NEWSWIRE: 3/18/19

  • An FBI sting operation implicated 50 individuals in a nationwide college-admissions cheating scandal, the largest of its kind ever uncovered. The scandal raises serious questions about the integrity of higher education (or lack thereof), and at the same time reveals the sky-high market value of a diploma from a big-name university. (CNN)
    • NH: The "Operation Varsity Blues" scandal offers a truly disturbing glimpse at some big things gone wrong in America.
    • Let's start by looking at it generationally: Pretty much all of the ringleaders and parents are midlife Gen Xers. And, in general, these Xers prioritize two things. First, "taking care" of everything for their kids--that is, snowplowing all obstacles out of their path (so the kids will never face the risks the parents once encountered). And second, focusing on ends over means (as in "it works for me" and "no rules, just right")--the sort of dark and pragmatic "survivor" fare that Xers have made so overwhelmingly popular on HBO and Netflix. Oh, and ABC. Doesn't this scandal give a whole new meaning to the term "Desperate Housewives"? Thanks, Felicity.
    • As for the other Xer celebrity couple, Lori and Mossimo (if you've visited Target in the last decade, you're wearing one of his t-shirts), it's now coming to light that Mossimo may have lied about his own attendance at USC--and spent all of his parents' tuition money on starting his brand. What a gutsy Xer thing to do! And a finger in the eye to all the Boomers who used to lecture Xers about the good, the true, and the beautiful. Xers know the real deal: It's all flimflam. Recall Han Solo's reaction to Obi-Wan's lecture about The Force: "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid!" Yet here's the pathetic twist: It turns out their Kardashian-clone daughter, Olivia Jade, never intended on even going to class at USC once she got in (though she would join "the partying"). I guess some of this stuff just runs in families.
    • At another level, the scandal points to deep dysfunction in higher education. One common blog response has been, oh, so what's new about colleges favoring the affluent--and why do these people face prison time for doing what the truly wealthy, like the Kushners, can do legally (getting their kid admitted by donating millions)? America's elite colleges are granted huge tax favors, student-loan subsidies, and antitrust immunity (e.g., Ivy League colleges can agree with each other not to allow merit scholarships). But, in return, they offer zero transparency on how they price discriminate and zero evidence on the value added they impart to graduates. (Overwhelmingly, the evidence suggests that elite college brands are merely signalling devices for lazy employers.) In response to the scandal, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are rousing themselves to change the rules of the game for higher education. About time.
    • Finally, what does this say about America's overall social mood? It's turning more pessimistic, for sure. As income and wealth inequality rise, as business dynamism declines, and as the Millennial preference for credentials over risk-taking grows, the importance of starting your life with the right college brand becomes simply overwhelming. Also, with wealth tilting more steeply to older generations, many late-wave Millennials (and soon, Homelanders) feel they have little choice but to tie their fortunes closely to their parents and grandparents--and trust they can pull strings. See The Complacent Class, by Tyler Cowen; or more pointedly Dream Hoarders, by Richard Reeves. (See Reeves' new broadside on the scandal here.) Apparently, it's every family for itself in zero-sum America--the sort of "game of thrones" Xers figure they excel at. Only watch out: Winter is coming. 
  • The candidacy announcement of Pete Buttigieg means that 2016 will likely be the first (and only) year in which the youngest presidential candidate belonged to Gen X. While Xers failed to make an impact on the presidential race early in their lives, candidates like John Delaney, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Beto O'Rourke  aim to end this generation’s White House cold streak. (Roll Call)
    • NH: Gen Xers have always been famously disinterested in national politics. Democrat or Republican, they tend to group more toward the libertarian side of their party, preferring a "lightly governed" America. They have also been very slow to get elected to national political office. When the oldest Boomers were the same age as the oldest Xers are today (58, back in 2001), they were into their third consecutive presidential term and had already gained a plurality in both houses of Congress. Today, Xers remain significantly outnumbered by Boomers in Congress. They remain indeed the slowest generation in American history by far to assume power in either the House, the Senate, or as state governors.
    • Now for a further indignity. In each of the last twelve presidential elections, there have been roughly ten to twenty serious candidates in both parties vying for the nomination. (By "serious" I mean lasting until at least one primary before bowing out.) From 1988 until 2016, incredibly, the youngest candidate was always a Boomer. That's 28 years! In 1988, it was Al Gore (at age 36). In 1992, Bill Clinton (age 46). In 1996 and 2000, it was Alan Keyes (age 46 and 50). In 2004, John Edwards (age 51). In 2008, Evan Bayh (age 53). And in 2012, Tom Pawlenty (age 52, born in 1960).
    • Only in 2016, with Xers flooding into the nomination scene, almost entirely on the GOP side, did Gen Xers at last comprise all the youngest candidates. (The two youngest were Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio; both age 45, born 1971.) Now guess what? That Xer honor of fielding the youngest candidate is likely to last only four years. Assuming Pete Buttigieg (age 37, born 1982) does not quit before the Iowa primary, the Millennial Generation will steal that honor in 2020. And it would be unwise to guess that the Millennials will relinquish it for at least the next couple of decades.
  • Starting next year, English high schools will begin teaching courses on fertility. In a pronatalist twist on conventional sex-ed curricula, these new courses will encourage family formation, cautioning students not to wait until it’s too late to start a family. (MercatorNet)
    • NH: This is a smart move. For every generation, the overall birthrate averages lots of women who have more births than they ever really intended with lots of others who can't have the births that they wished for. I have often pointed out that the biggest recent driver of lower birthrates (see: "Annual Demographics Outlook") is the steep fertility decline in the youngest age brackets--which points mostly to fewer babies to women who either did not intend to have them or were not prepared to be parents. This decline is no doubt a good thing. Accordingly, any public policy endeavor to raise the birthrate should start first with the other group: those who are capable and willing to have kids but cannot. We're talking about a large number of couples, accounting for perhaps 6 to 12% of all women age 15 to 44. Roughly 12% of women in this age bracket have at some time used infertility services.
    • As the article points out, students currently learn much about how to prevent pregnancy but precious little about how to enable pregnancy. Popular misconceptions abound, the most misleading of which is the belief (held by 4 out of 5 young people age 16 to 24) that female fertility does not start to decline until after age 35. In fact, optimal female fertility is reached in the early 20s and thereafter declines gradually with age--and declines more rapidly after age 30. Male fertility also declines with age but at a much slower rate.

