Obama's America

America in 2050 -- Strength in Diversity

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:14:24 -0400

An ongoing source of strength for the United States over the next 40 years will be its openness to immigration. Indeed, more than most of its chief global rivals, the U.S. will be reshaped and re-energized by an increasing racial and ethnic diversity.

These demographic changes will affect America's relations with the rest of the world. The United States likely will remain militarily pre-eminent, but the future United States will function as a unique "multiracial" superpower with deep familial and cultural ties to the rest of the world.

No Clear Majority

The United States of 2050 will look very different from the country that existed just a decade ago, at the dawn of the new millennium. Between 2000 and 2050, the vast majority of America's net population growth will come from racial minorities, particularly Asians and Hispanics, as well as a growing mixed-race population.

By the middle of the 21st century, America will have no clear "majority" race. Today 30 percent of the U.S. population is nonwhite; in 2050 it may be nearly 50 percent. Latino and Asian populations are expected to triple. Today, because of high Latino birthrates, one in five American children under the age of 5 is Hispanic; increasingly most Hispanic growth will come from the children of those born in America.

More Multiracial

At the same time, these varying groups, and particularly their children, will become ever more multiracial in their outlook. The percentage of Americans of mixed race is growing significantly among people under 18; in California and Nevada mixed-marriage rates are at more than 13 percent, and in the rest of the Southwest a heavily Latino population increasingly intermarries with other ethnic groups.

We will see more of this kind of interracial pairing in the future. According to market research firm Teen Research Unlimited, 60 percent of American teens say they have friends of different ethnic backgrounds. Even more telling, a 2006 Gallup Poll showed that 95 percent of young people (ages 18 to 29) approved of interracial dating -- compared with only 45 percent of respondents over the age of 64. Likewise, a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted in 2008 among teens showed that 57 percent have dated someone of another race or ethnic group, up 40 percent from when Gallup last polled teens on the question back in 1980.

More Immigrants

Europe also will continue to be a source of immigrants as many talented young Europeans continue to escape the continental nursing home by heading to the United States. But by far the largest groups of immigrants to the U.S. will come from Latin America, Africa, China and other developing countries. The United Nations estimates that 2 million people will move to developed countries annually until 2050, and more than half will come to the United States.

Some of best educated and most successful, of course, will then go back home, as has been case throughout most of American history. But many more will stay, often for very mundane reasons, such as the chance to live in a dwelling larger than a shoebox or to have more than one child. Others will cherish the chance to live without worrying about the depredations of some party bureaucrat, caudillo or religious fanatic. These immigrants are not seeking a spot on the Titanic. They realize that, despite its many failings, America is uniquely able to reinvent and re-energize itself.

Changing Landscape

This greater diversity will become increasingly evident across an expanding landscape, including many once homogeneous areas like the Great Plains.

But the new epicenter for diversity will lie in the once overwhelmingly white suburbs, which now increasingly are settled by minorities and immigrants. An absolute majority of our foreign-born population now lives in suburbia, up from 44 percent in 1980.

Already the best places to find ethnic shopping complexes, Hindu temples and new mosques are not in the teeming cities but in the outer suburbs of places like Los Angeles, New York and Houston. In most immigrant-rich suburbs, you find alongside the temples and mosques churches and synagogues.

Unique in the World

In contrast to this growing diversity, the United States' chief global rivals seem far less able to accommodate this level of interracial mixing. China, Japan and Korea are culturally resistant to diversity and unlikely to welcome large-scale immigration, even if much of their labor force has to go to work in walkers and wheelchairs.

Given Europe's current considerable problems integrating its immigrants, particularly Muslims, the continent seems ill disposed to open its doors further; Denmark and the Netherlands are considering measures to sharply restrict immigration.

Economic Benefits

The changing ethnic population in the U.S. will no doubt play a leading role in the next economic transition.

Recent newcomers have already distinguished themselves as entrepreneurs, forming businesses from street-level bodegas to the most sophisticated technology companies. Between 1990 and 2005 immigrants started one-quarter of all venture-backed public companies.

Large American companies are also increasingly led by people with roots in foreign countries, including 14 of the CEOs of the 2007 Fortune 100. Even corporate America -- once the almost-exclusive reserve of native-born Anglo-Saxons -- will become as post-ethnic as the larger society.

The America of 2050 will seem, to some, a very different and even foreign country. Yet our continuing racial evolution confirms the basic dynamism of our society and its ability to adapt. Our experiment with creating what Walt Whitman in 1855 described as "the race of races" will represent one of the great accomplishments of mid-21st century America.

This article originally appeared at AOLNews.com.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in Febuary, 2010.

Photo: chrisjfry

What American Demographics Will Look Like in 2050

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:51:54 -0400

To many observers, America's place in the world is almost certain to erode in the decades ahead. Yet if we look beyond the short-term hardship, there are many reasons to believe that America will remain ascendant well into the middle decades of this century.

And one important reason is people.

From 2000 to 2050, the U.S. will add another 100 million to its population, based on census and other projections, putting the country on a growth track far faster than most other major nations in the world. And with that growth -- driven by a combination of higher fertility rates and immigration -- will come a host of relative economic and social benefits.

More fertile

Of course the percentage of childless women is rising here as elsewhere, but compared to other advanced countries, America still boasts the highest fertility rate: 50 percent higher than Russia, Germany or Japan, and well above that of China, Italy, Singapore, Korea and virtually all of eastern Europe.

As a result, while the U.S. population is growing, Europe and Japan are seeing their populations stagnate -- and are seemingly destined to eventually decline. Russia's population could be less than a third of the U.S. by 2050, driven down by low birth and high mortality rates. Even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has spoken of "the serious threat of turning into a decaying nation."

In East Asia, fertility is particularly low in highly crowded cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing and Seoul. And China's one-child policy -- and a growing surplus of males over females -- has set the stage for a rapidly aging population by mid-century. South Korea, meanwhile, has experienced arguably the fastest drop in fertility in world history, which perhaps explains its extraordinary, if scandal-plagued, interest in human cloning.

