Third, and this is really key, pretend that every member of this - TopicsExpress



          

Third, and this is really key, pretend that every member of this 85-million-person generation grew up in a fabricated life-size playhouse on the set of Hannah Montana. Matching pajamas from Hanna Andersson was a nice start, but you can go so much deeper. Four-car garages, master suites, and cathedral ceilings—that is a good description of everybodys house now. Blame todays high youth unemployment on their parents’ success and suggest theyre not actually trying to find work because they’re already livin’ the dream. But remember: What you put into the column is just as important as what you leave out. By no means should you let the reader think that the Millennial generation is anything more than a uniform blob of rich, self-righteous idleness. If you start with the details—for example, that 80 percent of this generations parents didnt go to college, or that 60 percent of them grew up in households making less than $50,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars—youll only confuse people into thinking that not every family buys matching Hanna Andersson pajamas for Christmas. Talk as little about the Great Recession as possible. This is the most educated generation in American history and the only group for whom real wages fell in the three years after the recession began. These facts have the danger of making readers think that Millennials are wisely investing in their human capital when the opportunity cost of leaving the workforce is historically low. But above all, studiously avoid that fact that 6 million idle Millennials, which amounts to a 15 percent unemployment rate, is totally unremarkable in this economy. Youth unemployment tends to be about 2x the national average going back to 1970, in good times and bad (see the graph below of youth/national unemployment). Today its ... about 2x. In other words, young people are suffering from perfectly predictable multiples of youth unemployment, just like the generations before us did in the 1970s and early 1980s. Definitely ignore this point if youre going with idle basement-dwellers in the opening lines.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 23:14:41 +0000

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