

The Go-Nowhere Generation - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/the-go-nowhere-generation.html?hp

======
kd0amg
_For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate
can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and
a 3.3 percent rate. Why are young people not crossing borders?_

Because in addition to that $200 for the bus ticket, they'd also need money on
hand for first month's rent, security deposit, probably some new furniture and
houseware, etc. plus enough saved up to be able to commit to the lease without
knowing how much income they'll have... if/once they do manage to line up a
job.

 _it takes fewer weeks of work income to buy a car today than in the early
1980s, and inflation-adjusted gasoline prices didn’t get out of line until a
few years ago._

"Fewer weeks of work income" only helps if you have work income.

Maybe the authors have gone too long without wondering where next month's rent
is going to come from?

~~~
kstenerud
"Because in addition to that $200 for the bus ticket, they'd also need money
on hand for first month's rent, security deposit, probably some new furniture
and houseware, etc. plus enough saved up to be able to commit to the lease
without knowing how much income they'll have... if/once they do manage to line
up a job."

These concerns are not unique to the current generation. Pulling up stumps and
moving in search of work and prosperity has ALWAYS been risky (hell, I've done
it three times so far, once while massively in debt). It's just that now
there's a very strong trend towards risk aversion, which makes it that much
harder for the entrepreneurial spirit to flourish.

In fact, it's even worse than that; With the internet, it's easier than ever
before to find a job before you even decide whether to move or not. And yet
more and more people remain complacent in a 13% jobless rate area when 3.3% is
available for the taking.

Of course, the good news is that for those who ARE adventurous, there's never
been a better time to move and take advantage of the opportunities created by
the fear of the majority.

~~~
tfm
I like this analysis better! For bonus points, why would this generation be
any more risk averse than previous generations?

Managing risk is a learned behaviour, and we've kinda got our recession on...
may be they were paying attention. Heck, I couldn't be prouder of these
cottonwool wrapped kids. Let's give em a low carb imitation lollypop.

------
johnnyg
What an out of touch dude. I'm not sure he gets that the wealth is being
created by our minds instead of our backs. I wonder if he could code anything
he used to send or publish that article - or even if he understands even the
absolute basics of how that series of tubes works. I doubt it.

If we're renaming generations, perhaps we can rename his the "You've Lead
America Off a Cliff And Stiffed Your Children With The Bill." Generation.

Not catchy enough? Here are a few more to try on:

The "You Voted For SOPA" Generation

The "Civil Liberties? Overrated." Generation

The "Hey, I Don't Have To Go Fight That War" Generation

The "I Can't Email, But I Can Reform Washington" Generation

~~~
sheraz
I think it is important to note that author is speaking in broad, generational
terms. The HN community is definitely not representative of Gen-Y. I know many
20 and 30-somethings to whom the internet is a series of tubes.

Though the author might have had an old-fogey tone he does bring some
interesting points to light:

1\. why do young people in auto-centric cities hold off on getting a car? 2\.
why are young people not migrating to places where the jobs are? 3\. there
seem to be a correlation between recession-era kids and entrepreneurism.

I think these are very real issues that merit discussion.

~~~
_delirium
On #1, I'd guess one factor is that the car isn't as big a part of teenage
social life as it used to be. In much of the U.S., cars were central to high-
school social life, with who had cars counting for a considerable amount of
social status, and a lot of hanging-out activities (malls, movie theaters,
arcades, etc.) requiring cars to get to. It's possible that also had
advantageous effects for being able to get to jobs, but teenagers weren't
mainly getting their licenses _for_ those reasons. My read is that hanging out
at the mall doesn't have the same role in high-school social life of the 2010s
as it did in the 1980s.

------
MengYuanLong
I feel this article is flawed with the author only acknowledging one set of
possible goals/ values for a person to strive for in life. To myself and many
others, having a (government reported) job and a car are not the pot at the
end of the rainbow.

Instead, we have been raised in a world decrying the systematic consumption of
the environment which, when coupled with highly volatile gas prices, makes
using car alternatives an attractive option.

Further, many of us have complex outlooks that assigns value to friends,
family, and free time that we may have to surrender if we accepted a cushy
North Dakota job (and let's face it, you are reaching when North Dakota is
your poster child for opportunity). Not everything is about money.

