Obama's America

Can Millennials Turn around the Housing Bust?

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:04:31 -0500

Many of the nation’s youth (and a few of their elders) are expecting a magical turnaround of America’s economic fortunes as soon as their candidate for President, Barack Obama, is sworn in on January 20th 2009. But the Millennial Generation, born between 1982 and 2003, may be more the source of the country’s economic salvation as any initiative the new President might propose.

Millennials are the largest generation in American history, more than 91 million strong. They are coming of age just in time to join the workforce, enter the housing market, stabilize home prices, and buy the nation's expanding inventory of durable goods to furnish their new homes. Despite being burdened with student loan debt and graduating just when the job market is shrinking, this group of optimistic, civic-minded young Americans is ready to demonstrate that it is not only capable of electing a President, but also helping to resolve the country's housing crisis.

The “helicopter parents” of Millennials constantly hovered over their children as they grew up in order to protect them from anything that might harm their self-esteem. As a result, many older Americans, especially the 27 to 43 year old members of Generation X, think the Millennials’ “can do” attitude will crumble once they are confronted by the “realities of the real world.”

But this ignores the cyclical nature of generational change. The GI Generation – the Millennial civic generation’s great-grandparents who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s – were raised in much the same way and acquired many of the same values cherished by Millennials. These members of what have come to be called “the Greatest Generation” were able to draw upon a deep reservoir of confidence and determination to lead America’s recovery from the Depression and later win the struggle against both fascism and communism.

To give Millennials the same opportunity to rescue America, the new Obama administration should give the emerging generation the same attention in its policy initiatives that it expended getting their votes. Certainly the opportunity is there, particularly in rescuing the now devastated housing market.

One unintended collateral benefit of the rapid drop in housing prices across the nation is to put many suburban homes within reach of first time home buyers, something that has not occurred for at least a decade. Even in pricey California, for example, the ratio between income and cost of housing has begun to drop dramatically, notes a recent paper by Chapman University graduate students Gil Yabes and Jason Goforth, with the ratio between income and mortgages dropping by one half or more in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties, close to pre-bubble levels.

That’s a big opportunity, one that President-elect Obama’s “Home Ownership Initiative” should seize on. The Millennials could well be the demographic that could buy these more affordable homes and staunch the rise of foreclosures threatening the U.S. economy.

It’s not that these young people don’t want to own homes. A 2004 study of students enrolled in a four-year university, a community college and an historically black college found that about the same 40-percent plurality in each group preferred to live in a “suburban community, single family home,” upon graduation. The second choice of these Millennials was to live in a “rural area, with large lots and open space.” Only about a quarter wanted to live in an “urban setting with mixed housing styles.” Luckily for them, five years later, their preferred housing stock has just become imminently more affordable.

Now the Democratic Congress and President Obama should enact a significant tax credit incentive for first time homebuyers, many of whom would be Millennials. By rapidly expanding the universe of potential homebuyers, this program would help stabilize housing prices in the critical lower cost housing market. At the same time it would help stem foreclosures among existing homebuyers, whose loss of home equity has made abandoning mortgages more rational economically than keeping up payments.

In 1934, during an earlier time of far greater economic pain, the Federal Housing Agency (FHA) was created to provide financing for a new type of mortgage requiring a lower down payment with the loan to be paid off over 25 or 30 years. The federal agency’s financing authority was greatly extended through Title II of the Housing Act of 1949, which provided federally guaranteed mortgage insurance and helped a flood of returning GIs own a home. Now it is time for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be given the authority to finance a new mortgage structure for homebuyers under thirty.

By lowering down payment requirements for this select group of home buyers to 10% and stretching the terms of mortgages to the number of years these young people are likely to be active in the workforce, forty, monthly payments on starter homes could be brought in line with the Millennials‘ ability to pay. Initially, this combination of tax credits and new types of mortgage financing would slow the decline in home prices that triggered the problems in the country's financial markets. In the longer run, it will make sure that the benefits of widespread homeownership will expand to a new generation of Americans.

One young Millennial to whom we talked recently was concerned that the hours her retail employer wanted her to work were being cut as holiday shopping continued to sour. She expressed concern that there was still “more than a month before Obama gets sworn in and everything turns around again.”

Her statement exhibits the kind of economic naiveté that frustrates some older Americans, but does provide an important lesson – political as well as economic – for the incoming administration. The Millennial Generation, whose votes were key in nominating and then resoundingly electing President Obama, want to see things improve rapidly. After all, they lack either the experience or the equity that Baby Boomers have acquired over the years.

Once in office, President Obama should embrace the impatience of America's youth as one way to insure that his economic policies are enacted quickly. By making an explicit appeal to America's largest generation’s desire for homeownership, he would not only take a big step toward ensuring the popularity of his economic program, but its effectiveness as well.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics (Rutgers University Press: 2008), named one of the New York Times 10 favorite books of 2008.

The Housing Bubble and the Boomer Generation

Robert Bruegmann — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:46:05 -0500

Much of the commentary on the current economic crisis has focused on symptoms. Sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps and the loosening of financial regulations are not the root cause of the financial crisis. They are symptoms of what has recently become a surprisingly widespread belief that individuals, families and even entire nations could live indefinitely beyond their means.

The crisis has reminded everyone that, in the end, market fundamentals like supply and demand still matter and that ignoring traditional virtues like thrift and long-term planning can lead to grief. But what does this have to do with boomers?

Ultimately, this economic crisis shines some light on some of the most important yet unresolved and paradoxical aspects of American culture as it developed in the wake of the economic, social and political upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Children coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s were born into families that, on average, enjoyed the greatest material prosperity and the best housing the world had ever known. The security offered by an enormously expanded and comfortable middle class allowed these children to crusade on behalf of various causes. Those who called themselves “progressive” pushed to expand individual civil rights, sometimes at the expense of what others perceived as community rights or duties, but at the same time they were often deeply suspicious of capitalism and markets and for this reason pushed to restrict the rights of private property owners in order to expand on their own notions of community rights.

