True we may not have dealt with CO2 gases and every single environmental issue, but the notion that our generation has ignored environmental issues to the point that things are significantly worse for the current generation is unfair. There was no EPA prior to 1970. Growing up in Los Angeles I remember days when a brown haze descended over the region and you really couldn’t breathe in the inland empire. I remember trying to go to the fair and coming home coughing. That has markedly improved, at least from my personal anecdotal experience. There may be areas that we have neglected but there are many areas that have improved.</p>
<p>I’m not an expert (and I’m sure chemists or environmentalists will correct me if I’m wrong) but I would suspect that our levels of SOX, NOX, SF6, PFCs and CO have been going down (or at least the rateof increase has been going down)due to the technology we employ such as catalysis. Granted, CO2 is likely increasing, I think that’s a harder nut to crack, and likely more expensive to mitigate, hence the pushback from industry.</p>
<p>On the other hand, from what I heard from every WWII vet, the US population was highly supportive of the war, there was a sense of “we’re all in this together” on the homefront, everyone had or knew someone who was called up and serving, and the enemy was clearly defined and rightly portrayed as aggressive evil tyrants who attacked first and must be defeated. Though they may have been terrified, many of them had a strong sense of purpose that the war must be won and their families/US homefront was strongly supportive of their efforts. </p>
<p>Moreover, there was also information delay/censorship regarding wartime news coverage. One HS teacher who served in Vietnam said that if they had TV and the level of “current” news coverage of D-Day or Okinawa like they did during the Vietnam war, that may have been enough to stir up popular outcry to get the US out of the war. </p>
<p>I’m not so sure about that considering the great difference in the wars themselves and attitudes of the US homefront during WWII vs Vietnam…but that is some food for thought.</p>
<p>Could you clarify that? I ask because there were drafts in WWII, Korea, "peacetime 1950’s-60s, and Vietnam. </p>
<p>Knew/met many who were drafted during those periods…and sometimes they weren’t necessarily part of the same generation(WWII, Korea).</p>
<p>Incidentally, one “tweener”* aged friend who graduated from college in 1963 liked to kiddingly spring the “You at least never had to undergo the possibility of a peacetime draft” like he did.</p>
<ul>
<li>Those born between the “Greatest Generation” and the “Boomer Generation”.</li>
</ul>
<p>By the time D1 finished her 18th year she’d seen the WTC towers burning from her elementary school, helped in coastal MS after Katrina, spent the last weeks of her senior year (along with the vast majority of her classmates) ripping out the drywall & cabinets of her teachers homes after the Nashville flooding & dealt with the aftermath of an F5 tornado coming within a 1/4 mile of her campus. Certainly not the kind of stuff I’d had to deal with before I turned 19. And I never heard a single “why me?” or “why us?”</p>
<p>My kids and the vast majority of their friends are far more invested in helping the world than my parents & inlaws ever were. With the exception of my FIL coaching DH’s baseball team until Little League & my mom sewing some band uniforms back in 1972 (not kidding) I don’t believe any of the grandparent units ever volunteered (although both grandpas were in the military for a while.) DH & I have volunteered a bit, basically connected to programs the girls were involved in. But there is an expectation for this younger generation that the community has a need for you to help, sometimes prodded by graduation requirements (although that’s not the case in my area.) </p>
<p>As for the military & marriage data, to some extent this is a mirror of the area in which you live. I also live in an affluent area but military service is still considered an honorable duty here, so each year a few students go right from HS into the service. We have a family member who is just starting her junior year at West Point. And D1 & her BFF were just catching me up on their fellow 2010 graduates who were getting married this summer. It’s not unheard of to use those AP credits to graduate early so you can get married.</p>
<p>Based on D1’s career interests, she could come back to our area, get a decent starting job & fully fund a nice apt & car while building some savings to buy a condo. My niece & nephew in NJ won’t be able to do that on their expected teacher salaries; my SIL is probably going to have them home for a long time.</p>
<p>Note that the big boom in income (adjusted for inflation) happened from the 1930s to the 1970s, coinciding with a huge economic stimulus (World War 2) followed by the rise in education (with bachelor’s degree attainment rates rising from around 10% to 30% due to GI Bill financial aid), presumably making use of potential talent that was previously otherwise wasted due to lack of educational opportunity to generate a huge economic boom allowing the country to pay down the staggering debt (of World War 2) while greatly increasing living standards, maintaining high military spending in the cold war (and its hot spots in Korea and Vietnam), and visiting the moon.</p>
<p>But looking at the future, there is no longer an easy untapped well of potential talent ready to be educated to make a comparable economic boom to get us out of the current economic problems. Raising the bachelor’s degree attainment rate would require the much more difficult task of improving K-12 education, since about 30% is probably the best we can do with the current state of K-12 education. Probably the same applies to other types of education (associates degrees, trade education, etc.).</p>