Sadly, each year I get older, the more I internalize that somebody will always
feel the need to write articles bashing the younger generation. All I hope is
that I never reach the point where I am the one doing the writing.

~~~
betageek
Strongly agree, "The Well Adjusted Generation That Realised There Was Alot
More To Life Than Money" isn't such a good op-ed title. We may get a
generation of happy, socially aware people who make fantastic parents, oh
noes!

------
adrianparsons
I like how he goes after Facebook, a company run by a 27 year old Millenial
with $3.7B in revenue last year ($1.3B more than the New York Times)

~~~
pyre
Yea, but does Mark Zuckerberg _go anywhere_? If not he just proves that
author's point! </sarcasm>

------
poink
This is silly. The vast majority of yesteryear's kids didn't want to go
anywhere, either. The Lost Generation were the youth of WW1. The Greatest
Generation were the youth of WW2. More young people in the 60's went to
Vietnam than have ever joined the Peace Corps. This entire article is
essentially whining that we no longer have a draft.

~~~
tomjen3
And, ironically, the reason the US no longer has a draft is that his
generation went nuts over Vietnam. Everybody knows that it is political
suicide to institute a draft.

------
blackhole
"Good Luck Finding A Cheap Place To Live" Generation "I'm Running A Company
From My Bedroom" Generation "I Can Do Basic Cost/Benefit Analysis" Generation
"Have Fun Paying Off that Student Loan" Generation

But in all seriousness, this article is ridiculously pretentious and
completely out of touch with reality. I know lots of people, including myself,
who want to go travelling. Most of them can't afford it. As many others have
pointed out, most of them can't afford it because YOUR generation threw the
economic in the toilet.

------
seclorum
One thing that really bothered me about Americans when I lived there was how
often they just packed up everything and moved into a new house. Not for any
good reason, mind you, but just for 'the experience of having a new place to
live in'. Coming from a country where there was nothing beyond the city limits
for 4 days worth of driving, it was bizarre to me that American folks I knew
found themselves restless after 6 months in the new place. I suppose the urban
environments of America sort of promote this, though - there is very little
you can do in most of America without having transportation, and the
'neighborhood feeling' you get in Europe that makes it so 'nice to walk
around' just doesn't exist in the majority of American cities, with their
sprawl. Sure, there are exceptions - New York (people rave about New York, but
really its just a 'kind of Europe' sort of place), San Francisco, and so on,
but given your average American city, its sort of no surprise that people
don't really feel 'at home' most of the time.

Is it car culture that drives Americans to move around so much? I tend to
think so.

~~~
pyre
I know people that move around from apartment to apartment, but I've never
known of anyone that 'house hopped' like that unless they were flipping the
houses for a profit. My parents have lived in 3 houses over the course of my
lifetime. The one that I mostly grew up in they owned for over 20 years, and I
believe that the move into that house was due to the family expanding.

------
iradik
Love to read an article on this topic written from the viewpoint of a young
person instead of a 50 year-old who was raised in a period of enormous
economic growth. Perhaps some young people are not "slouches", but are
actually logical and evaluate pros/cons and decide to put down roots?

~~~
dasil003
And maybe 50-somethings find it easy to forget what little shits they were a
few decades ago. Time to sit down for a frank discussion with grandma and
grandpa.

------
dublinclontarf
They don't have to go somewhere else, tons of work can be done from at home.
Hell I'm running a company and working for another with only my mobile phone
for internet access. I could go anywhere I wanted but I've a damp corner that
I've grown accustomed to.

~~~
adrianparsons
According to this article you're doing it wrong and should move to North
Dakota.

~~~
zsherman
Right, because North Dakota is a far more enjoyable place for a teenage kid to
live than the state that's home to Las Vegas (;

------
secretwhistle
"“More time on Facebook probably means less time on the road,” he said. That
may mean safer roads, but it also means a bumpier, less vibrant economy."

So... the economy is being held back by the lack of teens cruising the main
drag?

------
organico
While the article is a bit lacking, in my own observations traveling
extensively around the globe, I encountered very few Americans, considering
their population numbers, wealth, etc. I realise the article is more about
interstate travel for work, etc, however it always just really surprised me
about how few young American kids were out there bumming it around the world
with backpacks on. I met more Israelis out there than North Americans, and
they have a population of what, 6 million? Or Australians? Those guys are
everywhere.

------
jakeonthemove
Well, you can move and shake from the comfort of your home - and that doesn't
apply only to virtual/intellectual products. You can easily set up some kind
of production in China, with worldwide shipping without even getting out of
your house - I find that extremely fascinating.

And young people move quite a lot - in fact, more than the previous
generations did. Just not from Nevada to North Dakota - heck, the city of Las
Vegas has more people than the whole of North Dakota :-D

------
sad_panda
Clincher that was redacted by the editor:

"Get off my lawn!"

------
forgottenpaswrd
As an engineer in Europe I'm working less and less outside. Today we can
control an industrial plant from our main company using Internet.

We predict problems before they ever arrive using telemetry monitoring and we
could fix 95% of the problems with keystrokes.

------
keithpeter
"Perhaps more worrisome, kids who grow up during tough economic times also
tend to believe that luck plays a bigger role in their success, which breeds
complacency."

This sentence caught my eye. Could the economic climate be reflected in a
person's locus of control?

[http://wilderdom.com/psychology/loc/LocusOfControlWhatIs.htm...](http://wilderdom.com/psychology/loc/LocusOfControlWhatIs.html)

I agree with many views expressed here by the way and thought the article a
tad patronising.