The result was, on the one hand, a massive effort to empower racial and ethnic minorities, women, gay people and many others. This aspect of the revolutions of the 1960s era has always been highly controversial, with conservatives fighting the “reforms” every step of the way. On the other hand, starting about 1970, there was an explosion in regulations on the use of land including tighter zoning and building codes, regulations governing environmental matters, historic preservation and land conservation, growth and building caps and growth management schemes. It became harder to build at the urban edge because of the environmental rules and efforts to limit “sprawl.” It also became harder to build at the center because of substantial down-zoning and other regulations to “preserve neighborhood character,” particularly in affluent neighborhoods. This aspect of the 1960s progressive agenda has led to grumbling about NIMBYism but has otherwise generated surprisingly little negative commentary.

Nevertheless, this movement has created one of the most paradoxical legacies of the 1960s as programs justified in the language and logic of “rights,” have turned into bulwarks for the status quo and a mechanism to transfer wealth from younger families of modest income to more affluent older families.

In the 1950s and 1960s developers in America built a huge amount of housing, primarily on cheap land at the suburban edge of almost every city in the country. This housing was remarkably inexpensive and, together with liberal financing terms, allowed millions of Americans to enter into the ranks of home ownership and the middle class. It provided the underpinnings for the enormous wealth of the boomer generation.

Starting in the 1970s, though, particularly in some of the most desirable markets in the country, the same people who most benefited from the developments of the early postwar years turned against those development practices. They advocated regulations for many things that most people, then as now, would agree were desirable – conserving scenic areas and wetlands, protecting coastlines and animal habitats and preserving open space, historic buildings and neighborhood character.

Yet the net effect of all of these regulations was to limit severely the supply of land for urban uses. Even more important, existing homeowners, what I have elsewhere called the “Incumbents’ Club,” created a political system that allowed them to dictate how much growth and what kind of growth would be permitted in their cities.

This shift of decision-making about development from private developers and individual property owners to public planning bodies, almost always controlled by homeowners, was hailed by many observers as a triumph of democratic process. The community rather than the developers, so this line of thinking went, would henceforth dictate the growth of the community. The problem with this equation was that it failed to consider who was speaking for the community and whose voices were not heard or to calculate the costs and benefits of these policies.

For existing homeowners in affluent communities like Boulder Colorado, or Nantucket Island or San Francisco, this regulatory rush turned existing land ownership into pure gold. By limiting the supply of land for development and driving up the costs of development where the land was available, it pushed up the perceived value of all houses, including their own.

Take the case of the Bay Area, where land prices were on par with urban areas elsewhere in the country up until 1970. Then, as the area pioneered in land use regulations of every kind, house prices started a steep climb. Where the rule of thumb had long been that the average American family in any given urban market would expect to pay about three times its annual salary for an average house, by the early years of the 21st century it had reached the point where that average house in the Bay Area would be the equivalent of ten, eleven or even twelve years of the average family’s income. At the same time, however, in lightly regulated urban areas, even extremely dynamic ones like those of Atlanta, Houston or Phoenix, house prices registered no comparable rise against incomes.

Nor was this all. There was at the same time an increasing movement around the country to push the cost of what had been considered public goods, like new roads, street lights, sidewalks and sewers, even parks and schools, onto the developers who then passed these costs on to the eventual buyers. As a result, existing owners who enjoyed infrastructure paid for by previous generations no longer had to pay for the infrastructure of their children’s and grandchildren’s generation.

Finally, this elaborate edifice of protection of the interests of existing landowners was capped by a series of tax revolts starting in the 1970s, particularly Proposition 13 in California. This made it possible for members of the incumbent’s club to enjoy the benefits of rapidly escalating house prices without paying a corresponding share of the property taxes that financed most municipal services.

These land use regulations and real estate tax policies have made possible, at least in certain highly regulated markets, one of the greatest transfers of wealth in American history. The primary beneficiaries have been existing landowners including a very large percentage of affluent boomers. The ones who have paid have been less affluent renters, younger people and all future generations of prospective homeowners.

The existing homeowner in the Bay Area could watch the value of his house soar from a few hundred thousand dollars up into the millions without lifting a finger. Meanwhile the dramatic rise in land prices, because it has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in salaries, has devastated the prospects of young couples, many of whom were forced to either leave the area or obliged to take on huge mortgage debt just to afford an entry level house. These same people are now bearing the brunt of the steep decline in housing prices and the wave of foreclosures washing over the country.

One of the most remarkable things about this enormous transfer of wealth has been how little most people were aware that it was happening or what caused it. A few people – notably Bernard J. Frieden in his book The Environmental Hustle from 1979 – had sounded the alarm. More recently Wendell Cox and Hugh Pavletich at Demographia.com have made a similar case using substantial data from cities in the English speaking world. Although all of these observers have been dismissed as free market enthusiasts, more mainstream commentators – like Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Joseph Gyourko of the University of Pennsylvania – have embraced this theme. Even the noted liberal economist Paul Krugman has joined the chorus, comparing the moderate land prices in the “flatlands,” meaning lightly regulated places like Texas, with the extremely high prices in the “zoned zone” or places like heavily regulated coastal California.

This leads us to the great challenge we face now keeping families in their homes. The sad truth is that in areas where housing prices have vastly outstripped incomes there may no easy way to do this. In many markets either housing prices will need to fall quite a bit further or income will have to rise substantially, and there is little likelihood – particularly with this weak economy – of the latter happening any time in the near future.

One good thing that might come out of the current crisis, though, is a recognition that regulations, however well-intentioned, can come at a price, sometimes a high one, for some parts of society. I doubt very much that the boomer generation ever intended to create the current housing bubble or enrich itself at the expense of less affluent families and generations to come. This was the unanticipated consequence of a genuine desire to create a better life for everyone by individuals who, probably inevitably, defined the good life as the kind of life they themselves wanted. In many ways they succeeded all too well. We can only hope this downturn will at least open up a new chapter in the discussion of the bittersweet story of a generation that set out to remake the world.

Robert Bruegmann is a professor of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His most recent book, Sprawl: A Compact History, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005, has generated a great deal of discussion worldwide.

