Why Baby Boomers Don't Understand Occupy Wall Street

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by Paul Campos

I am a baby boomer. Like many people my age, I have a high-paying and generally pleasant job, which features excellent benefits and a flexible work schedule. I’m also one of those people who, not long ago, would have dismissed the Occupy Wall Street protesters as just another bunch of spoiled kids, indulging in political street theater, while lacking any serious and constructive agenda. (Those people seem to include almost all of the mainstream media, which until a few days ago limited their coverage of the protesters to mocking their clothes and music. Predictably, time has transformed many boomers into their own parents.)

I am, in other words, part of what could be called the Clueless Generation. The Clueless Generation is made up of middle-aged, professionally successful people, who grew up in a nation that featured a mostly thriving economy, low-cost higher education, and some minimal commitment to economic justice. As a consequence, we graduated from school with little or no debt, got good jobs that featured real possibilities for advancement, and have on the whole ended up doing very well for ourselves.

A lot of us have also become insufferably smug and complacent. Over the past year I was lucky enough to be jolted out of my own smugness and complacency by a series of painful encounters with recent law school graduates. I began to investigate the question of how many law graduates were getting jobs as lawyers, and discovered that a shocking percentage—more than half—were not.

Since I went to law school in the 1980s, the cost of legal education has quadrupled in real terms, thereby ensuring most current law students will graduate with six figures of debt from law school alone. Meanwhile legal employers are downsizing and outsourcing, to the point where the ratio between new lawyers and new jobs for lawyers is approximately two to one. And most of the new jobs don’t pay enough to allow even those who are lucky enough to get them to pay their educational debts.

My attempts to bring this economic and human crisis to the attention of the law-school world have been met mostly with denial and incomprehension. It seems the Clueless Generation is largely incapable of grasping that this is no ordinary downturn in the business cycle, but rather that America is no longer the same country in which we were so fortunate to come of age.

For the still largely unacknowledged crisis in legal education merely mirrors the vastly larger crisis in our society as a whole. Millions of young adults are graduating from college and professional schools with massive amounts of educational debt—debt that, thanks to sweetheart legislative deals which lined the pockets of bankers, cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. In just the past decade, total outstanding educational debt in America has risen more than five-fold, from $180 billion to nearly $1 trillion. Meanwhile, the international crisis of global capitalism has led employers large and small to do everything possible to cut labor costs. This has produced the current 15 percent official unemployment rate among Americans in their twenties. (The real unemployment rate is far higher, since the government only counts people as unemployed if they did zero hours of paid work in the past week and have been actively seeking employment at some point in the last four weeks).

What the Clueless Generation finds difficult to comprehend is that literally millions of highly educated and hardworking young Americans—people who followed all the rules and did everything we told them to do—are either severely underemployed or have no jobs of any kind. Meanwhile, they struggle with the massive educational debts they incurred after the baby boomers decided that access to the bargain-priced higher education from which we benefitted wasn’t so important after all.

Now, as the protests spread across the country, the core of the Occupy Wall Street movement—young, over-educated, and underemployed—is beginning to find common cause with many other people disillusioned with a social system that continues to grant its privileged elite ever-greater rewards. The compelling images from what the movement calls “the 99 percent” paint a portrait of our new Gilded Age that we ignore at our peril.

America’s first Gilded Age in the late 19th century led eventually to mass protests and nationwide strikes, which played a key role in the development of both progressive politics and the modern labor movement. The widespread labor insurgency of the mid-1930s pushed FDR to adopt the most important and long-lasting features of the New Deal. And the civil rights and anti-war mass mobilizations of the 1960s helped overcome some of the great injustices of that era.

It seems that at this moment we in the Clueless Generation could use a reminder that the 1960s were about something more than sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/15/occupy-wall-street-why-baby-boomers-don-t-understand-the-protests.html

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

• I was born before 1944 - no one cares what I think.
  

[SMR 368]

I was born after 1964 (in 1986 if anyone cares) and while I understand the protest, that doesn't mean that I agree with it. I paid my way through college graduating in 2005 with no debt. I paid about $7000 in tuition a year to go to a top school (ranked 27 in the nation in engineering). I lived at home while I was at school and took the bus. After graduating, I voluntarily took 2 years off in Russia. I came back and got a regular 8 to 5 job and am in the top 25% (according to that other poll here). I actually had several other comparable offers that I turned down. I just finished a Masters degree in the evening from a top 100 in the nation business school. I paid about $15,000 out of pocket for the degree, total. I owe no debts and own two cars. I'm happily married, have good health insurance through my employer, and have a beautiful 1 year old son. I have a nice apartment and am saving up to buy a house.

So maybe I am the 99%, but it looks pretty good from where I'm standing.

When I say that I understand the protests, I mean that I agree there are problems in the current banking system and the corporate governance system. The problem is, it's immature and irresponsible to blame all of your problems on that. In particular, I have an issue with the concept that these OWS people "followed all the rules and did everything we told them to," as the OP and others I have heard and read contend. What does that even mean? Could someone give me a copy of those rules? I don't care how favorable the terms seem and what kind of job you expect to get (realistic or not), one of the rules should be not racking up 6 figures of debt in college. It's just not a good idea. It never has been. Also, you should consider what the job prospects in your field are. Do you need a post grad degree to be marketable? What type of income do you expect to make? Is this a field that is in demand or is it flooded (like the law profession is right now)?

