“This is not a book
to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
---Attributed
to Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
I read a favorable review of Kids These Days, by Malcolm Harris (B. 1988) and thought I’d see
what the millennial generation was thinking.
On the one hand, Mr. Harris is a good writer and the book
is mercifully short (228 pages of text). On the other hand, Mr. Harris really
likes to complain. If this were the only book that pointed out that millennials
are currently on the short end of the stick, the book would be useful. But it’s
not the only book. That job has been done better by many authors including Andy
Stern in his Raising the Floor, which
offered the Universal Basic Income as a way to combat offshoring, automation,
and the 1099 economy. Mr. Harris offers little in the way of solutions. After
saying, “After all, books like this are supposed to end with a solution,
right?” he suggests (halfheartedly) buying with a social conscience, voting,
giving to causes you believe in, protesting, and “put it down,” which appears
to be an argument that none of the above will work.
It seems many book reviewers are willing to give Mr. Harris
his millennial gold stars simply for showing up and mentioning “solutions.”
I’ll be the first to admit millennials have challenges. But
they are not alone. If Mr. Harris enters the labor market, he will no doubt in
just a couple of decades find out what it’s like to be a fifty-something cast
out into a labor market rife with age discrimination.
Mr. Harris makes some allegations that are difficult to
believe. Amazon.com shows different prices to different customers, for example.
He also repeats the old saw (made popular by Dorcas Hardy in her 1991 book Social Insecurity) that people who
collect Social Security will get more out of the system than they paid in. (This in spite of the fact that millions who die before they collect their first check will get nothing from the system.) News
flash for Mr. Harris: I will get more out of my IRA than I paid in. That’s how
retirement savings programs are supposed to work. Additionally, Mr. Harris says
(on page 108), “The average dual-earner couple will pay over a million dollars
in taxes into a system that half of Millennials (sic) think will leave them
high and dry.”
First, in order to pay over a million dollars into the
system, the dual-earner couple would have to be pulling in almost $376,000 a
year over a 40-year working life (and that includes the Medicare tax). And that
would only be possible if all $376,000 per year were subject to Social Security
taxes. The current maximum earnings taxed per worker for Social Security is
$127,200 (for 2017). It would not be possible to pay a million dollars into
Social Security. One wonders where Mr. Harris’ editor was when this statement
needed factchecking. And keep in mind Mr. Harris is evidently assuming $376,000
per couple will be a typical income after spending much of the book arguing
that millennials will have difficulty surviving the new economy.
After wasting a couple of days I’ll never get back reading
this book I wondered who Malcom Harris (B. 1988) is. The book offers little
other than to say he is a communist and an editor at The New Inquiry who has written for the New Republic, Bookforum, the
Village Voice, and the New York Times
Magazine.
It turns out there’s more to Mr. Harris than he lets on in
this book. He had a privileged upbringing. He took part in the Occupy movement
in 2011 and wound up in some legal trouble over that, which may be why he’s
dismissive of “protest,” one of his suggestions. You can look this stuff as
well as I can.
Mr. Harris appears to be more a Maynard G. Krebs-style communist
than a serious social activist.
All in all, Mr. Harris’ book brings to mind Gertrude
Stein’s description of the Oakland of her day: There’s no “there” there.
©
2018 Larry Roth
No comments:
Post a Comment