Why The Entire Way We Talk About Millennials Is Wrong

the same age. Oh my god. I actually I honestly thought we were the same You don't know me at all, thanks, Joe. Okay, so that if that's the case, then that makes me not a millennial. But you are clearly a millennial because I've always heard that one two or something like that is the cut off, and so you're clearly on the other side of the cut off than I am. I yeah, I mean people are about the definition of millennials all the time, but by most definitions, I am included in

that much maligned bracket, and you are not. I guess I honestly never knew you were a millennial. Like I'm Sorry. I'm kind of blown away by this because I was expecting a whole intro of like, we can't relate to millennials, and I didn't realize I was co hosting a podcast with a millennial. I've hidden it, well, haven't I. I've also ruined your interest. This is blowing my mind right now.

Oh God, why are we talking about millennials? Well, you know, like in the media, obviously, as you say, much maligned generation, the media has some very stereotypical ways of talking about millennials and these broad strokes. It's like millennials don't want houses, they just want to buy avocados, or millennials are only interested in investing this way or whatever it is, and it's always very embarrassing, sort of reductionist form of coverage. And you know, however, it's like we kind of have

to move on. It's kind of it's there's got to be a better way. As a long suffering millennial, I completely agree with your analysis, and I would also say that one of my pet peeves is people writing about millennials as if we're somehow a separate subspecies of human beings with completely different desires and behaviors. It's still so weird to me that you said is if weird? I just was not. I'm sorry. I'm still having a hard time getting over that. It's still weird to me, but

I'll get it. Yes, is if you're you and your type are a different type of human. Yes. So anyway, as you say, we should probably rethink it, totally bust up these impressions that we have about this subspecies called millennials, and the ramifications of this are huge because of buying power, economic cloud, political cloud. Every time there's a new generation, things are going to change, so we should probably try to get it right. I completely agree. Um, so how

are we? First of all, can I just say I totally distrust you, as a non millennial to represent our best interests. So it's going to be up to me in this podcast. Who are we having on them today? I'm very excited about our guest. His name is Malcolm Harris.

He's a writer, and he is the author of a recent book called Kids These Days, Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, which, if I sort of interpret that title correctly, may imply that a lot of making of millennials, that there's an element of a sort of social construct here that the way we talk about millennials is somehow forced and artificial, and maybe there is a a better way of understanding this generation millennials as a construct of

global capitalism. I love it already, Malcolm, Thank you very much for johning us. Thanks for having me. John. So I've mentioned in the intro that there is this sort of cliche way in which the media talks about millennials. I joke and you know, said, you guys all want to your millennial, right, I am. We have a number you now on this podcast, definitely a numbered on the podcast. You want to spend all your money out avocados instead

of buying a mortgage, instead of getting a mortgage. But I'm curious, you know, when you think about how millennials have been constructed, what you mean by that specifically, Well, it's interesting. One of the first the first thing you said when you said millennials right, was buying power. And because the easiest data we have for any cohort period is purchased data, It's really easy to get information about consumption.

It's really hard to get information about anything else, and it takes years of scholarship, and it's not as flashy, but consumption data is really easy, and there's an incentive for people who are selling things to have these consumption profiles. And so the first voices we hear to finding any generational cohort these days are marketers who are basing their ideas off of consumption patterns. That's not how I think of generations. It's not I think how generations are most

usefully understood as aggregates of purchasing power. So instead of going just by you know, it's sort of like generational bucket and arbitrary generational bucket that's chosen by marketers, what do you base your definition on them? So when I went to look at what is structuring this cohort of workers, which is how I look at you know, most members of this cohort accurate as as producers, not as consumers.

And so I was looking at, first of all, the research into what differentiates generations empirically in terms of they're like personal characteristics, their attitudes towards the world, and a lot of that was about the social environment, the political, social economic environment, and not you know, quick changes. It's not like nine eleven, you know, had a psychological effect that has constructed this generation. Necessarily, it's about long term

secular shifts in the economy. And so the biggest one and the one that I think defines this generation more than anything, is this divergence between compensation and productivity that emerges exactly when we start being born and has continued

expanding since then. Before we get into sort of diving into your framework, I find that just your point to be both really interesting and simple, Which is this idea that yeah, marketers come up with all these things and then they get to define the rules of what aspects are most important, and of course they care about spending patterns.

