I MET A
FRIEND of mine at a bar one day during my senior year of college.
The economy had just crashed and most people in Washington were
still stumbling around in a fog, trying to adjust to the new
reality. Our graduation—the ceremony that would hurl us into the
maw of The Real World—was only months away. All things considered,
a little (cheap) drinking seemed to be in order.
The conversation turned to politics, and my friend, a fairly committed Democrat, started railing.“They tell us we’re going to get Social Security when we retire, and they’ll have the money for it. But it’s bulls—t. It’s bulls—t. Where do they think the money is coming from?”
I was startled. Anyone who paid attention knew Social Security was going to have problems… eventually…decades away, by which point surely someone would have fixed it. But the program was always presumed to be permanent. Social Security would exist as it had since the sepia-toned days of FDR. My friend’s vitriol was something I hadn’t heard before.
We all graduated in 2009—the first class to experience the full bore of the recession right out of college. And we still feel it. Young people, the Millennial Generation, were hit particularly hard. The unemployment rate for those ages 18–29 is 12.7 percent, well above the national average. One-third of Millennials are underemployed, unable to find fulltime work. The idea of a career—stable advancement in a single job or industry—is going out of fashion. Instead, work life has a by-the-seat-of-your-pants feeling. And even for those with jobs, the economy has stunted adult life. Young people are increasingly delaying marriage and putting off buying a house. After college, 6 million of us moved back with our parents.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/17/the-social-security-hangover
The conversation turned to politics, and my friend, a fairly committed Democrat, started railing.“They tell us we’re going to get Social Security when we retire, and they’ll have the money for it. But it’s bulls—t. It’s bulls—t. Where do they think the money is coming from?”
I was startled. Anyone who paid attention knew Social Security was going to have problems… eventually…decades away, by which point surely someone would have fixed it. But the program was always presumed to be permanent. Social Security would exist as it had since the sepia-toned days of FDR. My friend’s vitriol was something I hadn’t heard before.
We all graduated in 2009—the first class to experience the full bore of the recession right out of college. And we still feel it. Young people, the Millennial Generation, were hit particularly hard. The unemployment rate for those ages 18–29 is 12.7 percent, well above the national average. One-third of Millennials are underemployed, unable to find fulltime work. The idea of a career—stable advancement in a single job or industry—is going out of fashion. Instead, work life has a by-the-seat-of-your-pants feeling. And even for those with jobs, the economy has stunted adult life. Young people are increasingly delaying marriage and putting off buying a house. After college, 6 million of us moved back with our parents.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/17/the-social-security-hangover
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