Young Voters Turn America Left

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:11:43 -0500

Nothing made Barack Obama's victory potentially more historically significant than his overwhelming support from millennial voters, members of the generation born in or after 1982. Obama won voters under 30 by roughly two-to-one, compared with barely half for John Kerry, making some Democrats positively giddy with the prospect of long-term domination of American politics. Most of these voters also stayed with the Democrats down ticket, enhancing the mass slaughter of GOP lambs across the country.

Whether the Democrats keep this edge, however, depends not so much on the new president's personal appeal, but on whether he and his party can deliver economically for workers entering a very tough economy. This will become increasingly critical as millennial voters age and begin focusing less on symbolism and more on how the new regime has worked for them in terms of income and upward mobility.

The poor economy impacts young voters more than commonly believed. Even before the recession kicked in, a 2006 survey by the Center for American Progress found 15- to 25-year-olds twice as likely to view the economy as the main issue than the rest of population. When they came out to vote earlier this month, young voters had little reason to support continued Republican rule. Even in the expansionary period earlier in this decade, the incomes of younger workers continued to fall, in part because they were too young to enjoy gains from either the stock or housing bubbles.

More ominously, since 2000, these reverses have been shared even by those with college educations--the very group that, outside of the poor and African-Americans, most supported Obama. They voted for him at a time when, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, half of all companies planned to cut the number of new graduates hired from the previous year.

In contrast to previous generations, millennials are finding that a four-year degree no longer insulates them from declining earnings or the specter of under-employment. This may be in part because college-educated workers today face unprecedented competition from skilled labor in other countries, particularly in the developing world.

Reversing this trend for younger workers may well prove the greatest challenge and opportunity for the new administration. If the millennials stick with President Obama and the Democrats, we indeed could witness a long-term shift toward the left in American politics.

Certainly, the initial indications are positive. As Morley Winograd and Michael Hais point out in their groundbreaking book Millennial Makeover, younger voters were attracted to the egalitarian and "civic" orientation of the Obama campaign. They first rejected the individualist, combative baby-boomer ethos represented by Hillary Clinton, who did very poorly among younger voters. Later they also turned against the harsh tone of the McCain campaign and its embrace of both Cold War rhetoric and social conservatism.

However, how long will the millennials' leftward tilt last? It all depends on whether the new administration fixes the economy and creates opportunities for the millennials who will be flooding the workforce in the coming years.

A generation's early exposure to politics and politicians can shape their perspective for decades. The politics of the generation that came to age during the 1930s, for example, reflected their experience first with the New Deal and then with Democratic leadership during the Second World War.

Although conservative ideologues can argue incessantly that Franklin Roosevelt's policies prolonged the Great Depression, the fact remains that most Americans supported Roosevelt through the entire period. More importantly, after the great stimulus of the Second World War, large parts of an entire generation shared in one of the greatest periods of prosperity in global history.

Not only did they enjoy a steady increase in real incomes, but also the average person's access to homeownership and college education expanded at an unprecedented rate. In addition, critically, the economy's expansion took place without increasing the gap between the rich and everyone else, unlike the most recent expansions.

Economists can bicker all they want, but most people believed that the New Deal and the Democrats delivered. This won them the loyalty of a generation that kept them as the majority party well into the 1960s.

If President Obama and the Democrats can deliver similarly prolonged economic growth with a strong egalitarian distribution, the millennials would seem destined to constitute the bulwark of a quasi-permanent new majority. Nothing that the Republicans could do with cultural issues or security could offset this phenomenon. Indeed, millennial positions on issues such as gay marriage and abortion suggest that contemplating a continuation of the "culture wars" could be self-defeating.

This is not the only possible scenario. In the 1960s and 1970s, many baby boomers also embraced liberal politics, largely for cultural reasons and in opposition to the Vietnam War. However, the dismal economic failures of the Carter years, and the apparent cluelessness of the Democratic Congress in finding ways to compete in a changing world economy, ultimately drove many boomers to Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. This shift allowed the GOP to dominate American politics for a quarter century.

For the new president, the critical millennial challenge will be to create a vibrant, productive economy that can expand opportunities for new workers, including those with college degrees. Style and symbolism will seduce young people only for so long; ultimately, they will also want jobs, income and the chance to live a decent middle-class life.

Everything depends on what the Democrats now do. Few of the forces closest to the new president--the gentry liberals, the legal establishment, the green lobby and big city mayors--have a track record of creating widespread new employment and expanding opportunity.

In addition, much of the leadership of the congressional party, based in urban and elite locales, favors positions that might constrain broad-based growth.

A policy of raising taxes on entrepreneurs (as opposed to the accumulated wealth of the gentry class), increased regulation on small businesses and spending on an ever-expanding public sector bureaucracy does not bode well for a strong economic resurgence.

It is true that younger voters, as a recent Center for American Progress report suggested, support higher taxes and expanded government as the preferred way to solve social ills. But as they age, some of those very millennials will be the ones paying the bills for their good intentions. They will have to try establishing businesses in a harsh regulatory climate. This could turn even some now fervent Obamaphiles into retro-Reaganites.

However, if the new president proves as clever at policy as at politics, and sparks a new growth economy, all this could prove moot. With a grateful new generation behind him, Obama could help the Democrats achieve a period of predominance every bit as extended as the one shaped by Franklin Roosevelt three-quarters of a century ago.

It all boils down to whether the senator can meet the millennial challenge not only this year but also in the years ahead.

This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

Obama: Making History but Not Ending It

Harry Siegel — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:30:53 -0500

Barack Obama won a mandate among younger voters so large that it literally defies comparison, and with it, we're told, a mandate to retire tired old fights of little concern to this new generation. Yet in the long run, it may well be that his victory has only put on hold some enduring political conflicts and may even ignite new ones.

Obama’s 34-point, 66-32 percent win among the group that made up about 20 percent of voters and 60 percent of new voters was nearly four times the margin of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Clinton in 1992.

This differential has been put down to the vast age gap between the first post-boomer candidate and his pre-boomer foe. A poll comparing support in an Obama-McCain race against a theoretical Clinton-McCain race in September, though, showed no gender gap in support for the respective Democrats, but a vast difference in the age of their supporters, with the Illinois senator faring 20 percentage points better than his New York counterpart among voters 35 and under, which was more or less cancelled out by Clinton’s 6-point lead among the larger pool of voters 35 and older.

