Middle X

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What happens when those of us born between 1965 and 1980, the infamous Generation X, enter middle age? Well, for one thing, we don't make nearly the noise about it our predecessors did:

People heard it loud and clear when the baby boomers crossed over to midlife – you couldn’t avoid it. Radio talk show hosts probed into the transition, newspapers described boomer women coping with crow’s feet and men reclaiming their vitality in tribal drum circles. For the generation born after – in the ‘60s and ‘70s, raised by television like no previous generation and with the divorce rate skyrocketing during their childhood years — there is no media watch broadcasting their new trajectory. Few have even noticed that this small, notoriously rebellious clan – those born roughly between 1965 and 1980, which means about 46 million Xers versus 80 million boomers — has entered middle age. It’s a transition that, until now, has been captured, mulled over and ridiculed for each generation for more than a half-century. But not this time.

The problem is, with adulthoods repeatedly shipwrecked by economic disasters, Xers might have neglected to track the crossing over. Susan Gregory Thomas, author of the resonant memoir ”In Spite of Everything,” says that many Xers “are always living in a state of triage, always in a survivalist mode. We’re not thinking long-term.”

And then there's this:

And one thing that’s clear: No one else is going to care that we’re moving into red-Ferrari territory. Sure we’ve been screwed. And there may be no Ellsberg in our bunch, but we drank plenty of American Dream Kool-Aid: the idea of real estate being a good investment, the platitude about working hard and getting a good education to secure a solid footing, and the assurance that you need to follow your dreams and not compromise. We are now the most educated American generation – and the first one not doing better than its parents.

There is a chance that being repeatedly burned by the marketplace may actually help us; our natural skepticism may be something American society needs to hear. Most of our trouble – from the Bush 1 recession to the dot-com bust and the more recent economic pit of despair – has stemmed from unchecked optimism. The Xers have paid for that trickle-down optimism repeatedly.

We Xers are sandwiched between two much larger generations in the Boomers and Echo Boomers, but 46 million is still a lot of people so there is a variation inherent to the group that makes it dangerous to offer up sweeping generalizations like those in the article. Still we are generally shaped by our shared generational experiences and the article does a good job of outlining some of the experiences that made a significant impact on us – a high rate of divorced parents, an adulthood punctuated by extreme economic highs and lows, a litany of political and business scandals covered in excrutiating detail by the exploding multimedia landscape – and how they likely influenced our development and outlook on life in general.

When I read the following excerpt I was instantly thankful that my lovely wife and I bucked the trend of our generation and started having kids in our mid-20s:

Many of us – busy building careers, wounded by family divorce, or just wanting to lay down the perfect foundation for marriage and family life — waited to have children. Studies reveal that a disproportionate number of us are sandwiched between dependent children and aging parents – fending off economic stressers while juggling a heavy load of family responsibilities.

Connelly, the Ford futurist, says that some of the postponing of the traditional midlife period may come down to a pushing back of all the major life milestones: “Some of that [midlife questioning] would be fueled by empty nesters – the kids are grown,” she says, explaining a feeling of “now what?” “Demographics have shifted such that with each passing generation, people are postponing marriage.” With dependent kids at home, everything has been pushed back. “There’s nothing midlife about my situation right now.  I think that’s why you don’t hear this conversation.”

After reading that who wouldn't want the traditional "red Porsche at 46" mid-life crisis prompted by empty nesthood and a sagging jowl?  I say bring it on.  Of course in my case it's a "burgundy Honda Pilot at 46" mid-life crisis which, if you ask a Boomer, would make me a classic Xer underachiever.

When Glitches Are More Than Inconvenient

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Yes! Weekly is reporting on problems with a rollout of North Carolina Department of Health and Human Service's NC FAST program:

North Carolina Families Accessing Services Through Technology, which is being implemented across all 100 counties of North Carolina, is designed to integrate various social services, including food stamps, Medicaid and WorkFirst, creating a kind of "one-stop shop" for clients seeking assistance. The Forsyth County Department of Social Services calls it a "no wrong door" approach.