Even more remarkably, America will expand its population in the midst of a global demographic slowdown. Global population growth rates of 2 percent in the 1960s have dropped to less than half that rate today, and this downward trend is likely to continue -- falling to less than 0.8 percent by 2025 -- largely due to an unanticipated drop in birthrates in developing countries such as Mexico and Iran. These declines are in part the result of increased urbanization, the education of women and higher property prices. The world's population, according to some estimates, could peak as early as 2050 and begin to fall by the end of the century.

Younger and More Vibrant

Population growth has very different effects on wealthy and poor nations. In the developing world, a slowdown of population growth can offer at least short-term economic and environmental benefits. But in advanced countries, a rapidly aging or decreasing population does not bode well for societal or economic health, whereas a growing one offers the hope of expanding markets, new workers and entrepreneurial innovation.

In fact, throughout history, low fertility and socioeconomic decline have been inextricably linked, creating a vicious cycle that affected such once-vibrant civilizations as ancient Rome and 17th-century Venice and that now affects contemporary Europe , Russia and Japan.

Within the next four decades, most of the developed countries in both Europe and East Asia will become veritable old-age homes: a third or more of their populations will be older than 65, compared with only a fifth in the U.S. By 2050, roughly 30 percent of China's population will be older than 60, according to the United Nations. The U.S. will have to cope with an aging population and lower population growth, in relative terms, but it will maintain a youthful, dynamic demographic.

More Hopeful About the Future

The reasons behind these diverging trends is complex. In some countries, a sense of diminished prospects, combined with a chronic lack of space, appear to be the root causes for plunging birthrates. As Italians, Germans, Japanese, Koreans and Russians have fewer offspring -- one recent survey found that only half of Italian women 16 to 24 said they wanted to have children -- they will have less concern for future generations.

In contrast, in the United States roughly three-quarters of young people report they plan to have offspring. Such individual decisions suggest that America, for all its problems, is diverging from its prime competitors, placing its faith in a future that can accommodate 100 million more people.

As author Michael Chabon recently wrote, "In having children, in engendering them, in loving them, in teaching them to love and care about the world," parents are "betting" that life can be better for them and their progeny.

This article originally appeared at AOLNews.com.

Photo: victoriapeckham

Scenario Two: An Optimistic view of the United States future

Richard Morrill — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:38:04 -0500

This is the second in a two part series exploring a pessimistic and an optimistic future for the United States. Part One appeared yesterday.

A positive assessment of US prospects rests on at least seven propositions. First, the current crisis is not inherently more threatening than many others, most notably the Civil War, the Great Depression, and two World Wars. Quality leadership, building on the resilient political and economic institutions of the country, will prove sufficient to bring about needed sacrifices and transformations. We have seen this many times in the past from the Progressive Era to the New Deal, the Second World War and the winning of the Cold War, which was a uniquely bipartisan triumph.

Second, despite the ongoing problems of racial inequality and tensions about immigration, the United States has been uniquely successful in having peacefully achieved a truly multi-racial and multi-ethnic state. It has welcomed waves of diverse immigrants, and integrated them into a broader, ever changing society. This process has culminated symbolically and literally in the election of a multi-racial president, Barack Obama.

Third, economic corruption and financial crises have been recurring phenomena, and the nation has emerged out of these because of the sheer magnitude of talent and natural resources. This has been aided by a deep entrepreneurial capacity and willingness to take risks, and, overall, a willingness of most to work hard to improve life for themselves and their families.

Fourth is the existence of a large and literate population, willing to work, certainly the world’s finest university system and research establishment, over and over again engendering innovations that create future economies: e.g., the computer revolution. American secondary education is still in need of great improvement, but the US University remains a beacon to talent from around the world.

Fifth, despite the noise and uproar, despite the continuing clash between the traditional and the modern or secular, the nation, through its independent courts and helped by governmental decentralization, e.g. the Federal system, the country remains the freest society in human history. Despite the appearance of power of the religious right under the Republicans since the 1970s, serious erosion in freedom of thought has been kept to a minimum. Similarly, the cult of political correctness, although annoying, has become, if anything, less potent and increasingly the butt of jokes.

Sixth, and perhaps most important, we have to consider demography. Despite current unemployment and despite the imminent retirement of the baby boomer generation, the United States, alone among the richest economies, will continue to have a relatively favorable ratio of wage earners to the elderly. This will enable us to afford social security and Medicare. The new generation – known as millennials – will constitute a large source of new labor, innovation and entrepreneurs needed to propel our economy.

Finally, there are a few positive trends, including modest recovery in housing and in auto sales, hints of some pulling back from the out-sourcing of services, and continuing innovation and marketing of new products and services. On the political side, although the current anti-incumbent mood will likely reduce Democratic margins in Congress and in several states in 2010, the sheer lunacy of the “tea party“ activists, many of them unreconstructed “know nothings” may actually hurt the Republican party more than the Democrats. People are constantly being reminded why, for all the failings of the Democrats, they tossed the Republicans from power in the first place.

An optimistic scenario rests on the historical precedent of muddling through crises and then creating new waves of innovation in products and services, and on the presence of a large labor force willing and able to work. A vital question is whether the President and Congress will have the courage to ask voters to make short-term sacrifices: higher income taxes on the rich and reduced subsidies to entrenched interests across the board that will be needed to restore fiscal health. And finally there is the big question, are the American people ready to do with less today to build a better future for the next generation?

Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist).

Photo: elycefeliz

Scenario One: A Pessimistic Forecast for the United States

Richard Morrill — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:37:43 -0500

This is the first in a two part series exploring a pessimistic and an optimistic future for the United States. Part Two will appear tomorrow.

