« Mortality Studies Again | Main | The Bionic Runner » No To Gen Next10 Jan 2008 05:41 pm I'm as glad as anyone that young people hate Republicans but the Pew Center needs to stop calling them "Generation Next." This is Generation Next: That's right. A lame Pepsi advertising campaign. Featuring the Spice Girls. The "generation next" brand will forever be tarnished. The youth are the future of our country and they deserve something better. Comments (42)
Are they not Generation Awesome? I had a great time teasing my little brother at Christmas with that one. 
Whatever they call us, it sure beats Generation Y or Millennials! Maybe we can poll under 30s and ask them what they want to be called?
I believe that children are the future. I also believe that "Generation Next" is a TERRIBLE name. However, there's nothing inherently wrong with using shallow TV-derived generation names in shallow pop demographic analysis. Generation Howdy Doody strongly opposes Medicare cuts. However, as the much larger Leave it to Beaver Generation approaches retirement, economists are concerned that the system will go bankrupt and the He-Man Generation will be forced to pawn their collectible action figures in order to afford heart medications. Generation Gilligan was busy printing up flyers for their local Medical Marijuana Clubs and could not be reached for comment. Just *imagine* how much more enjoyable Robert Samuelson columns would be if he adopted this lexicon.
I can't claim I made this up, Matt-- the credit goes to my brother John and his friend Tim-- but we (I'm 26 too) are Generation Zelda.
Yeah "Generation Next" sucks in that implies that the chief unifying characteristic of young people is that they drink Pepsi. But then we're hardly going to discourage people from using lame pat nicknames to describe whole generations. I like the section of that report devoted to explaining young people's "critical self-portrait" of its own generation: "Gen Nexters offer some fairly harsh assessments about how their behavior and lifestyle LOL you old Pew fogeys. That's not self-criticism! It's boasting!
I thought it was Generation Aught, only who can spell aught? Awt? Or how about Generation Ext, as in "extended" (via Web, wireless ,etc.)? Or, with a nod to Joe Pesci in "My Cousin Vinny," how about "youts?"
Don't get your hopes up. I hated Republicans too, until I got a job and started paying taxes. All of a sudden economic conservatism made a lot more sense.
I prefer the term "Millenials." It sounds like a cult.
Xenyon, I have a job and pay more than I want to in taxes and I'm still no fiscal conservative. So what's that make our generation? Perhaps reading Lucy's comments, we should be Generation Sex!
Whatever, Spice Girls are awesome. I, too, would like to pay lower taxes. The difference between me and Zeynon, apparently, is that I would like Mitt Romney and John Edwards to pay higher taxes to compensate, because they are very rich and I am poor-ish.
I don't know what's worse, Gen Next or Gen Y. Either one is a pretty lame characterization of my generation. The Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers and Generation X are great description. Maybe our generation is too diverse to be labeled. Someone needs to get creative with it though.
How about something more descriptive, like "Generation Morons"?
Matt, As a Democrat, and a member of Generation Not-Old-Enough-to-Remember-When-Farrah-Fawcett-Was -Hot (25), I would like to carefully point out that Pew's figures show decreases among Democratic partisanship as well. Independents are ruling this generational roost. ~ Jim
Ah, Xeynon and millions just like like him/her. Hated Republicans because the famous conservative predilection for supercilious (and oh so hypocritical) moralism interferred with normal youthful activities (sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, etc.). Got a little older, moved into more traditional adult activities (working, raising families, paying bills, etc.) and then it's "I got mine, Jack, keep your hands offa my stack!" I've ALWAYS hated Republicans, and I'm a six-figure construction manager in my 50s who's paid my fair share of taxes all my life (including 2-1/2 decades, and counting, of the Greenspan bump in Social Security specifically done to prepare for my generation's retirement). I don't like paying for things any more than anyone else, I've just never believed that "the Devil take the hindmost" made for a particularly human-faced political ideology, mostly because it plainly doesn't. The GOP hides behind a phony mask of "fiscal conservatism", but what it really works hard for day and night is crony-klepto capitalism, in all its retro-Gilded Age glory. How this isn't painfully apparent to everyone I have no idea. I just hope that enough members of "Gen Next" (or whatever label we give today's under-30s) keep in mind as they grow older that, while frustratingly imperfect and ineffective in many ways, today's Democratic Party is nothing like the horror that is the modern Republican Party.
