What’s going on here? We’re not suffering through a generational war. We’re continuing to live through a clash of economic classes…
Baby boomers just happened to have had the good fortune to come along at one of those rare moments in history when the richest among us were not doing so well in that clash of classes. These boomers found themselves born into a postwar America that average people — after years of struggle — had fundamentally transformed.
"just happend" does a lot of work there, for sure, but nevertheless...
I can’t afford to pay rent so will have to move back home with my dad and stepmom #2 and their 3 kids, don’t think I can get ahead in life without getting a higher paying job but my parole officer says I shouldn’t expect anyone to hire me anytime soon. Will the government make a new budget and give me money under international fairness?
Methinks, thou protest too much! You protest too much about not being whiners when whining is what you do instead of effective protesting. Stop whining and get active and organized as a united visual force. Rather than whining about not being whiners organize protests of a collective body of squeezed young people in solitary. There may not be a sense of collective out there as so many young people are too individualistic for solidarity in protest, but you will never know because you make no efforts to organize for collective protest. You don’t go beyond meetings with government officials other think tanks generating essays… that are happy to use the phrase generational fairness but leaves you sitting behind your computer screens writing passively- academically- with technocratic tweaks in mind. But our young people may have little interest in organizing, even if Generation Squeeze made efforts to help them try. Polls say that most young Canadians are so individualistic that they are inclined to vote for PP whose tax cutting-government shrinking-anti-socialistic measures will most likely will have him going pee-pee on those most squeezed. Then they will have more to whine about. I’ll say whine away! Laziness is not the problem. No generation is any lazier than another. What's lacking is the collective will and the will to come together as a collective to be a force to be reckoned with and not a bunch of individualistic whiners.
It’s our hope that this substack community will be a place for active dialogue. In pursuit of this goal, we initially welcomed your regular participation – and hoped that it might inspire others to do the same.
Sadly, I now think your style of participation impedes this goal, because you are no longer participating in a way that models a readiness to “disagree” without being “disagreeable.” Labeling most in younger generations as “individualistic whiners” is inappropriate for the Gen Squeeze substack community, and I ask that you apologize for this name-calling. Going forward, I also ask that you revise your tone of participation so that you communicate disagreement without being disagreeable.
I appreciate your enthusiasm for organizing policy influence through rallies on the street. You seem to presume that we’ve never led rallies – but you would be wrong. They were a bigger part of our earlier years of mobilization. In the light of that experience, especially the scale of engagement we achieved via those efforts relative to the resources they required to host the in-person events, we’ve since shifted our approach.
At Gen Squeeze, we are guided by several theories of policy change, including the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), which has decades of scholarship behind it. The punchline of that theory of policy change is one I’m sure you will agree with: Politics responds to those who organize and show up.
Your comments suggest a very narrow understanding of what it means to “organize and show up.” We agree rallies are one form of power to build. And we will be pleased to help harness such power you manage to create via any rallies you choose to organize.
In the meantime, the ACF also identifies other activities that contribute to “organizing and showing up,” including:
- Framing people’s beliefs about policy problems and solutions
- Shaping public opinion
- Setting policy agenda
- Building coalitions around those agenda
- Bringing that framing, public opinion, policy agenda and person-power to governments in ways that create new incentives for politicians to disrupt the status quo.
I take a lot of pride in the fact that our “Think and Change” contributed directly to the federal 2024 budget organizing entirely around the theme of “fairness for every generation” – a cause that had not been on the political radar in this country to nearly the same degree before our organizing work. And I take pride in the fact that the BC budget’s strategic plan also includes a similar commitment to “keep the province working for all generations.”
I certainly would like our organization to have more influence over government policy, because it grieves me that we are harming younger generations to the degree we are as a result of intergenerationally unjust climate, housing and fiscal policy. But I also know many other groups that applaud and seek to model the influence Gen Squeeze has created.
So, in sum, thanks for encouraging us to be better at building power in the world of politics. But please be careful with your tone of engagement in the future, because you are not modeling a style of non-judgmental and inclusive engagement that will motivate participation from a wider range of people in our community.
I know I am beating a dead horse. Astra Taylor in her introduction to her March 2024 book Solidarity says why academics are poor at solidarity. Ian McGilchrist in the Matter with Things points out that how academia looks at problems is the problem. Professor Melvin back in 1982 told me of the sickness of academia. I knew it wrote about it as a student and he confirmed it. That was risk taking! Pleasing people climbing the academic hierarchy getting marks being nice was not my priority. Professor Melvin was amazed at my risk taking and my insights. “But Glen, you don’t know the half of it, the games the lies...of Academia.” The corporatism, the pleasing of the powers that have increased in universities greatly since 1982! I have been beating a dead horse for a reason, Generation Squeeze is but one of many foils/fools in my story, an example of what got us into this mess and keeps us in the mess we are in. But you gave me more than ample evidence over a year ago.... I should have moved on right after I read Paul's’ Forget Occupy-Wall Street... but I hoped to make inroads... but back in the early 70s Patrick Watson and Ivan Illich told me you can’t with minds so closed-so schooled not to think unschooled. I even punished myself and gave Gen Squeeze another $365 saying now let go of it...let go of it Glen. Move on...but hope is a terrible thing to give up on a thing that has some good intentions.... Finally, I will leave you with this. Two professors recently wrote a book titled: Academia all The Lies What Went Wrong in the University Model and What Will Come in its Place. It's a really thick book-a door stopper.
You have not responded to our request that you apologize for calling younger generations “individualistic whiners.”
We are creating our Substack community to be a place where ideas can be shared without name-calling. A place where younger and older folks can gather, share and disagree in solidarity and support, without condescension. For this reason, we will be removing you from our substack community.