And more importantly, what does obedience to this list of rules and the instructions of the "we" from the OP entitle a person to? Does fulfilling some checklist entitle you to access to Easy Street? Someone please send me this checklist. There are problems in the system. But the reason these OWS are unemployed has little to do with the bonus that some banker made last year. The OWS protest is just about envy and greed.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Boomer. They are weak-minded spoiled little whining commies that don't want to take responsibility for living useless lives. They are dangerous. They can be manipulated by their evil demonic overlords. They should be beat with clubs and pepper sprayed at every opportunity.

[^_^ 5,021]

I have an issue with the concept that these OWS people "followed all the rules and did everything we told them to," as the OP and others I have heard and read contend. What does that even mean?

Good question. I've been thinking about that myself and to me it reveals a certain childlike naivete. It's the mentality you're supposed to let go in middle school. In school if you do what the teachers tell you to do, you do well. There are no other externalities that affect your outcome. But then you go to high school and college (maybe) and then the real world (hopefully) and you start to realize that you can do exactly what those you respect say you should and still not succeed in the way you thought you would. Such is life.

But that sounds positively fatalistic, doesn't it? As in, I will work hard and sweat and bleed but if it doesn't work... que sera sera. That's not a realistic expectation to have either. Not of human beings. People anger. People want. And when a large enough number of people see their expectations dashed in spite of them doing what they thought society wanted them to do, you end up with a lot of angry people. And then you end up with OWS.

I get it.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

I get it.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Edited October 17, 2011 by Crusty Old Perv

[luckytxn 2,265]

I understand and have no problem with them staging protests. I personally think they are missing the mark and going after the wrong segment. Even if you get the spread the wealth it will not solve the problems that they see. In fact it will more than likely make the problem worse. No one ever appreciates things unless they have earned them. This is about Socialist ideas that are being demanded. We have now had Socialism since FDR and it has never proven workable in the long run. We have had now the war on poverty and the Great Deal and still the problem exists. The war on drugs has been going forever it seems and we still have the problem.. The only thing we have done is make the problem worse and spend a lot of money doing it and causing a lot of casualties.

I also worked hard and earned a degree with no debt. It was the way it was done back then. I did have a lot of it paid for by my state that pays all tuition and fees if you are a veteran. Many of these kids would have been better off learning a trade. Most are not cut out to be academics.

[Fandango 1,440]

My husband went back to uni to complete another degree, and just graduated last year. He has student loan debt. He pays it. *shrug*

[slim 1,530]

What's interesting about this article is it doesn't take into account the trends in employment.

I remember going through high school and several colleges came to visit us to discuss their courses of study. All the usual suspects were there and some really touted their liberal arts degrees, business, engineering, etc., but by far, the most memorable (for me, anyway) were the schools that dedicated their presentation to careers where the aging workforce would be retiring soon or the projected growth would ensure job security from immediately after college all the way through retirement. They didn't necessarily say, "we have the best curriculum and programs" they said, "if you graduate from our program, you'll have a job for life."

Too many kids today think just because they went to college and have a degree they're entitled (the evil e word) to a job. And a good job at that. That is simply not the way it works in the real world.

Then you have others who think because they've worked a job - any job - for twenty years they're entitled (see, there it is again) to continuing employment. That is not the way it works in the real world either.

Well, not yet, anyway.

Had any of those folks worked a little more on their future instead of their right now, they probably would've been alright.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

[mawilson 2,133]

Good question. I've been thinking about that myself and to me it reveals a certain childlike naivete. It's the mentality you're supposed to let go in middle school. In school if you do what the teachers tell you to do, you do well. There are no other externalities that affect your outcome. But then you go to high school and college (maybe) and then the real world (hopefully) and you start to realize that you can do exactly what those you respect say you should and still not succeed in the way you thought you would. Such is life.

But that sounds positively fatalistic, doesn't it? As in, I will work hard and sweat and bleed but if it doesn't work... que sera sera. That's not a realistic expectation to have either. Not of human beings. People anger. People want. And when a large enough number of people see their expectations dashed in spite of them doing what they thought society wanted them to do, you end up with a lot of angry people. And then you end up with OWS.

I get it.

You are wise far beyond your years, young Jedi.

[SMR 368]

Good question. I've been thinking about that myself and to me it reveals a certain childlike naivete. It's the mentality you're supposed to let go in middle school. In school if you do what the teachers tell you to do, you do well. There are no other externalities that affect your outcome. But then you go to high school and college (maybe) and then the real world (hopefully) and you start to realize that you can do exactly what those you respect say you should and still not succeed in the way you thought you would. Such is life.

But that sounds positively fatalistic, doesn't it? As in, I will work hard and sweat and bleed but if it doesn't work... que sera sera. That's not a realistic expectation to have either. Not of human beings. People anger. People want. And when a large enough number of people see their expectations dashed in spite of them doing what they thought society wanted them to do, you end up with a lot of angry people. And then you end up with OWS.

I get it.

I agree up until the last two sentences. If you are not achieving the results you expect and think that the system is rigged against you, how is camping in the park going to help? That's the part that I really don't get. It's a complete non-sequitur.

[slim 1,530]

What's funny to me is these folks think doing more nothing (as opposed to the nothing they've been doing their whole lives) is going to result in something.

In this country, you have to do something to change things. Hope is not a course of action.

[dalegg 143]

I was born after '64-- by the way, how did we choose that arbitrary date? Is that when the Op was born?

But I would say I don't really get it. So they are protesting that wealth is not equally distributed within companies, but how does that affect most of these protesters? I'm guessing they don't actually work for the companies they are complaining about, because how could they spend all of this time off work protesting if they did? So if the top brass at Wal Mart decides to spread its profits around to its employees are these guys going to go away even if they don't work for wal mart?