~~~
marknutter
I've been noticing this on sites like Reddit more and more these days. There
is a growing sense that wealth is only generated by luck or corruption. It's
extremely dangerous thinking.

~~~
etherael
It's also not _dead wrong_ which is terribly unfortunate. (this is not to
imply that it is _dead right_ either, but ammunition for cynicism definitely
isn't good in this instance)

------
S_A_P
I don't know that it's necessary to leave these days depending on your
industry. Anyone just about anywhere can launch a global business on the
Internet, I have a 2nd job that I work 100% telecommute, so I can work on
vacation if I wanted. With most countries outside of Asia working in more
service oriented industries, the only real migration would be those who wish
to follow manufacturing.

------
wilschroter
I'm not sure how every aging generation is suddenly surprised that a previous
generation is different in some way.

It seems ridiculous to assume that with all the major changes that have
happened over the last 20 years that people wouldn't have different behaviors.

------
rblion
the author isn't aware that social revolutions are caused by hunger.

"The Rape and Pillage the Planet For Every Last Drop of Oil" generation

"The Gained the World, Lost their Soul" generation

"The Numbers and Dollars, not Humans and Values" generation

we are "Wish for the best, prepare for the worst" generation

~~~
sebphfx
the "wearing pyjama pants to go to school" generation. the "my pants are so
low,I look like I shit my pants" generation.

------
michaelochurch
I find that a lot of the comments here are missing the point. Sure, Baby
Boomers have no moral high ground when it comes to generational criticism. Who
cares? I think the OP makes some really interesting points and, for my part, I
don't think he's trying to moralize or call people lazy. "Go-nowhere" sounds
pejorative, but the fact is that people have less of a use for transportation
now, and I think there's an interesting insight there.

As a country, we deeply suck at moving humans around. Europe has actually fast
trains and they're actually reasonably priced, unlike Amtrak. If you want
great service in Europe, you take Virgin; if you want cheap flights, you take
RyanAir. We lose by getting RyanAir service for Virgin/BA prices. We're great
at shipping bits, U.S. freight rail is world-class, and we can get almost any
fruit in any season, but when it comes to passenger transportation, we
essentially stagnated in 1949. Air travel is still expensive and far more
unpleasant than it ever was, passenger rail is at the same speed it had in the
1920s, and most of us still rely on the car for commuting. If you want to live
in a place where you can actually walk or bike to a city, you'll pay absurdly
high prices to live there. This mediocrity in transportation is a deep
national morale problem that is exacerbated by the current economic climate
(i.e. many people having no fucking money). A result of this is that the world
is becoming larger. Much larger.

Moreover, what's left of the job market fills through social connections.
"Front door" approaches are officially dead. It's possible to make "weak ties"
and acquaintanceships online, and that kind of "networking" is often enough
(strength of weak ties) but if you fall into a bad spell (or, say, are female
and take a few years off from work to raise children) and need someone to take
a chance on you, you're going to want strong ties. With wealth disparities
widening and talent geography becoming more unfavorable, people are less
inclined to believe they'll easily make strong ties after college; it rarely
happens. So people are averse to moving without a strong reason to do so.

Then there is the difference in job markets between continuous (efficient,
low-latency) and discrete (illiquid, high-latency) ones. For high-talent jobs
and candidates, there are 3 places where the markets are continuous: New York,
Silicon Valley, and Boston. That's not to say there aren't great jobs (and
great people to hire) in places like Portland or Minneapolis. There are, but
there isn't the massive number that makes a market continuous. A lot of talent
is coalescing in these 3 areas because living in one of them means that
changing jobs _doesn't_ mean that one is likely to be changing cities. What
that means is that people who are willing to move for economic reasons, by and
large, have ended up in one of those three places (and will stay there).

------
smashing
Its the Ferris Bueller Generation.

------
damiankennedy
I couldn't disagree more. How many people are there making Apple and Android
apps now? How about the "Connected Generation"

------
funkah
This generational griping ignores the difficulty the current generation of
young people face. The country they inherited is not the bountiful one the
authors' generation did. I say this as a recently-young person who has moved
across the country.

~~~
pyre

      > I say this as a recently-young person who has
      > moved across the country.
    

If you didn't move to North Dakota, you've proved the author's point!
</sarcasm>

------
nomaningme
"For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate
can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and
a 3.3 percent rate. Why are young people not crossing borders?"

This is so stupid. Read any story about the ND oil field boom and all they can
talk about is these little towns that have quintupled in size, where ND
license plates are outnumbered on the streets 25:1.

------
shareme
another flawed article..

Can we suggest that NYTIMES seek better article submissions? Maybe some HN'er?

