Malcolm Harris -- Kids these days
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In part Harris's book is a defense of millennials.  But, much more
of the book is occupied with explaining the stress and pressure that
is brought to bear on millennials by  our capitalist economy and by
the political system constructed to support that economy and by the
parents attempting to raise their children so that they will be able
to have good outcomes in the society produced and controlled by that
economy and by the competition that millennials face when competing
for the fewer well paying jobs provided by that economy and ...
Well, you get the idea.

Along the way, you get a detailed and informative description and
analysis of an important and interesting segment of our society.

Although Harris claims and the title of his book suggests that he is
only concerned with members of the millennial generation, his
discussion actually concerns a much wider set of topics and
problems.  Millennials are not the only ones who are paying too much
for their education and not getting enough in return.  Millennials
are not the only ones who are being squeezed out of the job market
by too much competition for too few jobs.  Millennials are not the
only ones onto whom corporations have offloaded the burden of
preparing and training themselves for possible work and at the same
time avoided the expense and risk of training their own workers.
These are issues and problems that have been building and worsening
for some time now, and which appear to be continuing to get worse.

But, it's more than just corporations.  From "Kids these days" we
get a picture of an industry plus government coalition (perhaps,
collusion) that stacks things in favor of employers and
corporations.  In a variety of ways, employers have the leverage:
access to employment, negotiation for wages, attempts to get better
working conditions, extensive efforts and resources for lobbying
various governments, etc.  That dynamic has been building across
governments controlled by both Democrats and Republicans, and has
gotten especially extreme during the last four or so
administrations.

One aspect of "Kids these days" that makes it especially
interesting, is that it is not just a static analysis; it is not
merely a snapshot of a generation.  It is more.  It is an analysis
and description of a generation as it grows up, as it is educated
(or not), as it attempts to transition from school to the work
force, and as that generation attempts to deal with the stresses of
the work environment and pressures from employers.

Harris also claims that there has been a fundamental and pervasive
shift in the U.S. away from a social welfare state (as weak as that
has been here in the U.S.) and towards a coercive, social control
state.  Rather than educate our citizens and provide jobs the
support a reasonable standard of living, we fund more police and
prisons so that we can incarcerate more citizens who are desperate
and disruptive, often because they were not able to find employment
that supports them.  As a result, incarceration rates in the U.S.,
especially among people of color are as high or higher than anywhere
in the world.

Harris also focuses on the entertainment industry, which has
transitioned to a state where a very small number of superstars can
make incredibly large earnings while everyone else earns little at
all.  If you want to learn even more about the entertainment world
"free" platforms like YouTube have sucked the earnings out of the
employment landscape, consider taking a look at "Move fast and break
things", by Jonathan Taplin.

Another trend that has caused yet more stress for workers and those
looking for work is that corporations have off loaded the cost and
risk of gaining education and training that they (the corporations)
require for employment onto workers.  That results in huge education
costs (both time and money) for those hoping for employment and, as
a consequence also results in staggering student loans.

Harris has a section about some employment (for example, concert
violinists and Olympic athletes) where very high performance levels
are sought and where competition is so extreme that it requires
incredible amounts of training and where that training must start at
a very young age.  That's interesting, but these seem like
anomalous, edge cases, and I'm not sure they tell us much about
millennials or the employment environment that they face.

Competition for work and jobs has become more severe.  A consequence
is that millennials are more anxious and trust each other less.  See
"The age of anxiety", by Jean Twenge for backup in support of this
claim.

Because of the heavy need for education and training in order to
have a chance at a job with decent pay, we (our education system)
attempt to force all children into a highly attentive mode, a mode
where they each must sit still and concentrate hard for long periods
of time.  Of course, not all young children can do that.  And, since
the stakes are so high and failure is so devastating, for those
children who cannot or do not comply, we resort to medication and
coercion, that or we encourage and even force non-compliant children
to drop out.  That means that the coercive, control state has to
deal with them.

The pressure of high stakes education and job preparation also
results in intense parenting, helicopter parents, and children who
are not allowed to explore and experiment without supervision.  The
cost of failure to educate a child and prepare her/him for work is
so high that parents feel they must do all they can to remove risk
from that process.  And for the active child who does not focus,
e.g. on school work, the remedy, all too often, is prescription
medication.

Millennials live under a heightened psychological burden caused by
increased amounts of homework in the primary and secondary grades,
increased competition for acceptance to colleges and universities,
larger college costs, increased competition for jobs, increased
financial burdens (paying off student loans, employers shifting
training costs onto workers), etc.  This increased psychological
burden has consequences, for example, depression and drug use to
stimulate performance.  In addition, the competitive system turns
everyone into a potential loser, which also results in increased
stress.

Add to that the fact that there is increasing inequality of both
compensation and wealth.  With respect to compensation, there are
fewer jobs, fewer good paying jobs, and a very few jobs with
extremely high compensation.  The result is that there are more
losers than ever before.  With respect to wealth, there is
increasing inequality both within and across generations.  Members
of older cohorts are richer than those in younger ones.  Within a
cohort, there are increasing extremes of wealth and poverty.  And,
there are ever fewer parents who can afford the costs of more
intensive parenting and more expensive college education.

Harris has some doubts about whether the elite classes in the U.S.
which are becoming smaller in size but larger in wealth, can hold on
to control of their privileged position.  I suspect that Harris
understands that those outside the elite classes are being bought
off by more shiny toys and cheaper consumer goods.  The need for
those consumer goods at lower prices in order to reduce the pressure
from those less privileged and who are receiving a smaller portion
of the economic pie is likely one motivation for push-back from the
rich on any legislation that would increase the cost of goods.

And, although I may be putting words in his mouth, I'm not putting
this idea in his head, because it is surely already there: Harris
does seem to want a revolution.  He wants millennials to take
serious action to change their world and to take it back from those
who currently control it.  He wants some push-back against an
economic system and a government that more and more sides with
corporations against workers and that more and more gives
capital/owners a larger percentage of the profits.

One of Harris's interesting complaints is that kids (students) are
being asked to do more work, in particular, more homework, and are
not paid to do it.  What's more, when, and if, they get to college,
they must pay in order to be allowed to do it.  Harris calls our
hiding this school work "pedagogical masking".  Perhaps so, but I'm
not sure what should be done about it or whether even Harris himself
knows what he wants done about it.  The future employment that these
students are doing more work to prepare for provides fewer jobs at
lower pay, I'm sure Harris would like to see more jobs at better pay
in exchange for all that work.

Harris is not so much skeptical about whether kids need to try to
get an education, as he is about (1) the value of that education for
obtaining a good paying job and (2) the excessively high cost of
that education.  (See "The myth of education skepticism", NY Times,
3/17/2018.)  Summarizing this idea: we're not skeptical about
whether we've got to do it (get an education); we know that we do;
we're skeptical (and cynical) about how we're getting screwed when
we do it: too much money and not enough value.

04/06/2018

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