Joel Kotkin on the “screwed generation”

Hint: It’s not the baby boomers

Because I know you like it, let me lay some demographics on you. We are looking at two groups of Americans: one has lost 13% of its net worth since 2005; the other lost 37% over the same period. Since 1984, the median household worth of one has increased by 42%, while the worth of the other has declined by 68%. One has seen its share of the workforce increase since 2008. The other suffers unemployment at a rate 50% higher than the national average. And one of these groups claims to have invented rock and roll—no, not white people. We are talking about the differences between people over 65 and people under 35. All these fun statistics come from this article by Joel Kotkin, cheerfully titled “Are Millennials the Screwed Generation?”

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Hey, what’s Meghan McCain up to?

McCain 2008

Besides wearing that one kind of hat that girls who are definitely not fat wear, I mean.

Remember the good old days, when Combat! blog was primarily about me getting angry at Victoria Floethe and other children of privilege masquerading as writers, politicians and intellectuals? That sort of masquerade is for children of the middle class, bitches, and don’t you ever forget it, but I digress. My point is, in our haste to actually address elements of contemporary American society that will be of interest to more than one obsessive man in his eerily unfurnished apartment, we at Combat! blog have forgotten our roots. Those roots are regularly dyed, and they totally look amazing and not trashy at all. They belong to Meghan McCain, the daughter of longtime senator and former candidate for President John McCain, and she is still working away at her weekly column in the Daily Beast, which has nothing to do with her being John McCain’s daughter but was instead awarded to her out of respect for her astute political analysis and talent as a writer, as demonstrated by her bestselling book, My Dad, John McCainSeriously, that’s the title of her book. According to the New York Observer, she’s also got another book in the works for Hyperion, which contract she secured with the help of “the literary agent she shares with her father, Sterling Lord Literistic president Flip Brophy.” Every time I try to understand that clause, my brain slips out of the socket. If you’re like me, you can’t wait six months for Meghan McCain to write a whole damn book, even if it does cover “topics ranging from what the party needs to do to attract others like her, to the importance of technology in reaching out to younger voters, to what needs to be done to keep young people passionate and involved in politics in the future.” I’m assuming the word “Twitter” appears in this book several hundred times, but until I find out I will have to content myself with her Daily Beast columns, which finally brings us to the topic of today’s blog: Meghan McCain is a rich little fascist who can’t think and would right now be gradually developing a cocaine problem in the the stock room of some ASU college bar had her dad not run for President. Ours is a broken meritocracy. Won’t you join me for lunch at Schadenfreude’s?

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