Are We Sacrificing Our Younger Generations To Our Older Ones?

It can feel that way, but part of the story is really just people living longer.

Here is a pretty good TED Talk from Scott Galloway, posted semi-recently:

You have to take a chunk of this with a graint of salt. This is a rich 50-something guy railing against the system he benefited from. He’s got some good suggestions, but we have seen this movie before. Tech bros do it all the time. I like guys like Tristan Harris, but they got rich from places like Google, and then go and rant about the industry that made them rich. At some point, it is bullshit.

If nothing else, Galloway has a lot of charts and graphs (44 slides total!) in this video and you can reference them to pull various points about the decline of American civilization, or America’s potential “failure to launch.”

America’s Potential “Failure To Launch” Problem

This is a complicated issue that creates a lot of misguided debate, so I can try to relatively simplify it for anyone who might stumble across this:

• One big issue is simply people living longer. As people live into their mid-80s and beyond, they need more money to exist, and they pull more off any perceived safety nets and less money goes back down the chain in the form of inheritance, etc.
• One other big issue is the cost of things then vs. now: Everyone has the potential to wax poetic, but if you could buy a five-bedroom house for $170,000 vs. now it might start at $670,000 … that is a substantial difference. Same with the price of a four-year degree, which we’ve conned people into thinking is a workplace must. Most things you do in white-collar jobs, you could honestly do after sixth grade. It’s not that hard, and “critical thinking” is not required…