I’m an old (76) 1950s type liberal, and have lived to see the election on the nation’s first mixed-race president, as well as some remarkable social change in the general status of women and ethnic minorities. The United States has a remarkable heritage of entrepreneurship and resilience in its democratic institutions. Yet there are cogent reasons to be fearful and pessimistic about our capacity to maintain our preeminence, at least in the medium run (10-15 years). I obviously hope I’m wrong, and look forward to attempts to undermine my thesis – including, tomorrow, my own.

Consider the numbers 17, 49 and 60. Seventeen is the real unemployment rate, not the “official” ten, when we take into account those dropping out of the labor force, or giving up. Forty-nine is the real percentage of home ownership, in our “ownership” society, not the 68 percent from the census. For mighty Los Angeles, the real number is 44 percent. The difference is the stupendous number of households whose equity in the house is less than they owe on the mortgage. This house of cards has increasingly been the engine of national growth. Sixty is the number of votes in the US Senate needed to stop a filibuster, and together with inept leadership, is responsible for the absurd failure of Congress and the effective collapse of collegial democracy.

Economists say we are in a recovery. What recovery? The small increase in house sales is due to temporary incentives, but including speculators buying up homes, many foreclosed, for yet greater inequality. The main gains in jobs, not fully offsetting wider losses, are in temporary construction tied to government-funded projects. The growth in jobs and the economy in the last 20 years has been in services, stuff we do for each other, and the main fuel has been the pyramiding of house values. That is over. How can we restore growth through more consumption if the majority of the population no longer has the resources to invest or spend?

By far the most destructive accomplishment of almost 30 years of restructuring has been the reestablishment of extreme inequality, the emergence and power of the ultra-rich, both “progressive” and conservative in orientation, to levels last seen before the Great Depression.

But perhaps the greater root of our malaise, and perhaps the downfall of the American Empire, lies in excessive globalization and the loss of our capacity to make stuff, the outsourcing of, first, manufacturing and now even of services. It is instructive that this is the same story of imperial Rome, although long dependent on its empire, by the time of its collapse it imported virtually everything from its tributary states. Its finances could no longer pay the Army which was largely made up of people from outside Italy.

I’d agree that the main hope in the economic arena is via the small entrepreneur, but they face the immense monopolistic power of ever-larger global capital. I’m proud to live in Seattle, which at least dared to fight back, as in the one and only US general strike, in 1919, and in the WTO protests in 1999. Perhaps this is not so surprising since Seattle still makes things: planes (Boeing), ships (Todd) and trucks (PACCAR).

The saddest irony is that even as maybe half of us celebrate a Black president, we have utterly failed to follow up on the political civil rights gains on the 1960s to incorporate Black Americans into the mainstream economy. The status of the Black male is, relatively, worse in 2009 than it was in 1969. I would not be surprised to see a reprise of the 1960s race riots. But it is also relevant to reflect on the declining state of the white male, suffering increased drop-out rates from high school, declining enrollments in college, all in the face of reduced job opportunities for the less skilled and educated, plus competition from immigrants, legal and illegal. Is it any wonder that both nativism and populism is rising anew?

One might dare to believe that large Democratic majorities in Congress would give us hope for effective responses to this national malaise. But I’d say the current Congress rivals the infamous 80th congress that Harry Truman excoriated, for its “do nothingness”. On the surface we can correctly observe that the Republican party, increasingly conservative, is more than willing to wreck the country in order to regain power.

But part of the problem is that we no longer have a conservative and a liberal party, in an economic sense. We have two bourgeois parties, with the “new” Democratic Party increasingly dependent on the wealthy educated elite as well as well-paid public workers, it long ago abandoned the working class and did nothing to constrain globalization and the rise of the toxic financial practices. Thus we should not be surprised that the populist know-nothing uprising could bring to power large numbers of proudly uneducated folks.

In the final analysis for this pessimistic scenario, the underlying culprit is the inexcusable failure of the US educational establishment, the astounding incapacity of our public and private schools to teach people to think and reason. And part of the reason for this incapacity is the excessive power of religion, which values belief over reason, in our culture. And this is why decadent Europe – aging and tax-burdened – could come out of this recession and malaise better than the United States. Perhaps we’ll see a reverse migration of surplus underemployed young Americans returning to their aging historic motherlands!

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Decentralize The Government

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:28:31 -0500

From health care reform and transportation to education to the environment, the Obama administration has--from the beginning--sought to expand the power of the central state. The president's newest initiative to wrest environment, wage and benefit concessions from private companies is the latest example. But this trend of centralizing power to the federal government puts the political future of the ruling party--as well as the very nature of our federal system--in jeopardy.

Of course, certain times do call for increased federal activity--legitimate threats to national security or economic emergencies, such as the Great Depression or the recent financial crisis, for example.

Other functions essential to interstate commerce--basic research, science education, the guarantee of civil rights, transportation infrastructure, as well as basic environmental health and safety standards--also call for federal oversight. Virtually every modern president, from Roosevelt and Eisenhower to Reagan and Clinton, has endorsed these uses of centralized government.

But what is happening now goes well beyond the previously defined perimeters of the federal government's powers. Obama seems to possess a desire not so much to fix the basic infrastructure of the country but to re-engineer our entire society into the model championed by liberal academia.

There also seems to be a conscious design to recreate the country as a European-style super-state. Forged by an understandable urge to minimize chaos after a century of conflict, the super-state generally favors risk management through centralization of authority. This has traditionally been accomplished by ceding regulatory powers to national capitals, though lately more and more powers have been ceded to the European Union.

Initially the administration had hopes of imposing similar controls through acts of Congress. However, with the shifting political mood, this seems less and less possible. With its latest action the administration sends the message that it will now impose the desired results through the bureaucracy. Under the proposal, private firms that do not raise wages will be bullied into doing so through the manipulation of federal contract awards.

This marks a departure from our basic traditions. For most of our history the burden of expanding opportunity has rested with the private economy, albeit in conjunction with often necessary protections for workers and consumers. Now the overall control of the economy is shifting to Washington--from government contracts to ownership shares in companies like General Motors and much of the financial sector.