That´s pretty lame. Tell me Matthew, who did elect Bush in 2000 and reelect him in 2004? Maybe we could label YOUR generation the Bush generation?
funny how these "fiscal conservatives" don't mind getting screwed by terrorist supporting oil states and all sorts of corporate greedmeisters on a daily basis
Detlef, NO ONE elected Bush in 2000.
One of my co-workers in China is about 30 and still has "Wannabe" as his ringtone. He's a nice guy, but every time I hear it, I want to grab his phone and yell, "No. You don't get have a cell phone anymore." Also, every name for our generation sucks. There was a good "Non Sequitur" cartoon about ten years ago that had a teen with a sign on the street saying "Lacks a pithy, stereotypical, overly-generalized label and identity for their generation. Please don't help."
A friend of mine in college once pointed out to me that all of these labels, past and present, apply only to white people. Think about it.
"The youth are the future of our country and they deserve something better." I'd like to see some evidence to support this claim.
How about Generation Super Gay. That would piss off a lot of frat guys.
A Letter to an Aging Baby Boomer Dear Anonymous Boomer, As you approach your twilight years, I call for a congratulatory moment on behalf of all other generations in regards to the inspiring achievements of you and your remarkable peers. Although, at 24 years of age, I was not there, I am sure you can trust my opinion—seeing as I am under 30. Your path, long and often obstructed, has been debated and dissected in films, books, and documentaries. Today I congratulate you not only on your accomplishments, but of your insistence that I, a member of generation Y, never forget just what you did with your lives. Where to begin? I believe it is appropriate for me to offer my sincerest gratitude for the civil rights movement, which finally sought to extend the promises of the Declaration of Independence to people of color, who had been unjustly rejected from the full participation in the American Dream for far too long. True, with the Civil Rights Act’s passage in 1964, the oldest of you were only 19 and thus, could not vote. However, had you been able to vote, there is no doubt you would have supported it, which earns you praise. In fact, it was your accomplishment, Anonymous Boomer. You did it. For the same reason, I am terribly embarrassed at the intellectual deficits of my own peers, for we then, caused the Iraq war. Sure, many of us, including myself, were not old enough to vote for President Bush in 2000, but had we been, we no doubt would have supported him. The burden which we carry is unbearable. Next, the environmental movement is something only which a generation of your post-materialist design could have ever dreamed of. Although it was a top-down movement orchestrated in the late 60’s by the intellectuals of your parents generation, themselves in their 40’s and 50’s, it was you, dear Boomer, who ignored the more irritable members of your age group with their endless door knocking and silly appeals to not destroy the world which surrounded you. Of course, I could not thank you enough, dear, sweet Boomer, for changing the ways of American economics. Before you, our country was governed by well-to-do pragmatists who, bereft of strong ideological impulses, would come together and compromise for the benefit of themselves and the country. They, “the establishment”, lied to you Boomer that, as one of you recently told me, if you worked hard you “could be all be millionaires”. Never before in America had such a dream been unfairly squared upon the young. Never before had an aspiring generation of Americans been fed such nonsense, and of course, thanks to you Boomer, the scope and possibility of that dream has been narrowed dramatically. Although no generation before you had the financial ability to be raised, as you were Boomer, by the single income of a single parent, or could, as you could Boomer, succeeded in life with little more than a High School Diploma, it took the courage of your peers to look opportunity square in the eyes, deep into the very soul of all the wealth which surrounded them at a time when the rest of the world gazed-in, dizzy with envy, and decided, “I’m going to grow my hair…Long.” Again, I have you to thank for the courageous struggle to lift these important barriers, to fight these important fights. I thank you for ignoring the advice of your parents. A pitiful generation whose overcoming of depression and fascism I find unimpressive, it took the Boomers to reject this embarrassing inheritance and pawn it off for the endless wisdom of “tune-in, turn-on, drop-out”. Without such a revolution of the mind, the ideologies of your generation, fought passionately for on your college campuses, could not have been simplified into the accurate, fruitful, and uniting two-dimensional liberal-conservative politics of today. Thank