I do not disagree that the economic outlook for folks from my generation and beyond is bleaker for those of us who occupy the middle class (and lower), but I want to push back at two points:
My point on net worth was as much a comment about net worth in the general sense (we don’t own houses) as it was about the collective inclination to fall back into comfort, using the economy as an excuse to avoid building it. How many of us moved back in with our parents rather than scraping and saving on our own? How many of us are buying $5.00 lattes (or $2.50 coffees!) every morning without batting an eye? How many of us are turning to wicket politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in a desperate attempt to “reclaim what ought to be ours?” How many of us aren’t getting married because we conveniently believe we “ought to be settled” before we move into that part of our lives? All of that is effeminacy, in this case excused in our own minds by the actions of others.
Along this line, if Jesus’ parable of the talents is a functional allegory, then none of us are excused for being given 1 talent when Gen X got 5 and the Baby Boomers were given 10. To bury our talent in the ground is to embrace effeminacy.
My point is that I am a 30 year old man with a wife, two children, and hope for another to come next year. I work with many members of my own generational cohort, some of whom are committed believers. I am the only one with a spouse. I am the only one with children. My wife and I are the youngest family at a still-relatively-young suburban church. The economy has not favored me - last year, our attempt to buy our first house fell through. My own actions, detailed in my prior testimony, screwed us by failing to lead us into prudent financial decisions in the earlier years of my marriage that would have almost certainly prevented the home purchase from falling through.
And yet, those decisions were makeable. They were there to be made. It was my own effeminacy, my own put-upon-ness, that told me I could excuse car buying and credit card-style borrowing because the economy stinks and I deserved the life I wanted. The reason the pokes and prods about “avocado toast” are valid is because we want to eat like kings on a budget of paupers and refuse to take responsibility for the fact that we live in the one economic system known in human history that affords us the ability to climb from impoverishment to wealth and have decided we want the right to that feast without the responsibility of bringing it to the table.
I do not say all of this to grand stand or to beat my own chest. I say all this because I think this is the point at which challenging men to shed their societal invitation to be effeminate is strongest. If we let the younger millennials believe they have an excuse to be effeminate and are also not calling effeminacy for what it is, then we are failing each other.
We should not let the economy be an excuse to avoid wisdom or to shed our mantles of manhood.
Yes, you are right that the Boomer choices were not entirely spontaneous and individual. Rather, I’d say the Boomer generation was the first in which the ethos of self-gratification came into full flower. This ethos was subsequently adopted by their older peers in the Silent Generation and of course carried down by the succeeding generations. What distinguishes the Boomers is that they received the most material and social wealth and passed on the least.
Well, there have been wars throughout history, but sons didn’t turn out like the Boomers. I would instead attribute it to the psychological theories of the time that greatly influenced child-raising (and still do). The Boomers nonetheless had the benefit of continuation of older practices by inertia, intact families, and a mother at home. The following Gen-X generation that I am part of was the first to experience widespread parental divorce, absence of a father, and mothers away at work.
Of course, the primary reason for this is that the Boomers by and large decided to have few (or no) children.
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Certainly.
In my metro area, the median price home costs $600K but the median household income is only $77K (and note that many households are dual-earner, so the typical man earns less than this). One rule of thumb is that one shouldn’t spend more than three times annual income on a house, but in my area it would take a year and a half of household income merely to build up a 20% down payment. Foregoing a daily $5 latte over a whole year would knock off less than 1/60th of that downpayment. Yes, one should scrape and save on one’s own, but let’s not kid ourselves that “avocado toast” is what is preventing Millennials from buying houses. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it didn’t used to be this way.
I completely agree, and I honor you for growing in manhood in the presence of adverse circumstances. You were wrong to spend beyond your means, and I rejoice that you have repented of that. And yes, it is still true that our current economic system affords us the opportunity to climb from poverty to wealth, but that is less true than it was decades ago.
Great post from our friend KR. I am almost exactly your age, and have dealt with very similar problems.
I agree with Joel that the economy is poorer for us than it was for previous generations. I believe this to be a corporate judgment of God on our country. God deals with us as individuals and also as families and nations. Even though all are not equally guilty, all suffer.
We have moral agency to work for change, and I have no hard principle against public policy helping. Yet men are still responsible and it is unseemly to complain.