Is this new in the sense that previous generations where they defined by marketers as well, or is this because of the emergence of a marketing class that now Millennials, Generation Z, every generation will now sort of be defined by characteristics that maybe people didn't think about as much in prior generations. Yeah. I think that starts with Gen X, which is a generation that's may be characterized by its being targeted by marketers for the first time, and that

was a marketing term as well. But if you look at the baby boomers, right, that's not about consumers necessarily, that's about their demographic effect. Right, if you look at the greatest generation, you know some real great self branding there. Uh, that's about fighting in a war and defeating fascism and building a country or whatever. It has nothing to do with selling them stuff. Whereas millennials was created by marketers. We've got marketers right now fighting desperately to name this

next cohort. Jean TWANGI is one of the the leading authorities, as they say, named her book Igen, which is also the name of her consulting firm Igen, trying to sell things to Igen, or trying to sell companies on how to sell things to Egen, or even just the name Igen. So it's generational analysis is full of that kind of marketing chicanery. Wait, I want to hear more about how my compensation doesn't match my level of productivity. Yeah, Joe wanted to get us off that. I wonder why, of

course he did. He's not millennial, right, Um. Yeah, So this is I think the most important thing about you know, data point over the past three or four decades is this diversions that starts and really does about late seventies early eighties, where medium compensation starts to level off for workers, and productivity keeps increases, and we've seen recently that productivity itself start to level off as well. But that gap is not closing, and there's no sign that it is

going to close. And neo classical of economics doesn't really have a term for that divergence, but Marxism does, and it's called the rate of exploitation, and that rate of exploitation is what characterizes, I think the millennial experience more than anything else, certainly more than buying things. Let's talk about how that plays out the question of stagnant wages. The chart showing the gap between productivity and wage growth, I think there's a fair amount of understanding of that,

or at least facets of it. But the sort of translation or maybe the transmission mechanism between this pace of wage growth. Uh two, cultural values and cultural definitions and what defines this generation. What are the sort of second order effects of that. That's a great question. So in a society in which the stakes are higher, because that's really what we've seen is the difference between making it and not making it is greater now than it used

to be. It used to be you could do okay and do okay and that's not the feeling that young people have growing up in America anymore. Um and not not that everyone always did, but there is an increasing feeling that if you don't make it, life is not going to be easy. Life is going to be hard, and so to make it requires more work, younger, earlier, higher stakes, younger earlier than it has in past generations.

And so when we talked about when I went into this project, I felt very critical about sort of the helicopter parents archetype. But as I did more research, I found out that they're responding to real, actual situations that the risk of their children having a much harder life is higher. And so when parents are working harder and most of these parents are not you know, rich, because

most people aren't rich. These are mostly working class parents who are taking on extra work to try and make sure their kid has the best shot they have in a world where if they don't make it they could really suffer. And so I developed a lot of sympathy for that during the course of the project. It sounds like there's a certain winner take all on this about how millennials see the economy, or millennial parents as you put it, in which you can make it and do

phenomenally well. And there are obviously people who have, but as you say, it's not as easy to just do okay and do okay. So the possible paths, the successful paths, are perhaps fewer and maybe greater, and then there's just a lot of bad paths. Yeah, and that competition is very useful for employers and not useful at all for employees. Kevin Russ for The New York Times is a great book called Young Money where he's talking to young stockbrokers,

you know, Goldman analysts, right out of college. And these are the people who have never lost at anything in their whole lives. And they're recruiting, you know, only out of Ivy League schools. And they take these kids who have never lost any things in their lives and they just pit them against each other. And they don't have to know anything about finance or whatever. It's just about

this competition and winning and losing. Because employers harnessed profit from that, that is an engine of productivity for them, whereas for us not so much. So they encourage that kind of competitive behavior just to play devil's advocate for a second, because as a millennial, this is often the response that I hear from people when this type of conversation crops up, it's that our definition of making it

has shifted. So yes, there's a lot of urgency to make it in the workforce because otherwise life will be bad. But the critics of millennials say that our expectations of what making it actually looks like have grown exponentially and in some cases unrealistically. So making it to us is, you know, traveling all the time and posting photos on Instagram and affording a really nice apartment and a big house that we can show off to our friends and families,

and yes, eating avocados all the time as well. What do you say to those people? I think they're they're somewhat misinformed, and they might be misinformed by young people in their own lives who are working hard to reassure

them that they're okay. And I hear this from young people all the time that a lot of their like curating of their digital lives and making themselves look good is not just for their friends to make their friends think they're doing well, but for their parents and older people to make them think that, like, you know, their life is going okay. I think in reality, our expectations