you. And the provocative debate from which such fights sprang! You “won” the Cold War. But unlike the aggression displayed by your parents in winning WWII, your fight was made all the more valiant by not actually having to defeat anyone, you just lasted longer. And of course, the Federal deficit represents a record share of the economy, but that’s your way of bequeathing unto us, your children, a challenge worthy of the struggles that consumed your adult lives: Gay marriage, gays in the military, gay rights; never would anyone in my generation had thought so much importance lay upon this issue, this never ending issue of “what to do” with the homosexuals which hide behind every corner, tempting as they are. Related, I thank you for our two Presidents from your generation. When I think back on the legacies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, I shudder to imagine how any generation could follow such acts. One cannot help but admire the time invested in matters of stained dresses, and one cannot comprehend the affluence that is the $2 trillion final price tag of the Iraq war. Such time and such wealth surely could have only been used to the detriment of my generation and I thank you for making sure to no other purpose were those resources spent. I thank you for undermining the higher education system. Those “elite” institutions which your parents constructed for you, only you Boomer had the foresight to drain the wealth out of such systems for your children. Free education could only be a retarding force on the development of a good work ethic, and no doubt would I value my college degree less had I not been forced to borrow $20,000 for it. For your ability to see the institutions created for future generation by your parents as obstacles to the success of your children, for your diligence at undermining the funding of our colleges and schools, I thank you. Your insight taught us a crucial lesson: opportunity is misfortune and is to be mortgaged immediately for the tax-breaks necessary for weeklong vacations to Vegas. My student loan payments are only in the low hundreds of dollars per month, yet it is you who keeps the shame of my generation’s fiscal recklessness acute in my consciousness everyday in the newspapers—a constant reminder how to plan ahead from the most responsible generation ever. Thank you. For painstaking efforts to restore spirituality in public life, I thank you. Despite the media’s portrayal of your generation as one whose opened minds embraced the peaceful kook religions of the Far East, both you and I know your lasting legacy was the passionate awakening to Jesus Christ and the reinvigorated age of science, reason, and humility that your interpretation of said lord’s words which it spawned. For teaching me just how much is at stake in having the word “God” in The Pledge of Allegiance, or how justice can only be served by posting the Ten Commandments in every courthouse, I thank you. Even in the realm of the arts, my generation pales when compared to the Gods of Rock which from your generation sprang. Whereas your Pete Townsend of The Who defiantly opined he “hoped” he “died” before he got old, we, a generation commercially raped, produced Kurt Cobain, who wrote that he “hoped he died before he became Pete Townsend”. And even in this exchange, it was our icon that proved weak enough to follow through on the promise. But now, as you face retirement, your preeminent behavior still guides our opinions. At my own college campus, I witnessed the young carrying on the proud tradition of prying open the petty differences between us. However, wise old Boomer, I worry about the future. Late-night comedians mock your righteous crusades daily. We seem less likely to be driven by ideologies, and more likely to respect—and this I fear—results. I am afraid too many of us do not see the plain threat that is the equality of homosexuals—which many see as their “right” and don’t seem interested in condemning them at all. I fear the opposition we have to the blood and treasure being spent on the invasion of Iraq, even though it was our fault—much as you are to congratulate for the Civil Rights Act. I’m afraid we don’t have the stomach for the same left-right food fights, and I’m sorry more of us aren’t thankful for our education bills. We don’t appreciate enough, the gilded age in which you have created. We aren’t grateful enough for your insistence we grow-up in a tougher world. Finally, I’m afraid we won’t be up to the task of shouldering your deathbeds, numerous as they are; the wealth of the nation having been sucked-dry by three decades of tax cuts and overseas investments, there just might not be anything left of America once your gone. And for that, I thank you. Gen Y
I don't really understand folks like Xenyon's point of view. I hope to have the honor of paying a ten million dollars in income taxes some day (with all of the income that implies.)
