Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials

It seems what we have today can be described as a higher education industrial complex. In this book, the author attempts to analyze the major structures and intuitions that had an influence on young Americans over the past thirty to forty years. It is necessary to begin with schoolkids in order to understand the true reach of the changes of the past decades.So if the kids take the right classes, study, do the homework, master the right extracurricular activities, and do well on standardized tests – well, they should have a good shot at a spot in a decent college. This results in then a sort of prerequisite to “better life outcomes.” This “investment” will make the student a more valuable future employee. Growing up becomes a very complex exercise in risk management, notes the author. He continues saying that “By every metric, this generation is the most educated in American history, yet Millennials are worse off economically than their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents.” College follows next, which turns out to be more comprehensive and most directly consequential. College admissions act as rating agencies for kids, and once the “kid-bond” is rated, it has four years until the expectation of a return. And boy is this going to be expensive. Between 1979 and 2014, the price of tuition at four-year nonprofit colleges, adjusted for inflation, jumped 197 percent at private schools and 280 percent at public schools – yikes! At the same time real wages for graduates is down 8.5 percent between 2000 and 2012. The author then elaborates on the motivation behind lenders awarding thousands of dollars in loans to teenagers and why universities need so much money from students. He elaborates on the questions: “Where does the money come from, where does it go, and why does everyone keep insisting college is a good investment no matter what it costs?” Discussing the first question, we see government student loans swamping a generation in debt, while the Department of Education reaps about $18.99 in profit for every $100 in loans originated in 2014. The answers provided for the other questions are equally enlightening.Seguing into the work environment, we see many changes in the college employ (to reduce costs as tuition goes up), but also across the economy “bad jobs are getting worse, good jobs are getting better, and the middle is disappearing.” Productivity has increased rapidly between 1972 and 2009, while, at the same time, hourly compensation has been falling way behind. Employers are delighted! Not so much the Millennials. So basically the author proclaims, “Efficiency is our existential purpose, and we are a generation of finely honed tools, crafted from embryos to be lean, mean production machines.” And technological innovation has enabled workers to be more hyper-connected, superfast, always-on tools. The whole system produces workers that are too efficient for their own good.Then there’s the government conservatives war on the welfare state. We see what is called the “juvenilization of poverty.” By 2012 one in five (actually over 20%) of American children lived below the poverty line. For adults over sixty-five, that value is just 9.1 percent. There are lucky times and places to be born. In America, it appears that the relatively lucky time to have been born is in the past. In other words, today’s children and young adults are worse off than their parents. The author buttresses his case against government policies in the chapter called “The Feds.” He concludes that the American government can, in effect, act like a predator.In the chapter “Everybody is a Star,” we how kids are disadvantaged in the sports and music arenas. We see all the hard work athletes perform so a few can get coveted spots on professional sports teams. We see all the tremendously hard work youth perform, let’s say, to become an elite violinist. These youth engage in grueling schedules to reach the top. “The Millennial character is a product of life spent investing in your own potential and being managed like a risk,” according to the author. The author finishes up the discussion by listing seven slow-motion disasters that he fears many of them could look forward to if Millennials continue on the current path. He does offer his take on some of the possible solutions going forward, however. He laments, “Either we continue the trends we’ve been given and enact the bad future or we refuse it and cut the knot of trend lines that defines our collectivity.” He continues, “it is up to the Millennial cohort to make something else of what’s been made of us.”

The author describes--very well--numerous societal problems. He also appears to claim that millennials suffer more than other generations. Gosh, they've lived through 2--count 'em, TWO!--economic problems as adults--2008 and 2020. Their parents lived through those two, plus the internet bubble busting, plus the 1987 market meltdown--and more wars, to boot. Oh gosh, tech firms laying off young people? Meet these blue collar workers who were laid off in the 80s as their jobs went to Mexico and then China. And meet these 90s middle managers who were "downsized" out of work. Guess what, millennials? Times are tough, and they've been tough. If you don't like what you see out there, do something about it other than whine, woe is you.

Quite simply, Harris makes a solid case for generational bias and how ridiculous and mindless it is when someone exclaims, out of blame and ignorance, "millennials". My mom's dad thought Elvis was satan and her generation the end of the world. So yeah, I appreciated this book and I look on the younger generations with much more honesty. And btw, the older gens should be asking for forgiveness, not laying blame on younger generations. Let's get this world flipped, Mr. Harris. Can't wait to read Palo Alto (kids graduated from Paly).

OCD about my books so I was annoyed that it came with a big dent in the middle of the pages and scratched. Too much work to send it back. But love his writing... wish the seller sent it more carefully.

Well researched and reasoned historical framing of what formed Millennials. Best of all, clearly written by a Millennial and not by those thinking they know and understand the age cohort. More than any other previous generation-and generations are formed by major critical events that change the complexion of one grouping from another, Millennials have been highly programmed from an early age to be hard-working, competitive self-interested individuals making them suitable for a new generation of commodities in the global labor market for hyper-accelerated global capital, and its drive to earn maximum profit benefiting the few at the expense of the many. In this process of risk-managing our kids, and not just "my" kids, childhoods have been robbed and despair wrought upon a whole generation who, as a group, have nothing of the "dreams" promised them. Young people are largely struggling, poor, and massively in educational debt as a result of chasing the hopes that the system has formed in them. And, they had no choice as all has been foisted on them. Shame on us as a culture! Shame on us who have capitulated in this gross injustice!

The author has a single major insight, but it's a thumper: millennials are the subject of a work speed-up in capitalism in which the costs of becoming a laborer (doctor, programer, whatever) have been shifted astronomically onto the worker. So, today, kids are expected to borrow obscene amounts of money so that they can go work for a corporation that hasn't contributed a dime to the cost of developing the skills these folks bring to the workforce. So, doctors borrow 3-400,000 to go work for some crappy corporate HMO that underpays them. Lawyers borrow 200-300,000 to work for some crapy firm that treats them like dirt, and on and on. So, this is the generation that's paying for the privilege of being screwed over by corporate power. Truly awful

About how tough things are for millenials and how easy it all was for me, a baby boomer.

A must-read for everyone, both millennials and non-millennials alike. Replete with data, studies, and references, the author shatters the myth of the millennial being lazy and entitled. Taking a comprehensive look at what shapes millennials, it goes on to list and explain various socio-economic forces that have had a profound effect on this oft-maligned cohort.Furthermore, the book is a parallel look at contemporary American society and the changes that have transformed it into an exploitative, take-no-prisoners, winner-take-all environment.Highly recommended!

Un libro muy bien argumentado y documentado sobre el infierno que entre todos estamos construyendo para los jóvenes actuales y futuros, con nuestra devoción por la hipercompetitividad. El libro es demoledor y expone las cosas tal cual son, con respaldo estadístico. No me gustaría ser joven con necesidad de ganar dinero hoy, y peor lo van a tener las futuras juventudes. Y parece que no estamos dispuestos ni a reflexionar, ni a hacer nada por mejorar las expectativas.

Solid thanks goes to Malcolm Harris for this sharp view of America's 30-odds, through a focussed lens well-learned from Marx.

Das Buch hält einem unsere Gesellschaft deutlich vor Augen! Leider ohne Happy End, aber mit gut recherchierten Beispielen von Chief Keef bis Harward.