An Addendum (in the Vernacular)

Warning -Edited for clarity, and now fucking long as hell. Seriously, take kitten breaks.

Hello, my friends. I am particularly unfriendly today, and so I am once again using Written Kitten to keep my blood pressure from spiking. The last thing anyone needs is a blood vessel bursting and spraying my computer screen crimson.

Whew. Alright.  *click*

 *click*

Ok, so long-time reader Chris sent me this, a well-written and worded rebuttal to this, a adequately written argument about why Gen Y is unhappy.

Yes, in true contrarian-anarcho-moderate style, they are both fucking wrong.

I will start with the cheeky coward who hides behind a funny/procrastination website.

*click*  *click*

Shit, did I just lose an hour?

Wait but why says

To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula:

It's pretty straightforward -- when the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they're unhappy."

And continues to say:

"With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy's parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility. And they weren't alone. Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches.

This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents' goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn't really do it for them. A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers. "

 

Alright. I don't deny that "Gen Y" was set up with some pretty damn high expectations. I would liken them to the first immigrants. Streets were supposed to be paved with fucking gold, and we were promised robots. Robot sex maid robots.

Seriously. Where are my sex-maid-robots? Thanks Obama!

Anyway, then goes on to blame Gen Y

GYPSYs Are Wildly Ambitious

GYPSYs Are Delusional

 GYPSYs Are Taunted

And adds what is obvious to fucking everyone:

Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they're actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build -- even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them -- and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s.

But GYPSYs aren't about to just accept that.

Fuck you. Fuck your fucking face. Die ina  fire of pink slips. We accept this. We accept that hard work gets you ahead. We accept work.

We are the janitors, the barristas, as Hotel Clerks, and the anarcho-moderate bloggers.

That's how post recession Amercia worked. Asshole.

 Mr. Weinstein posts as much:

You have no idea about student debt, underemployment, life-long renting. “Stop feeling special” is some shitty advice. I don’t feel special or entitled, just poor. The only thing that makes me special is I have more ballooning debt than you. I’ve tempered the hell out of my expectations of work, ... I’m still poor and in debt and worked beyond the point where it can be managed with my health and my desire to actually see the son I’m helping to raise."

And he's right, we aren't entitled. Just poor.  We are busting ass.

Most of us who got shit degrees (like yours truly) understand, by now that they "done fucked up." Philosophy, gender Studies, English. If you ain't teaching, you ain't doing. And those with Education degrees might not be teaching either.

We know that companies want STEM degrees. if we didn't know then, we know now, for sure.

But, a friend of mine who has a MATH degree raises chickens because he can't get a job. The fuck?

Adam Weinstein touches on the issue, that \the promises of a high technology and better science has been an increase of productivity, but the consequences of that - more idle time and greater wealth, have been sucked up by the wealthy.

American workers have changed from generation to generation: Since 1979, the alleged Dawn of the Millennial, the average U.S. worker has endured a 75 percent increase in productivity...while real wages stayed flat.

The problem is: Long ago the government realized that as long as they said the right thing, they weren't accountable to the citizenry. And then doing the right thing became more expensive than making laws.  And distracting, imprisoning, and impoverishing the masses was cheaper than educating, liberating, and enriching them.
When the government no longer feared the masses, they just decided to follow the money.

And the poor folk don't have any.

Last weekend my baby had a fever, and we contemplated taking him to the ER, and my first thought was - had to be - “Oh God, that could wipe out our bank account! Maybe he can just ride it out?” Our status in this Big Financial Game had sucked my basic humanity towards my child away for a minute. If I wish for something better, is that me simply being entitled and delusional?

No it isn't. And yes, it is (see below)

Anyway, I'm ranting. I really just wanted to share Mr. Weinstein's blog post.

Weinstein says:

The latter maxim lurks in the heart of every critique of millennials. It assumes that if we're worse off than previous generations, the fault is ours, and our complaints are so much white whine.

He's not wrong. American's love their "Prosperity Movement" That with a little elbow grease, we can make it after all.

He continues to discuss how awesome it was for our parents:

They had room to advance and buy things. Yes, even the creatives. I once listened to a professor, who is in his sixties, read us the first published piece he'd been paid for, in the late 1970s. A thousand words or so. The rate, he says, was something like two bucks a word. That's four times what the Village Voice pays today, even for an award-winning investigative cover story. It's geometrically greater than what most writers can earn today writing daily brilliance for nationally renowned publications online. And writing daily brilliance, which many of them do, is hard goddamned work.

The economy post WWI was AWESOME. The BEST EVAR, actually. and that economy isn't here anymore.

 And my rebuttal, to all this naval gazing:

"So what?"

Reality doesn't care if you are poor. It doesn't care if have ER bills. it doesn't care if you are worried about a stroke but can't afford an ER visit (my version - I don't have a baby). It is on the side of the winner. Lower your expectations, or don't.

This is why, my kiddos, while I do not advocate violence (They have more bullets than us), I do advocate that you do your best to win. To make yourself a success. You're poor, you're fat, you're struggling and you want things.

Well, then go out and get them. This isn't a "suck-it-up" post. The truth is suck-it-up and bust ass only works when the other side is playing fair.  And the other side of the 99%, the 1%, is and always will be playing dirty fucking ball.

And the refs we elect to stop it are in their pockets.

So what is the solution?  Weinstein touches on it

Take the system that siphons off our capacities for human flourishing in hopes that we get thrown a little coin of the realm in return. Take that system and blow it up, you cowards.

Right now money is valuable, and so the 1% have learned what rules to make and change and follow to get as much as they can. And never did we slap their hand and tell them to get out of the bank and give back those properties.

We never learned, it seems, that wealth will make more wealth- for the wealthy. Trickle down economics could have been stopped by a cursory reading of history. If the cost to make wealth is too great, via regulation, inflation, or bureaucracy, then only the wealthy and criminal will make money.

I don't know kiddos. Somewhere along the lines the Aristocracy realized it didn't need to hide. We had been given enough rope of liberty and democracy to hang ourselves.

What we need to do is create value that cannot be taken. Value that can be traded. A new currency for a digital age. I'm not offering examples. It might not be enough to just have a new currency. It might have to be a new system.

We live in a unique place to do that. We have anonymity of the Internet, we have ways to create value from nothing, and more and More of us have nothing to fucking lose. We are career-less, jobless, and homeless. So fuck it. Reach for the fucking stars, assholes. What will happen? Lose your Mcjob? Hah! Go to jail? Free housing and a free (to you) Education. So paint on building walls and rant in the street.

We are not new yuppies. We are new hippies. We aren't changing the world for the better because we have luxury and a good post WWII economy, We are changing the world because we have nothing and therefore nothing to lose.

I needed to repeat that.  having nothing means you have nothing to lose. So go out and be a dreamsmith. Paint yourself fucking green. Steal from dumpsters, build gardens in empty parking lots. Shit.

So do what helps you, and if helps your fellow man, awesome. I hope it does. I hope we start building a world out of the junk the 1% let's us have. And it will be much cooler than manicured golf courses.

Alright, I need a kitten break, kiddos. Good luck, and do something fearless.