Slackonomics “is full of interesting mini-arguments, including an entertaining takedown of Ethan Watters’s Urban Tribes …” Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2008
I have to admit rather enjoying the fact that the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer noted my dissection of Urban Tribes, a pseudo-sociology trend book that tries to argue that Generation X is not settling down and getting married because “friends are the new family.” One of the more unsubstantiated reasons he attributes to Generation X never “growing up” is because we have a lot of disposable income and, what’s more, “In the long run, most of us knew we had an ace in the hole. Many of us were in line to be the beneficiaries of the largest transfer of wealth that had ever taken place from one generation to the next.”
There was plenty of evidence this wasn’t true when he wrote it and more evidence keeps coming. An article in today’s Times is titled, “8 Reasons You Should Not Expect an Inheritance.” You can read it and weep for yourself, but here is one point worth highlighting: A 2004 survey “noted that 21 percent of people born after 1964 thought they would inherit some money someday. After all, most of them [meaning us Gen Xers] still have living parents or grandparents. But with each passing year, the pressures on the nest eggs of those older people will only grow. The truly rich will be fine, as they usually are. But a lot of other people, even retirees with net worths well into the seven figures, could end up spending every dime before they die.”
I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that the new economy and the old safety net system are seriously out of whack. Pensions, Medicare and Social Security? Please. As the article points out, those are reasons two and three not to expect an inheritance in the first place.
Ya know, I try really hard not to take shots at baby-boomers, mostly because they’re such an easy target these days, but sometimes you just have to shake your head. Charlie Cook, the most incisive political analyst working today (in large part due to his complete lack of partisanship and dispassionate approach to sussing out the facts) has a very enlightening — and sad — analysis about the presidential race. He has been trying to puzzle out why the race between Obama and McCain is so close. And it turns out that Obama is WAY behind McCain when it comes to white baby-boomers!
In a piece today for the National Journal, he notes that, “The political environment is wretched for Republicans. In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted June 6-9, respondents preferred a Democrat to win the presidency by 16 percentage points, 51 percent versus 35 percent for a Republican.” So why is the match up between Obama and McCain much closer, he asks?
“Obama trailed McCain by 9 points among both 18-to-34-year-old white voters and those 65 and older. He lagged by 10 points among 35-to-49-year-old whites [roughly Generation X]. But among those 50 to 64, Obama is losing by a whopping 18 points, 51 percent to 33 percent.”
Keep in mind that these numbers include Republicans, but still, aren’t boomers supposed to be the ones who advocated for diversity, tolerance, peace and love and all that crap? As usual for the boomers, those are ideals of convenience — nice only when they don’t cost anything, like their position as leaders of the country or increased taxes. Obama has talked repeatedly about the need for America to turn the page and usher in a new generation of leadership. Perhaps even more to the point, Charlie Cook wonders, “is [Obama's] difficulty that these are voters in their prime earnings years, when they are most sensitive to the issue of taxes?” Undoubtedly. Throw in a little unreconstructed racism and you’ve got an 18 point deficit with a 71 year-old white guy who thinks we should stay in Iraq for 100 years if that’s what it takes to “win,” whatever that means. So much for peace and love.
All over the news today is a story about two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers who were indicted on charges that they defrauded investors. According to the Times, prosecutors are building their case on e-mails between the two men who were arrested today. “I think we should close the funds now,” wrote Matthew Tannin to Ralph Cioffi (they plead not guilty) before telling investors it was a good time to put money in their funds that were heavily invested in the subprime mortgage market. One allegedly withdrew his own money while investors lost about $1.6 billion, “setting off a financial chain reaction that has rattled global markets, led to more than $350 billion in write-downs, cost a number of executives their jobs and culminated in the demise of Bear Stearns itself,” the Times reports.
I argue in Slackonomics that it could very well be up to Generation X to bring the economy back from the brink. First, do we kill all the Hedge Fund managers? Not necessarily. In this week’s New York magazine is a profile of 39-year-old Hedge Fund manager David Einhorn, a very successful AND highly principled manager of Greenlight Capital. I almost wrote “but” instead of “and” as if successful and principled are mutually exclusive, but that is in fact my point — they aren’t! Putting these two ideas back together is one of the challenges facing Generation X as we move into positions of leadership.
For five years I’ve lived on St. Marks Place (a street in the East Village famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page). I’ve taken many photos of random street life, and sifting through them, it’s clear that a lot of activity revolves around creative pursuits. Of course, this isn’t a surprise to anyone who lives here, but only recently have there been attempts to actually quantify the creative economy.
One fascinating look at how the creative economy works in New York is the book, The Warhol Economy, written by my friend and USC prof. Elizabeth Currid (which I also wrote about here).
More recently, the National Endowment for the Arts released an important study titled, “Artists in the Workforce, 1990-2005,” which Janet Babin reported on for Marketplace and quoted me ever so briefly (listen to the piece here). This time period coincides exactly with the the entrance of Generation X in the labor force, and is therefore a chronicle of the impact that Xer artists have had on the creative economy. It’s huge. Representing 1.4 percent of the labor force, artists represent a larger group than the legal profession (lawyers, judges and paralegals) and medical doctors (physicians, surgeons and dentists). Aggregate income is about $70 billion. Of 
course, this includes all generations of artists, but the median age of almost every category of artist profiled in the study falls within the demographics of Generation X.
The NEA study confirms what I write about anecdotally in Slackonomics: Compared to other workers, Gen X artists tend to be better educated (twice as likely to have college degrees) and are more entrepreneurial (3.5 times more likely to be self-employed). Despite the fact that artists are not as well compensated given their education levels compared to other professionals (about $6000 less), and are chronically underemployed, the number of Gen X artists has grown at the same rate as the total labor 
force. So clearly there’s a payoff that’s not measured in dollars.
Artists are also highly concentrated in urban areas, a fact that Currid not only documents but explains: artists are much more likely to live and work in close proximity to each other because social interaction is necessary to develop ideas, make contacts and bring creative products to the market.
As the report points out, “There is no way to understand the new American economy without recognizing the role of its two million creative workers.”
Photos, top left to right: a film being made on St. Marks, a trumpet player in the Howl Parade, and a writer typing on an old-fashioned typewriter on the sidewalk at night; from top to bottom: dancers in the Howl Parade, a painter at the Fringe Festival, and a photographer doing a fashion shoot (click to enlarge any of the pics).
The NYT Sunday Magazine has a cover story titled, “When Mom and Dad Share it All.” Sadly, the term “Generation X” isn’t used, but that is clearly who this article is about. Author Lisa Belkin cites research showing that the majority of housework and parental care is still done by women, yet the story focuses on Generation X parents who are changing the rules by sharing things equally. Seems to be a contradiction, yeah? Not necessarily.
As I point out in my forthcoming book Slackonomics, Generation X does share parenting more equally than previous generations, but it doesn’t show up in the stats. Why? There is a big difference between the entire demographic of parents, and the subset of middle class, educated couples in their 30’s and mid-40s. This is the cultural definition of Generation X and the people Lisa Belkin focuses on. Because they are a small portion of the overall parenting population, the extent of the change is diminished. But not only is this subset of the population embracing shared parenting, they’re having more children than the average because of it.