Length: 720 Words     Reading Time: 3 Minutes

On first reading of this editorial piece the other day, I thought the best part of it was the title because it had a nice ring to it.  It was mostly downhill after that.

Mr. Sternberg notes that the Millennials were born in the years 1981 through 1996.  He is himself a millennial, born in 1982.  So, he has the credentials to speak for his generation, and he is a WSJ journalist and a member of WSJ’s editorial board if memory serves.

Mr. Sternberg blames almost everything on the dastardly Baby Boomers who made a dog’s meal of the lives and future of the Millennials. He believes the Boomers made poor choices in public policy and economic decisions.

I am not a Baby Boomer (I was born in 1943). So, I hope I can comment unemotionally and without prejudice on several of Mr. Sternberg’s most egregious errors in fact and wording.

He writes that the “lowest-earning quartile of college grads earn roughly the same as the top quartile of high-school-only workers, but with more student debt to show for it.”  This statement demonstrates that Mr. Sternberg’s numeracy skills are not well developed.  Relationships between lower quartile data for one group and upper quartile data for a related group often overlap.  That is not newsworthy or a cause for concern, but the associated student debt issue is undoubtedly worthy of highlighting.

In two places, Mr. Sternberg writes “by one estimate” and “by one count” and builds a story on both statements.  He would have been more effective if he had not relied on one data point for his argument because that can be a shaky place on which to stand.  “Numbers rule” as Max Planck once wrote, but it is better to have a few studies or analyses that demonstrate a similar conclusion or that reinforce each other.

He also writes that “…today’s socialists have a coherent response to all of this….”  By this, he means “tech bubbles, resource misallocations that skewed the labor market, the student loan albatross, an entitlement state that saddles us with debt while failing to deliver economic security for many recipients….”  I cannot follow his reasoning here for believing the socialists, especially when he cites Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the socialist messengers. I would not be far off the mark if I state that neither of these individuals has made a compelling or coherent case for socialistic solutions of any kind.

I must also add that the Baby Boomers were not the decision-makers of record for what has occurred over the last 30 years. The blame for any bubbles, financial crises, and the Great Recession should be placed with the political elites, the crony capitalists, and the money men on Wall Street.  Politicians always get it wrong when they try to outguess the free market.  Socialism is not going to be any better in steering a more dependable course.  The real issue here is not capitalism, but the politicians and the capitalists who do not believe in the free market and who are not guided by a reasonable moral compass.

Mr. Sternberg also blames the Baby Boomers for pushing the Millennials to go back to college so that they would be more competitive in the marketplace.  He neglects to provides any information on the curriculum choices that many of the Millennials made.  Many Millennials chose soft courses that were easy, but that did not have much economic traction in the marketplace after graduation.  There is not a significant demand for philosophy majors and majors in various esoteric studies curricula, outside of academia. Wrong choices often lead to unintended adverse consequences, such as no available jobs, except for flipping burgers at McDonald’s or packing book orders at Amazon.

 I would award Mr. Sternberg a C+ for his efforts in writing this editorial.  He used a lot of space on the Journal’s editorial page, but he did not add a lot of value to the discussion.  Perhaps, he would have been more successful if he had set forth some recommendations as a “Way Forward for America.”  He certainly has access to the resources and information to make such a case for change.  I will leave it there, because I do not want to be accused of piling on, after all, I am not a Baby Boomer.