Ivy League Admissions for Sale. NewsWire - Mar18 chart2 

  • Recognizing the lethal toll of loneliness, more insurers are moving to cover devices and services that keep seniors company. Options include the app Papa, which offers “grandkids on demand” (see: chatty college students), and the robot ElliQ, which reminds users to talk with family members daily. (The Wall Street Journal)
    • NH: Mounting evidence of the adverse consequences of social isolation--especially among Boomers as they grow older--isn't just speculation. (See: "All the Lonely People.") Health insurers are taking it seriously. Cigna funded the first massive survey of social isolation. AARP teamed with Harvard to produce the first estimate of its annual cost to Medicare (minimum estimate: $6.7 billion yearly), confirming that chronic loneliness is as deadly as smoking or high blood pressure. And now Humana's Medicare Advantage plan is funding programs to help its members stay more socially connected. Unlike fee-for-service Medicare, the advantage plans are incentivized to pay for anything that will reduce members' demand for acute care.
    • For a generation that has so long prized its independence and "going solo," this gradual appreciation of the costs of loneliness has an ironic twist. Once upon a time, Boomers regarded the clubby togetherness of their parents' G.I. Generation as something akin to a pathology. And now? To help cure Boomers of the opposite affliction, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May recently appointed a "Minister of Loneliness." Wow, how Boomer is that? I can already imagine the ministry's public service ads, dubbed with classics by Simon & Garfunkel ("I am a rock...") or Eric Carmen ("All by myself...").
  • Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon prepared for the upcoming baseball season by reading Managing Millennials for Dummies. Maddon is just the latest sports coach to realize that generational change calls for a different managerial approach: Millennial players, for instance, want to know the “why” behind every command. (Associated Press)
    • NH: Left unmentioned in this article are many of the most obvious Millennial-era shifts in coaching style: More structure and scheduling; more supervision; more focus on off-field lifestyle (diet, leisure, relationships, counseling); less tolerance of risk; and, of course, getting coaches to act more like coaches rather than pulling rank like bosses. That's probably what Maddon meant when he observed that young players today want to know "why."
  • To understand why young people are embracing socialism, read this profile of a 19-year-old Briton who’s active in the Momentum movement. His experience reflects those of other Millennials who have come to associate capitalism with disillusionment: higher costs, lower mobility, and (likely) a lower standard of living than his parents’. (The New York Times)
    • NH: In both the U.S. and the U.K., the recent youth embrace of socialism has been swift and recent--showing up dramatically here in the 2016 Democratic primaries and there (six months later) in the 2017 youth surge for Labor that nearly toppled the Conservatives. And, in both countries, the socialist standard-bearer is an elder gray champion--Bernie Sanders (born 1942) and Jeremy Corbyn (born 1949).
    • Unlike their parents, many Millennials are exhilarated by the prospect of top-down national authority and none of them recall the horrors of communist misrule like Mao's great famine or Pol Pot's killing fields or the crushing of dissenters in Eastern Europe. (See: "Are Millennials Giving Up on Democracy?") One curious emerging issue is terminology. AOC and many other young leftists like to call themselves "democratic socialists," when in fact they should be calling themselves "social democrats." Unless, that is, they propose "the public expropriation of the means of production." And that definitely would not fly well in America--not even among Millennials.