This new order would transform the very nature of American capitalism. Now the economic winners will not be those working for the most agile or profitable companies, but those who gain the blessings of the federal overlords. In some senses this extends the corrupt, largely failed political economy of Chicago politics to a bastard American form of French dirigisme.

Climate change provides another critical and necessary rationale for the expansive federal role. With the "cap and trade" system all but dead, the administration now wants to regulate energy and land use through the gentle graces of a largely unaccountable EPA apparat. As a result, we may see energy use, land use and transportation--as is increasingly the case in California--controlled by the whims of the unelected bureaucracy.

Such command and control approaches have their advantages in making people do what the mandarins demand. This is one reason there are so many admirers of Chinese autocracy now. In that regime, unlike our messy democracy, you can be forced to be green in precisely the way they tell you. There are always firing squads for those who go off the program.

Of course, even the most passionate centralists don't advocate adopting the Chinese model. But the notion of an enlightened super-state has long appealed to those disgusted with American-style muddling through. In some ways, the current fashion recalls Americans' attraction for the Soviet Union or even fascist Italy during the troubled 1930s.

Fortunately, most Americans do not appear ready for unbounded autocracy. This is particularly true outside the coastal urban centers. The Tea Party may have some cranky--even ill-advised--ideas, but they reflect a genuine--and broader--American preference for solving problems at the state or local level.

Indeed, Americans, including some on the left, are instinctive decentralists. We express this tendency physically, first in our decades-old movement to the suburbs, and increasingly to smaller towns and cities as well as rural areas. Even in cities like New York or Los Angeles, local neighborhood identity trumps ties to more grandiose visions of City Halls or regional bodies. The rise of the Internet and social networks has enhanced this decentralizing trend by providing instant linkages and helping ad hoc organization among neighbors.

Economic evolution mirrors this trend. Over the past few decades U.S. employment has shifted not to mega corporations but to smaller units and individuals; between 1980 and 2000 the number of self-employed individuals expanded 10-fold to include 16% of the workforce. The smallest businesses--the so-called micro enterprises--have enjoyed the fastest rate of growth, far more than any other business category. By 2006 there were some 20 million such businesses, one for every six private sector workers.

America's entrepreneurial urge, in contrast to developments elsewhere, has actually strengthened. In 2008 28% of Americans said they had considered starting a business--more than twice the rate for French or Germans. Self-employment, particularly among younger workers, has been growing at twice the rate of the mid-1990s.

The remarkable volatility within even the largest companies has exacerbated this trend. Firms enter and leave the Fortune 500 with increasing speed. More and more workers will live in an economic environment like that of Hollywood or Silicon Valley, with constant job shifts, changes in alliances between companies and the growth of job-hopping "gypsies." Although hard times could slow new business formation, historically recessions have served as incubators of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Much of the most dynamic and meaningful change takes place under the radar of both big business and government. The shift to greater localism can be seen in the growth of local, unaffiliated community churches, regional festivals and farmers markets. Bowling clubs and old men's clubs may be fading, but volunteerism has spiked among millennials and seems likely to surge among baby boomers. In 2008 some 61 million Americans volunteered, representing over a quarter of the population over 16.

No other major country exhibits this kind of localized, undirected activism. Such vital grassroots may become even more important as the country becomes more diverse. In the coming decades we will have to accommodate an expanding range of locally preferred lifestyles, environments, ethnic populations and politics. One size determined by mandarins in Washington increasingly will not fit all. South Dakotans and San Franciscans will prefer to address similar problems in different ways. Within the limits of constitutional rights, we should let them try their hand and let everyone else learn from their success (or failure).

Ultimately, we do not want to recreate the expansive mandarin state so evident in many foreign countries. Instead, we should focus more on family, community, neighborhoods, local jurisdictions and voluntary associations--what Thomas Jefferson called our "little republics"--as the most effective engines driving toward a better future.

This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

Why Millennials are Economic Liberals and What to Do About It

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:11:17 -0500

The Obama administration celebrated the anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or economic stimulus, by pointing out the gradual recovery of the United States economy has resulted in “saving or creating two million jobs.” But young Americans continue to bear the brunt of what is still America’s worst recession since the Great Depression.

From December 2008 to December 2009, the employment of 16-24 year olds in the U.S. fell by 1.78 million, or a third of the total estimated drop in employment of 5.4 million. Only 41% of Millennials are working full time, a drop of 9 percentage points in the last few years, even as the proportion of older workers employed full time remained fairly stable.

The experience with hard times of Millennials, born 1982-2003, is one of the main reasons why they strongly support the classic liberal solution of effective government intervention in the economy. Recent Pew research, for example, indicates, that far more than older generations, a large majority of Millennials (71%) agrees that the government should guarantee that every citizen has enough to eat and a place to sleep. Millennials are also the only generation in which a majority (54%) disagrees with the contention that if something is run by the government it is usually inefficient and wasteful and a plurality (49%) rejects the belief that the federal government controls too much of our daily lives.

A recent study by UCLA professor Paola Giuliano, and her colleague Antonio Spilimbergo, clearly documents the impact of recessions on people who are between 18 and 25, “during which most beliefs on how society and the economy work are formed.” Their research found that individuals who experienced recessions much milder than our current Great Recession during these formative years believe that “luck rather than effort is the most important driver of individual success, support more government redistribution, and have less confidence in institutions.” Other research shows that people who think luck is the primary driver of success are more willing to increase taxes to pay for a more activist government. Giuliano and Spilimbergo’s findings support the observation that lies at the heart of William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational cycle theory, namely that the “values, attitudes and world-views” acquired during this period of early socialization “become fixed within individuals and are resistant to change.”

