I was just a kid in the '80s. Things seemed pretty good to me but nuclear war paranoia was still very much a thing. When I was a young adult in the '90s I was almost entirely focused on my own prospects, financial and otherwise. I had a vague sense that things were generally getting better - happy Clinton was in, and still feeling the Berlin Wall afterglow. Things had been changing so fast it was dizzying - suddenly there were no longer two Germanys! Suddenly the Soviet Union just didn’t exist anymore! Plus, of course, the '90s were a heady time to be a computer/gaming dork.
Around the time of the '99 impeachment, and then the 2000 election, I became more politically aware. Now I’m angry and afraid all the time!
I’m a bit younger than you, but I lived through it too. I don’t doubt your experience at all. I’m just pondering aloud how universal that perspective was. Different aspects of life affect each of us differently is all. I’m probably overthinking it.
I was also a kid in the 80s. I lived in Europe for some of it. I feel the same way.
Younger folks today- they don’t have the hope we did.
Thrag
3286
Biden is giving a speech on Covid vaccinations currently:
Yes, you’re right.
For me, the thing about the 80s is it was really the last decade in which something like the American dream was in force, where you could expect to have a better economic life than your parents had. It’s true the economy was broken in 1980, but it wasn’t broken in a way that it could never get better, and everyone believed that a good economy would be good for them. You could get a good job and have a good career without an extended education, and if you wanted that education it wasn’t ruinously expensive.
The problem, now, is that even a good economy leaves most people behind, or at least not appreciably better off. That’s the difference in hope: people back then could hope it would be better and it got better, people now don’t really have any reason to hope it will be better, because it isn’t ever better for them.
Moi aussi.
'61 was a good year, clearly.
Alstein
3289
I often feel like I’m between the two worlds. I got the benefits of the old America, but I saw the injustice and am in alliance with the new. Things started getting bad just when my life hit bottom, but I was able to turn it around just in time. That said, it did do damage to me, and I’m just now starting to live the life I want.
Me, too. I was in the infantry from 1981-1986, then went into the workforce. In mid-1986, I was a device operator in a data center, cleaning line printers and distributing reports. In 1992, I was the project manager for a software company building and delivering large scale reservation systems to major hotel brands. My educational background? I dropped out of college after one semester as a history major. And I was surrounded by people like me. That sort of thing is mostly impossible now.
Alstein
3291
This might be the only board where I feel younger than most of the folks I’m around. It gives a different perspective, even if it’s maddening sometimes.
Most other places I go I’m the old crotchety moderate
Thrag
3292
What are these crazy socialist ideas!?
Menzo
3293
Maybe this belongs in the Supreme Court thread, or the economy thread, but I’m putting it here because Biden leveraged this decision to make a pretty awesome move.
From 2019 until this week, the FHFA was led by Mark Calabria, a libertarian Donald Trump nominee whose term was set to stretch into 2024. Calabria intended to release Fannie and Freddie from the conservatorship—freeing the companies from strict government control, ending their transfer of money to the treasury, and allowing them to begin lining investors’ pockets once again. This goal angered Democrats, as the conservatorship furthers many progressive aims, including affordable housing and racial equity. Because of his protection against removal, Calabria was set to stay in office for three more years and wind down the conservatorship by the end of his tenure.
Thanks to Collins , however, Calabria lost that protection. And Biden swiftly took advantage of the Supreme Court’s decision: He requested and received Calabria’s resignation within hours, then replaced him with a new acting director, Sandra L. Thompson, a liberal who joined the FHFA under President Barack Obama. (She is the first woman to lead the agency.) Thompson promptly announced her intention to continue regulating Fannie and Freddie, and to focus on “affordable housing and access to credit, especially in communities of color.” It’s clear that she has no intention of freeing the companies from the conservatorship, and it’s a safe bet that Biden’s eventual nominee to replace her will not either.
That is hilariously awesome. The what could possibly go wrong thread is another option.
Exactly.
On paper, I’m sure there are a lot of things better today economically than in the 80s. But anyone thinking that young people have the same opportunities with the same expected consequences obviously don’t regularly interact with anyone under 40.
For most people entering adulthood since the aughts, they’ll never own a house. They’ll be paying their student loans for thirty years. They won’t be able to retire at 65. One unexpected medical bill will bankrupt them. Young people know this, and the result is largely either apathy or radicalization.
Timex
3296
A few things here…
We aren’t talking about the 80s. We are talking specifically about 1980, and the late 70s immediately preceding 1980, because the context of the discussion was Reagan’s election in 1980. Further on in the 1980s, things were much better eventually.