Beginning in early July complaints began to crop up in Forsyth County about food stamp benefits being held up for current clients applying for reactivation. A number of clients said their benefits had been delayed for months on end, and food pantries and agencies that provide free meals reported an increase in demand that was partially attributable to disruption in food stamp benefits. Those complaints were a reprise of similar concerns expressed in neighboring Guilford County where the program was piloted.

Many of us have lived through the inconvenience of a software upgrade that didn't go as smoothly as planned, or improved our lives as much as the upgrader promised, but I seriously doubt many of us have lived through such dire consequenses as the result of a systems upgrade. Combine this with the recently constrained unemployment benefits and it's apparent that we all need to be prepared to step up our game to help our local food pantries meet the spike in need in the immediate future. 

Try to Be Kinder

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You really should check out George Saunders' wonderful convocation speech found via a sharing friend on Facebook. Here's a taste:

So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. 

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly.  Reservedly.  Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope:  Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

Amen brother.

The One, Yourself

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Dr. Cyndi Briggs lives in Winston-Salem and teaches at UNCC and Guilford Colllege.  She's very active online – you can find her blog here and you can also follow her on Twitter – and writes a lot of stuff that quite frankly aren't in the sweet spot of your average American dude.  

If you're like this American dude and constantly trying to figure out what makes women tick, especially the women in your family, then reading her stuff can be an educational experience. All of which is to explain how I came to listen to her piece on WFDD after she mentioned it on Twitter and had a real "a-ha" moment after listening to it. Let's just say I'm going to make sure my daughter listens to it because I think it's that important, and I highly recommend you listen to it too even if you're not a dudette.

I’m Just a (North Carolina) Bill

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Many of us of a certain age learned most of what we know about government and grammar from Schoolhouse Rock. Unfortunately there isn't a Schoolhouse Rock piece about the process the North Carolina legislature goes through to draft a new law, but thanks to a guest piece in the Greensboro News & Record's Sunday opinion section we do have a fairly understandable overview provided by Louis Panzer, the executive director of North Carolina 811:

For those of you unfamiliar with the process, here is the flow in a nutshell: A bill is drafted by a team of research analysts and then introduced in either the House or the Senate. This requires sponsors who carry the language through the chambers, explaining the nuances and seeking votes to approve and move to the next level.

Each bill requires three readings in the chamber it originated in. During this process, a bill may be sent to a committee. Once the bill leaves the original chamber, it “crosses over” to the other for another round of three readings and more potential committee attention. Each time this happens, there is an opportunity for amendments. In some cases, the amendments adopted by one chamber are rejected by the original chamber. Then more modifications might have to be made. When a bill finally receives the governor’s signature, it becomes law.

Sounds simple right? Well, let's just say that the process truly resembles the proverbial sausage making and is rarely as simple as it sounds.
As for law making at the federal level, I'll leave the explanation to our friends at Schoolhouse Rocks:
*Note: This is a crosspost of an item I wrote for work*

Everyday Barrier

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The following was found on Sasha Dichter's blog and is something that might be a great exercise for all of us. Why? So we can walk a mile in someone else's shoes:

It reminded me of a day I spent over the winter, an exercise called “everyday barriers” that all Acumen staff participate in.  It’s something the Acumen Fellows undertake as part of their training.  Like our Fellows, each Acumen New York staff member came to work and then left everything in the office except for $5 in cash and a round trip Metrocard.  We were to spend the day in New York City and come back with suggestions for how to improve public services.  It’s an exercise in what we call “moral imagination,” cultivating the ability to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and to see problems from a new perspective.

Having talked to Acumen Fellows who had participated in this activity in the past, I recalled profound stories of connection, as well Fellows gaining a much deeper understanding of the challenges of being a poor person in New York City.  I recall a Fellow telling a story of a woman who walked everywhere with a giant box filled with papers – they were all of her identification, phone bills, records, etc. because the woman had gotten sick of getting to the front of a long line only to be told that she didn’t have the right paperwork.  Fellows experienced what was and was not working well in the provision of New York city public services, and the day served as a jumping off point for discussions about identity, empathy, and social change.