It’s clear that Obama's victory represents, among other things, a generational transfer of power. What’s less clear is the oft-repeated claim that with it the culture wars of the 1960s have finally been "won," or at least that the two sides have agreed to a cease-fire.

Vietnam vets, pollster James Zogby points out, are oh-for-the-last-three elections, and vets overall oh-for-the-last five. Race has been put away, perhaps since Obama's post-Wright speech and certainly since his election. (That particular cease-fire, as it were, was immeasurably aided by McCain’s decision, not always honored by his campaign, to stay clear of former Obama spiritual guide Reverand Jeremiah Wright in particular and race more generally).

Gender? It turns out the Hillary supporters came around to Obama after all. When feminists blasted Sarah Palin for working despite having five children and conservatives insisted they'd never had an issue with unmarried teen pregnancies, it became clear that yesterday's core principles had been reduced to this election’s politically expedient positions.

The era-ending nature of Obama’s win has been vouched for by no less an authority of the old culture wars than William Ayers. Writing in These Times after the election, the Weatherman founder turned Hyde Park friend of the Chicago machine writes:

“The idea that the 2008 election may be the last time in American political life that the '60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, let's get over the nostalgia and move on.

On the other, the lessons we might have learned from the black freedom movement and from the resistance against the Vietnam War have never been learned. To achieve this would require that we face history fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.”

Ayers is right that we haven’t faced history, in part because Americans are always so busy trying to bury it. We have opted to use Obama – who referred to himself in The Audacity of Hope as “A blank screen on which people of vastly differently political stripes project their own views” – as a proxy for history. With his election, the old politics are behind us.

Or not. As Mario Cuomo might say, it’s a poetic notion but it won’t survive four years of prose.

By the time the election was called for Obama at 11:00 Tuesday night, it was already clear that the old racial, ethnic, gender, class and regional antagonisms remain very much in play.

The heated and at times nasty name calling between blacks and gays (mostly aimed at the former by the latter) in the aftermath of Proposition 8’s passage in California even as those same voters gave Obama a 23-point, 2.6 millon vote win, represents one illustration. (Gays incidentally, preferred Clinton to Obama by more than 2-to-1 in the state’s primary, according to CNN exit polling). Arizona and Florida voters also passed referenda defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and Arkansas voters passed one prohibiting unmarried couples from adopting children or serving as foster parents.

It’s clear that the strong generational consensus of equal rights for gays isn’t a broader American consensus just yet.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s dismissal of the automakers’ appeals for federal monies (which spawned a predictable round of New York to Detroit: Drop Dead headlines) is another, representing both the clash of cities and regions for their share of the federal bailout funds, and the clash of wealthy Wall Street Democrats with what’s left of the old industrial union branch of the party.

So too will be coming tension between the party’s urban core and vulnerable new exurban House members, who may not easily accept the urbanist green agenda embraced by the party’s city-oriented congressional leadership, and which would pass tremendous upfront and long term costs to industries ranging from airlines and aerospace to truckers and energy producers. Whatever the potential environmental and economic benefits down the road, this tack will prove politically difficult to implement if the economy continues to struggle and oil prices continue to fall.

More generally, there’s the tension between the socially libertarian instincts of younger voters and their pro-big government tilt, especially but not exclusively on the environment, a dynamic that’s just now beginning to play out but augurs conflict to come.

Then there’s the continued dissatisfaction of those Hillary voters who gritted their teeth while pulling the lever for Obama. What if the Republicans find a more effective and proven female standard-bearer than Sarah Palin?

New black and Latino voters culturally closer to the religious right than to the wealthier liberals with whom they united in support of Obama have not had a chance to express those culturally conservative views. Perhaps a Bobby Jindal or some other non-white Republican figure could emerge to exploit these potential fissures once memories the anti-immigration fervor of the GOP primaries has faded.

It’s critical to recognize that all these conflicts – regional, geographic, ethnic and philosophical – were suppressed this year by the economy, which drove voters of all stripes running to the Democrats. When the economy improves, or becomes the problem of the Democrats as opposed to George Bush’s cross to bear, many issues now considered resolved won’t be.

Barack Obama may have made history but he did not end it. As we have seen over the past decades, the end of one set of conflicts often sets the stage for another. This is likely to be the case again.

Harry Siegel is a contributing editor at Politico. hsiegel@politico.com

America in the Millennial Era

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:57:29 -0500

By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

Senator Barack Obama’s success in the 2008 presidential campaign marks more than an historical turning point in American politics. It also signals the beginning of a new era for American society, one dominated by the attitudes and behaviors of the largest generation in American history.

Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, now comprise almost one-third of the U.S. population and without their overwhelming support for his candidacy, Barack Obama would not have been able to win his party’s nomination, let alone been elected President of the United States. This new, “civic” generation is dramatically different than the boomers who have dominated our society since the 1960s and understanding this shift is critical to comprehending the changes that America will experience over the next forty years.

The arrival of social network technologies enabled Millennials to create the most intense, group-oriented decision-making process of any generation in American history. This generation’s preference for consensus for everything from minor decisions, like where to hang out, and major decisions, such as whether go to war, stems from a belief that every one impacted by a decision needs, at very least, to be consulted about it. This approach will dominate how leaders of America’s primary institutions – from corporations and churches to government at all levels – will be measured in the years ahead.

Contrast that approach to those of the candidates who struggled in 2008. In her losing run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton presented case for a highly assertive, controversial – if sometimes a bit too strenuous – Boomer style of leadership. She emphasized the value of her years of experience and wisdom. Senator John McCain tried that approach as well during the summer lull, but found it didn’t have sufficient power to overtake Obama in the national polls. He then rolled the dice and asked a Generation-X Governor, Sarah Palin, to help him win voters by emphasizing their mutual belief in the superiority of traditional social values and small government. The Republican ticket has had about as much success with this strategy as Governors Huckabee and Romney did Millennial voters during the primaries.

