Aram Zucker-Scharff

Meet the New Underclass: People With Ph.D.s in Science:

Once upon a time, newly-minted science Ph.D.s would get research jobs at a senior scientist’s laboratory, to train and hone the ideas they would explore at their own labs. But now the supply of post-doctoral students is outpacing demand, creating a new, hyper-educated underclass.

Why You Should Start Taking Millennials Seriously:

There are more millennials in the U.S. than there are baby boomers. Why do they get so many eye rolls?

Ugh… the whole tone of this piece feels like it is trying to sell me something. A few problems:

1. The painting of Millennial as a single group accomplishing things together. What BS. Yes there is a more diverse Millennial population, but they are incredibly divided as a generation of Millennials includes plenty of conservatives, sexists, racists, and people working to undermine these things. 

2. Millennials are no more or less likely to vote than the last generation – http://www.nytimes.com/…/voter-turnout-for-boomers-and… – while they may poll positive in large numbers on the mentioned issues, and they may show up to protests, the actual work on liberal social goals is done just as much if not more than a slightly guilty generation of Boomers, who, suddenly seeing that greed isn’t so good after all, are slowly turning their attention to the social issues that are rising in America. 

3. It’s super awesome that Milliennials are optimistic, but optimism does nothing in reality. And it won’t considering that, among our generation, only 35% consider running for office honorable.

I disagree with the ridiculous trend of articles portraying Millennials as lazy, selfish, or foolish. But painting them with a wide smiley-face brush and putting freaking Zuckerberg as the generational hero is equally as foolish and unhelpful. 

If Zuckerberg actually represents the generation, we’re in big trouble. He follows the same rules as the last generation, profit at expense of people, ethics as a non-issue. I doubt he does. What he has done, mostly by accident, is been one of the leading forces in inflating the economy and driving the tech bubble that, along with the real estate and debt bubbles are going to come crashing down squarely on the heads of our generation.

I don’t care if anyone takes Millennials seriously. The other generations can fly off as far as I care. We don’t need to beg for attention here. As a group, especially if the cited statistics are correct in labeling us the largest, the important thing is that we take ourselves seriously. 

We need to stop pretending we can all be Zuckerberg and realize 75% of all startups fail and that the ‘startup culture’ is an excuse for VCs to use our youth to front to investors as “hip, cool and innovative” and our bad job prospects to work us on the cheap. That the wealthy and older generation is using politics and finance to basically drive us into the depths, to grind up a generation as meat to fuel their retirements so they can get out wealthy and leave no resources behind. We need to realize that every underpaid job and unpaid internship we ‘optimistically’ take is basically driving down everyone’s salary. After all, when someone’s willing to do something like what you do, but for free, it means that what you do must be worth less. 

We don’t need to be “taken seriously” we need to take ourselves seriously. The effect and aspects of what we are, what we do, what jobs we take, what environment we create. We need to ‘take seriously’ the mass of threats that pulls down our ‘optimistic’ future on top of us. 

I’m normally a fan of NPR, but I just can’t find the enthusiasm to cheer on what looks like pablum to me.

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“The single most important number in today’s report is 102 million, which is the rounded sum of adults either not in the labor force or unemployed, and it amounts to 41% of the adult population. […]

The prime age [25-54] employment ratio has never been as low as it has remained since the end of the Great Recession.”

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– September Jobs: Some Numbers Bubblevision Didn’t Mention.

“”The first major benefit of this bottom-up perspective on inequality: it is very practical. If we ask which groups are getting left behind, we suddenly find ourselves with an agenda for effective action against poverty. A second benefit also becomes clear: once we know which groups are impoverished and excluded, we can often get a better sense of the political context that explains both action and inaction.””

– To end inequality, we must realise that it isn’t about the rich, it’s about the poor. And we know almost nothing about them.