In reply to:
in for a depression in 10 to 15 years. This is because of the huge, aging baby boomers withdrawing their spending power from the economic marketplace.
Now I don't mean to pick on the boomers here, but every article I read names every generation after them... Gen X was the kid of the boomers (now 40s)... then GenY, New Boomers, Zoomers, blah blah, etc... somehow they tie everyone in from the age of 20-45 into a demographic they need to prove a point. (Reader's Digest did it this month in a pandering "oh, these kids entering the workforce now that don't know their place!" article)
All the boomers I know got into sectors that now require 10 years experience and an alphabet soup of letters after someone's name by showing up at the right time and taking down the help wanted sign (usually with barely a high school education)... their companies trained them, they worked up the ranks, then turned around and burned the ladder behind them... busting the Unions that got them there, implementing hiring outside the company, outsourcing to foreign lands, privatizing Crown corporations, and all the other general BS that's propping up their top-heavy posteriors and destroying the economy. Everyone says it's the guy on the floor running a milling machine making $45K a year that's sinking their industry... he's a
bum on the rod compared to the
bum on the plush in the office pulling his "only" $175K a year, with a few mill in stock options for sweating up his suit collar with grease stains trying to wrap his head around with of these peons to downsize first.
Maybe it's just my personal experience on the planet... but where are these boomers spending their money that is going to cause this depression when they quit spending it? I see them at Wal*Mart and dollar stores... finding any way they can to continue giving back nothing to an economy they've taken so much from, pinching every nickel until it farts pennies to make sure they stay ahead of the next guy.
So stores that sell Elvis busts and garden gnomes as loss-leaders, take heed!
As for the rest of us, maybe the retiring/dying off of the boomers is just one final flush in what they're been squeezing out for the past 30 years.
Bren R.
Any resemblance between
Douglas Coupland and the author is strictly coincedental. Never even read one of his books.
