The Price of Civilization_ Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity - Jeffrey D. Sachs [107]
Who will provide the political base for cleaning up the U.S. government? All Americans should look toward the group with the biggest stake: young Americans. From the campuses to the workforce, today’s Millennials, aged eighteen to twenty-nine in 2010, are already showing a distinctive generational character. They are more open, more diverse, more wired, more networked, better educated, and more committed to making government work than the generations before them. One is tempted to call the current crisis the unintended and unwelcomed bequest of the baby boomers—my generation—to America’s young. America, I predict, will change more due to its youth than to their parents. How that can happen is the story of the next and final chapter.
CHAPTER 13.
The Millennial Renewal
Economic crises open the door to deep political change. The future is up for grabs. Yet the dangers also multiply. There are, after all, many more possible wrong turns than right ones. The most common outcome is that the government continues to lose competence, direction, and financial capacity. The hardest change to pull off is constructive change in the middle of a crisis. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed about the French Revolution, “The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.”1
America’s deepening crisis has not yet led to any significant reforms or change in the manner of governance. If anything, the vested interests have held their ground. The Obama administration has been a government of continuity rather than change, as Wall Street, the lobbyists, and the military have remained at the center of American power and policy. This stasis has discredited government still further. American white, middle-aged conservatives are enraged at their loss of wealth and security and have lashed out at the government for adding to their debts but not to their relief. The Tea Party movement has resulted and has dominated the media coverage. The poor, meanwhile, have hunkered down, withdrawing from hope and activism as they scramble to survive and make ends meet. The young have been biding their time, trying to stay afloat in the face of high unemployment and little income.
This holding pattern cannot continue. It is like a cartoon character that runs off a cliff, looks down, yet remains suspended in midair. We know something is about to happen, but what?
There are three main tendencies at play and of course huge imponderables. The first tendency is inertia. The vested interests still have the money and the power but have lost their legitimacy and the public trust. Big banks, big insurance companies, and big arms manufacturers are close to Congress and the White House and have successfully resisted any serious intrusions into their prerogatives. The second tendency is backlash. The Tea Party is a concoction of the anger of middle-aged, middle-class white Americans who sense that their cohort is slipping from economic security and social dominance. They are furious, of course, and are easily manipulated by the status quo interests. That’s an old story. Time is against them.
The third tendency, the one with the long-term play, is generational change. Opinion surveys show that something truly new is in the works. The Millennials are different from their predecessors. If the boomers are the children of TV, the Millennials are the children of the Internet. The boomers sat for hours each day transfixed by the tube; the Millennials multitask for hours each day, networking with Facebook friends, catching snippets of news, watching videos, and surfing the Net. In the meantime, they are facing unique and difficult job prospects. But there is more. The Millennials are ethnically diverse, socially liberal, better educated (though struggling to meet tuition to complete four years of college), and more trusting of government. Obama was their hope and