NEWSWIRE: 10/8/18
- Amazon is raising its company-wide minimum wage to $15 per hour—and will also lobby Congress for an increase in the federal minimum wage. The Seattle-based giant, long criticized for its treatment of workers, has picked a side in the contentious minimum wage debate. (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: Sure, Jeff Bezos made this move in part to shed his Silicon Valley reputation as a sweatshop employer: Amazon pays its median worker about $28,500--versus well over $200,000 at Alphabet. Just saying "my workers do different things" wasn't cutting it. Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders targeted Amazon by proposing a "BEZOS" bill, which would tax companies like Amazon whose employees earned so little they qualified for public means-tested benefits. No way Bezos wanted to be simultaneously cross-haired by both Sanders and Trump. But that's not all that's going on. Clearly, the job market is heating up--especially at the low-wage end where we are close to running out of "woodwork" job seekers. Pushing up the minimum wage will put upward pressure on higher-paid Amazon workers, which (even after netting out bonuses and stock options) may take 5% or more out of AMZN's earnings. Other big labor-market competitors, including Walmart, Target, FedEx, and UPS, will have to accelerate their own hike schedules in turn. If this move is a harbinger, expect wage growth that could end up speeding past the new higher minimum wages enacted by states like California and Massachusetts ($15/hour by the early 2020s)--along with higher inflation and faster rate hikes. Unless or until we hit the next recession. And then all bets are off.
- In his new book, The Coddling of the American Mind, NYU professor Jonathan Haidt expresses concern about the state of free speech on college campuses. While plenty believe that these concerns are overblown, Haidt and others like him argue that PC culture is undermining the role of the college campus as a place for open, thoughtful debate. (Bloomberg Business)
- NH: Jonathan Haidt is one very smart guy, and I wish him the best of luck in his effort (see Heterodox Academy) to foster viewpoint diversity in academia. But I'm not optimistic. Abundant evidence shows that exposing people to opposing viewpoints does not make them more tolerant; instead, it further confirms them in their prejudices. As Diana Mutz demonstrates, while "deliberative citizens" (those who enjoy cross-cutting discussions) are often held up as the ideal, "participatory citizens" (those who love partisan blood sports) are the ones who actually engage in politics, run for student offices, engage in protests, and basically run things. A better approach, IMO, would be to improve the employability of grads from non-Ivy League colleges (where the coddling problem is most severe). And to allow students to take fewer liberal arts classes--something that Millennials are already doing, young men especially--and thereby avoid compelling anyone to hear any social or cultural or political "viewpoint." As a proud liberal arts grad myself, I'm not happy about this solution. But I think the humanities curricula at many colleges is broken beyond repair. Btw, here is the cover for Haidt's original piece in The Atlantic.
- Among Gen-X parents, school lunches have become a competitive sport. Forget PB&J in a brown bag; nothing tells the world “my kid deserves the best” like multiple varieties of fruits and vegetables, elaborate themed meals, and love notes in a bento box. (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: Take the society-wide moral panic over protecting and caring for Homelander kids, and combine it with the Xer thrill about competing to be numero uno, and this is what you get. It's not pretty, since it is so obviously not about the kids, many of whom probably throw these Instragram-worthy bento boxes into the trash. Rather, it's about the parents amassing likes and high-fives on social media.
- Decades of rising gender imbalance in China has spawned the “love market,” an informal economy featuring matchmakers, singles’ events, and pickup classes. The stakes are high not just for the many men who are seeking out the elusive single woman, but also for the “leftover women” who are treated as damaged goods. (The Washington Post)
- NH: This is a sobering report, showing how traditional Confucian filial piety mixed with the affluence and opportunities of today's urban China generates a dating scene where everyone is talking past each other. On the one hand, young adults feel hugely pressured to enter early into economically advantageous marriages. Yet, on the other, they often resist and delay giving up their independence. This is especially true for young women, who, despite their demand-driven advantage in numbers (see: "Trendspotting: 5/7/18"), feel they have the most to lose once they marry "into" their in-laws' family. See this essay on the "balinghou" for a brilliant, though maybe even darker, appraisal of generational tensions in China.
- California’s housing market is ground zero in a fierce intergenerational battle between Boomers and Millennials. Despite the state’s severe housing shortage, Boomer residents are eager to vote down construction proposals and protect their own property rights—leaving would-be Millennial buyers on the outside looking in. (Fast Company)
- NH: Millennials in California are creating YIMBY ("Yes In My Backyard") organizations in order to battle the rampant NIMBYism of aging Boomers. Sure, progressive 60-somethings will tell you they are obstructing development up and down the west coast to save the planet. But what they don't tell you is that they're also pumping up the value of their real estate by throttling new housing starts. What this article leaves unmentioned is the even greater travesty of Prop 13, which (by freezing real estate taxes at 1978 levels until the property is sold) has given birth to a whole new rentier class of Boomers. Even worse, this status is conferred to commercial as well as single-home property and is heritable by children. Most of these heirs (children or grandchildren of the original G.I. and Silent Generation owners in 1978) pay less than one-tenth of the property tax of a new buyer. Few of these landed gentry even live in these homes; they live elsewhere and pocket the entitlement. Where oh where is the David Ricardo or Henry George ready to lay a battering ram into this unjust bastion of legal privilege? Aux armes, Millennials!
