<p>Looking at the economy, and the energy shortage, I have the sinking feeling our kids who may have been born on 3rd base will be stuck there, and their kids will be lucky not to be sent back to first!</p>
<p>
If your kids are smart, there is undoubtedly options for them. The people you should be sorry for are the ones with no options.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Sometimes you catch a lucky break and draw a walk --maybe even hit by a pitch. Dumb luck to be sure, but you now own 1st base. </p>
<p>Sometimes you smack a beautiful single into the gap…and a single can be everybit as beautiful as a homerun and is usually more elegant than a triple. A clean crack of the bat, and a perfectly placed ball. Just what you wanted.</p>
<p>I often find that a lot of misery in life comes from believeing nothing but a homerun will suffice – swinging like a maniac trying to hit the ball out of the park; hoping to walk, not run, the bases in that hero’s victory lap.</p>
<p>…just get on first base, and you never know what good things can happen.</p>
<p>Our college daughter has been hitting singles and more ever since she was in highschool – works harder than we ever did. She plays a very good game and she plays on her own terms. A singular batting stance and she doesn’t swing at too many bad pitches.</p>
<p>Btw:
Audiophile, thanks for a great link. Would love to see more of this kind on cc.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>I really like this metaphor.</p>
<p>Now I am thinking about all the kids who have to be pushed, shoved, cajoled, or dragged to first base. After they get there, sometimes they realize they can get to 2nd on their own. :)</p>
<p>Mr. Payne: I’m just thinking how we all had it easy, with cheap energy in this country and a rising economy (for most of our lives.)</p>
<p>It will be more difficult to have an easy life, no matter how smart you are, when food and gas costs will be a much higher percentage of the income. Much less available for a house, for education, for everything else.</p>
<p>But that’s all fodder for a different discussion.</p>
<p>In “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Sidney Poitier launches into a marvelous monologue when his parents try to lay a guilt trip on him for all they’ve done for him. He tells them that the debt he owes to them is payable to his children. That makes a lot of sense to me.</p>
<p>Until the day comes that they pay it forward, though, it’d be nice if they could do the dishes without all the long-suffering sighs. ;)</p>
<p>I’m with Mommusic. To abuse the analogy further, even those of us who weren’t born on third base came to the plate facing a batting practice pitcher. All you really had to do was mind your technique, keep your eye on the ball, and you almost had to want to fail to not get at least a solid single.</p>
<p>I feels like our kids step into the batter’s box and look up to see Johan Santana on the mound. And he’s throwing BB’s.</p>
<p>I don’t know.</p>
<p>I dont want to sound like John McCain getting punked for saying America is better off now than it was at some previous point but; fwiw, when I was a kid there were no Black Americans a step away from the presidency not a women, either. Race relations sucked. Women were not considered for the board room --let alone the presidency. </p>
<p>Most kids did NOT go to college. Ivies were all male and not very diverse (apropos this crowd). Most teenagers did not have a car in high school or even after high school unless they had a job to pay for it and it was usually a clunker without air conditioning, a cd/dvd player and GPS navigation. </p>
<p>You couldnt fish in Lake Erie or take a midnight stroll through Central Park. The list would bore us because it is virtually endless.</p>
<p>There are tougher times ahead to be sure; but as these things go, it doesnt seem like much of an apocalypse out over the horizon.</p>
<p>I cannot remember a time in my life where a boatload of folks were not decrying the death of the American dream. Really. Think about it. When? Or even a time in history when the more prophetic amongst us were not predicting the END.</p>
<p>I am a contrarian on this point:
I think our kids will be stepping in to a much better world
in large part because they will be the ones who will live it and make it what it is.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Total wealth is up over 500% since 1980. And since the last recession in 2001 it is up substantially again. </p>
<p>[Image:US</a> household and nonproft net worth 1945-2007.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_household_and_nonproft_net_worth_1945-2007.gif]Image:US”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_household_and_nonproft_net_worth_1945-2007.gif)</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_household_and_nonproft_net_worth_1945-2007.gif]Image:US](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_household_and_nonproft_net_worth_1945-2007.gif%5DImage:US){kind=link}
<p>Only for the wealthy, Barrons. Inflation-adjusted income at the 75th percentile is flat over that period. At the 50th percentile inflation adjusted income has gone down. [SOI</a> Tax Stats - Individual Statistical Tables by Tax Rate and Income Percentile](<a href=“http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html]SOI”>http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html) Table 7 So apparently all of that “total wealth” gain has been enjoyed by the top 25% of the economic strata, sharing nothing with the rest. People who were born on third base are, indeed, doing OK. The rest of the folks? Not so well, apparently.</p>
<p>(Of course the numbers you cite are not adjusted for inflation, and are of uncertain accuracy, coming from a personal opinion posted on Wikipedia with no confirmation.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Great post, woodwork. I feel greatly encouraged after reading it! The kids will have challenges just like we did. I remember that in the midst of staflation in the 70’s things looked pretty rotten for the future, too.</p>
<p>could someone please give me a definition of 3rd base? How much “total wealth” a family must have to be regarded as on third base?</p>
<p>Woodwork, it’s absolutely true that the America of 2008 is a much better place than the America of 1980 was in many ways. It’s also true that that happened despite a substantial contingent in society which fought each and every one of the advances you cite. I remember Martin Luther King being called a “racist revolutionary.” I’ve heard even the most modest environmental requirements decried as “fascism.” So while we have a lot to congratulate ourselves on, we’re not done. It took real work to make things better, overcoming constant resistance.</p>
<p>And with regard to the specific subject of this thread - economy, income and wealth - I do think things will be less rosy for our children than for ourselves. We’ve left them more debt than our parents left us - that’s nothing to be proud of. The nation is more stratified than at any time in the last 100 years, with the gap between the ultra wealthy and the middle class widening each year, and the poor and lower middle class actually being worse off financially than their parent’s generation was. Other stuff: good on us. Economic legacy for our kid’s generation? Not so hot.</p>
<p>
Well, quite honestly this is all a bit above my intellectual pay grade. </p>
<p>I’m simply saying that I can never remember a time in my life --and I am not that young-- when there were not a lot of very intelligent and well spoken people saying that, well…essentially “The end is near.” Still, the end --much to their chagrin, I suppose-- never came. </p>
<p>I’ve come to believe that there is something wired into our brains, our DNA, our language, I don’t know which, that simply makes all people through all times believe that the world is going into a dark age, even an end time. From Armageddon, to Nuclear destruction to whatever speaks to the moment. </p>
<p>This time, maybe global warming, or some bird flu, or maybe nuclear war will be the one. Maybe this time it is for real?! As I say, this is all well above my calculating abilities.</p>
<p>Still, the way it is, I tend to err on the side of cautious happiness. </p>
<p>I remember reading that after Ayatollah Khomeini died in Iran, no one was allowed to laugh or smile publicly for some ridiculous amount of time: </p>
<p>The way I see it, guys like me are the real insurgents.</p>
<p>Great thread, audio. :)</p>