To successfully manage the transition to a Millennial era, institutions will need to find leaders of any age far-sighted enough to fully embrace Millennial attitudes and behaviors. They have to give them full reign to makeover the outdated structures they will inherit.

Millennials, in particular, are ready to take on the challenge. Millennials were taught that if you follow the rules and work hard, you will succeed. As the first generation to experience “always on,” high-speed access to the Internet at a young age, Millennials have confounded the vision of many Gen X futurists who envisioned the Net as a tool to enhance individual freedom and liberty, not as a new resource for community building. Sharing their ideas and thoughts constantly from short Twitter texts, or “Tweets,” to extended, if often amateurish, videos on YouTube, Millennials generate and absorb an overwhelming amount of information. Individual Millennials use this ability to influence their own decisions, and then those of the wider group. If institutions and their leaders want their decisions to have any credibility with this new generation, every institution will need to open its own governance procedures to ensure a level of transparency and fairness that meets the test of Millennial values.

There have been other times in American history when a “civic” generation like the Millennials has emerged to transform the nation. In the eighteenth century a “civic” generation, called the “Republican Generation” by the seminal generational theorists William Strauss and Neil Howe, created the constitutional republic whose democratic values we celebrate to this day. About eighty years later, an equally “civic” impulse propelled to the war to abolish slavery and extend liberty and freedom to all citizens. And when the last “civic” generation was called upon by its elders to conquer fascism and remake America’s economy in the twentieth century, the GI Generation responded with such fervor and ability that they were labeled the “Greatest Generation” by a grateful nation.

Now, another eighty years later, it is the Millennial Generation’s turn. Its “civic” revolution draws its unique character from the particular way Millennials were brought up, and their use of interactive communication technologies. We believe the Millennial Generation's revolution will be just as profound as that of previous “civic” generations. Barack Obama’s victory does indeed mark the end of the late 20th century “idealist” era of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But its significance is much deeper, and likely to shape the nature of the new era the country is about to enter.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics Winograd and Hais are fellows at NDN and the New Policy Institute.

Obama’s Marketing Message

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:01:00 -0400

By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

In less than two weeks, when Barack Obama’s lead in all the polls is likely to be confirmed in the voting booth by the American electorate, millions of words will be written about why he won and how John McCain managed to lose. Unfortunately, marketing executives and corporate leaders have ignored some of the most important lessons from the campaign.

Obama's success to date lies in his ability to blend his own persona as a messenger with a unifying and uplifting message that reaches the newest generation of Americans, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003. His campaign has mastered marketing through social networks and other Internet-based communication technologies. This “cool” approach defeated the “hot” rhetoric that came from his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, and is likely to perform even more favorably against the more confrontational and traditional campaign of John McCain.

But Millennials don’t just represent the key constituency behind Senator Obama’s successful campaign but also a key market opportunity for economic growth. Almost one-third of all Americans are in this generational cohort, and even though many of them are still too young to vote, almost all of them influence the daily purchases of the families of which they are a part. Until brand managers and marketing mavens master the art of reaching and attracting Millennials, consumer expenditures will continue to languish.

CEOs need to learn how to create brands that attract Millennials with something more transcendent than their product’s functionality or characteristics. Corporations will only hit their growth targets if they are willing to change their own message, messenger and media to fit the tastes of this generation.

A recent study by The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit suggests this campaign lesson has not yet penetrated the thinking of many in the “C suites” of the world’s corporations. More than half of those executives said they did not currently have a strategy to target or retain this demographic group. In their report, "Maturing with the Millenials", survey respondents acknowledged the need for new tactics to target the millennial customer, but indicated a lack of readiness to do so.

For instance, the report found that, “While 44% indicate that communicating the right messages in the right medium and at the right time is critical to their success, the majority have yet to leverage enriched content, peer recommendations and enhanced online experiences as part of their outreach—even though they acknowledge these are among the most effective ways to communicate with Millennials.” This sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton’s advisors Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald on the eve of the Iowa caucuses when they derided the supporters of Obama as looking “like Facebook” pages. When Obama’s Facebook legions came out to vote in droves in the Iowa caucuses they dealt a fatal blow to Senator Clinton's cause.

Companies, fortunately, do not have to suffer the short shelf life of failed candidates. They can change their strategies in order to capture an emerging new base. We have seen this with companies that have succeeded with emerging ethnic markets at home and with whole new markets abroad.

Even though most executives surveyed by The Economist understood that Millennials have specific consumer needs, few have tailored their marketing strategy for this generation. Four out of 10 executives in the Economist’s survey said that Web 2.0 technologies, such as webcasts and online forums, are the best way to serve Millennial customers. More than 80 percent agreed that consumer needs vary by age group, and 42 percent believed that a bigger share of investment should go towards Millennial customers. Yet remarkably, the respondents reported that telephone, e-mail and physical storefronts were the top three ways that Millennials could interact with their company currently.

The risks companies are taking by not addressing Millennials are great. John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam, details this argument in a new book, The Brand Bubble. His research shows that consumers’ trust in brands has declined by half in just ten years. Instead consumers increasingly turn to nontraditional sources of information, such as search engines and social networks, to determine what they should buy and from whom. That is why any good corporate CEO should check every day what customers are saying about their company on the mushrooming “Why I hate xx” websites that now exist for every major company.

To restore their brand’s value and regain traction with the buying public, companies will need to reinvent themselves in order to engage Millennial constituencies on Millennial terms and in Millennial media. They will need to learn the art of attracting support from Millennials without appearing to be chasing after it in much the same way Obama did in his campaign.

One leading-edge private sector example of how to pull off this Zen-like non-effort is Nike’s successful efforts to enhance its brand’s attractiveness by creating online communities of runners. By partnering with Apple it created an application for runners that transfers running time, distance and even calories burned to a Nano so that the results can be uploaded for sharing with others. By building virtual running communities, Nike gave its customers an opportunity to register their individual profiles while receiving content that they can access while running. Nike was able to create its own social network linking people with similar running habits, such as those who run with poodles, to produce a strong bond of affiliation among each member of the group, and from that experience an equally strong sense of loyalty to the Nike brand.