- The “rewilding” movement, which began decades ago as a call to restore landscapes to their natural state, has morphed into a blanket term for high-end, tech-free getaways. Ironically, these trips are anything but natural: According to one tour operator, luxurious amenities are important because “[an] unpleasant meal, a poorly lit tent, can distract people from their chance to reconnect with nature.” (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: Nothing is more Boomer than the "rewilding movement"--that effort, pushed by local and national leaders over the last couple of decades, to tear down what the G.I. Generation built and "give it back" to nature. We're talking about everything from turning highway medians back to wildflowers and letting wolves run free in Wyoming to dynamiting dams (let the Colorado run free again!) and allowing wildfires to keep blazing to repair ecosystems. A narrower, and more peculiar, definition of "rewilding" is this new industry, which offers high-end customers a chance to "glamp" in the wilderness the way homo sapiens once did 50,000 years ago on the savannah. It's a Boomer dream: no electronics, no cell phone, no companions, no creature comforts... unless something really weirds you out, of course, in which case help can be summoned instantly.
- Fashion brand Madewell is now selling home goods on its website in an appeal to nesting Millennials. While handbags and cheese boards may seem like an odd marriage, the move signifies Madewell’s desire to transform from a clothing company into an all-encompassing Millennial lifestyle brand. (Fast Company)
- A tongue-in-cheek PSA campaign is aiming to boost Millennial turnout in the midterms by terrifying them with older conservative voters telling them everything’s fine. While the ads are funny, they also speak to serious differences in generational priorities: “Climate change?” one woman says cheerfully. “That’s a ‘you’ problem. I’ll be dead soon.” (Adweek)
- Teenagers are unsettled by the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh (and the accompanying discourse). Even in the culture of #MeToo, young women are worried that men (of all ages) aren’t getting the message: “The language being used by a lot of Republicans is eerily similar to the way boys sound in high school.” (The New York Times)
- NH: The Kavanaugh-Ford affair has laid bare a huge divide in generational experience. Most Boomers and nearly all Xers can well recall a Dazed and Confused teen world in which absent parents, empty houses, lots of alcohol, and take-what-you-can movies about teen sex were commonplace. (Last week's SNL skit gets at this pretty well.) Millennials and Homelanders, who cannot recall this environment, aren't really sure what to think about it. In all fairness, the WP story should have interviewed more teen boys. This would have given more balance to accounts that mainly focus on how girls feel pressured. As it turns out, boys too feel pressured. As if this were anything new under the sun.
- The wealth gap among Boomers is spurring fierce clashes over the cost of upkeep in retirement communities across the country. With some residents sitting on sizable nest eggs and others just getting by, no one can agree on a price that’s right for their community—and instead of attempting to compromise, each side has declared war. (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: Back in the mid-1960s when the G.I. Generation invented "Sun City" and "Leisure World," the retirement lifestyle was all about community and fitting in. The G.I.s' homes in Arizona or Florida were as cookie-cutter similar as the Levittown suburban homes they had before age 65. Boomers have spent a lifetime blowing up that paradigm. Now that they are retiring and sometimes moving in their turn to sunnier climates, they are bringing with them the same growing wealth inequality and contentious individualism that they brought to young adulthood around 1980 and to midlife around 2000. Unlike the G.I.s (or the Millennials), no Boomer has ever dreamed about joining the middle class.
DID YOU KNOW?
Brands Coach Up Their Customers. The age-old vendor-customer relationship ends at the checkout line. But that’s changing. Many of today’s brands are lengthening the post-purchase relationship by taking a stake in consumers’ health and well-being. Supermarket chain Lidl is hosting a series of pop-up cafés in Ireland, called The Bakery, that host events designed to promote mental health—including laughter yoga, meditation, and sing-alongs. Lola, a women’s wellness company, created a hotline devoted to answering questions about sexual health. (The hotline received 1,600 calls in its first week.) Fashion brands are getting in on the action as well. Coach launched a weeklong pop-up in Manhattan called “Life Coach,” an interactive space that CMO Carlos Becil says was designed to encourage self-expression. Women’s clothing brand Tuxe wants to make sure that its patrons are prepared for success: With each purchase, customers are granted access to a free performance coaching session, centered on topics such as learning to deal with setbacks.