The research of Giuliano and Spilimbergo also suggests that the Millennial Generation’s economic liberalism comes with a healthy dose of skepticism about the ability of institutions to help them meet their profound economic challenge. To fully restore Millennial confidence, government will need to take effective action to deal with the economy and reaffirm America’s tradition of economic mobility and rising middle class incomes. Beyond whatever short-term benefits President Obama’s stimulus program has provided, longer term more structural changes in the economy will need be made — starting with education.

Higher education remains an important antidote to low wage employment in such economic circumstances, but only if students complete their chosen field of study. Yale economist Lisa Kahn has found that “the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent,” resulting in lower wages, in less prestigious jobs for extensive periods of time. Her research suggests that even college graduates fortunate enough to get a job still suffer a 6 to 7 percent initial loss in income for every one percent drop in employment. Even though the differential diminishes over time, her research found such unlucky graduates still experiencing a statistically significant 2.5% loss of wages fifteen years later.

Even so, those who get a four year college degree earn on average 35% more than those who leave college without getting a degree. Getting one or two years of post-secondary education and receiving an associate’s degree from a community college or a certificate from a career college also boosts wages above what they would have been without such a degree. One Florida study found that holders of certificates in particular occupations such as health care or IT earned 27% more than those who attended, but failed to complete, college. Associate degree holders earned 8% more than those who had no post-secondary education.

One major reason students aren’t able to get a degree or certificate is that three-fourths of associate degree or certificate seekers end up working to help cover their education and living costs. Meanwhile federal support for higher education has failed to keep up with rising costs so that more and more students find themselves financing their education with student loans of one type or another. In Indiana, for instance, 62 percent of those who do manage to graduate carry student loan debt averaging $23,264 per student. The loan burden in that state is even higher for graduates of for-profit, private colleges who leave school with an average debt burden of $32,650.

Increasing Pell Grant funding and the value of college tuition tax deductions are two steps government could take to address this problem. Reforming the student loan program to eliminate subsidies to banks as President Obama has advocated, and including student loans under any consumer protection agency that might be created as part of financial regulatory reform would also help address this problem that would fit with Millennial’s liberal perspectives.

The other major reason students fail to complete their post-secondary education is the inadequate preparation for college, especially in math and science, they receive in high school. This is something that parents of Millennials will tolerate no longer. As Neil Howe points out, "when these Gen-X "security moms" and "committed dads" are fully roused, they can be even more attached, protective and interventionist than Boomer [parents] ever were. . .They will juggle schedules to monitor their kids' activities in person. . . [and] will quickly switch their kids into - or take them out of - any situation according to their assessment of their youngsters' interests."

These “stealth-fighter parents” have already begun to move one of the largest and most consistently poorly performing school districts in the country, Los Angeles Unified, forcing the district to grant them more say in school curriculum and governance. Their success led California’s usually dysfunctional legislature to pass a “parent trigger” law empowering a majority of parents in a demonstrably failing school attendance area to fire the principal and half the teachers as part of a turnaround initiative. Congress should incorporate this very interventionist idea into its reauthorization of the framework federal education law when it comes up for renewal this year. It should also expand funding for the Obama administration’s innovative Race to the Top initiative, which rewards schools that improve student learning performance rather than simply subsidizing mediocrity.

All of these ideas will be resisted by those who believe that individual success is solely based upon effort and initiative and don’t believe in the efficacy of government efforts to revive the economy. Others with a stake in the status quo will argue against some of these ideas. But Millennials, whose lifetime of liberal economic beliefs have been forged by their experience with the Great Recession, will resist entreaties from those who offer only laissez faire economic policies or who try to delay dealing with these problems. They want government to act quickly and effectively, before they and their siblings are doomed to never enjoy the American Dream.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of the New Democrat Network 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 10 favorite books by the New York Times in 2008.

MILLENNIAL PERSPECTIVE: Kindle 101

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:21:21 -0500

The rising Millennial Generation has been cast as the leading force in teaching current technological advancements, and in predicting what will come next. Labeled “Digital Natives” because of our familiarity with digital communications and media technologies, the rise of the Millennials has run parallel with the rise of the cell phone, the computer complete with Internet, and the launch of MP3 players. In keeping with expectations that we’ll provide leadership on the digital media world, here’s what to expect of the sophisticated technology of Kindle, the digital book:

Named “Kindle” to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge, this software and hardware platform was developed by Amazon.com for rendering and displaying e-books and other digital media.

First released in the U.S. in, 2007, the device represents the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0, the revolution in progress that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish. Originally it was designed to present an aura of “bookishness”. With the dimensions of a paperback, the Kindle weighs 10.3 oz and mimes the clarity of a printed book by using a colorless “E-Ink”. Unlike most wireless devices, the Kindle doesn’t run hot or make beeps, and the battery is durable and made to last at least 30 hours on charge. It runs on “Whispernet”, a wireless connectivity-based on EVDO broadband service offered by cell phone carriers which provides access everywhere, not just in Wi-Fi hotspots.

Any bookworm can carry 200 books onboard the device and hundreds on a memory card. "The vision is that you should be able to get any book—not just any book in print, but any book that's ever been in print—on this device in less than a minute," says Amazon president Jeff Bezos.

Search tools provide convenient access to a high volume of books. Consumers can read multiple books online for free, instead of buying books one at a time at a higher price. It pairs nicely with a trend towards short content: news stories, online journals, blogs, and short e-books. The short story phenomenon has grown among young writers who prefer writing short fiction blogs rather than lengthy novels.

Amazon prices Kindle editions of New York Times best sellers and new releases at $9.99. The price for the Kindle edition books drops for classic novels; Edgar Allan Poe works are under $5.00, and vintage hardboiled reads are available for under $7.00. The first chapter of almost any book is available as a free sample.

Digital book prices are in danger of rising. Beginning in March, books from Macmillan will reportedly cost up to $14.99. Five additional publishers have negotiated higher prices for digital publication on iPad.

