The Living-in-the-Basement Generation

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/living-basement-generation

With housing prices and job numbers rising, many commentators have begun to talk about the “recovery,” with the “crisis” relegated to the past. But a crisis certainly remains, according to new research by the Social Science Research Council’s Measure of America project, for our nation’s 5.8 million “disconnected youth”—the one in seven Americans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four who are neither working nor enrolled in school. This cohort, whose numbers were stable for a decade, surged by 800,000 after the Great Recession and includes not only children from poor and minority families but significant numbers of white, middle-class youth as well.

The consequences are dire for these young Americans. They’re not only more likely to have a hard time in the job market; researchers have found that disconnection has scarring effects on health and happiness that endure throughout a lifetime. Unemployed, uneducated youth are at greater risk for criminality and incarceration, and they often go on to become unreliable spouses and improvident parents.

The costs to society are also considerable. The direct support expenses and lost tax revenues associated with disengaged young people cost U.S. taxpayers $93 billion in 2011 alone—a bill that will only compound as the years progress.

But youth disconnection differs substantially across the country. The table below, based on data from the Measure of America report, shows the shares of disconnected youth for America’s twenty-five largest metro areas. Eight of the ten areas with the highest levels of disconnected youth are in the Sun Belt, including Charlotte, Atlanta, Tampa, Phoenix, and Riverside-San Bernardino in Southern California. These cities’ economies were focused on suburban sprawl and thus were especially hard hit by the housing collapse. But that isn’t the only, or even the biggest, reason for their high levels of youth disconnection.

Share of Youth Not Working and Not in School in the 25 Largest Metro Areas

[grilled onions]

1. The Wasted Years

These are often the years where kids used to try and follow their dreams. They were often too young to realize many of those dreams were impossible but they were in there trying. They had health,they had energy. They were willing to work long hours in the hopes of those dreams. Of course today we realize that most of those dreams are pure fiction but it is sad to see today's young adults turn into recluses,often having no interest beyond a tv or computer screen. They can make up for those years and today of all times one needs to work harder than ever to survive.

[GladRagDahl]

2. I don't quite understand this

I have two daughters. One is a senior in college who is already getting job offers and the other was a dance major in college who tended bar to help pay for her degree. She didn't make it as a dancer but IS now making a really good living in upper management for that same restaurant chain. She worked her way up. Opportunities are still out there but it DOES take hard work. Nothing is handed to you these days -- but (except for the technology boom era when the very young made a lot of money at an early age) that has pretty much always been the case.

There has always been a percentage of people who fail to launch. (I know...there are a few in my extended family.) It just seems that that percentage is growing. So sad.

[geek tragedy]

4. So, it's just the lazy stupid ones who don't succeed?

Thank you for the rightwing talking points.

[snooper2]

5. My friends younger brother just turned 21, he isn't stupid

but sure the fuck is lazy...has zero motivation.

He has tried to help him get motivated and keep a job, any job for years to no avail. Kind of just shuffles around, work a little bit here and there just to have money for cigs and to go out and play poker and that is it.

We were just talking about him yesterday and I was saying my neighbor might be able to get him on doing bread delivery which actually pays pretty damn good, especially once you own your own route. My friend responded, the only job he would be good at is sitting behind a pottery wheel all day

[geek tragedy]

6. well, some people who are struggling are lazy, but certainly not all or even close to most nt

[GladRagDahl]

11. I think most ARE lazy

I think the whole "pursuing their dreams" is crock. People who DO pursue their dreams are out there doing it, not talking about it. The rest (me included) spend their time arguing endlessly on the internet, getting stoned or drunk, playing games and/or watching tv. If you have dreams to pursue you are doing whatever you have to in order to pursue them.

[hunter]

7. If he worked at Wal-Mart, what would he get?

Enough to afford a nice apartment and a car?

The "lazy" people used to get factory work. A good union job, and maybe they could buy a house and a new car after a few years, and count on a pretty comfortable retirement.

That's a great incentive to go to work, and would overcome most all forms of "lazy."

What's the lifestyle change of a MacDonalds or Wal-Mart job?

Nothing. You still live in the basement except now you have a really crappy job too, not just odd jobs, which do at least end.

There is something fundamentally wrong with our society.

If the private sector cannot create satisfactory work for young people, the kind of work that gets them out living on their own, then the public sector must.

There's plenty of things that NEED doing, plenty of infrastructure that is falling apart, plenty of work that would improve this nation greatly -- retrofitting existing homes and businesses to use less energy, alternative energy, restoring damaged wetlands and landscapes, putting utilities underground to resist increasingly difficult weather and improve neighborhood appearances, reducing classroom sizes by training and hiring more teachers, creating walkable urban neighborhoods where people can live without automobiles... and yes, even making art.

