing about who’s killing what industry, and so on. But hey, they have memes! That’s something!