When purchased, the Kindle e-book is auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle in under a minute. A Kindle owner can also subscribe to major newspapers or popular magazines. When issues go to press, the virtual publications are automatically beamed into the user’s Kindle. A user can also subscribe to selected blogs, which cost either 99 cents or $1.99 a month per blog.

Kindle allows the reader to personalize the reading experience. Users are able to change the font size, which is particularly accommodating to the Boomer generation and those older who may struggle with small print. For tech savvy multi- taskers, an electronic highlighter captures passages, which can be linked via web access to Wikipedia and Google. Another feature includes a personalized Kindle e-mail, which allows users to file any word document or PDF file into a personal digital library.

The original Kindle proved to be revolutionary and popular device, selling out within its first six hours on the market. Within less than two years, Kindle 2 and Kindle DX were released.

Kindle 2 developed into an “international version” of Kindle. Currently, it works in 100 countries using AT&T’s U.S. mobile network. Kindle DX is a little larger, with greatly increased book storage and, of course, a higher price.

As authors adapt to online literature, the current book readership demographics may change as well. Scott Moyers, Director of the NY office of Wylie Publishing Agency, categorized the readers of e-books as “People who view the physical book as disposable”. Moyers believes that the first genres to solely go e-book will be Romance and Mystery novels, based on rapid turnover of the vast amount of works available in those genres. Visually intensive books — such as photography books that are beautifully produced — will be the last genre to go e-book, suggests Moyers, since these would be a “paler echo on the colorless Kindle”.

Piracy poses a threat, as in the music industry; pirate sites may gain access to scan the online books. As far as “peer-to-peer” file sharing, Kindle has attempted to create a limit: a user can freely borrow an e-book for one month. Although this suppresses most excessive file sharing, online file sharing could become more popular.

Despite potential dangers, Kindle has expanded along with the wild success of internet visibility on computers and cell phones. “Kindle for PC” and the Kindle application for the iPhone are now available. Can “Kindle for Mac” and “Kindle” for Blackberry be far behind?

Kjellrun Owens is a freshman at Chapman University. Originally from Minnesota, she plans to pursue a career in Broadcast Journalism/TV.

The Gero-Economy Revs Up

Greg Critser — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:51:18 -0500

Green jobs? Great. Gray jobs? Maybe an even better bet for the new jobs bill. If there is a single graphic that everyone concerned with the nation’s future should have tattooed on their eyeballs, my vote goes to the one on your left. Here is its central message:

Forty years from now, one out of four Americans will be 65 or older.

Twenty million will be over 85.

One million will be over 100.

So far the Big Think on such numbers might be boiled down to a few reasonable conclusions: People will have to work longer and delay retirement. The government should underwrite serial job retraining and promote new kinds of annuity plans. These will boost tax revenue that would help pay the nation’s growing Social Security and Medicare tab. “[It] would constitute a kind of neo-welfare state—a new covenant—that promotes individual responsibility in alliance with the voluntary sector, the market, and government,” observes Robert Butler, the dean of modern gerontology. He calls his package “productive aging.”

But there is a third rung: incentives to make aging an engine of economic growth. There’s gelt in that there gray! It’s the entire world that’s aging, after all, and that world’s in need of gero-tools, gero-think, gero-innovation. We’ve got it. Let’s sell it – to China, Europe, India.

I spent some time recently with innovators in this realm. Perhaps the most exciting were those designing new-style senior housing—ranging from high end architects and builders to small time real estate entrepreneurs. They are pursuing ways for the elderly to live more comfortably and safely in their own homes and communities.

In Palo Alto, one former real estate saleswoman, frustrated with the elder-scary housing stock in that uptown realm, took to providing what turned out to be a popular and profitable service: gero-fitting, or “prostheticizing,” those ultra-modern (and hard-edged) homes with senior-friendly accoutrements: hand bars everywhere in case of a fall, showers and water sources that adjust heat and flow automatically, wheel chair turns in halls and room-by-room phones and computer screens that activate by voice.

Nursing homes – places where one normally sees neither – are also slowly emerging out from under decades of under-investment and institution-think. Architects and developers from Sweden (one of the fastest aging nations in the world), Japan (the fastest in Asia) and even Italy (one of the most unprepared gero-nations) have been retooling the unfulfilled promise of universal design to come up with new construction methods and new construction materials.

Yet it’s American builders, with their vast experience and regional flexibility, who stand to be generational leaders in the most profitable arena: building new homes. Where are they?

Then there is transportation. Cars–and our addiction to them–are perennially painted as villains in elder-world. Yet until they are in their early 80s, aged drivers far outperform their younger counterparts, with fewer injury accidents and fewer tickets. Nevertheless, finding ways to make driving safer and more comfortable suggests another major opportunity: prostheticizing the automobile and making highways less cognitively confusing.

Here in Los Angeles, the original car capital, one company is using space program sensor technologies to make cars that warn drivers when they are tailgating, when they are weaving, when their off ramp is coming up. Roadways? Someone needs to use our state-of-the-art understanding of cognition to redesign everything from highway signs to lighting. A few farsighted firms are already trying to do so. We need more.

The aging of the modern stomach could also drive food science to develop new staples that are less glycemic (high blood sugar being one of the biggest sources of chronic inflammation in the elderly) but still tasty and satisfying. And, instead of being peremptorily dismissed, the “anti-aging” medical movement could be scientifically (and systematically) plumbed for real medical advances, tested with gold standard clinical trials, and then sold to the rest of the arthritic world.

Who, then, will lead? Who will become the Bill Gates of ElderWare, the Al Gore of GeroWarming, the Warren Buffett of AlterAssets?. Right now, we’re still waiting.

“The boomers are going to have a rougher time in retirement than their parents,” says Robert Butler. “That can mean two things: they can complain about it, or they can retool it for their kids and take advantage of its promise.”

Greg Critser’s new book is Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging (Random/Harmony 2010).