There isn't any reason for "austerity." Money can be created in unlimited supply, and inflation controlled by taxation.

Trouble is the wealthy don't want to be taxed, and austerity allows them to purchase real property at fire-sale prices and hire desperate workers into a system of wage slavery.

[snooper2]

9. He could get into the window cleaning business like his brother but he is too lazy,

Oh, and he actually did work at Wal-Mart for like 4 months earlier this year in the warehouse unloading trucks and stocking. He got fired along with his manager and another dude for smoking pot out back.

They didn't really care if you worked high, just don't do it in the parking lot LOL

[hunter]

10. I used to make $8 to $10 an hour loading and unloading trucks.

My university fees were $0 the first few years, and never rose above $1200 a year. My rents, apartments or homes I shared with a bunch of guys, were $85 to $125 a month. A repairable used car was $500 and gas was less than a dollar a gallon. You do the math. I could drive to Mexico or San Francisco any Friday afternoon and it was nothing but a slight headache Monday morning when I showed up for class or work. Certainly not a financial hardship.

I graduated from university with no student loans and I got a job teaching in the big city where I met my wife.

It's been a wild ride since but the days of that kind of working-class prosperity are long gone.

Those non-union truck loading jobs still pay $8 to $10 an hour and people are supposed to be grateful???

My dad had an ordinary union job and owned a home and a car. He had enough leisure time to pursue his arts. My mom's and my dad's personal identities are always artist first and day jobs second. My mom didn't have a "day job" when we were little kids and I have a mess of two-at-a-time breast-fed siblings, "Irish twins." We even lived in Europe for a year and visited Ireland from which a few of our ancestors fled. My parents live on a comfortable retirement income, which fortunately hasn't been stolen.

Okay, I know this was "white people" stuff, and other people not-white had to work twice as hard for half as good, but where did the world go where a kid could graduate from high school and get a good job in the local industry whatever it was? Seriously, among my high school classmates the only people who have been seriously fucked-over were gay men (many long deceased from suicide or AIDS, including a few of my childhood friends), people with very serious substance abuse problems, people with mental health issues, and people who suffered random serious accidents and medical problems or very very messy divorces.

My oldest kid got an adequate job when he graduated from college, but even that seems rare today. Some of his friends got good jobs through family connections and some sold out to unethical business, mostly in the financial "industries" selling or maintaining bullshit. The rest of his friends are "starving artists" working in retail and similar jobs carrying student loans they can't pay.

What the fuck happened???

[GladRagDahl]

12. Yes, enough...eventually

That's why they call it "work". Very few of us start off with everything. Those who want everything either do whatever work it takes to start accumulating it -- not complain about why it won't fall into their laps.

[hunter]

13. It's a dream sold to the wage slaves to keep them from rioting.

Go home angry prole, turn on the television, eat some junk food, drink some cheap beer or soda, go back to sleep.

Sophisticated complex societies ought to have an explicit means of removing young people from stagnant economic situations. We do not live in a time where the kids who stay home end up running the family farm or business.

"Joining the military" ought not be the only option. ("Joining a gang" and ending up dead or in prison seems to be another option for leaving mom's basement in my own community.) Otherwise most people work very hard in low paying jobs and live in crowded conditions in multi-generational family homes. The promised upward mobility of the American Dream, work hard and prosper, simply doesn't exist. Grandma lives in the back bedroom of her own home full of kids, grandkids, and other assorted relatives, and when she passes on another matriarch takes her place. (The men tend to pass on at a much younger age.)

Our society is throwing away tremendous amounts of youthful energy so that a few greedy (mostly white) men can maintain their positions of political power and unconscionable wealth.

"Austerity" is not the solution to this economic stagnation, nor is high energy industrialization of the "pump more oil, frack more gas, dig more coal" sort.

We've got to find a way to create an environmentally sustainable and progressive human society before Mother Nature destroys this civilization as she has destroyed all previous civilizations.

[canoeist52]

3. 1000. dollar rents, full-time minimum wage jobs, and student loan payments

= a "living in the basement" life.

[question everything]

8. And, apparently are not interested in looking for work

On the one hand, we've applauded the young generation that does not take things too seriously, is more tolerant, does not adhere to rigid ideological concepts. But, I think, this also translates into "whatever." A friend has had her 30 yr old son living at home. No, not in the basement. He lost his job, now had another one, has a girl friend but is not in a hurry to "settle down."

While my generation, the baby boomer did not believe in "settling down" at a young age, at least we could not wait to leave home. Yes, things were easier then. Jobs were aplenty and the cost of living was easier.