In "Gen-Y Now Taking Cash Advances From Pets," Infectious Greed's Paul Kedrosky highlights an interesting graph from a Western Union survey that sheds some light on how the younger generation is coping with challenging economic conditions.
While their responses match those of the broader population in a number of ways, it seems apparent from the answers highlighted with red arrows that the under-30 crowd are more interested than their elders in finding additional sources of income to support their lifestyles.
Then again, that may also stem from the fact that many older Americans have essentially been shut out of the job market and have given up. Either way, it seems to reinforce the view that people are rethinking all aspects of their lives in an attempt to remain above water.
Can I get life insurance on my pets?
If so, we've got a date with a brick and a rope and a lake.
Posted by: W.C. Varones | August 12, 2010 at 11:36 PM
You can get health insurance for when it's rescued and you're in jail.
Posted by: sharonsj | August 13, 2010 at 10:55 AM
I fully expect that these young people just getting started in the work force are going to make it. In thirty years they'll have as much as their parents but we may be surprised at the forms that wealth takes.
The return to the land, the reduction of work weeks, the improvements in technology and productivity, the sheer mass of accumulated goods, the internationalization of society and commerce and many other factors will change our culture. People will have more time for art, charity and public service and personal development. The prejudices of the past will grudgingly but inevitably be displaced by a willingness to cooperate that does not yet find full expression. The go-go ethic of the last hundred years or so will relax into an abundance similar to the past but without the capital-labor conflict that characterizes the past centuries down to our own day.
The transition will be jarring and many pitfalls lay ahead, but the days monster cars and cavernous houses, of needing to rent storage sheds for superfluous and soon-forgotten stuff and closets and attics bulging with more clothes, furniture, bric-a-brac and assorted impedimentia are (thankfully)receding.
Our children may turn out to be smarter than us.
I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Posted by: francismarion | August 13, 2010 at 07:55 PM
In the mid 50's optimism was King.
It was widely believed that there was a Golden Future
with guaranteed early retirement,longevity would be
extended to 120yrs' of age,that there would be unlimited
free energy compliments of the atomic knowledge.
economic crisis was a thing of the past ,we now knew how
to control them, poverty would be eradicated for ever,
The country was like GM indestructible.need I say more?
Posted by: roger | August 14, 2010 at 05:57 PM