Blame Their Parents, Not Us

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:36:31 -0500

We appreciate Pete Peterson’s attention to our work, but in responding to his complaint that we are denigrating Generation X and underrating its civic participation, we should begin at the beginning, define our terms, and give credit where credit is due. In writing our book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, we borrowed heavily from the thinking of and acknowledged our intellectual debt to Neil Howe and the late William Strauss, the founders of generational theory. In their seminal books, Generations (1992) and The Fourth Turning (1997), Strauss and Howe described the four generational archetypes – Idealist, Reactive, Civic, and Adaptive – that have cycled throughout Anglo-American history. Stemming from the way each generation was reared by its parents, each generational type develops a characteristic set of attitudes and behaviors that is broadly similar regardless of where in American history it appears.

It is the attitudes and behaviors of these archetypes, not our biases or disdain for Generation X, that underpin our comments. Those same archetypical attitudes and behaviors also shape the statistics that Peterson cites both selectively and somewhat out of context in his New Geography posting.

One of Peterson’s contentions is that members of Generation X currently participate in voluntary or non-profit activities to at least the same extent as Millennials do. He cites a survey conducted by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC) to prove his point. It is clear, however, that the NCOC itself places great hope in the Millennial Generation, entitling a section in its reports, “The Emerging Generation: Opportunities with the Millennials” and stating that “In the 2009 Civic Health Index, Millennials emerge as the ‘top’ group for volunteers.”

While the NCOC statistics do indicate that Millennials lead the way in civic engagement, to be fair the overall differences between the X and Millennial Generations are not large. What most distinguishes Millennials from other generations is the type of community activities in which they are involved. Not surprisingly, given the lower incomes normally associated with entry level jobs and the fact that the Great Recession has hit them to a far greater extent than other generations, Millennials are more likely than older generations to volunteer rather than make financial donations. While a plurality of those in all generations say they both volunteer and donate financially, Millennials are substantially more likely to engage solely as volunteers. Among those who only volunteer, Millennials do so at 3.25 times the rate of Baby Boomers, 2.6 times that of seniors, and 1.3 times more than members of Generation X. In effect, at least in the current economy, Millennials have more time than money.

As Peterson points out, when respondents were asked whether they had increased their civic participation in the past year, Gen-Xers led the way with 39% answering “yes” surpassing Millennials (29%), Boomers (26%), and seniors (25%). He dismisses the possibility that this might reflect improvements in previously low engagement levels among Gen-Xers, but actually it does. According to the U.S. Department of Education in 1984, when all of them were Gen-Xers, only a quarter (27%) of high school students participated in community service. Twenty years later, when all high school students were Millennials about three times as many (80%) did so. It could be argued that this increase occurred simply because by 2004 students were required to be active in their communities while they weren’t previously. But, for whatever reason, Millennials better seemed to internalize the lessons about community service to which they were exposed in high school. In 1989, 13% of those participating in the National Service organizations like the Peace Corps and Teachers Corps were from Generation X, about the percentage contribution of the generation to the U.S. population at that time. In 2006, 26% of National Service participants were Millennials, twice their percentage in the population.

Peterson also maintains the voting turnout of Generation X equals that of Millennials when the two generations were of similar age. To demonstrate this he compares youth turnout in the 1992 and 2008 presidential elections. According to CIRCLE, a non-partisan organization that studies and attempts to increase the political participation of young people, 18-29 years did indeed vote at similar rates in 1992 when those of that age were Gen-Xers (50%) and in 2008 when that age group consisted primarily of Millennials (52% overall and 59% in the competitive battleground states in which the Obama and McCain campaigns concentrated their efforts).

What Peterson did not do is to report on what occurred in all of the elections between 1992 and 2008. This provides more nuanced data that is generally more favorable to Millennials. For example, in 1996, when again all young voters were members of Generation X, youth electoral participation fell to 37%, the lowest of any year for which CIRCLE reports data. Youth voting began to steadily increase starting in 2000 as the first Millennials attained voting age until, in 2008, it reached the highest level since 1972.

But, Peterson’s biggest unhappiness with those of us who “gush” about the Millennials really seems to be his belief that we extol them for partisan reasons. It is true that Millennials lean heavily to the Democratic Party. They supported Barack Obama against John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%) and, according to Pew, last October identified as Democrats over Republicans by 52% vs. 34%. They are also the first generation in at least four to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.

We certainly don’t hide the fact that we are life-long Democrats, something we clearly pointed out in the introduction to our book even as we made every effort to be evenhanded in our examination of American politics. That evenhanded examination suggests that as a civic generation, at this point in American history, it is hard to imagine most Millennials being anything other than Democrats. Civic generations, like the Millennials, favor societal and governmental solutions to the problems facing America. At least since the New Deal, the Democratic Party has had more affinity for such approaches than the GOP. It is for this reason that the GI Generation (Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation) became lifelong Democrats in the 1930s and why we believe most Millennials now see themselves as Democrats and vote that way. For Peterson to wish that were different won’t make it so.

But, in the end, all generational archetypes play key roles in the mosaic of American life. In truth, no generation is somehow “better” or “worse” than another. When the civic GI Generation served America so nobly and effectively in World War II, members of the idealist Missionary Generation like Franklin D. Roosevelt inspired it and it was commanded in battle by great generals from the reactive Lost Generation such as Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton. America now faces a new set of grave issues. It will take the concerted efforts of all generations to confront and resolve them.

A Race Of Races

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:24:22 -0500

When Americans think of our nation's power (or our imminent lack of it) we tend to point to the national debts, GDP or military prowess. Few have focused on what may well be the country's most historically significant and powerful weapon: its emergence as the modern world's first multiracial superpower.

This evolution, after centuries of racial wrangling and struggle, will prove particularly critical in a world in which the power of the "white" race will likely diminish as power shifts to China, India and other developing countries. By 2039, due largely to immigrants and their offspring, non-Europeans will constitute the majority of working-age Americans, and by around 2050 non-Hispanic whites could well be in the minority.

