Comments for Esquire Magazine: Writer wanted to help convert class war into generational war. No skills required; pays top dollar. at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 33 out of 20 comments http://www.cepr.net Wed, 22 May 2013 07:00:08 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15692 This "inter-generational" stuff has been brewing for a while, essentially from about the time the Kochetypes started putting together ad agencies labeled as "think tanks." As such it's abundantly clear that this is another attempt by the 1% to distract attention from their ongoing thievery. So now we blame the "Baby Boomers"--the most productive generation in history, which has funded their parents' lives, their children's lives, and the bank accounts of a few billionaires--and gotten screwed for their efforts. Their pensions? GONE! Their savings? GONE! Their property values? GONE! The Social Security they've been paying for? GONE! Medicare they've been paying for? GONE! Taxes they've paid? SQUANDERED on wars and military contractors. All you Boomer Blamers: who you gonna hate after the Boomers are gone and you have no one but yourselves around? - good2go Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:12:46 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15688 "Of course the debt is not a measure of intergenerational equity. At some point everyone alive today will be dead. The bonds that they hold will end up in the hands of the next generation." Tendentious nonsense: negative real interest rates result in inter-generational theft. A more redistributionist future will not change the diminished purchasing power of bond coupons and principal. Debased money can only pay for cheaper social services. - Namazu Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:05:08 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15671 The editor in chief of Esquire did not agree with the article. You have to read his opening in the actual magazine. Although, he did feel there was a lack of opportunity for the younger generation and felt this article captured the angst of the difficulty of getting ahead today as a young person. - x Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:09:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15666 On one issue here, the U.S. as a whole is of course better off without owing foreign debt than with it, but there are two points to keep in mind. First, the foreign debt is a story of a trade deficit, not a budget deficit. Second, the remedy is to get the over-valued dollar down. This both gets rid of the long-term debt problem and also creates more jobs for young people in the short-run. It would have been great if this Esquire piece had talked about the over-valued dollar and bad implications it has for our kids. The second point has to do with the DeLong-Summers projection that we are looking at lower long-term growth because of the downturn. This is a plausible story -- if we don't take steps to boost the economy, which we probably won't soon. This is certainly bad news, but it will not matter much for SS. The reason for their projected slowdown is primarily people dropping out of the labor force, not slower productivity growth. This will mean that these people will collect smaller benefits when they reach retirement age in 10-15 years. That may not be exactly offsetting the lost tax revenue, but it will go much of the way there. So, it is unlikely to affect SS solvency much, even if it is really bad news. - Dean Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:23:08 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15659 Yes! Thank you for this. I realize Esquire shouldn't be counted on as a legitimate news source, but considering how many young people read it it's a shame how they aggressively obfuscate the real issues. Pandering at it's finest. - Stephen Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:58:42 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15652 While you cannot comment directly at Esquire, YOU CAN COMMENT on the article at the author's website: http://stephenmarche.blogspot.com/2012/03/war-on-youth.html - Benedict@Large Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:12:54 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15650 Prof. Baker, This is a great critique of this particular Esquire article, with its pernicious agenda and its simple confusions. But we should be careful not to imply that any argument along generational lines is simply an attempt to displace class-war arguments. There are solid and very progressive cases for the recent emergence of a cruel generational war going on in the US, in which organized and engaged constituencies of older Americans are intensely fixated on some perceived loss of "their America" and their desire to limit opportunities for and delegitimate the identities of younger Americans. Plus the climate change point isn't a small one: older Americans are disproportionately shortsighted about this huge threat. Here's a progressive version of the generational argument: http://www.democracyjournal.org/24/the-vexed-generation.php - Tom Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:26:09 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15649 Sry, here's another version of the link that should work: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/shc2010r.pdf - JSeydl Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:19:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15648 Andrew Clearfield, you make a good point, and I'd actually love to hear Dean's thoughts on this, if he's reading. If we look at the most recent U.S. Holdings of Foreign Securities Annual Report, which is for 2010, we can find out which sectors in the U.S. hold foreign debt: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/shc2010r.pdf. Table A15 is what we're concerned with. What that table shows is that firms and institutions from almost all sectors in the U.S. economy own foreign debt. Our government holds a big portion of that debt, but the largest holdings of foreign debt are concentrated in the financial services industry, which is not surprising. So it sounds to me that your argument would then be, "See, it's the rich bankers who own the foreign debt! This means that our debt burden must promote intergenerational inequality for the middle class!" I get that argument, but, in theory, it shouldn't be a problem that companies, such as banks, hold the foreign debt and not average workers. Why? Because companies are a part of our market system. They pay taxes, from which money can be redistributed to the middle class. With competence in Washington, we should be able to offset the intergenerational burden from the distribution of foreign debt holdings in the U.S. Now, you could argue that our political system doesn't allow enough taxation to offset the intergenerational inequality promoted by the distribution of foreign debt holdings, but that's a separate argument. In principle, it shouldn't matter where the debt is held, so long as it's held by American institutions (e.g., banks, government, the middle class, etc...). - JSeydl Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:15:08 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15646 Dean, Years ago, someone left a comment on your blog about how YOU had missed the housing bubble when you made your claims that there was no need to worry like the WAPO was worrying about social security in the future because the country will be richer then. The reason they gave was that you had ignored that the housing bubble had killed US GDP, meaning the country would not be as rich in future had the bust not happened. My recollection is that you replied that no one had revised down their long-term projections of US growth, so the objection did not stand. I just read this by Brad DeLong, and it reminded me of your the blog post all that time ago: "Reputable forecasters – both private and public – have been revising down their estimates of America’s potential