To me the most surprising part of the exercise came right at the beginning.  After about an hour of walking, feeling pretty relaxed, I started to feel a bit hungry and thirsty, and it hit me that it was 9:30am and I had 8 hours to spend in the city on a cold day with nowhere to go and almost no money in my pocket.   While part of my plan was to go to new neighborhoods, suddenly the very familiar parts of the city started to feel different.   The glass windows of a coffee shop or a high-end clothing store felt like they had “keep out” signs flashing at me with my empty pockets, big parka and heavy boots.  The transformation in my experience of something as simple as walking down the street in an upscale neighborhood was profound and shocking.  How could a shift happen so quickly?  I bought an apple for 50 cents and trudged on, making my way to a church (where the music was uplifting), a homeless shelter (for lunch), and then taking a massive trek (that turned out to be a wild goose chase) to an employment center in Queens, with a lot of time in the NYC subway noticing how everyone except for me was in an iPod / newspaper / book bubble.  Time passed differently, and most of New York City felt like it was for someone other than me.

 

The True Cost of Flying

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Just about anyone who has flown at all over the last few years will tell you that the data on flight delays highlighted in this Freakonomics post is not at all shocking:

The cost of air travel is going up, and airlines are counting on us not to notice.

I’m not talking about airfares, which have actually declined in real terms over the past decade, despite inching up in the past few years. And I don’t mean the ancillary fees to check a bag, check in at the airport, speak to a live agent, or pick your seat, though these, too, are going up. Instead, I’m talking about the cost of delays and schedule disruptions that waste travelers’ time and force them to travel earlier to their destinations or risk missing important meetings and events. ..

Researchers at MIT and George Mason University estimate that delayed and canceled flights imposed on passengers an aggregate delay of 28,500 years in 2007. The cost of these delays, and of risk-averting behavior like traveling early to destinations, was estimated at $15.3 billion, a startling number that accounts for the opportunity cost of time but doesn’t measure the consequences of missing critical appointments like weddings or job interviews.

Indeed, on a business trip to San Diego this past June I ended up missing my connections in both directions and spending the night in Dallas both times. The trip out was a weather issue so the airline just rebooked me for a flight the next morning and I was on my own to find accomodations. The trip back was a mechanical issue and the airline paid for a night at a Dallas hotel. Both times I missed appointments becuase of the delayed flights and missed connections. Sadly, I think this is becoming more and more common. The data would seem to back this feeling up:

Airlines are increasingly consolidating service at the nation’s largest airports, according to areport this summer from MIT. Meanwhile, the number of large hubs has declined from 20 to 10, even as the number of flights channeled into large hubs has grown 75 percent.

This means an ever-larger share of passengers must make connections in an ever-fewer number of airports, including those in the most congested airspace in the country. If weather, security, or accidents halt or slow operations at one of those airports, effects can reverberate throughout the system, as late-arriving aircraft delay flights downstream elsewhere around the country. United passengers should find this particularly alarming as five of the airline’s hubs rank among the six worst airports in the country for on-time departures.

 

Free Job Advice for Youngsters

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Here's a blog post from Jessica Gottlieb with some great job advice for Millenials, including:

  • Your first job will probably be a crappy job. Don’t wait until you’re 20-something to have that first job. Working is good for you, even when it’s not fun. 
  • No one owes you a job, you’re replaceable so it’s up to you to be better than everyone else (this advice holds true until you’re 75 or so)
  • If you work in a service industry tips should feel like silver and gold raindrops. No one is obligated to give them to you. Customers can sniff out entitlement.

To this I'll add:

  • Be on time.
  • Watch your language. Not just cursing, but grammar. You don't necessarily need to know when to use "who" or "whom", but at least know that you shouldn't say "I'm doing good" when you're asked how you're doing.
  • Dress appropriately and accept that it is perfectly reasonable for your boss to define what is appropriate.
  • Use a firm handshake when you greet people, but don't try to break their knuckles. Also, unless someone's your friend don't give them a hug/bro-hug.
  • This is for guys: shave every day even if you don't think you need it. Believe me, you do. If you have a beard, keep it trimmed and shave where appropriate every day.
  • Flirt at your own risk. It can backfire on you in a big way.

There's plenty more where that came from; things I was once taught and that have never really changed.

Side note: you millenials are exactly where we Generation X/Y, Baby Boomers were at your age. The generations that preceded us thought we were slackers/losers/lost causes too.