In 2006, the International Television and Video Almanac pointed out that Americans were being bombarded with about “5,000 marketing messages each day, up from 3000 in 1990 and 1500 in 1960.” Nothing in the trend line for communication technologies suggests this amount of corporate generated content is likely to decrease in the coming decades. Not surprisingly, Millennials can absorb much more information at any single moment than previous generations. But this does NOT mean that they are absorbing information in the same way. To gain the attention and brand loyalty of Millennials, companies will have to turn to non-traditional, online information distribution platforms to create a new message that builds a sense of community and caring around their products.

The best way to do that is to incorporate a cause or purpose into the reason for buying a product. It may be protecting the environment by going green, or reducing inequality in the world through acts of charity, or demonstrating a commitment to young people by investing in educational institutions, or all of the above. Regardless of the cause, not only did the era of unfettered capitalism end with this month’s financial meltdown, but so too did the days of appeals to consumers based solely on narrow self-interest or conspicuous consumption. Bling is out; doing good is in. Make that your message, and you have a story that will work effectively in the Millennial era.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics

An Investment Agenda for the Millennial Era

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:03:54 -0400

By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

Historians will mark 2008 as the year that started the fundamental political debate that will define America in the Millennial Era. This is not just because Millennials (young Americans born from 1982 to 2003) have propelled the candidacy of Barack Obama but also because their entire civic orientation is now permeating the policy debate crystallized by the nation’s unfolding “financial Pearl Harbor”.

Clear indications of a shift can be seen in the adoption of the bipartisan bailout proposal and many cases of agreement across partisan lines on what needs to be done now. Both liberals like former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich and conservatives such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agree that America should reinvest in its physical infrastructure. They were equally supportive of the need for the country to invest in human capital through a new educational system that would enable America to compete in the global economy. They each acknowledged the necessity for a health care system that would alleviate an ever-increasing financial burden on American families and businesses. From previously and presumably irreconcilably opposite sides of the political spectrum, Reich and Gingrich sketched out an economic growth agenda they could both support.

Their conversation demonstrated one critical new reality: the demise of the ideologically driven Baby Boomer era of American politics. Although a stubborn majority within the Republican House minority implored its party to stick to its Reagan-era idealism by voting against the rescue package even the second time around, most GOP leaders, especially in the Senate, recognized that if their party didn’t change its rigid belief in free markets über alles, then as one put it, “Heaven help us” in November.

Interestingly, October 1929 was the last time the market crashed as dramatically as it did on the day the Republicans first voted down their leadership’s recommendation. That event led to the end of America’s previous idealist era, one that also glorified free markets and attempted to enshrine laissez-faire economics as the end-all of U.S economic policy. What followed was an era of government intervention in the country’s economic well-being and an opportunity-expanding fiscal policy led by the civic generation of its time --- the GI Generation. That generation supported policies that cut the share of the nation’s wealth held by its richest one percent from 50% on the day of the crash to 30% in 1949. Today’s civic generation, Millennials, are equally determined to reduce the level of economic inequality in America, which was approaching pre-depression levels before the market dived and investment houses disappeared from the landscape of Wall Street.

Economic jingoists like Lou Dobbs may celebrate the humbling of the nation’s financial elites, but anger and resentment don’t make good economic policy. Instead, Americans will have to learn to behave like Millennials: finding win-win solutions that work for the whole group. The Millennial generation will create a new paradigm of governmental policy with guidelines for behavior established at the national level, but with implementation left to each individual or local community interacting with others in their peer-to-peer networks to make a choice on how best to comply with those national rules.

This will create a “patient-centered healthcare system” analogous to the Millennial Generation's fondness for user generated content on social networking sites like YouTube. America’s educational system will be refashioned with schools run as much by kids and their parents as it is by administrators. Just as Barack Obama’s acceptance speech called for individuals to make their homes more energy efficient and for executives to do the same with the companies they lead, energy and environmental policy in a Millennial era will be linked through policies that provide tax incentives along with moral persuasion from the bully pulpit of the presidency to ensure America finally ends its dependence on foreign oil. America’s role in the world will be to lead other nations in the way Millennials expect leaders to behave: finding consensus for a course of action that gains its power from the unity of the group, not the raw strength of the biggest kid on the block.

This will require the country to make all types of productive investments. As we enter the Millennial era, America will experience changes as sweeping as any the country witnessed in the 1930s and 40s. If the past is any indication of the future, the Millennial Generation will provide the same level of leadership as America’s greatest generation did nearly eight decades ago. In the process the Millennials will put an end to the Boomer era’s destructive clashes of irreconcilable ideologies.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics published in 2008 by Rutgers University Press

Cities, Children and the Future

Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:25:51 -0400

By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

“Suburbs,” the great urbanist Jane Jacobs once wrote, “must be a difficult place to raise children.” Yet, as one historian notes, had Jacobs turned as much attention to suburbs as she did to her beloved Greenwich Village, she would have discovered that suburbs possessed their own considerable appeal, particularly for those with children.

Although some still hold onto the idea that suburbs are bad places to raise children, in virtually every region of the country, families with children are far more likely to live in suburbs than in cities. Nearly all the leading locations in percentages of married couples are suburbs, from Midwestern towns like O’Fallon, Missouri to Sugarland, Texas, Naperville, Illinois and Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

In contrast, many of the places with the lowest percentages of children are urban centers. This includes many of the most highly touted urban cores such as Manhattan, Boston, Portland, Seattle and San Francisco.

This is particularly true among more affluent, middle class, educated family households. Despite the rise in the number of children in a few affluent locales, such as the upper east side of Manhattan, most middle class families tend to cluster outside the city core. Even in Manhattan the number of kids falls considerably below the national average after the age of five.

So the question remains: are families important to the planners, developers and politicians who run our cities? Veteran geographer Dick Morrill wonders if they do. He sees many cities turning their backs on working and middle class families, long the ballast of urban society throughout the ages.

Instead, many city planners, and urban developers have focused their attention on the growing ranks of the unattached: the “young and restless,” the “creative class,” and the so-called “yuspie” - the young urban single professional. These advocates suggest that companies and cities should capture this segment, described by one as “the dream demographic.”

