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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Thu Jul 24, 2014, 05:32 AM Jul 2014

Clueless Rich Kids on the Rise: How Millennial Aristocrats Will Destroy Our Future

http://www.alternet.org/clueless-rich-kids-rise-how-millennial-aristocrats-will-destroy-our-future




Prevailing neoliberal ideology, which perverts capitalism as an economic system into capitalism as an unyielding political ideology, lurks in the shadows of almost every major issue in America, though nowhere is its influence more obvious or profound than in the spiraling rise of income and wealth inequality today.

When Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” was first released in English, it followed the Culture War Playbook to perfection: First came the triumphant plaudits from like-minded thinkers, followed shortly by the hasty rebuttals of their ideological opponents, followed themselves by a torrent of commentary from pundits left and right who skimmed the book before adding their own two cents. Soon, there was the predictable “unskewing” by the right, after which came the fact-checking of the “unskewers” on the left… at which point the whole process had reached its inevitable conclusion. High-traffic angles fully juiced, our treadmill news cycle moved on to the next plank in our bitter, pointless culture clash, what author William Gibson has termed our “cold civil war.”

So it goes.

What’s so interesting about this Kabuki dance is just how few commentators at the time bothered to note that Piketty’s findings were never particularly controversial or groundbreaking. Piketty’s book became such a sensation on the left precisely because it gave weight to what anyone with a pair of eyes in the real world (i.e., not Lower Manhattan, the Washington Beltway, or Silicon Valley) can already plainly see: Wealth inequality grows each and every day, while the middle class keeps getting pummeled by this Glorious Free Enterprise System. What used to be good, stable jobs are converted into temp positions or contract work — automated, downsized or simply eliminated entirely, they’re replaced in the labor market by the worst-paying, most utterly dehumanizing low-wage gigs that our much ballyhooed “job creators” can imagine and implement.
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Clueless Rich Kids on the Rise: How Millennial Aristocrats Will Destroy Our Future (Original Post) xchrom Jul 2014 OP
K&R and K&R and K&R.. nt riderinthestorm Jul 2014 #1
An excellent read - worth the time. CrispyQ Jul 2014 #2
ahem (cough) +1 ^ johnnyreb Jul 2014 #4
Article goes on to mention Wealthy Millenial Candidates... KoKo Jul 2014 #3
The growing gang of narcissists. L0oniX Jul 2014 #5
on a tangent ... Tuesday Afternoon Jul 2014 #7
Incompetent wealthy calling the shots. moondust Jul 2014 #6
100,000 Zuckerbergs, 100,000 Thiels! MisterP Jul 2014 #8
A Very BIG K&R emsimon33 Jul 2014 #9
K&R! smirkymonkey Jul 2014 #10
Heirs of Trickle Down. Octafish Jul 2014 #11

CrispyQ

(36,234 posts)
2. An excellent read - worth the time.
Thu Jul 24, 2014, 08:55 AM
Jul 2014
snip...

With a few notable exceptions, the latest batch of millennial candidates aren’t any better. Almost universally children of wealth and privilege, most embrace some token aspects of social liberalism while hurrying to display their fiscally conservative bona fides. They represent the status quo of the affluent, the powerful — the inherited wisdom of a political class that has overseen decades of economic failure for all but the wealthiest among us. When compared with other candidates, most of their positions are uncontroversial — which only makes their grand pronouncements about changing Washington all the more disheartening. If these candidates are in any way representative of the next class of Americans who are both willing and able to run for national office (and I suspect that they are), they should give pause to anyone who thinks that a new generation is coming of age who will rescue our captured politics.


KoKo

(84,711 posts)
3. Article goes on to mention Wealthy Millenial Candidates...
Thu Jul 24, 2014, 09:06 AM
Jul 2014

and how some follow Pete Peterson in wanting to cut entitlements because they are fiscal conservatives... Some snips about candidates from article:

