Generation Bubble
Economic Crisis
Home Cheat Home: Against Property Ownership
In days past (say, the 1950s or -60s) we might of been rewarded for trying to put down foundations — a warm hearth, a solid education, a happy family, a fruitful career with a reliable company, a rewarding retirement and then off into the sunset. But life’s different now, far more different than it was even five years ago. The man or woman with the fewest ties, someone who refuses to sign contracts, create dependents and make promises, is going to come out the winner in this seemingly winnerless economy. A volatile, unpredictable economy demands a new class of nomadic professionals, a wandering, unsentimental cohort of single, childless men and women willing to follow the fluctuation of the dollar’s value like so many sharks in search of the elusive bait ball of whiting. They will comprise our new middle class.
Hansen Agonistes: Consumerism, Inforrhea, and the End of the End of History
Though it’s tempting to indulge oneself in the twilight of mindless consumerism, to party like it’s (still) 1999, to do so, I’ve come to realize, is to engage in folly. Misinformation abounds, and the only way to navigate the treacherous waters of the current political situation is … well … to pay attention and to exercise discernment. For we’ve entered that stage where the electronic equivalent of propaganda pamphlets are falling from the sky like so many spent locusts. Perhaps it’s time, then, to bid adieu to a world that doesn’t seem like it’s coming back any time soon. One of those pesky historical shifts has occurred these past few years. What lies ahead is anyone’s guess.
The Body Economic: One Nation Under Finance Capital
Certainly many fortunes hung in the balance during the dark days of TARP, TALF, PPIP and the other bilious alphabet soups of the Great Panic of 2008. I can’t help but think, however, that it would’ve been better had the entire rotten edifice that is High Finance collapsed. At least then 2010 would have found America nearly two years into the rebuilding.
Detroit Nosh City: Glemie Beasley and the Future of Food
The one-two punch of de-industrialization and real-estate devaluation, though it dealt grievous injuries to the city’s two-footed denizens, has, strangely enough, set Detroit on a path toward becoming a veritable bushmeat Eden.
Children of a Lesser God: The Global Precariat and the Goldman Sachs Gospel
Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein and Metropolitan‘s Charlie Black share the sort of myopically grandiose perception of their class. For them, the value their class is made plain by its continued existence. Should their class disappear, Armageddon would ensue. Seas would boil. The moon would turn to blood. Stock options would go unexercised. It’s this inflated sense of vital necessity which lay behind Blankfein’s bloviation and Charlie Black’s lucubration. Ultimately, it underwrites the sense of the unique tragedy attending the urbanite bourgeoisie’s decline, as well as the logic of “Too big to fail” and the ex cathedra decree of “doing God’s work.” Apparently no longer content with being known as “Government Sachs” for the various former executives who now stride Washington D. C.’s corridors of power, Blankfein and his merry band seek nothing less than the foundation of one holy catholic and apostolic church, consecrated to Mammon, their tribal deity, who demands regular bloodletting and smoldering hecatombs.
Imagined Communities: Rebecca Solnit’s Disaster Paradises
The order in need of reestablishing after disasters, it goes without saying, is the elites’ order, one replete with manifold modes of domination. But in the interim, before such order is reestablished, workaday folks glimpse the power that resides in them alone, one which the dominant culture typically short-circuits with its constant exhortations to earn and spend. It’s as if principles of anarchism — not theoretical anarchism, but a practical, functioning sort — are inscribed in the human genome. Indeed, if there’s anything to regret about disasters, its that the remarkable communities (Solnit goes so far as to call them “utopian”) which spring up during them are all too quickly folded back into the status quo. Yet, short-lived as these communities are, they endure long enough to make me believe that there’s something behind the stenciled graffiti I so often see emblazoned on walls, park benches and sidewalks: Another world is possible.
Nonprofit Squeeze: Tax-Exempt Institutions Feel the Recession's Pinch
One would suppose these institutions held nothing but reliable, blue-chip stock on their portfolios, stock that, while certainly not generating spectacular returns, at least produced reliable ones. No, these nonprofits were after sexier stuff — all gamine gyrations of puts, calls, strikes and options. And I begin to speculate myself. I wonder if these nonprofits weren’t up to something altogether venal, exploiting their tax exempt status as a way of increasing their profit margin.
Death Cab for Booty: Wall Street Dead Set on Its Latest Investment Vehicle
In an economy based on traffic in life settlements and the derivative instruments spun off from them, centenarians would be as reviled as smokers are now, while smokers would become media darlings. The biggest loser would no longer be the fatso who sweats off pounds for a television audience, but the investor whose bond value rides on that fatso’s never getting off the couch. I can imagine the monthly magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) printing vouchers for Wild Turkey, Big Macs and Haagen-Dazs, while featuring a curiously high number of articles encouraging its subscribers to take up extreme sports.
Arabian Bites: It's Rich Eat Rich in the Saudi Kingdom
Such Olympian rifts among the super-rich seem like they’ll become the new normal, giving the lie to the incredible esprit de coeur and sense of shared purpose writer David Rothkopf credits them with in his depressing, dispiriting paean to plutocracy, Superclass. Yes, it appears that those “differently sheltered” populating tent cities and Hoovervilles across this great nation who are otherwise occupied with stirring watery pots of squirrel soup over fires fueled by shredded 401K-earnings and Social Security statements can look forward to a little old-fashioned skullduggery among the sheikhs of Araby.
Lax Americana: Higher Education and Innovation Stagnation
There’s no way to demonstrate positively that the mind which can move from Moliere to microchips designs better microchips than the mind which concerns itself solely with microchips. This could, at best, be demonstrated over a long period of time, with sustained attention and infinite patience (maybe something along the lines of Michael Apted’s Up series), as a generation liberated from liberal-arts curricula show themselves easily buffaloed by tasks that do not perfectly conform to their limited repertoire of technical aptitudes. But until such time as one can assess that critical appreciation of just this number of Botticellis or that number Bach fugues equals this optimal number on a creativity index, suspicion of disutility will continue plague humanities.
Anton Steinpilz
Rob Horning
Ylajali Hansen
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