The other coveted urban demographic centers on the so-called “empty nester,” largely boomers who have already raised families. Developers, like luxury homebuilder Robert Toll, see a vast movement of such people from the suburbs to the inner city. “We are more hip-hop and happening than our parents,” he explains. “We want the sophistication and joy and music that comes with city dwelling, and doesn’t come with sitting in the burbs watching the day go by…”

Yet although this strategy might work for a handful of cities, childless urbanism may have its limits. There is, for example, little evidence that many empty nesters --- outside of the very rich --- are moving en masse to center cities. The vast majority seem to be staying put in the suburbs while a considerable group heads further out into the periphery and beyond.

This leaves the key demographic for cities to remain viable: the young and educated, one group that has shown a tendency to move into center cities. But there’s a problem with relying of ‘yuspies” in the long run --- they get older and grow up. Right now, as Philadelphia’s Paul Levy suggests, most young couples leave once they start having children. If cities are to hold on to this population, he suggests, they must address the basics important to families, such as public safety, good schools and parks.

This issue will become even more pressing in the next few years. As the current and very large millennial generation ages, they will begin to dominate the housing market. From all accounts, they tend to be family oriented. More than 80 percent thought getting married would make them happy, and some 77 percent said they definitely or probably would want children, while less than twelve percent said they likely would not.

If cities cannot change to appeal to these young people once they enter their 30s and 40s, they will be hard-pressed to maintain, much less expand, the population gains made over the past decade. Once the Millennials are gone, the next generation of young people seems certain to be considerably smaller.

In this sense, the Millennials represent the future hope for cities. The need to shift the focus beyond the denser downtowns and towards many outlying neighborhoods will become a necessity. These places --- think of Queens in New York, South St. Louis or parts of the northwest Philadelphia --- may see less glamorous and more “plain vanilla” than city centers but they already possess some of the basic prerequisites needed by family: relatively low density, work areas nearby, neighborhood shopping streets, churches, schools and parks.

What will happen to the least child-friendly cities over the next generation? Imagine a city with fewer total residences, inhabited by fewer people, although with a significant increase in “luxury” dwellings. In the new urban landscape, high-rise towers for the rich predominate, some of them in refurbished office buildings that formerly employed the middle class. These now become the homes of the “creative class” and the nomadic rich.

This is a city whose funds come largely from the global economy, but whose needs are cared for largely by low-wage workers who eke out their existence in the city, and reside in outlying areas. Ultimately, such a bifurcated society may limit the economic functions that can be carried out in these places. A small cadre of operatives, including the CEO and some senior staff, may remain ensconced in the glamour zone but companies dependent on a broader array of talent will continue to relocate to less exclusive places, either to the suburbs or to different regions.

Such pressures have already helped Houston to replace New York and Los Angeles as the nation’s energy capital. In the future a place like Charlotte will continue its emergence and its drive for financial dominance. Charlotte, suggests local real estate developer, John Harris, can compete against an expensive metropolitan region not only at the top levels of management, but across the board. “It’s hard to be a mass employer in San Francisco,” he notes.

In the end, the elite childless city can be seen as both the culmination of urban development and as a demographic dead end. Unable to lift up outsiders and absorb newcomers, these cities may be able to thrive as high end business hubs and elite playgrounds. But they seem unlikely to absorb more than a trickle of those Americans who may want to move into dense urban places over the coming decades. Instead, this cohort may look to those towns ready and still willing to accommodate families.

Joel Kotkin is the executive editor of Newgeography.com.

Baby Boomers: A Millennial's Perspective

Adam Mayer — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:26:20 -0400

The retiring of the vast sect of the population collectively known as Baby Boomers has several economic alarms going off. Due largely to this phenomena, by the year 2030, the number of people in the U.S. age 65 and above will double in size.

Concerns abound about whether there will be enough Social Security funds to cover retirement and what the impacts on the economy will be with this large group leaving the workforce. While these concerns are real, making an accurate assessment of the future requires going beyond analyzing demographic data by also taking into consideration cultural tendencies.

The Baby Boomer generation covers an immense swath of the population making it difficult to generalize much about them. If one is to look at the 1960s and ‘70s, the social movements reflected an earnest attempt to manipulate the future into one where peace would be king. The optimistic spirit of the time led a small but influential group of Boomers to join communes and relinquish traditional American values altogether.

By the time the 1980s rolled around, many Boomers had no problem reneging their oft-stated egalitarian values. Conspicuous consumption became the order of the day and newly christened Boomer parents became preoccupied with gaining an advantage over one another by vicariously living through the achievements of their young children --- a notion parodied in the 1989 Ron Howard directed movie ‘Parenthood.’

Yet, ironically, Boomers still often clung to the values and culture of their youth. Even Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs, who created a technological empire based on marketing of the idea of individuality, cites the use of the hallucinogenic drug LSD as ‘one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life.’

So now, we have the ultimate irony. Boomers have tended to think of themselves as ‘forever young,’ either in spirit or by heading down to the local Botox clinic, but they are becoming as elderly population. Of course, many will put off the acknowledgement of aging. Often self-defined by their work, many will retire much later or not at all. In addition, with concerns about Social Security, some will continue working in order to support their accustomed lifestyle.

Not surprisingly, real estate speculators and developers are taking aim at predicting where Baby Boomers will retire. Much has been talked about a mass ‘return to the city’ by empty nesters. The amenities that are offered by a cosmopolitan lifestyle will most likely appeal to some, but the fast-paced nature of the big city --- and high prices in the most attractive urban cores --- will probably keep the majority seniors out in the suburbs or moving to the countryside.

Similarly, Boomers generally will avoid living in an ‘old-folks’ home --- unless totally necessary. The idea of not being self-sufficient, even in old age, contradicts core Boomer values. Many hope, rather, that their children will reciprocate the years of generous financial support and let them live with them.

The previous generation has shown that if indeed retirees are to move away from where they have spent the previous years of their lives, there is a propensity to go to where the climate is warm. This leads me to believe that, although both Florida and Arizona, are suffering from the mortgage crisis, these and other warm-weather states will retain their attractiveness. Indeed, the lower prices now offered could spark a resurgence of retirees in the coming years.