are standards. And I I've actually just been reporting on this about in my line of work, freelance writing, where the nominal pay has decreased, just straight up gone down, and you can see this across industries, and the jobs we have now are worse, and that's not particularly controversial if you look at the numbers. I would like to address the idea of expectations or entitlement to life getting easier,

because that's a criticism we hear about young people. Millennial was a lot, but it was also supposed to be the premise of capitalism, right like a hundred years ago. Kane said, in about a hundred years, we should solve this whole economic problem thing, and then we can spend all our days doing art and being creative and eating great food and you know, taking pictures of avocado tift. That was supposed to be the deal. We haven't seen

that at all. We haven't seen any even movement in that direction where the proceeds of this mode of production become more shared and our state of living increases. So I think people should feel entitled to a better life. I got a question and one of the talks I was giving about the book where a college student asked me, if housing prices are always going to go up, then

when is life's supposed to get easier? And that's a totally valid question that I think, you know, economists need to be answering if things are supposed to get more expensive continually forever, when does life get easier for people on this planet. One of the areas that I don't think is particularly controversial in terms of the way millennials think about the world and think about sort of state

of things is the lack of trust. And so we hear a lot about millennials don't trust politicians, they don't trust the stock market, they don't trust their employers, that all of these institutions have to some extent failed them, and whether that's true or not, that seems to be a real thing. I'm curious what your take is on this sort of trust collapse idea. And it's not just institutions,

it's also other people. And that's one of the biggest, most qualitative gaps that I think defines the generational cohort if you look at compared to recent cohorts, is social trust. It's the idea that most people can be trusted to be honest, which was not huge for Gen X either, But we're I think ten points lower down to I think nineteen or something. So four out of five millennials

don't think most people can be trusted. And that again goes back to that higher stakes economy where if you're constantly competing with other people, of course you're not going to trust them. You'd be an idiot to trust them. They don't trust you either because they're in competition with you. Fundamentally, that is their relation to you as another person, and that didn't used to be the case. I don't think,

especially for younger people. When we're learning concepts of social trust, the level of competition between young people was just lower, so I we shouldn't be surprised. So how much of the blame for the current situation, this intense competition, low compensation, for the productivity that you're actually giving to your employer. How much of that can you weigh at the feet of uh, let's say the older generation. I don't think

about that quite in generational terms. You can, there's a way to think about it if you're using generational conflict is your main frame, but that's not really how I look at it, I would blame the ownership class of that generational cohort in particular. And I think if you look at Bruce Gibney's book, and he's the most he wrote a book called Generation of Sociopaths that is about the Boomers, that is straight up that argument, just like the Boomers did this to us, uh, And I think

he's a gen X guy. At the beginning, he excludes non white and non American born Boomers just from the jump, and you know it, that doesn't make for as good of a title, but you have to do that in order for the analysis to make sense. So the idea of blaming boomers itself is I think kind of faulty. It doesn't stand up. Speaking of gen X. I like a lot of gen X people are pretty upset these

days too, Right. Isn't there a sort of theme that the gen xers feel no one ever talks about them that so much interest is on millennials and the boomers and then gen X which sort of felt, maybe in the late nineties, like their lives were all gonna be awesome and everyone was gonna get rich, and they just

had this very brief moment and they've forgotten about. Yeah, the thing about generational analysis is not everyone is born at an equally important time, and that's that's nothing personal to to gen X, but and it also means no one is going to hold them ultimately responsible for the state of the world and the way that I think millennials will be that's yeah, so you could. I would take that deal if I were you guys, to be honest,

for what it's worth. I think I'm also not gen X because I was born in and I always so. I kind of like you're given the generation between millennials and gen X well, and that gets too. I think an important point about the way I'm doing generational analysis, which is that it isn't about a year cut off. It's about the kind of life you have, right, Jared cushed there's a millennial, but he doesn't live that way.

That's not that question. I'm curious about um to defining things if I guess events in the last fifteen or twenty years, and that is the Iraq War and also the Great Financial Crisis, and the extent to which those have informed millennials view of the world. There were war is an interesting one because it definitely for a lot of us myself included was our first introduction to political participation. UM I started protesting the Iraq War before it's protested

the war in Afghanistan. But um at the same time, the impacts of that constant state of war have been cordoned off from most of society in a way that we've never really seen with war. And so a large effort for the Iraq War was to insulate the population from its effects or even the knowledge that it was ongoing. And so you don't see millennials influenced by the Iraq War at the same um rate volume that you know

