If you haven't read the latest Business Week, Michelle Conlin wrote an excellent article on my generation - which they refer to as the "Millennials". Please check it out if you haven't already as it is worth the read.
On the Millenials growing political influence,
Across the political spectrum, they say, Millennials are mobilizing around the idea that the federal government's operating system is in dire need of a sweeping update. Iowa and New Hampshire proved that candidates ignore these voters at their peril. Youth turnout surged by 25 percentage points in the Granite State over 2004, according to the Student Public Interest Research Group, which is dedicated to getting young people to the polls.
On why they are becoming politically active,
At first, the Millennials were the Children of the Rising Dow. They grew up during the greatest period of wealth creation in modern history, but watched their elders consume resources and run up deficits as if the party would never end. Then came the dot-com crash, terrorism, war, climate change. Epic uncertainty informs their worldview. When asked to name the issues they care most deeply about, bread-and-butter concerns such as the economy, health care, and education routinely rank high. In an October Pew Research Center poll, 80% of voters aged 18 to 29 cited the economy as a "very important" concern, vs. 61% who felt the environment was a major issue—a telling finding given all the campus activism swirling around global warming these days.
Talk of recession, a weak dollar, and rising unemployment all animate Millennials' economic angst. But there's a lot more to it than that. Young people may not know that the inflation-adjusted earnings of new college grads have fallen 8.5% since 2000. But they can feel it in the deflated salaries and shriveled benefits they command, even in white-collar jobs. They don't need an economics degree to understand that the middle class is squeezed. This generation has grown up watching parents struggle to stretch a buck. They lived through the mass layoffs during the corporate scandals earlier this century.
A more apt name for people like her may be Generation Debt. No group has ever started life so deeply in the hole, due mainly to mounting college costs, dwindling financial aid, and credit-card debt. The average college student now graduates with $20,000 in loans....
On how they are getting it done,
Given all the pressures and economic gloom, you might wonder why today's twentysomethings don't despair and disengage. There's a simple answer: They weren't raised that way. Growing up in the era of cater-to-kids politics, the V-Chip, and helicopter parenting, they were the most coddled generation ever, infused with their elders' belief that they possessed unique abilities. They also have been the most marketed-to generation, giving rise to their BS-despising, post-ironic disdain for any political solution—or candidate—that doesn't seem straight up. Thus their attraction so far to candidates, like Obama, McCain, and Paul, who they believe are outsiders representing change.
As any chief marketing officer knows, this generation believes in "owning" its favorite brands. Its members carry the same ethos to their political activism. Bringing the music and media industries to their knees was also empowering—providing Gen Yers with the self-confidence for a third-way, post-partisan manner of doing things. It's striking that the largest group of 18- to 24-year-olds, some 40%, consider themselves independent, according to a recent survey conducted by Harvard University, with 35% identifying as Democrats and 25% as Republicans. Millennials, like many Americans, may have lost faith in the political Establishment, but they have utter faith in themselves and their wiki-inspired abilities to get things done.
Are the Millenials the new Soccer Mom or Nascar Dad? Maybe. Many people who argue against going for the youth vote say that for years it has continuously been a poor investment - as they have had poor voter turnout for years. However, I believe there is no difference between a 25 year old and 45 year old except for incentive.
In any democracy (especially the one we currently have), voters turn out based on the assumption that that there are enough other like-minded people who are going to punch the same ballot as them. While most voters have the incentive to vote, they only end up in the voting booth if they believe that there are others who share that incentive as well. This is nothing groundbreaking, and is why targeting (and sometimes artificially creating) certain groups is a major strategy for politicians. In turn, organized groups of every sort have had enormous political influence in the past. The recent apathy and low voter turnout as a whole has come from the fact that the majority of our population - lower to middle class white people - have had no real identity. This has a lot to do with the dissolution of many labor unions as this group of people is the biggest subset of a major group - labor. They have no major unifying social cause to get behind, as they are the majority are not largely repressed in that respect. Their main motivation is economic, and unions gave them assurance that their vote would be cast with many others.
Since labor has deorganized, politicians have been desperately trying to artificially group these people together to get their vote on election day. These groups are formed usually in a social or cultural context, but as a way of taking advantage of some sort of other deep-rooted economic desires. In the 1990's it was the suburban "Soccer Mom" an image that 50% of the people 35 to 55 could identify with and Democrats were very successful at mobilizing a group of people, women, who for the first time in history became independent economic entities and could be counted on to vote their wallet. In 2000 and 2004 her counterpart, the "Nascar Dad" came along. This group, largely made up of lower middle class males in the rural as well as suburban areas were somewhat alienated economically during the boom in the 1990's. In turn, the Republicans were successfully at creating and mobilizing this group based on social, cultural, and religious principles. In both cases, the groups had an enormous economic incentive to vote, but needed the reassurance that there are others like them out there to make their vote count.
For years, the youth vote has been largely absent due to the lack of incentives. There have been no major wars or drafts and the economy and job market has been thriving on the whole. Since they are young, they have very little at stake in the actual near term economy. To someone just out of school making $40,000 a year who doesn't have a family of their own, a tax cut equates to the difference of ordering shots of Jose Cuervo or Patron on Saturday nights out. To someone older, who has assets, a family, and life rests on the fact that the next four years they will earn at least as much as they did the past four years, the incentive is much higher.
For the first time in a while, however, the situation is different. Although there is no draft or talk of having one, we are currently at war in Iraq and talking about going to war in Iran. On top of that, my generation is the first generation to come out with such a high level of student loans - increasingly from private lenders (at near credit card interest rates). This is on top of the credit card debt they have amassed while at school. The charts I have included tell this story well.
This group of voters went to college during the last economic downturn 1999 - 2002. Many saw their college savings evaporate during the years that they needed it and had to pay the price that was already inflated due to the years of prosperity and growth. On top of that they have seen the real wages of student with a bachelor's degree decrease dramatically. Michael Mandel at Economics Unbound has looked at this phenomena in depth and have included this chart as well.
This would make sense since more people have been going to college, thus increasing the supply of labor and driving down costs. Outsourcing has been named as a culprit, however I contend that the jobs going to India were not jobs that went to college graduates - on the whole. To a student who has very little college debt, a soft job market, although a problem is not an enormous deal. They can get by bartending or taking an basic entry level job at less pay until they find the job they want. They are able to mess around for a few years and probably actually enjoy it more. For someone with tons of debt it becomes a noose. They are entering the beginning of their adult lives - when they "should" be planning for a family and saving for a house. Instead they are working just to get back in the positive. It has serious ramifcations in one's "pursuit of happiness" - the major reason every voter casts a vote on election day.
Most important, these Millenials are not poor and uneducated, but middle class (maybe too) educated and savvy . They are people, who grew up with relative prosperity are now facing economic hardship. It can be argued that economically, on the whole, they are less better off than their parents were at their age. I will argue this has not happened in the history of our country. During the Great Depression, our Grandparents were the closest, however, their parents were largely immigrants and came here because economic conditions in Europe were poor.
So, while many pundits will scoff at the youth vote this election, these Millennials could be the swing vote as many are largely independent. The combination of a growing incentive to vote, sense of entitlement, and ability to network online could make them a very powerful voting block. Could this election be the first shots fired in the great Demographic War of the 21st century? We will find out.
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Posted by: Marry James | February 28, 2008 at 12:20 AM