Born between 1985 and 2000, Generation I is the first generation to grow up with the Internet fully enmeshed with their daily lives. As these young men and women transition to adulthood with the choice, immediacy and excitement of the web top of mind, they do so with an unprecedented gift of connectivity.
With that gift, they must also bear a unique burden.
The Internet has both expanded and narrowed the focus of Gen I. It has centered them on the here and now, shielding them from spending too much time thinking about the future.
Whether it’s on-demand video games and real-time messaging, or the millions of websites and apps serving up fun or thought-provoking content 24/7, Gen I gets everything they need – right now. The immediate has become the enemy of the distant.
It’s not that Gen I is selfish. Ideas of social justice are engrained in them from kindergarten through college. They care about and choose their politicians based on shared views of critical social issues such as LGBT rights, sensitivity to minorities, animal cruelty, and climate change.
Should we be surprised then that they favor electric cars over fossil fuels, prefer slow food over genetically modified crops, and often patronize startups over big business? Or that one of their biggest concerns is how to land that first job and make enough money to move out of their parents’ home?
Why should we be surprised by their total disinterest in changes in national policy that could relegate them and their children to second-class nationhood? Have political promises of student-loan forgiveness and free community college by the president and his Democratic Party blinded young adults to how badly they have been hurt by these same politicians?
Consider the damage done in the last seven years:
- We’re running out of money. When President Obama took office in 2009, our national debt was $10.6 trillion. It will be close to $20 trillion when the next president takes office in January 2017. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says that, absent changes in the law, the entire federal budget in 2028 will be consumed by entitlements and interest on that debt. That means no resources to fund infrastructure, defense, education, the environment, border controls or thousands of other federal programs.
- We’re running out of jobs. In 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 120 million Americans had full-time jobs. Today, 123 million Americans have full-time jobs, an increase of just 2 percent, despite population growth of more than 5 percent over the same period. And nearly all of the job growth has been in part-time jobs.
- We’re cutting off access to the job market. In 2010, the Labor Department banned most unpaid internships. Yet internships are the pipeline for new workers to gain experience and employers to test potential full-time employees.
- Obamacare is a tax on the young. The new health care law raised health insurance costs for younger, healthy workers so older, sicker Americans pay lower premiums. And the law imposes new costs on companies for each full-time employee, discouraging creation of full-time jobs.
- We’re making it harder for businesses to hire entry-level workers. The Obama administration is proposing that any employee making less than $50,400 must be paid overtime for extra work. This proposal would hurt American competitiveness, handcuff our vibrant and innovative startup community and could encourage outsourcing overseas. Worse, it denies young professionals the traditional path of investing long hours in order to learn, gain experience and move up.
Next, the administration wants to double the minimum wage, create a litigation bonanza with equal pay for “comparable” work (the law already mandates equal pay for equal work) and impose new taxes on business. Add these proposals to hundreds of new rules levied on companies, and it’s no wonder that businesses look overseas for expansion.
Still, Gen I has remained silent as this administration has pushed policy after policy crippling employers’ ability to create full-time positions for recent college graduates.
Worse, this generation is not even a part of the negotiations. They say that if you are not at the table in Washington, you’re getting eaten for lunch – and regrettably, my greedy baby boomer generation is now eating its young.
Gen I has become the new silent majority, relinquishing its collective future to the will of others. While launching many successful young innovators entrepreneurs, this next generation has yet to produce serious leaders willing to protect and defend them in Washington.
Every prior American generation has been driven by the idea of creating a better life for their children. Remarkably, my generation has failed. Until and unless Gen I starts paying attention and taking action, I fear we will continue to abscond with their future.
Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®, the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,000 consumer electronics companies, and author of the New York Times best-selling books, Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s MostSuccessful Businesses and The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream. His views are his own. Connect with him on Twitter: @GaryShapiro