<p>I agree with many of your points in No. 41, but the trend has generally been to pollute mindlessly until things are so bad the government needs to step in and require remediation. Pollution is an externality that doesn’t factor into costs of production for corporations. The trend seems to be react to environmental disasters rather than to try to prevent them. That works so long as the disaster is not catastrophic, but if it turns out to be, then we are SOL. We have pushed a lot of our pollution problems off shore by moving manufacturing to places where it is cheaper and there are fewer environmental regulations. That environmental strategy of racing to the bottom only works if environmental disaster is regional, not global, in impact. </p>
<p>A significant part, perhaps even the majority, or our generation (the entrenched economic elite) is now trying to get the government out of environmental regulation because global warming is too expensive to fix and might make us less competitive. There has not been enough thought being given to whether the downside is truly catastrophic and how to balance that potential cost. </p>
<p>We are bequeathing that problem to the “coddlees” along with a host of economic problems worse than any of us faced, except for those very few still alive who went through the great depression. While most of us did not do anything specific to cause these problems, “no snowflake feels guilty in an avalanche.”</p>
<p>CO2 just comes from burning carbon-based fuel; coal is the most carbon-dense fossil fuel, then oil, then natural gas. Cutting CO2 production basically means cutting fossil fuel use, not always an easy thing to do (especially in transportation, where non-liquid fuels pose significant problems).</p>
I thought this was the most cogent comment on this thread thus far. I grew up with a stay-at-home mom; my kids didn’t. Who was more coddled? My wife’s grandmother lived with them and made home-cooked meals every day and cleaned the kids’ rooms. Not so for my kids. But my kids were coddled in other ways–they didn’t have to work for money in the summers as I did.</p>
<p>It’s my view that technology is giving us a new version of the extended family, after a period of smaller nuclear families. How this will play out is unclear to me.</p>
<p>Not to mention the rise of unions (now declining), the establishment of economic safety nets (now in danger), strict regulation of the financial system (ditto), and very little real global economic competition (long gone).</p>
<p>Heard from older classmates and some military parents that the popularity of the military took a steep dive in the '70s and '80s due to Vietnam’s legacy…including news coverage of the Army’s personnel/social problems. Especially in the NE/many parts of California. </p>
<p>A cousin who graduated near the very top of his highly respected suburban Massachusetts high school with near-perfect SATs was considered “nuts” by many classmates and some parents when he went off to a service academy in the mid-'80s. Alums from my NYC public magnet who graduated and went to service academies around the same period encountered similar reactions. </p>
<p>In contrast, those who went off to service academies or enlisted in the '90s or later tended to be respected, even if it is something only a tiny minority of graduates did in wake of Desert Storm and backlash against the anti-war/hippies among many of my HS classmates*. </p>
<ul>
<li>Heard Stuy was “very liberal” during the Vietnam War era and into the '80s from older alums. By the '90s, however, most classmates tended to be center-right leaning “independents” with a strong libertarian streak and a strong disdain for those who were/identified with '60s era hippies.</li>
</ul>
<p>Because Medicare and Social Security were not originally designed in an economically sustainable way, there will be nasty intergenerational fights about whether to cut benefits or raise taxes. Basically another version of the “overpromise and underdeliver” problem.</p>
Don’t forget the destruction of the manufacturing base in the rest of the industrialized world by WWII, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Green Revolution.</p>
<p>I don’t think my kids are coddled. My two oldest, who are in college, are both extremely independent and hard working. I give them plenty of financial support, but they are making the most of that opportunity. Looking at the big picture, I think my generation (I am at the tail end of the baby boom) has been the most coddled. We have just not paid our way. We want all of the benefits–strong military, Medicaid, social security–but we don’t want to pay for them. We will bequeath to our children a nation much weaker than that one we inherited–massive debt, endangered entitlement and social programs. not only do I not feel that I have coddled my children, I feel that in some sense I (as part of my generation) have let them down.</p>
<p>I think my parents were coddled. My mom felt valued in her role as a home-maker and mother; she took pride in taking care of her family. My dad was a doctor when being one meant you were respected as a valued part of society. Most of my friends’ dads had jobs at companies where they worked for decades, rising in authority and compensation until they retired with a nice pension.</p>
<p>I work; many of my friends are SAHMs. Both of us feel bombarded with “why aren’t you doing more?” messages. Their husbands have been downsized just as they hit middle age.</p>