Two more good articles on the politics of the younger generation (whatever we call 'em): http://newpolitics.net/node/360?full_report=1 http://newpolitics.net/node/89?full_report=1
Well... Not that I'm trying to be the absolute, final voice for my generation, but here's my feeling. Take the culture of South Park, Family Guy, and The Daily Show. Add in the fact that a majority of us have lived our lives under either Clinton or (a) Bush. I'm kind of partial to Generation Fuck.
ol' doom n' gloom- Nice try. I am and always have been personally conservative (tho' libertarian) on issues like sex and drugs. So while GOP moralism on those topics might bother me in the abstract, it never impacted my personal life. Rather, I disliked the Republicans because of the war and because I imbibed too heavily of the campus Kool Aid about how they're fascist imperialist pigs and how capitalism enslaves the working man. I got out of school, got a job, and realized that most of my professors have never worked a day in their lives at a real job and for all their intellectual firepower had no idea how the real world works because they'd never set foot outside the ivory tower. I traveled abroad and came to realize that a.)defending our national interests does not make us evil, b.)strongly anti-business policies lead to economic stagnation, c.)economic globalization helps more than hurts the world, and d.)people in other countries are capable of being ignorant, jingoistic, and self-interested too. I'm not married, and I make $28,000 a year, so difference in the two parties' tax policies is minor for me personally. I do, however, want a strong American economy so that I'll be able to make and save more in the future. The GOP generally has a better understanding of basic market economics than the Democrats do. John Edwards, for example, favors trade restrictions that will not only wreck American exports and slow down economic growth but incur retributive tariffs abroad and drive the price of cheap imported goods up, thus hurting the very people they're supposedly intended to help. It's not so much that I favor Mitt Romney's tax proposals as that, since he's a businessman, I trust him not to do idiotic things like this. There are other issues on which I find today's Republican party intolerable (torture, civil liberties, foreign policy). Hence, I am an independent. Jim D had it right, about me at least.
Generation X is objectively teh suck as a moniker, yet we're stuck with it, so I don't see any reason why y'all shouldn't be stuck with something Pepsi-flavoured. Life's tough like that sometimes.
Doing generational analysis will rot your brain. Since I had to deal with slacker I enjoy using Echoes.
Gen X wasn't Dougie's best book, but it was pretty damned good. I'm just happy they called us that instead of Slaves of New York.
Xeynon, for what it's worth, I think the current Republican administration is as good an example as any of clueless intellectualism run amok. And as Andrew Sullivan has pointed out on too many occasions to count, the Republican party hasn't been about fiscal responsibility in ages. Furthermore, if you really think our tax rates are low or even moderate (relative to Europe, even) for the working non-wealthy, you probably haven't bothered to add up all your different taxes. And you haven't considered that the Europeans, with their high taxes, actually get things like usable public transportation and very affordable health care in return. What the Republicans have done with all their exemptions and deductions since 1986 is make the personal income tax utterly incomprehensible for the people who are obliged to pay it (even to tax attorneys, mind you), and thus patently unfair, but they have not reduced the real tax burden on anyone but the independently wealthy. Meanwhile, their ruthless funding cuts and ingeniously crafted outsourcings to private industry have had significant negative effects on the quality of every meaningful service to the American people, including, shockingly, many aspects of the military (in which I served). These are the reasons that I, though generally a fiscal conservative and though I pay a ton of my own income in taxes, am not a Republican.
PS, how about "Generation Programmed Sociopaths"?
I say we steal the "Greatest Generation" moniker. It's not like the people who spawned the baby boomers really deserve the title. At least our use of it would be appropriately ironic.
