Youth pushed to the edge

EDITORIAL | James Carroll

October 10, 2011|By James Carroll, Globe Columnist

THEIR YOUTH is what registers most powerfully. The “Occupy Wall Street’’ protests in New York — and similar events in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, and numerous other American cities — drew participants from across generations. Yet most organizers, spokespeople, and tent-pitching tweeters seem to be in their 20s. “These young people have brought a pretty bright spotlight,’’ a supportive Transport Workers Union leader said in New York last week. “These young people,’’ said another union leader, “are speaking for a vast majority of Americans who are frustrated by the bankers and brokers who have profited on the backs of hard-working people.’’

These young people adopted “99 percent’’ as a slogan, branding the demonstrations as protest against the wealth gap that pits a tiny fraction of super-rich against everyone else. As activists elsewhere pick up the “Occupy Wall Street’’ lead in Montreal, Prague, and Melbourne (much as the Americans picked up on Tunis and Cairo), it becomes clear that the world financial crisis, universally swirling around irresponsible banks and unpunished bankers, has sparked a global sense of frustration and rage. But these young people stand out as victims of the new condition.

All kinds of people have been pushed to the edge by mutations in the economy everywhere, from replacement of workers by machines to cross-border erosion of wage structures to the corporatization of agriculture to the hyper-productivity of robots to the crisis of public-sector financing that leads to mass layoffs. The hidden hand of capitalism is wearing brass knuckles, and among those being slugged are mid-life workers whose careers are cut short, elders suddenly too pinched to retire, immigrants scapegoated as job thieves, and, always, the impoverished underclass more trapped than ever.

Even so, the plight of 20-somethings is distinct. In America, their anger can seem grounded in a sense of betrayal. Having been taught a social arithmetic since childhood that education plus diligence equals fulfillment, they are now confronted with a grim subtraction. Education has all too often left them crushed by the debt of student loans, and diligence is irrelevant in a jobless market. People in their 20s take the weight of unemployment rates that can be double the national average. Not only are their present prospects bleak - management training in fast food, anyone? — but they can look forward, in their 30s, if and when the recovery comes, to being passed over by junior siblings. Youth interrupted, adulthood postponed, careers that never materialized, disappointment as a way of life. A bottomless abyss of missed opportunity yawns at the feet of an entire American generation.