long-run GDP." Will the revisions downward made so far have enough of an impact that social security, decades in the future, will be at risk? Hope that makes some sort of sense... - Anonooo Sat, 31 Mar 2012 20:23:28 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15645 oh, sorry, my point was very unclear (and partially wrong). Let me try again: 1) Foreign ownership of American debt makes future American generations poorer relative to the present American generation. (We both agree on this.) 2) US ownership of foreign debt does not reverse this trend because this money gets concentrated in the hands of the very rich (rather than spread out among society) and so doesn't significantly raise the median future American's wealth. (And even if you speak in the aggregate rather than median, the same holds true, since uncontroversially handing money to the very rich does less to increase GDP than giving it to anyone else.) (My error was that I said "exacerbate." US ownership of foreign debt very surely and very obviously does not exacerbate the problem, it simply doesn't do much to reverse it.) - Andrew Clearfield Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:48:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15644 jseydl: I disagree. Only rich Americans own foreign debt. This means that rather than subtract from our projected intergenerational inequality, private American ownership of foreign debt will exacerbate it. - Andrew Clearfield Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:36:48 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15643 that will burden all of us with twice the present amount of stuff in thirty years (assuming equal distribution of course). Life is all about affording bigger and bigger boxes to hold all your stuff: shoe box, dresser drawer, dresser, closet, room, house and finally, the rented storage space. - diesel Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:42:33 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15642 "Social Security is projected to first face a shortfall in 2036." Social Security is facing a shortfall right now. To get beyond the BS, I use this analogy. You are allowed to borrow money from your 401K, right? So knowing retirement of a large generation was coming, those now 55 and over put a lot of extra money into Social Security from 1983 to 2008 or so. Think of it as a collective 401K. Then they borrowed all of the money out of that 401K, and spent it, leaving behind IOMEs. And borrowed more on top of it. Now they expect someone else to pay back that 401K loan. And the other debts. Where did the money go? If you look at changes in federal revenues and expenditures since President Carter, but big changes -- for comparable years to adjust for the business cycle -- were a but cut in progressive income tax and a big increase in health care spending, most of which goes to seniors. But federal policy is just one aspect of the generational inequities. You seem them in every institution. - Lawrence Littlefield Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:38:36 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15641 There was plenty of hyperbole and very few facts, but that's what sells in the MSM. For a boring essay with lots of facts, linked to more boring essays with spreadsheets, try this out. It is a little harder to refute. http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/generational_equity_and_the_legacy_of_today_s_politicians.html There is nothing wrong with public policies that favor the old at the expense of the young, who have other advantages, as long as these are sustainable. As long as the old had been willing to pay as much when they were young, and the young can reasonably expect to benefit as much when they are old, but that isn't so. There are two almost reasonable arguments against the fact that Generation Greed has screwed those coming after. The liberal one, implied by this post, is that the problem is the income distribution. Every generation is as well off as the last collectively, but younger generations have more of that income concentrated in fewer people. What I see is a diminishment of the standard of living, at each point in a lifecycle, rising up the education and income ladder, starting with the high school drop outs and now reaching college graduates. I expect that among younger generations the one percent will be less well off than the one percent of older generations, simply because there is less left to steal. The almost reasonable "conservative" criticism is that despite years (in some cases decades) of falling median wages, Americans are living better. The falling compensation was first covered up by two income households, then by cuts in future income (employer-provided retirement benefits) which did not affect current cash spending. Then when just about everybody's cash income started to fall, it was covered up by debt. - Lawrence Littlefield Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:17:12 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15640 "I'm still thrown ... Doesn't having $170K in savings and $170K debt mean zero net worth?" Not if the debt has been used to buy a durable asset (e.g, a home). In that case if you use cash savings to pay off the debt you own the asset free and clear, and its value becomes part (perhaps all) of your net worth, offsetting the reduction in the cash. If the debt was used to buy non-durables or services, then despite having $170k in "savings", net worth was zero to begin with, so again, paying off the debt would not change it. - jm Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:12:42 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15639 Andrew Clearfield, if you're going to consider debt owned by foreigners, then you need to also consider the debt we own that belongs to foreigners. Krugman has already addressed this issue: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/the-burden-of-debt-again-again/. Our net international investment position -- when you consider both the foreign holdings of our debt and our holdings of foreign debt -- hasn't changed much at all in recent years and is not alarming. - JSeydl Sat, 31 Mar 2012 09:47:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15638 You write: "Of course the debt is not a measure of intergenerational equity. At some point everyone alive today will be dead. The bonds that they hold will end up in the hands of the next generation. This means that the debt will be paid from some members of younger generations to other members of younger generations." I think it's important to be honest about the debt issue. A large percentage of it is owned by foreigners not by other Americans, which means that in fact this debt is promoting intergenerational inequality (to the extent that it is not being used to finance education and infrastructure etc.). - Andrew Clearfield Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:01:18 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15637 Derek the difference is that when you are 60 you hopefully have paid off the mortgage and have a 170 k house as part of your "wealth." When you are 25, say, you OWE that 170 k... that's the mortgage... therefore it is not part of your net wealth. This is the lie that Esquire is telling: see, young people would have to be born already owning the house in order for their net wealth to equal that of, say, their parents. The world does not work this way. And most sane people understand that is fine. But Esquire, and the Big LIars who work for Peterson, know that if they talk fast you won't catch the lie. - coberly Sat, 31 Mar 2012 06:37:31 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar#comment-15636 Good piece, and terrible nonsense from Esquire, but ... I'm still thrown by the idea that having $170K in net worth allows them to 'pay off their mortgage' b/c that debt is already subtracted from wealth. Doesn't having $170K in savings and $170K debt mean zero net worth? - puzzled Sat, 31 Mar 2012 06:25:04 +0100