Maybe the kids aren't alright. Maybe they're scared, still hoping a Daddy Warbucks will save them. Because, as the faux-affluent bubble of the past decade has burst, we're seeing the wreckage of people who have no idea how to manage their money with thrift.
Looking back to 2006, at the height of our economic insanity, the Times profiled "Bank of Mom and Dad" beneficiaries like 23-year-old Jason, who "lives a postcollege life in Manhattan that is very nearly typical... [His] walls are decorated with pennants and posters from Syracuse University... [He] carries peanut-butter sandwiches to work," and he gets a monthly check from his parents.
Parental support in your early 20s may be useful and often necessary for getting your foot in the door of this overpriced city. But what happens when it becomes a point of pride? When it goes on too long? When it's the only way to stay afloat?
In the summer of 2009, we heard that parents were pulling the plug on New York's "trustafarians."
On television The Bank of Mom & Dad recently debuted. In the show, viewers meet "deadbeats" like Christina, described by Slate as "a 33-year-old with an apartment in Queens and a mouth perpetually scrunched in a petulant sideways smirk"--and $38,000 in debt.
TIME
Last week the New York Times' Room for Debate looked at "The 40-Something Dependent Child" asking experts their opinion on adult children who may approach middle age still relying on their elderly parents to subsidize their retirements.
Holding on to the fantasy of endless financial support, of money growing on trees, young people remain helpless, even as they age into adulthood. And we all end up paying for it.
American Consumers this week made TIME Magazine's Top 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis, in the battle of Main St. Vs. Wall St.
And now we've got the hipster-made T-shirt "I Can't Afford to Heart NY." (It's actually printed on American Apparel shirts.)
photo Mark Byron
Our mayor is a man who set the record for Biggest Spender--he spent more of his private fortune on the campaign than any other politician in US history (close to $100 million). At a time when we should be valuing thrift, saving, and moderation, we're about to get Business As Usual for 4 more years--and maybe more, since Bloomberg abolished term limits.
What kind of role model is Bloomberg for the young people who voted for him? What do they see when they look at him? He might have worked hard for his billions--clearly, he invested and saved well--but that's not what he flaunts.
When we look at Bloomberg we see a shower of dollars, a magical money tree that never stops yielding golden fruit, and the promise that if you just spend enough, you'll get what you want in the end.
11 comments:
Fabulous post, JM.
I can't stand bloomberg, but at the end of the day I couldn't bring myself to vote for somebody as obviously incompetent as Thompson. Get a good technocratic candidate who seems like he can remotely manage a city NYC's size and then I'll reconsider.
"But what happens when it becomes a point of pride? When it goes on too long? When it's the only way to stay afloat? "
What happens? Who cares. Anybody willing to rest on their laurels and not have any sense of real self worth deserves all the consequences. Fuck em. There have been plenty of people in the past who couldn't afford to live here...but they made it work anyway. So take your "I'm to poor to live in NYC" American Apparel t-shirt and get thefugouttahere!!!
This is turning into one huge nightmare that never ends.
When is everybody going to wake up?
Bloomberg declares his victory a "mandate." What a pompous, arrogant ass.
So we can look forward to (by which I mean "dread") at least four more years of Bloomblight. Great (by which I mean "aargh").
"At a time when we should be valuing thrift, saving, and moderation"
Wow. You really don't understand how the economy works at all, do you? Of course, if everyone stopped spending right now, we'd get out of this mess in a hurry!
It's not like I come here and expect reasoned arguments. I've come to terms that this blog is basically a shrill howl of a wounded animal - pure emotion, and no logic. (The fact that I come here at all is dictated by necessity - I do like to know what's going on, but the most thorough neighborhood bloggers also tend to be the most ideological.)
I am far from a free market knee jerk Ayn Randist, but this post is really drivel. There have always been many New Yorks - bohemian, artsy New York and hustling, bustling, money making New York. And art always needed patrons.