But this should not be seen so much as a matter of ethnic succession as multiracial amalgamation. The group likely to grow fastest, for example, will be made up of people, like President Obama himself, who are of mixed race. There is no more demonstrable evidence of the changing racial attitudes of Americans. As recently as 1987 slightly less than half of Americans approved of interracial couples. By 2007, according to the Pew Center, 83% supported them. Among the millennial generation, who will make up the majority of adults in 2050, 94% approve of such matches.

Today roughly 20% of Americans, according to Pew Research Center, say they have a relative married to someone of another race. Mixed-race couples tend to be younger; over two-fifths of mixed-race Americans are under 18 years of age. In the coming decades this group will play an ever greater role in society. According to sociologists at UC, Irvine, by 2050 mixed-race people could account for one in five Americans.

The result will be a U.S. best described in Walt Whitman's prophetic phrase as "the race of races." No other advanced, populous country will enjoy such ethnic diversity.

The U.S. will likely remain militarily and even economically preeminent, but much of its power will stem from its status as the world's only multiracial superpower. America's global reach will extend well beyond Coca-Cola, Boeing and the Seventh Fleet and express itself in the most intimate cultural and familial ties.

Our continuing relative success with immigration is key to this process. In the next decades the fate of Western countries may well depend on their ability to make social and economic room for people whose origins lay outside Europe. No Western-derived country produces enough children of European descent to prevent them from becoming granny nation-states by 2050.

In other words, countries and societies need to become more racially diverse in order to succeed. Yet over the past few decades many countries, from Iran to the nations of the former Soviet bloc, have narrowed their definition of national identity. Even the province of Quebec, bordering the U.S., has imposed preferential policies devised to blunt successful minorities. Because of these restrictive policies, which in some places are accompanied by lethal threats, Jews, Armenians, Coptic Christians and diaspora Chinese have often been forced to find homes in more-welcoming places.

In recent decades Europe has received as many immigrants as the U.S., but it has proven far less able to absorb them. The roughly 20 million Muslims who live in Europe have tended to remain segregated from the rest of society and economically marginalized. In Europe, notably in France, unemployment among immigrants – particularly those from Muslim countries – is often at least twice that of the native born; in Britain, as well, Muslims are far more likely to be out of the workforce than either Christians or Hindus. British Muslims, according to Britain National Equity Panel, possess household wealth one-fifth that of the predominant nominally Christian population.

This is also a famously alienated and socially isolated population. For example, in Britain in 2001 up to 40% of the Islamic population believed that terrorist attacks on both Americans and their fellow Britons were justified. They are not mixing much; 95% of white Britons say they have exclusively white friends. In comparison, only 25% of American whites in 29 selected metropolitan areas reported having no interracial friendships at all.

Despite scattered cases of terrorists in our midst, the contrast between U.S. Muslims and their counterparts overseas is particularly telling. In the U.S. most Muslims are comfortably middle class, with income and education levels above the national average. They are more likely to be satisfied with the state of the country, their own community and their prospects for success than are other Americans – even in the face of the reaction to 9-ll.

More important, more than half of Muslims – many of them immigrants – identify themselves as Americans first, a far higher percentage than in the various countries of Western Europe. This alienation may be a legacy of the European colonial experience, but it can also be seen in Denmark and Sweden, which had little earlier contact with the Muslim world. In contrast, in the U.S. more than four in five are registered to vote, a sure sign of civic involvement. "You can keep the flavor of your ethnicity," remarked one University of Chicago Pakistani doctorate student in Islamic studies, "but you are expected to become an American."

But the general success of American immigration extends beyond Muslims. Even the largely working-class immigrants from Mexico generally have had lower unemployment than white and other workers, at least until 2007; then with the housing-led recession their unemployment rate began to rise, since so many were involved in construction and manufacturing. Once the economy recovers the historical pattern should reassert itself. Other large groups, including Asians, Cubans, Africans and a still considerable number of Europeans, have performed even better.

Immigrants by their very nature, of course, are a work in progress, reflecting the essential protean nature of this civilization. Yet they are clearly becoming Americans and transforming who we are as a people. Ideologues on the left and right often don't understand what is going on in America. The left, locked on the racial past, looks for new grievances to stoke among newcomers. They envision the rise of a fractured country – precisely the same thing many conservatives fear.

Yet Hispanics, and particularly their children, are not becoming serape-wrapped Spanish speakers. Among Hispanics in California, 90% of children of first-generation immigrants speak fluent English; in the second generation half no longer speak Spanish. Only 7% of the children of immigrants speak Spanish as a primary language.

Over the next few decades this pattern of ethnic and racial integration will separate America from its key competitors. In 2005 the U.S. swore in more new citizens than the next nine immigrant-receiving countries put together. These newcomers will reshape the very identity of the country and allow the U.S. to continue growing its labor force.

Our prime competitors of the future – India and China – are unlikely to evolve in this direction. India is a highly heterogeneous country itself and remains driven by ethnic and religious conflicts. China, like Japan and Korea, remains a profoundly homogeneous country with little appetite or capacity to accept newcomers.

America's relative openness is particularly critical in the worldwide struggle for skilled labor. Right now more than half of all skilled immigrants in the world come to the U.S., though Australia and Canada, which have much smaller populations, have higher percentages of them. Despite repeated press reports about return migration to home countries, understandable given our sometimes bizarre immigration policy and the deep economic downturn, the vast majority of skilled immigrants – at least 60% – from around the world are staying.

America's successful evolution to a post-ethnic society will prove particularly critical in U.S. relations with developing nations, our largest source of immigrants. Even those immigrants who return home to Europe, China, India, Africa or Latin America often retain strong familial and business ties to the U.S. They can testify that America maintains a special ability to integrate all varieties of people into its society.

As we negotiate the next few decades, America's growing diversity allows it to stand alone, a multiracial colossus unmatched by any in the evolving global economy. In the current world being a "race of races" represents not a dissolution of power but a new means for expressing it.

This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.