But the main place for aging boomers will be precisely whey are now: the suburbs. While the suburbs are definitely not the same place characterized by Ozzie and Harriet, Baby Boomers show a preference for places where neighborhood and community are of high importance. This would partly explain why suburban college towns, even in states with dwindling real estate values, are showing strong resilience. College towns, despite their transient student populations, have a tendency to foster communities based around the functions and cultural amenities offered by a University. College towns also tend to have ‘traditional’ downtowns that remind Boomers of the kinds of places where they grew up.

The only sure thing about the Boomers is they are a generation rife with contradictions. They can be seen as the beginning of the postmodern era, where America began the descent from its cultural apex in history. To Boomers, hard work and manufacturing was passé. Largely because their parents had come out victorious in World War II, they started in their early years to think it was party time. Even as Boomers got older and started having children, ridding themselves of platform shoes and polyester suits, they carried on some of their social values. As Boomers enter the next phase of their life, retirement, values --- like a quest for independence and a search for authenticity --- will continue to inform their choices.

Bye, Bye Boomers, Not quite

Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:11:05 -0400

By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

They may be losing out politically to oldsters and youngins, as Morley Winograd and Michael Hais suggest, but Boomers will have a profound impact on our country’s demography and economics for decades to come.

In some ways this is as much a matter of numbers as anything. There are lots of Boomers and until the Millennials start entering their 30s in the middle of the next decade, they will retain a massive say in what kind of places and regions will thrive.

One thing Boomers can be counted on: to disappoint many expectations cast on them. In the 1960s the punditry was full of expectations that Boomers would reject the suburbia settled en masse by their parents. They would be different, returning to the land or resettling the urban frontier. Instead the Boomers ended up turning suburbia into the nation’s dominant geography.

Now that the Boomers are aging, once again the punditry predicts they will once again reshape the landscape. Maybe so, but not as quickly and not in ways widely bandied in the media and some developers.

One predominant myth is that Boomers, as they age, will desert the boring burbs and rediscover the allure of a fast-paced, defiantly “youthful” lifestyle. Suggests luxury homebuilder Robert Toll:

We are more hip-hop and happening than our parents.
We want the sophistication and joy and music that
comes with city dwelling, and doesn’t come with
sitting in the burbs watching the day go by while
puttering, painting, reading, writing, making flies
for fishing, customizing your own golf clubs,
stringing your own tennis racket, tending your tropical
fish.

It makes good copy for journalists, and spurs wishful much thinking among urban developers. The reality is a different matter. Overall, downshifting Boomers seem to prefer what one critic calls “the bland American dream”; barely two percent want to move to experience the “excitement” of a dense urban area. And, like their younger counterparts, aging Americans have remained tethered to their cars; less than ten percent of seniors over 65 walk, bike or take public transport as their primary means of getting around. “Suburbanites,” summarizes Syracuse University economist Gary Engelhardt, “like the suburbs.”

Indeed instead of heading to dense cities, our analysis of data -- -and the findings of the homebuilding industry --- is that most Boomers, as University of Arizona gerontologist Sandra Rosenbloom suggests, are “aging in place.” Rather than head off anywhere far away, most will want to stay close to their personal networks, offspring, churches or clubs.

Family ties are perhaps the biggest factor. One quarter of Generation Xers, for example, still receive help from their parents, as do nearly a third of Millennials. As many as forty percent of Americans between 20 and 34 now live at least part-time with their parents, an option that is likely to become more commonplace in areas where home prices are particularly high.

As a result, older Americans will remain a far more active force in the economy --- and in their children’s lives --- than might have been the case a generation ago. Most plan to stay near where they currently live, and rate being close to family members as a major factor in their decision. Contrary to the celebration of “independence” created by marketers and advocates of the “slimmer” family, most consider themselves to be about as concerned with passing on an inheritance to their children as their parents were.

This does not mean that eventually some aging Boomers will not choose to move into smaller residences. But to lure them, successful communities need to develop cultural amenities and diverse stores and restaurants, while offering a secure environment. Nine of the top ten active-adult communities put up recently were located in the suburbs. “They don’t want to move to Florida and they want to stay close to the kids,” notes Washington area developer Jeff Lee. “What they are looking for is a funky suburban development --- funky but safe.”

It turns out the most attractive options for aging populations are quieter ones. Only a small slice of the aging population seeks electric excitement; at older ages, most people seek repose, familiarity and general As Canadian demographer David Foot has pointed out, as people age, they tend to favor quieter activities, such as bird watching or gardening; “eco-tourism” jaunts nearby seems more attractive than bar-hopping in the fast-paced city. This tendency will extend increasingly to non-traditional populations, including childless couples and the gay community, many of whose members also apparently share the general desire for a quieter life as they age.

Indeed, if you are looking for a big movement among aging Boomers --- now roughly 55 to 64 --- the best place to look will be amenity-rich smaller towns and cities such as Douglas County, Colorado and certain counties in Idaho, in the Berkshires of New England, and even in parts of Alaska. Such counties, according to the US Department of Agriculture, grew ten times faster than other rural counties.

In many of these counties’ central towns, old Main Streets are already being restored; as downshifting seniors move in, this process should accelerate rapidly. College towns in particular could win out --- something they will need to do as the number of teenagers begins to drop dramatically in the next decade.

Although not in ways foreseen by urban boosters, the Boomers still could have a major impact on our future communities. In many places, they could become a bulwark of community organizations and churches. They certainly will have more time to devote themselves to quality of life issues, including environmental activism, education and historic preservation.

And as many may still be working, they could contribute to economic growth, through their greater financial resources and accumulated skills. Expect many Boomers to work well into the 60s and 70s --- using their spare bedrooms to accommodate home offices and assisting younger entrepreneurs develop their businesses. Many will keep working because they need the money; others may still in the game for the love of it.

In the end the Boomers could play a less heroic, but still very positive role in the evolution of American communities. Even as the Millennials mature into dominance --- and the Xers assert their shot at political leadership --- the Boomers could offer the financial wherewithal, the skill and, perhaps, most surprising of all, the wisdom required by a rapidly evolving, and expanding, society.