Who Says a Colon Exploration Should Take Two Hours?

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The Washington Post has a story on the 'secretive panel' of doctors who come up with the pricing on all medical procedures:

Unknown to most, a single committee of the AMA, the chief lobbying group for physicians, meets confidentially every year to come up with values for most of the services a doctor performs.

Those values are required under federal law to be based on the time and intensity of the procedures. The values, in turn, determine what Medicare and most private insurers pay doctors.

But the AMA’s estimates of the time involved in many procedures are exaggerated, sometimes by as much as 100 percent, according to an analysis of doctors’ time, as well as interviews and reviews of medical journals.

If the time estimates are to be believed, some doctors would have to be averaging more than 24 hours a day to perform all of the procedures that they are reporting. This volume of work does not mean these doctors are doing anything wrong. They are just getting paid at the rates set by the government, under the guidance of the AMA.

So, who's surprised by this? And it gets better:

To determine how long a procedure takes, the AMA relies on surveys of doctors conducted by the associations representing specialists and primary care physicians. The doctors who fill out the surveys are informed that the reason for the survey is to set pay. Increasingly, the survey estimates have been found so improbable that the AMA has had to significantly lower them, according to federal documents…

In the late 1980s and early ’90s, the United States called on a group at Harvard University to develop a more deliberate system for paying doctors.

What they came up with, basically, is the current point system. Every procedure is assigned a number of points — called “relative value units” — based on the work involved, the staff and supplies, and a smaller portion for malpractice insurance…

This point system is critical in U.S. health-care economics because it doesn’t just rule Medicare payments. Roughly four out of five insurance companies use the point system for the basis of their own physician fees, according to the AMA. The private insurers typically pay somewhat more per point than does Medicare.

Once the system developed by the Harvard researchers was initiated, however, the Medicare system faced a critical problem: As medicine evolved, the point system had to be updated. Who could do that?

The AMA offered to do the work for free.

Has no one heard of the fox in the hen house? Sheesh. It's one thing for the doctors' groups to be consulted – they should be – but to drive the entire process? That's absurd.

Race as a Distraction

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In college, way back in the dark ages of the 1980s, I had a roommate from Scotland who was intrigued with the racial discord he observed in America. To him it made no sense that people would hate each other based on their race, but of course it made total sense to him that the Catholics and Protestants back in Scotland were in a constant state of discord. He'd say, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Why do you Americans hate each other for what you are? At least in Scotland we hate each other for what we choose to believe."

Whenever race comes up as a topic I think about those words. Indeed, it's totally illogical for us to hate one another for something we have no control over. In fact it's probably the most absurd reason for people to hate and distrust each other. On the other hand, probably the most logical reason for any group of people to dislike another is if one group has disproportionately more of anything – wealth, food, opportunity, etc. – than the other, particularly if the group with less feels that the other group has gotten it off of their backs.

That's why the new data about the true nature of poverty in America, and the plight of working class whites in particular, should scare the bejeezus out of this country's power structure. Once all of the poor and struggling working class folks from every race realize they have more in common with each other than with the wealthy of their own race they will form a formidable body to deal with. From the article linked above:

As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused — on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race.

Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."…

While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.

There's another important societal component contributing to the economic struggle of millions of individuals in this country, and it's one we need to deal with head on: the breakdown of the traditional family. Again from the article:

–For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million…

Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.

As a man who has been happily married for a long time I'm obviously a fan of the family structure. However, whenever the topic of single parent homes comes up for public debate we get pulled into the moral/religious rabbit hole and never address the economics of single parenthood. Why do we insist on approaching this problem from a moral standpoint, haranguing young men and women about their sinfulness and almost guaranteeing they'll tune us out, and not instead concentrate on developing societal structures that will help deal with a very real problem? I'm not smart enough to have a solution here, but it doesn't take a rocket science to realize that the answer is not browbeating people back into church and insisting that they live they way great-Grandma and Grandpa did. 

Our leaders, whether in industry or government, need to begin to deal with the reality that is portrayed in this new data or our country will soon be in even deeper doo-doo. They can no longer hide from the reality that our middle class is disappearing and that our "land of opportunity" could quickly become an empty slogan if they don't change things, and fast.