Vietnam and impacted that generation. At the same time, we've been at war that our entire lives and it's the war that's been fought by young people. UM, so there are a lot of veterans out there. At the same time, it's a not a infantry intensive war in the same way that we've had past wars. So the impact of the Iraq War has been been very complicated. The financial crisis, I think is probably a little bit more direct and a little bit more visible, and the bailouts I think

is also part of the financial crisis. As part of that whole sequence is understanding that firms would lie and cheat and steal and get away with it, and that this was the condition of our politics and our economy, and that they had the rest of us hostage, and that they could take the whole thing any day and we had to, you know, appease the bondholders or else we were all going to die, and that this was

the condition of our political existence. That's disheartening. So if millennials are constructs of capitalism, and mostly constructs of the downsides of capitalism, it sounds like what can possibly be done to improve the situation for our cohort of people? That's the hundred million dollar question, I guess. Thankfully, we we have one example recently, what was the West Virginia

treat teacher strike, um and labor strike. Labor actions which a point I'm making the book, have been basically banned since we over the course of millennial development, strikes have been marginalized as a practice, so much so that everyone sort of forgot that even that they were illegal, I

feel like, and that they could repress them. And so the West Virginia teacher strike, which was illegal, was also successful and victorious and earned them a wage increase, and I think a lot of people saw that, especially teachers and around the country. We're going to see the impact of that so um lawbreaking, mostly lawbreaking labor action. If it's not breaking laws, it's probably not going to be

very useful. I think at this point, I'm glad you brought that up, because I'm curious, you know, like you know, in the world that I kind of inhabit New York City media. I used to work for a digital or strictly digital media company. We've seen a number of unionizations of newsrooms recently. I think, uh, places like Fox Media and Vice Media have recently unionized. Is this a phenomenon that is okay, this is liberal leftist journalists in New York City are sort of getting into the idea of

lay for action. Or is this a phenomenon that is taking root in a in your view in a broader way, because I have a hard time telling what's just the bubble of the people I follow on Twitter or my colleagues versus the larger cohort, and this is something that's started to change. I think since I wrote the book, actually that the numbers when I was writing the book is that millennials were less likely to join unions even when they were available in their workplace, those numbers might

be different now. I do think we've seen maybe an excess of attention on the media space because it's the media space. We we do control the media, the media controls the media. But I do think this West Virginia teacher strike is going to have a big impact because

it's been so off the table for so long. Um part of the problem is that that just labor organizations have been weakened, the leadership is not necessarily acting in the best interests in the rank and file, which again, this West Virginia teacher strike as a wildcat strike at a certain point where the leadership was ready to go

back in and the rank and file stayed out. And so I think more than just the question of labor action, it's the the type of labor action, the kind of labor action that we're going to see that's led by you know, Facebook memes rather than union bureaucrats, and that seems more effective at this moment. I for one, can't wait for the millennial revolution. I do wonder how much of the reluctance to join unions is part of that competitive culture that has essentially been bred into millennials in

the workplace. You know, you talked about that winner takes all environment. It's kind of hard to be the one joining a union if you think that you also have to set yourself apart from the rest of the group and basically do whatever your employer wants from you in order to get ahead in life. I think that's absolutely true, that crucial point. We saw this with the the Gawker union. Actually, back when there was a a Gawker union, they negotiate

did an at will higher contract, which is insane. If any union person looked at that contract, they, you know, slap that Gawker negotiating team right in the face because that terrible contract. But it was motivated by this idea that I think had been bred into all of them of competition. You know, we don't want to protect the jobs of people who aren't pulling their weight. All right, I'm going to ask you a question that is perhaps

anathema to you, but let's hear it. No, but let's let's say, and maybe this has already happened, because people are smart, this would have already happened. But you know, someone at PEPSI or Procter and Gamble or something came across your book kids these days about millennials, and they're like, oh, we should get that guy Malcolm Harrison to teach us about millennials and how we're all taking this very naive

view of them. That's and how we should be thinking about them more than just a bunch of checkboxes of consumption patterns. We really need to learn more. A has that happened and be you know they bring you in to give a talk, would you tell them? So? The only one where that happened was for the twenty one century Fox off site before they sold the whole company. Basically, they asked if I wanted to come talk about young people at the twenty one century Fox off site in

like Palm Beach. So I got some email about that and I wrote back, you know, being a good Marxist, how much? And at that point I think they sold the company. So that was the closest I've I've come to corporate consulting. I think I would have done that just to go to Paul Meach, to hang out with Lachlan Murphy Murdoch and see what the al Right, so what let's say, let's say they had hit your bed and like, yeah, we you know, come down and talk to us. And I love I just love that vision,