  • “Rage rooms,” places where people can destroy objects in order to release their pent-up frustrations, are popping up across the globe. It’s no accident that these rooms are becoming popular just as emotionally repressed Homelanders are aging into young adulthood. (Cassandra Report)
    • NH: LOL. I totally get it that Homelanders--the most rule-encumbered, micro-managed generation of kids in living memory--need to vent their frustration from time to time. (See: "Are Kids 'Overruled'?") What's hilarious here is that these rooms enable teens to rage in a totally safe and "socially acceptable" manner. So go ahead and be Conan the Barbarian. Just don't hurt or offend anyone.
  • Writer Julius Krein contends that the emergence of nationalist movements worldwide on both the political right and left can be explained by the weakness of “synthetic globalism." According to Krein, post-Cold War voters only backed neoliberal globalism (aka "the Washington consensus") because they were promised by leaders that everyone would be a winner; as it became clear that this was not true, voter support evaporated. (American Affairs)
    • NH: While Krein's essay is a long and challenging read, it contains brilliant insights. He suggests that both parties have gone along with globalism not because any leader has seriously proposed top-down global governance (with global institutions having any final decision-making power). Instead, he says, they have done so to vitiate the power of national democracies to make any important decisions of their own. Popular passions must always be constrained by the "inevitable" progress of globalism. Why does the right support this? Because, while they love the nation, they hate the state. And why the left? Because, while they love the state, they hate the nation. Neither side accepts that societies sometimes need to make top-down collective decisions that entail winners and losers. In such a world, while globalism is deemed to be a "democratic" trend, actual democracy in practice is thwarted and most individual nations are badly governed.
  • Privacy enthusiasts can add yet another worry to their list: being spied on by an airplane seat camera. While airlines say these cameras are inactive and intended only “for future developments,” that will hardly quell concerns of surveillance capitalism’s steady creep. (CNN)
    • NH: Interestingly, Boomers are the most likely to be irritated by these newfangled privacy intrusions. Millennials are more likely to assume that, well, someone probably installed it to keep me safe.
  • After testing well with focus groups, Boston’s Commission on Affairs of the Elderly changed its name to the Age Strong Commission. The “don’t call me old” movement continues gaining momentum, even as it’s also inviting exasperation from critics who believe this language only papers over the fact that Boomers are aging. (The Boston Globe)

                                          DID YOU KNOW?

                                          The Optimized Workplace. Co-working spaces are catching on with employers and employees alike. (See: “So Happy (Living and Working) Together.”) WeWork, the leading company in the industry, has a new tool that it hopes will attract even more clients: data-driven optimization. The firm recently acquired Teem, maker of conference room booking software. Last month, WeWork doubled down on data with its acquisition of Euclid, a service that specializes in smartphone tracking in retail stores. The company is experimenting with various tracking tools in its workspaces, including thermal and motion detectors as well as Bluetooth beacons. WeWork has even built out its data capabilities into a consulting business by which it helps outside organizations answer their workplace logistics questions (“Do we need more conference room space?” “How can we encourage attendance on Fridays?”). Naturally, however, privacy has emerged as a concern. Though WeWork officials say all data are anonymized, datasets could still be traced back to a particular individual.