What kind of a role model is Bloomberg? He *might* have worked hard for his billions? Do you have any idea what several decades of 18 hour work days are like? It ain't blogging from your favorite pre-gentrification greasy spoon, I'll tell you that much. Where do you think that $100 million he spent on the campaign went? All into the local economy. Unlike buying some Italian yacht, spending money on a local political race send almost ALL of that money right into the pockets of lower-wage New Yorkers who put up his posters, staff radio and tv stations and man phones. But no, I'm sure they would have been better off if he'd been more "thrifty." We would all be better off if billionaires kept their money in the Caymans and didn't spend a dime of it. *head slap*
Here's a well-reasoned and thoughtful critique of Bloomberg (for whom my support is lukewarm at best, btw). One that happens to mention that in 2007 ALONE he gave $205 million to charity. Can you even grasp that?
http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/mike-bloombergs-crushing-loss
What have you done for humanity lately, that you call him out for being a bad role model? I know, we should all write blogs and gripe about everything - that'll make for a swell society.
I don't know why I even bother. I wish someone would report on LES/EV without so much hyperventilation and cluelessness.
The idea of parents paying their children to live their ordinary lives is just something I can't wrap my head around.
When I moved back to NY after college I lived at home for a few months until I got a job and an apt which I shared with my BF. The rents seemed really high then, as they are now. A tiny 1-br on the UES was $900 and we were each earning around $21,000/year.
Rents are now about double that, and so are starting salaries. So what is the problem? Why can't these kids make it without their parents? The recent economic downturn doesn't explain this problem that has been around for a decade.
I fully expect my son to support me when he is a successful whatever he becomes, and I am a starving old lady on social security eating cat food, and he knows it. When he has excessive text message charges he pays me out of his allowance and what he earns tutoring (for example). Am I cheap? I bet these kids would think so. But he is a responsible teenager with a great deal of ambition, and I believe will continue to be so into adult hood because he doesn't expect life to be handed to him - he knows he has to work hard, and he certainly does.
Our kids are supposed to exceed us, do better, be smarter, richer and move out of the ghetto, but for some reason there is a large population that are not becoming independent adults who know the value of a dollar and can live a modest life within their means.
These are the same commenters on this and other blogs who think that you hate progress of all sorts, because it is an insult to the future that is theirs.
The problem is that their future, as they are proving to us by their actions on our streets and their disrespect of their neighbors is ugly and suburban, and they are too self absorbed to see it.
Hey Anonymous at 3:19, have you noticed that this isn't a blog that tells you what is going on in the neighborhood? Not at all. Like you and your ilk keep saying: "If you don't like it, shut up and leave."
Try Gothamist or the Curbed/Eater group of fancy blogs. Lots about what is going on all around town that will fulfill all your glass and mirror condo-loving, beer pong fantasies.
To be fair to the young spongers, the situation in this country is now the opposite in terms of which generation most of the income and wealth goes to than in the decades after WWII. The situation of Anonymous 7:42 is atypical.
Older people -who haven't been kicked to the curb by early retirement!- now make higher salaries than younger people. They hold most of the wealth (who do you think owns these homes that increased in value so much the last decade?). They get most of the benefits from government support programs -for example they have government funded health care. Many of them have defined benefit pensions, and so on.
As a culture, we simply haven't caught on to this. If we had, you would see more young people living with their parents, more generations living under one roof. That is actually the norm in many other countries. There wouldn't be the cultural expectation of people in their 20s moving out and "making it" in a city like New York. Never mind that starting salaries have stagnated and post-graduate unemployment has been rising.
So having all these people in their 20s and 30s living in New York and subsidized by their parents who live elsewhere, maybe using loans based off of the equity of the parents' houses, is a problem. It drives up rents and its based on an unrealistic and outdated view of the economy. But these people are pretty much just doing what the culture is telling them to.
"Good works are a good thing. When it comes to political power, though, Bloomberg’s giving has been a powerful strategic asset to Bloomberg’s getting."
from the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/11/09/091109taco_talk_hertzberg
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