” Forget what you’ve read about the “Me, Me, Me Generation.” Here are four things you probably don’t know about the 95 million Americans born between 1982 and 2003:
- Millennials, in general, are fiercely committed to community service.
- They don’t see politics or government as a way to improve their communities, their country, or the world.
- So the best and brightest are rejecting public service as a career path. Just as Baby Boomers are retiring from government and politics, Washington faces a rising-generation “brain drain.”
- The only way Millennials might engage Washington is if they first radically change it.
Nearly three in five young Americans agree that elected officials seem motivated by “selfish reasons,” an increase of 5 points since 2010.
- Fifty-six percent agree that “elected officials don’t have the same priorities that I have,” a 5-point increase.
College students increasingly prefer the private sector, graduate school, or non-profit work, according to the Partnership for Public Service’s analysis of the 2011 National Association for Colleges and Employers Student Survey. In 2008, 8.4 percent of students planned to work for local, state, and federal governments after graduation. That number reached an all-time high of 10.2 percent during the 2009 recession, before dropping to 7.4 percent in 2010.
Now, just 6 percent of college students plan to work for public sector institutions, and only 2.3 percent want to work at the federal level.
And that’s just the bureaucrats. When top-shelf talent abhors politics, it stands to reason that the pool of political candidates gets shallower. “I want to change the world,” said grad student Brian Chialinsky at the Kennedy School. “I can’t do that in elective office.”
The trouble is that Millennials believe traditional politics and government (especially Washington) are the worst avenues to great things. They are more likely to be social entrepreneurs, working outside government to create innovative and measurably successful solutions to the nation’s problems, even if only on a relatively small scale. One is Matt Morgan, a Kennedy School student, who launched a website that helps readers respond to articles with political action. “There are so many problems Washington can’t fix that we can,” he says. Another is his classmate Sarah Estill, who wants to provide police departments with technology to fighting crime. “For my generation there are more ways we can effect change than in the past — more tools in the toolbox,” she said. “Why not use all of them?” A generation ago, government had a monopoly on public service. To Millennials, the world is filled with injustice and need, but government isn’t the solution. They have apps for that.
So will elite Millennials abandon Washington?
Nicco Mele believes so. A Kennedy School professor who oversaw the groundbreaking digital strategy for 2004 Democratic candidate Howard Dean, Mele said it’s already happening — and it’s a devastating development. “These kids are starting their own things at a rapid rate — in part because there isn’t much of a job for them in the old institutions,” he told me. “If you’re a super-talented, super-smart 22-year-old and it looks like you need to take an unpaid internship and lick envelopes to get into a field you’re interested in, forget it. Better to start something new.” Mele is an investor in ShoutAbout.org, Morgan’s website.”
There is a future for the country after all . While the attitude throughout this piece in the Atlantic , heh , is one of regret and dismay that the younger generation has soured on politics and big government we here at YouViewed see this as the beginning of a sea change in public mores and a possible harbinger of a return to our Republic’s roots of individual liberty , personal responsibility and limited government .
So while the author presents the reader with his seemingly sorrowful lament of Statism lost , we read the story as an inspirational tale of redemption to come with a hearty “Praise To The Lord , We Are Saved” … Amen . Read the whole thing and be encouraged for our future … The signs are there , the dream of a Statist American utopia are done . They’ve tried to cross a “bridge too far” and in doing so have exposed their ideology as the spurious doctrine that it is .
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