“Ok, Boomer” is a verbal eye-roll that expresses derision, frustration, and a subversive compliance. And it says something important about the newest generation of Americans: they’re worried. In particular, generation Z is worried about the future: their chances of economic success in a rapidly changing world, the exploding cost of higher education, environmental concerns, and societal injustices. Naturally, they see older generations as having a hand in creating or at least perpetuating these problems. We now live in a world of illusion and see the world not as it is but as we want it to be. The illusion is nothing can change without the market – there is no alternative to neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberalism has outlived the socioeconomic conditions that gave rise to its existence. We need to seek an answer to this challenge with new ways of thinking, and introduce solutions to address inequities.
Generation X-ers did not let it happen. Millennials are suffering, with college education sky rocketing, they are buried in debt. They are struggling to find jobs, and millennials cannot buy homes. The ‘free marketplace’ is a grand illusion for those in power to promote to justify dominance over those who are less privileged. Of course, it is based on greed being a virtue, relying on a system to harness the selfishness of people and direct it to public good, thus freeing itself from the need to depend unrealistically upon the uncertain moral virtues of its participants. The political and social domination of the economic elite are presented as normal outcomes of the functioning of the free market. The neoliberal worldview has been embedded in contemporary culture to such an extent and now is so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince people of its ultimate truth.
Everyone accepted the idea that deregulated markets were self-correcting. The illusion was that this system, a product of globalization, could self-correct as required. The ugly truth was that a few greedy bankers on Wall Street could just about collapse the world financial system. It was triggered by the consequences of policies championed by a small group of influential people. The financial sector took advantage of the system, empowered by reckless deregulation. Deregulation has been above all else, a means to reducing corporate business accountability to the public. After the Great Recession unemployment skyrockets due to the financial crisis, and experienced Boomers get first pick of jobs as the economy recovered, then as their pensions crash they delay retirement, blocking millennials from advancing their careers. As millennials pitch toward middle age, many are failing to make it to the middle class, and are likely to be the first generation in modern economic history to end up worse off than their parents.
Maintaining the illusion of prosperity, though, is critical to the economy as it is, because its foundation is built on consumption, fraud, credit and debt. The toxic combination of lower earnings and higher student-loan balances – combined with tight credit in the recovery years – has led to millennials getting shut out of the housing market, and thus losing a seminal way to build wealth. As a result, millennials have not benefited from the dramatic rebound in housing prices that has occurred since the financial collapse and the foreclosure crisis. Millennials have also been forced to shell out hundreds of billions of dollars in rent as housing costs have skyrocketed in many urban areas. This represents a large generational transfer of wealth from the young to the old. In addition, as boomers are looking to downsize, there is often a mismatch of where the large house is built and where the millennial wants to live.
More and more millennials find themselves in an era of insecurity as the safe routines of their lives have become undone, they now realize that the market system failed them, and this security was an illusion. Neoliberalism is an ideology of fear and insecurity that enslaves us all. In the 21st century the myth of the market hinges on the illusion of a supposedly natural order in the economic realm. This ideology is used to direct public policy (not only in the US but around the world) under the illusion it creates opportunities and frees individuals from control of the state. Presenting people with an alleged threat to their well being will elicit a powerful emotional response that can override reason and prevent a critical assessment of these policies. As author Mark Vernon has noted, “… the politics of fear plays on an assumption that people cannot bear the uncertainties associated with [risk]. Politics then becomes a question of who can better deliver an illusion of control.
The economic elite have engineered the system from the top down to create unlimited wealth for a few at the top. Neoliberalism constructed a system that not only benefits the upper class but also effectively justifies this outcome – abandons the interventionist model of the welfare state to emphasize the use of ‘free market’ mechanisms to regulate society. We are beholding to Donald Trump for pulling back the curtain and drawing attention to the mechanism of the social repression behind the illusion of minimal government and austerity. He governs like a king – as the only public person – re-enforcing the fact that ‘people’ are spectators with no real input into government decisions. We must begin the process to end big money’s grip on politics to take back control of the public sphere to ensure the ongoing transformation in structures of public communication in order to overcome social repression.
Neoliberalism is responsible for a defining shift in society. Malcom Harris argues, millennials are bearing the brunt of the economic damage wrought by late-20th-century capitalism. All these insecurities – and the material conditions that produced them – have thrown millennials into a state of perpetual panic. If “generations are characterized by crises,” as Harris argues, “then ours is the crisis of extreme capitalism. (T)o understand why millennials are the way they are, then we have to look at the increased competition between workers, the increased isolation of workers from each other, the extreme individualism of modern American society, and the widespread problems of debt and economic security facing this generation. And because wages are stagnant and exploitation is up, competition among workers is up too. Thus, as individuals, the best thing we can do for ourselves is work harder, learn to code, etc.”1
The issue isn’t personal narcissism and selfie culture but, rather, a culture of mass consumption and material acquisition. Western popular culture promotes these values, fueling a consumer culture built on speed, excess and distraction; whole industries today are built around reproducing socially-approved images of perfection, from cosmetic surgery to college test prep. Our mediated lives are populated with images of what we aren’t, what we aspire to be, and what is impossible to achieve. No wonder young minds are awash in emptiness and insatiable hunger for self-fulfillment. More and more millennials are protesting, boycotting, calling out, and sharing memes that reflect their anger about politics and social issues. “Anger is a very social emotion,” Dean Burnett says. “Someone who is angry prompts corresponding reactions in the brains of those around them, either making them more calm in order to neutralize the angry person, or making them angry in turn.”
Today the power elite manipulates the collective illusion that the free markets of globalization maximize individual freedom, choice and prosperity. Democracy is the best human weapon so far invented for guarding against the ‘illusion of certainty’ and breaking up truth camouflaged monopolies of power, wherever they operate. Democracy reminds us that truths are never self-evident, and what counts as truth is a matter of interpretation. Democracy supposes that no man or woman is good enough to claim they know the truth, and to rule permanently and controlling choices and opportunities of their fellows. We must begin the process to end big money’s grip on politics, then people will be able to create their own form of truth and choose actions and politics to support it. Millennials must not doubt that democracy remains the best human weapon so far invented for guarding against the erosion of truth to introduce the necessary change to create a successful society.
Workers have always been exploited, but that rate of exploitation – measured by the productivity wage gap that is today’s reality – is increasing exponentially for millennials. But they’re not individuals, not as far as bosses are concerned. The vast majority are considered replaceable workers, and by working harder for less, are undermining themselves as a class. It’s a vicious cycle. The capitalist millennials are going to be just as bad, if not worse, than the boomers, because they’ve inherited this exploitative system. The millennials have a good reason to be angry. Anger is power. It’s red. It’s heat. Anger is movement and sound. Anger is a force for change, a force of strength. The message: as quality of life is not primarily a function of what we consume – then protecting the environment need not be at odds with promoting human well-being. The answer: Millennials will lead the world out of scarcity and develop a clean and safe environment that is not detrimental to health.
1 Sean Illing. (16 March 2019) Why are millennials burned out? Capitalism. https://www.vox.com/2019/2/4/18185383/millennials-capitalism-burned-out-malcolm-harris