by the way, if you down there. But let's say they had, you know, they had come back with an adequate number for you, and they're like, okay, so what would you What would you tell them, assuming you were trying to saboteger to them roll them? Sure? If I wanted to talk to Laclamurphy, Well, it's hard because the honest things I have to say to them are not ones they'd want to hear. Right, I'd say, your father dies happy and you will die in the street surrounded

by lots of angry people. And I think they are aware of that possibility right now. Right was the head of Cardier the other day was like, I you know, the idea of uprising keeps me up all night every night, and I think partly that's what they want to hear. Right. They get a some sense of excitement over knowing their position is somewhat precarious, but it's it's true. I mean, I don't have anything that I think they would find useful.

They know what their strategy is in terms of labor exploitation. Maybe they can clarify it by reading the book if they want, but I'm not inclined to give them any advice about it. I'm not like Jean Twang, where I'm going to go talk to the American Petroleum Institute about how you can sell cars to millennials, and no one has reached out to me to do something like that. I think we should call this episode. Do you hear

the millennials sing that should be it? Malcolm? How much do you think the pressures that we're talking about that are on millennials? How much do those get eased as the older generation leaves the workforce? And dare I say it actually dies off and maybe leave some money to their children, um which we can all inherit, and also relinquishes their voting power and their influence in US politics. Is that the point where things start getting better? No?

I don't think so, because that one, I have no idea when that's going to happen, and they sure have invested a bunch of time and money into prolonging it as far as possible. It's like Western civilization, right, It's like a nice idea boomers retiring, but also that they've set up the next millennial leadership cohort is not any better than the boomer leadership cohort. Again, people like Jared Pushner.

All Right, these these folks are already in place, and they are responsible to an even smaller number of people than their fathers were. So I'm not looking forward to our millennial over here, Malcolm Harris. The book is Kids These Days, Human Capital and the Making of Millennials. Thank you very much for joining. Thanks so much for having to Tracy. I know you like that episode. I definitely did. It was so good. I feel empowered as a millennial, and you know, I'm going to go out and start

the revolution. And I know that Malcolm, as he said multiple times, he doesn't really think that the straight up generational warfare lens is exactly the correct one, But I do know that nothing gets you more excited about anything ing that sort of any sort of vague whiff of generational warfare, because it has been a constant theme of

your writing. Well, come on, I think there's more than a vague wif to be fair, but I also think if you pin it just on the baby boomers, of course that is oversimplifying things, but just to broaden it out and not be a completely self centered millennial and play to that stereotype. I do think there's an important aspect to this conversation, and a lot of it you can apply to the broader workforce. Right, we talk in markets and economics all the time about that elusive wage growth,

why hasn't it happened? And a lot of what we've been discussing about companies sort of holding all the cards in the battle between corporations, capital owners, and the labor force when it comes to millennials, you can apply that

to a much much broader section of the workforce. I think, yeah, absolutely, and I think there's there's a lot of themes to unpack here, including and increasingly less controversial viewpoint that the concentration of corporate power among a smaller and smaller number of winner take all companies has put downward pressure on wages. I think this lens is absolutely, as you say, very useful for a much broader conversation as well. Yeah, and I like the part where Malcolm said that you weren't

born in an important time. I know I've come to realize that and I just accept it now that it makes me a little bit sad. The one other thing I really liked is the idea of, you know, when we're talking about the strikes, and the idea of maybe the sort of labor action in the future will be people in a Facebook page sharing memes about labor action rather than some sort of centralized union leadership. And it's a good reminder that the next wave of things may

not look like the old things. And so we might have this view like, Okay, we're watching for the re emergence of a more powerful labor movement, and we key looking at union membership or something like that. But it could just be ideas taking ideas taking root, or some sort of more horizontal coordination. Sort of a good idea to remain open to how these things could look different.

It could be something as simple as millennial employees talking to each other about what their actual salaries are and then going to their bosses and figuring out how to make those higher. Absolutely, I'm a little bit worried that maybe the revolution is going to play out on Instagram. Um, but we'll we'll find out, We'll say, alright. This has been another edition of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and

I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at The Stalwart, and you can follow Malcolm on Twitter at Big Mean Internet. And you should follow our producer Topur Foreheads on Twitter at forehead t, as well as the Bloomberg Head of podcast, Brincesica Levy at Print. Just good today, Thanks for listening.