Feeling optimistic about the future? Bryan Goldberg is here to slap that silly optimistic grin off your face:
Hey kids, you’ve all read “The Hunger Games,” right? Almost all young people have read the best-selling books or seen the Hollywood movie about Katniss Everdeen, a smart and ambitious young lady whose life prospects are diminished by historical events that predate her. What little hope she has is seemingly reduced to nil when a bunch of old people drop her into an arena and force her to fight with her fellow children in a battle royale to the death.
But that’s just fiction, right? Your loving parents and grandparents would never screw up their world and then throw you kids under the bus…or would they?
Actually, they already have.
Last week, the economics blog Calculated Risk ran a chart that tells a pretty compelling story. To an economist, this chart means that the magnitude and duration of the 2007 recession’s impact on unemployment outpaces that of any prior post-war recession. To young people, it simply means this…
You kids are screwed.
In fact, teenagers today probably aren’t old enough to remember the “Dot Bomb” recession of twelve years ago. But even at its peak, that really bad recession did not reach a level of unemployment that matched the one we are still currently experiencing. With the Federal Reserve losing its appetite for quantitative easing, the last bullet in their holster, and both political parties deciding to half-ass the fiscal policy debate, it’s safe to say that…
You kids are really screwed.
Pay careful attention to Lesson No. 4: it’s even more important than you think it is.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.