---------

Up until now, Pennsylvania Independent Nick Troiano and Republican Mike Turner have received the bulk of the media’s attention. (Turner recently lost his primary bid despite outspending his opponent 3-1.) Troiano has been in the public eye for a while, most prominently as one of the founders of “The Can Kicks Back,” a tragicomic millennial astroturfing outfit that tried to sell billionaire debt-alarmist Pete Peterson’s ideological vision to young people (slashing entitlement programs so that his gazillionaire buddies won’t be forced to help shoulder the programs’ expanding costs). The Can Kicks Back has been a monumental failure; the group has struggled to stay solvent, characterized as ”nearly broke” by internal emails discovered by Politico reporter Byron Tau last February. But this is America, and kids from upper-class families and cushy private schools always manage to “fail up.” Rather than departing from politics or taking on a more humble role, Troiano has opted to foist his entitlement reform obsession upon the voters of Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional district. As for Mike Turner, at least he was honest about being a Republican: Turner’s campaign went viral recently when Mother Jones ran a story titled “ This Millennial Bro Is Running for Congress Using the Family Trust Fund,” which is pretty much everything you need to know about former candidate Mike Turner.

Examining the full slate of the millennials running for Congress this term, a troubling trend emerges. Despite varying slightly on a number of other (mostly social) issues, the majority of these candidates display an almost monomaniacal obsession with “entitlement reform” and balancing the budget, as if that were the only long-term crisis facing young Americans. ( It isn’t. At all. Even a bit.)

How about Elise Stefanik (29), a New York Republican running for the House? A long-time D.C. insider and Harvard grad, Stefanik was raised by a family that owns a flooring company worth upwards of $50 million ( per manta.com, h/t DailyKos). A consummate D.C. insider who’s now posing as a local small businesswoman, her campaign site is much more cagey than any of the other candidates I researched for this piece. She resorts to generalities when discussing most issues, but does tout “fiscal responsibility,” stressing the need to “balance the budget and pay down the national debt.” Stefanik has already raised a staggering $836,126 from a wide-ranging group of individuals, companies, PACs and party leadership.

Young Republican candidates Isaac Misiuk (25) and Marilinda Garcia (30) are also convinced of our oncoming debt disaster. At Maine’s 2014 State Republican Convention, Misiuk stated that “we must reduce spending and balance the budget.” Garcia follows much the same script, calling for ”entitlement reform,” the full repeal of Obamacare, and “a balanced budget amendment.” To be fair, unlike the rest of these candidates Garcia and Misiuk are no aristocrats, as is immediately apparent when examining their latest FEC filings. Combined, they raised less than almost every other candidate mentioned in this piece. And yet, the song remains the same.

In an email exchange with Forrest Dunbar, a candidate for Alaska’s 1st Congressional district, Dunbar defended entitlement programs aggressively, despite what he sees as a “dark fatalism” among millennials skeptical that they’ll ever receive those programs’ benefits. Dunbar is particularly critical of recent plans to cut Social Security and Medicare, where “‘serious’ attempts at entitlement reform include the Ryan Budget, which would turn Medicare into a voucher, slash veteran’s healthcare, raise taxes on the middle class… and then turn around and plough those savings into a giant tax cut for the wealthiest people and corporations. If that’s the best Congress can do, then Medicare (and eventually Social Security) are doomed.” New Jersy Congressional candidate Roy Cho agrees, stating in an email that “[m]aking drastic and immediate cuts to so-called entitlements might balance the budget, but it will [...] plunge our economy back into a recession. Spending is certainly a large part of the problem with the dysfunction in Washington, but the bigger problem is that bipartisan cooperation no longer exists between the two parties.”


more about other candidates in the article...

Tuesday Afternoon

(56,912 posts)
7. on a tangent ...
Thu Jul 24, 2014, 12:04 PM
Jul 2014

actually, I think the theory has been proposed that we are past The Age of Narcissists and have now entered The Age of Sociopaths.

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/age_of_the_sociopath/

and also:

Why We Love Sociopaths
By Adam Kotsko
My greatest regret is that I’m not a sociopath. I suspect I’m not alone. I have written before that we live in the age of awkwardness, but This text excerpted from Adam Kotsko’s Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide To Late Capitalist Television, now available from Zero BooksThe New Inquiry Magazine, No. 3, Arguing the Web. a strong case could be made that we live in the age of the sociopath ...


at link: http://thenewinquiry.com/features/why-we-love-sociopaths/

moondust

(19,917 posts)
6. Incompetent wealthy calling the shots.
Thu Jul 24, 2014, 11:58 AM
Jul 2014

They may know how to cash rent and investment checks but not much else, leading to poor judgment and bad decisions. Already a problem in Congress.

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