Bust, Boom, Echo for Millennials
For Millennials, timetables seem to be out of sync, or at least slowed down. Compared to the previous couple of generations, the inevitable milestones of life – marriage, kids, home ownership, investments, ability to pay of student loans, even car ownership – are inevitably taking longer to acquire. Some have even forgone such hopes altogether as they struggle to make life confirm to their goals and desires.
For those born between 1980 and 2000, life didn’t quite come together as they thought. The result has been a collective sense of anger, frequently directed at the Baby Boomers for theoretically emptying the cupboards before the Millennials got their shot at the good life. Some of this is surely true, though large swaths of such a rationale have turned out to be misguided. Nevertheless, the feeling that life had delivered them a bad hand, or at least a diminished one, runs throughout their cohort.
The Federal Reserve in America recently put out a research paper saying that Millennials basically want the same things as their parents, but they’re just not getting such things in a timely fashion. They are just as driven by materialistic wants and desire the same affluence those who came before them enjoyed. But they are angry and because of this, numerous commentators have endeavoured to claim that the Millennial generation is fundamentally different than their predecessors. According to the Federal Reserve studies, however, that doesn’t seem likely. Much of it is myth.
What does make them different is their collective sense of frustration and anger that the good life promised to them never materialized as expected. And it is that deep sense of angst that is increasingly coming to define who they are, what they want, and what they are prepared to do to achieve it.
In all this rush to judgment, however, is a key reality frequently overlooked by observers of the current scene. Shortly, the greatest financial transfer of funds in history is about to pass from the Boomers to the Millennials, as older generations prepare to pass on to their kids the financial rewards they accumulated during their productive years. Financial analysts concur that the results will likely be a windfall, perhaps sufficient enough to make up for the delays mentioned above. First there was a bust for Millennials that could quickly become a boom.
But there is an echo to be expected. Much as the generation that endured the Depression, or those who fought their way through World War Two, were defined by their hardships in ways that led to fundamental societal change, so the impatience that Millennials have endured in the past decade, especially since the financial disaster of 2007, will lead to overt changes that will surely leave their mark on the present and the future.
To be sure, the Millennial belief that older generations failed to deal with some of the greatest challenges of modern life will lead to significant change. Climate change, financial inequality, latent and overt racism, the rise of mental illness, affordable housing, gender inequities – these and more are about ready to undergo a transformation. In the 2020s, it won’t just be funds transferred to the Millennial generation but political power as well, as new life is infused into our political systems. It’s already obvious in nations around the world for anyone wishing to take the time to look.
Perhaps most fundamental of all will be how the Millennial generation, powered and resourced, will address the subject of work. Enduring years of minimum wages jobs, few benefits, split shifts and the lack of worker rights will result in new legislation designed to enhance the relationships between employers and their staffs.
To enable the transformation, the Millennials will look to change that one institution that they feel failed them in the past – government. Far from starving it the way that Conservative politics has done for years, new Millennial leadership will seek to adequately resource it to do its job. It will go after the fabulous amounts of wealth created in each nation but which, through tax laxity, loopholes and transfers, has been permitted to escape the world of domestic society, enriching the few while stagnating the livelihoods of the many. They will use democracy as it was originally intended: to level out the unequal places, round off the harsh corners, and provide supports that provide the best chance for everyone to live productive lives. Government itself will be refashioned, much as it was following World War Two.
In Canada’s 2011 election, around 40 per cent of Millennials voted. Only four years later (2015), that number rose to almost 60 percent. To a large degree, the face of Canada, both domestically and to the world, changed as a result of that increase. It’s likely to change again as more Millennials are expected to vote in the next federal election in three months.
There are now more Millennials than there are Boomers and our public estate will surely feel the effect of a more progressive force rippling through modern society. The resultant echo of what Millennials have endured in recent years will reverberate its way through public policy and other key areas open to public input. It’s their time and its likely they will use their power and money to change our country at a fundamental level.