A pox on your citation to that cant by Brooks. I read that piece when it came out in 2001, riding on a train through Philly. Firstly, to the author's limited credit, it does not even pretend to define all of a generation - it is couched as an expose of the "next ruling class" (scary). Secondly, while I probably know some of his guinea pigs personally, and while their education may, in fact, propel them to some prominence in a future ruling regime, the way things are going in the U.S. (and by its influence, in the world as a whole), it will be the "moral flexibility" of those young brains that determines their degree of influence in the coming decades, not their affinity for Microsoft Outlook or the fact that they can IM their friends in class. Far from defining the generation of kids he surveyed, Brooks merely apologized for our general education disaster by glorifying the lucky few who, due to their family's wealth or a lucky break, remain unaffected by it. Only by negative implication did he hint at the real story: that the overwhelming majority of people in that generation simply cannot afford to be well educated enough to withstand the manipulations that those budding technocrats will foist on them once they have entered the direct or indirect service of the investment banks and increasingly large corporations that the investment banks increasingly own. The kids in Philly, just a few miles from Princeton, have no clue about this and thus no chance. And the kids in Princeton will probably never appreciate the harmfulness of their success, or how much the luck of the draw, more than their own efforts or intelligence, had to do with it. That's the story of this generation.
Tim - note that I stated that I'm not a Republican either. I agree with most of your criticisms of the Republican party, and yes, their lack of fiscal responsibility is appalling (doubly so for me since I'm young and will still be paying taxes 40 years down the road). That said, there are at least SOME Republicans who are sound on fiscal policy (e.g. McCain). There are also some Democrats (Obama). For me, this is one of the answers to the "how could independents who back Obama also like McCain?" conundrum that so many liberals seem to be pondering. One of the reasons that I will consider voting for either of these two, but will not vote for Giuliani or Edwards, is that the latter two propose both propose comparatively reckless economic policies, though from right-wing and left-wing perspectives respectively. I want someone who is pro business and friendly to market economics, As far as paying taxes go, I've lived and worked in three different countries (the U.S., Japan, and South Korea) and the latter two have lower overall tax rates for people in my income bracket, particularly when state taxes are factored in (the difference is partially made up by nationwide sales taxes). The Japanese tax code in particular is simpler than the U.S. one however. Both countries do provide excellent public transportation and cheap healthcare, as in Europe, but there are a couple of things to consider here that don't relate to the rate of taxation: 1.)As smaller, more densely populated countries (like those in Europe), they are better suited to economical public transportation.
it is couched as an expose of the "next ruling class" (scary) Another conclusion to which I've come is that this is and always will be true so long as human beings endure on Earth. It's true everywhere I've been, and of every society I've studied. It may be our genetic inheritance (other primates are highly hierarchical animals). History suggests that attempts to alter this reality will come to bad ends (French Revolution, Communism, etc.) I think the best we can do is create a society egalitarian enough so that no one starves and no one freezes to death in the winter.
Xeynon, I agree with most of what you said, except I would note that both transporation and healthcare really could be better in the U.S. with the right leadership to start eliminating corrupt (and inefficient) practices. The degree to which we've gone in the wrong direction to date was not inevitable. Both situations are the result of generations of elected officials choosing to line their own pockets and those of their campaign contributors instead of doing what they knew to be right. Honesty in basic policies like those and reasonable restraints on the destructive urges of oligarchs are both, in my view, necessary conditions of the continued viability of democratic government. I agree that it would be much worse to try any other form.
I would note that both transporation and healthcare really could be better in the U.S. with the right leadership to start eliminating corrupt (and inefficient) practices. No arguments there, Tim. One of the things I've become really interested in as a result of my time abroad is better, more efficient zoning laws and urban planning for American communities. Allowing people convenient access to PT or putting a corner store in your typical American residential neighborhood would work wonders for our oil dependency and environmental problems and would even have an impact on healthcare by getting people walking more.
"my professors have never worked a day in their lives at a real job" Hmmm, define "real job"? Is a "real job" one that pays money for services rendered? Because that's what a professorship is, so I don't see how it is any less real than coal mining or pro golfing or accounting. You must not have paid attention in college.
Dear Adrian Covert, Tough shit, son.
Christ, I was like 12 when those commercials were on. The spice girls are the worst kind of nostalgia.
Matter of diction: I prefer 'The young'.
Comments closed January 24, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
I always thought that your age group was called "Generation Fox Kids".
Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | January 10, 2008 5:56 PM