{"id":42759,"date":"2018-03-21T05:00:33","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T09:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42759"},"modified":"2018-03-20T11:31:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T15:31:56","slug":"millennials-and-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/03\/21\/millennials-and-economics\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennials and economics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <em>Continental Telegraph<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.continentaltelegraph.com\/2018\/03\/20\/arent-these-millennials-going-to-be-surprised-when-they-find-out-the-truth-about-economics\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Worstall<\/a> views-with-alarm the economic illiteracy of many Millennials:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A most amusing piece over in <em>Salon<\/em> about how American millennials are certain that capitalism just ain\u2019t gonna be around in the future therefore they see no point in saving for their retirements. Boy, ain\u2019t they gonna get a surprise! One of the larger ones being that an absence of capitalism is going to, as it was before the emergence of the system, make having some savings for old age rather more important than it is now.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s more there, of course there is, this is <em>Salon<\/em> we\u2019re talking about:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The idea that we millennials\u2019 only hope for retirement is the end of capitalism or the end of the world is actually quite common sentiment among the millennial left. Jokes about being unable to retire or anticipating utter social change by retirement age were ricocheting around the internet long before CNN\u2019s article was published.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, that\u2019s a generation shopping in the cat food aisle for their meat requirements in retirement then. But more:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Many millennials expressed to me their interest in creating self-sustaining communities as their only hope for survival in old age;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Certainly, that\u2019s one way to do it. Move back to that pre-capitalist idea of the self-sustaining community which takes care of its oldsters. Be useful to have a name for those sorts of things but fortunately we\u2019ve got one that already fits \u2013 families. Go and have those 6 to 8 kids and hope like hell that one stays home to change diapers. You did it for them after all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m pretty sure that&#8217;s not how they&#8217;d see it if you presented it to them that way&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Lord, has anyone even taught them some Marxism? For what\u2019s being described there is the True Communism that will arrive once we\u2019ve abolished economic scarcity. The thing which will come through the productive powers of bourgeois capitalism. You know, as Karl The Beard insisted? As, arguably, we have by any reasonable historical standard. A recent potter around Primark \u2013 yes, I know, not high up the list of fashionable outlets \u2013 showed that you could, or can, purchase an historically adequate set of clothing for a person for \u00a3100. Two day\u2019s minimum wage labour. One set of clothes for everyday, one for Sunday Best. Including a warm coat and more changes of underwear than was usual back then.<\/p>\n<p>No, seriously, there\u2019s not been a period of human history when clothing \u2013 to give but one example \u2013 was as cheap as it is now. Not in relation to the effort needed to acquire it at least.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s actually a serious argument to be made that true communism has already arrived. Certainly Karl and Friedrich would be astonished at a society rich enough to be able to afford diversity advisers \u2013 if societal productive surplus is great enough to support that idea then surely communism has indeed arrived?<\/p>\n<p>Boy, aren\u2019t these millennials going to have a surprise when they grow up? That the Good Old Days are now?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall views-with-alarm the economic illiteracy of many Millennials: A most amusing piece over in Salon about how American millennials are certain that capitalism just ain\u2019t gonna be around in the future therefore they see no point in saving for their retirements. Boy, ain\u2019t they gonna get a surprise! One of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[780,1076,956],"class_list":["post-42759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-communism","tag-karlmarx","tag-millennials"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-b7F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42760,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42759\/revisions\/42760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}