Second, it was not merely worse “on paper” than today. In 1980, the economy was significantly worse than today by pretty much every single economic metric. Perhaps literally every metric, as I can’t think of any that are worse now than then.
The fact that we were experiencing stagflation was a uniquely bad thing. We had high unemployment, but ALSO high interest rates and ridiculously high inflation. That’s an extremely bad combination. You want to talk about buying a house? You can’t buy a house when interest rates are nearly 20%, man.
On top of all the economic stuff, we also had, as other have pointed out, crap like imminent threat of nuclear destruction.
But recall that this discussion about 1980 was started by Alstein suggesting that the lessons from the 1980 election didn’t hold true today, because things are much worse now than in 1980, and that’s not accurate. Things were seriously fucked up in 1980.
2020? That was more like 1980.
Yeah, that’s fair and a very important point. Over the years I’ve had a lot of folks on my teams who didn’t finish college. Usually because they got tech jobs right out of high school or after military service. Some of the best and brightest I’ve ever worked with, but a kid these days like that would have a radically different experience. It’s hard enough convincing people to interview folks that don’t have at least a masters. Drives me crazy.
Personally, I honestly didn’t really think much about economics back then other than, “I guess I’d better work and dear god don’t run up credit card debt.” Naive and foolish of me, to be sure. I got better, I suppose.
side note: If you don’t mind my asking, which reservation system? I did a brief stint as a contractor for AMEX back then and we used IBM 3090s for card processing. Meant that there was a fair bit of talent sharing between the reservation system folks and AMEX for that niche. I sat with a bunch of the 3090 assembly programmers even though I was doing desktop stuff. Lots of war stories about all of that stuff, for sure.
Fair, I hadn’t parsed that distinction across today’s posts. Everything I was saying should just be interpreted in the context of the 80s and 90s.
That said, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous for Alstein to say that young people are getting radicalized. Many more are simply apathetic, sure, but both radicalism and apathy are (I believe) outcomes of the same underlying cause, such that I don’t actually think it would be that difficult to flip a bunch of the apathetics into full-blown leftists. A post for another topic, maybe.
Seeing so many people telling me authoritatively and assuredly how “Millennials” feel as en masse and as an aggregate group – and doing so in comparison to people of similar age in the early 1980s – is taking every bit of restraint I have to not type two words that rhyme with “Night Sneeze”. :)
CraigM
3300
Ok boomer.
(Said in jestful irony, but you teed that up perfectly)
It should be obvious that millenials are not just an en masse hivemind. You’re going to have your MAGAs and your centrists in there as well.
That said there is a real difference between attitudes of younger folks today and those in the 80s/90s on the aggregate.
THe younger folks today have been through a lot. THe most trauma any generation has had in 100 years.
CraigM
3302
But in non snarky tones.
Maybe instead of dismissing the POV of the younger crowd (note most of us are not discussing the state of view in 1980, but rather our own actual lives reality as people who graduated in 2007 and later), realize there is a real fundamental shift in the experience economically of our generation. One that shifts the ground out from under us in ways that are incredibly disheartening. Things that shift home ownership out of grasp of many, that mean we have more debt and less savings, that many of us are starting families later or not at all.
And how top down overall the divide between the experiences, good and bad, of our generation track less with the national fortunes than those that came before. And how many of the avenues of betterment that existed for our parents have been cut away from us.
Yeah things in 1980 sucked, and there are different challenges then. But flat out the long term prospects of my generation, on average, are bleaker. Because we can see the ways the game has been shifted against us. Some of us will succeed. By all rights I’m doing pretty ok myself. But my economic prospects as a college grad compared to my fathers? Well he didn’t go to college, but got a vocation (firefighter) that started his true career sooner. So he got into his career younger, and without debt. But a person like my dad today would be in real trouble. 1980 vs 2006, same person same experience and skills? No doubt he is better off in 1980. To have the same overall prospects requires tens of thousands of debt, and starts you into a career 4-5 years later, at best.
So I need to be smarter and more skilled than my father to only barely be behind where he was economically, and constantly fighting to keep there. With less savings, more debt to start, and no pension. I’ll be ok, because I’m smart and in a good field to be in. But most of my peers are not me. The opportunities that existed for many more before, are narrowed to a lucky few now. And the growth of costs for education and healthcare, along with the complete disappearance of pensions and unions, mean that without major changes those that follow are going to be squeezed even harder.
So yeah, my generation has a different experience than yours. And while the challenges in 1980 were real and severe, the pathways for opportunity were much wider once those crisises were past. It’s more fundamental and baked in today. Even in good times the squeeze exists.