We will be happy to engage with your ideas on Twitter/X where a more derisive tone is part of that social channel’s online culture.
TVO' s The AgendaThe Conservative Party's support among young people appears to be on the rise. What's drawing them to the party, does that echo trends elsewhere in the world, where parties on the right are appealing to the youth vote? Have tough economic times and social media brought a whole new generation of voters to the conservative fold?
Episode: What's So Attractive About Right Wing Politics?
Lighten up Paul you are too defensive and self-promotional. Narrow mindedness is what I see when those squeezed complain about not being able to be as affluent as their parents when they, their parents and great grandparents didn't give a shit about our natives living conditions of yesterday or today. I am saying redouble your efforts at collective protest. There is nothing equal to the power of that. No generation is any lazier than another. What's lacking is the collective will and the will to come together as a collective to be a force to be reckoned with. And selfish individualism is not particular to one generation but a civilizational sickness. Paul needs to have the balls to challenge PP in public with more vigor rather than going after me who was writing political science papers arguing for taxes on wealth for universal basic income when UBI was hardly known and when Paul was just a child. The late Patrick Watson, Canada's greatest journalist- broadcaster- producer wrote an eloquent piece on niceness ending with nice people are the most dangerous people. When Paul goes on TV the journalists know and even say we know you wont take sides…being nice but be nice to all parties. Paul Kershaw is not one of the most dangerous people I know but he fits Watson’s description niceness to a T. I am not interested in being nice. I am interested in setting a fire under Gen Squeeze, so you play better and win. NOT that YOU win, but that the cause of reducing the Squeeze to our natives and all being squeezed wins. Generation Squeeze will carry on and be fine regardless of whether your cause wins. The cause is bigger than you and it's bigger than me. I wish you luck. Take care,
https://inequality.org/great-divide/to-best-understand-inequality-think-class-not-generation/
What’s going on here? We’re not suffering through a generational war. We’re continuing to live through a clash of economic classes…
Baby boomers just happened to have had the good fortune to come along at one of those rare moments in history when the richest among us were not doing so well in that clash of classes. These boomers found themselves born into a postwar America that average people — after years of struggle — had fundamentally transformed.
"just happend" does a lot of work there, for sure, but nevertheless...
I can’t afford to pay rent so will have to move back home with my dad and stepmom #2 and their 3 kids, don’t think I can get ahead in life without getting a higher paying job but my parole officer says I shouldn’t expect anyone to hire me anytime soon. Will the government make a new budget and give me money under international fairness?
Methinks, thou protest too much! You protest too much about not being whiners when whining is what you do instead of effective protesting. Stop whining and get active and organized as a united visual force. Rather than whining about not being whiners organize protests of a collective body of squeezed young people in solitary. There may not be a sense of collective out there as so many young people are too individualistic for solidarity in protest, but you will never know because you make no efforts to organize for collective protest. You don’t go beyond meetings with government officials other think tanks generating essays… that are happy to use the phrase generational fairness but leaves you sitting behind your computer screens writing passively- academically- with technocratic tweaks in mind. But our young people may have little interest in organizing, even if Generation Squeeze made efforts to help them try. Polls say that most young Canadians are so individualistic that they are inclined to vote for PP whose tax cutting-government shrinking-anti-socialistic measures will most likely will have him going pee-pee on those most squeezed. Then they will have more to whine about. I’ll say whine away! Laziness is not the problem. No generation is any lazier than another. What's lacking is the collective will and the will to come together as a collective to be a force to be reckoned with and not a bunch of individualistic whiners.
Dear Glen,
It’s our hope that this substack community will be a place for active dialogue. In pursuit of this goal, we initially welcomed your regular participation – and hoped that it might inspire others to do the same.
Sadly, I now think your style of participation impedes this goal, because you are no longer participating in a way that models a readiness to “disagree” without being “disagreeable.” Labeling most in younger generations as “individualistic whiners” is inappropriate for the Gen Squeeze substack community, and I ask that you apologize for this name-calling. Going forward, I also ask that you revise your tone of participation so that you communicate disagreement without being disagreeable.
I appreciate your enthusiasm for organizing policy influence through rallies on the street. You seem to presume that we’ve never led rallies – but you would be wrong. They were a bigger part of our earlier years of mobilization. In the light of that experience, especially the scale of engagement we achieved via those efforts relative to the resources they required to host the in-person events, we’ve since shifted our approach.
At Gen Squeeze, we are guided by several theories of policy change, including the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), which has decades of scholarship behind it. The punchline of that theory of policy change is one I’m sure you will agree with: Politics responds to those who organize and show up.
Your comments suggest a very narrow understanding of what it means to “organize and show up.” We agree rallies are one form of power to build. And we will be pleased to help harness such power you manage to create via any rallies you choose to organize.
In the meantime, the ACF also identifies other activities that contribute to “organizing and showing up,” including:
- Framing people’s beliefs about policy problems and solutions
- Shaping public opinion
- Setting policy agenda
- Building coalitions around those agenda
- Bringing that framing, public opinion, policy agenda and person-power to governments in ways that create new incentives for politicians to disrupt the status quo.
I take a lot of pride in the fact that our “Think and Change” contributed directly to the federal 2024 budget organizing entirely around the theme of “fairness for every generation” – a cause that had not been on the political radar in this country to nearly the same degree before our organizing work. And I take pride in the fact that the BC budget’s strategic plan also includes a similar commitment to “keep the province working for all generations.”
I certainly would like our organization to have more influence over government policy, because it grieves me that we are harming younger generations to the degree we are as a result of intergenerationally unjust climate, housing and fiscal policy. But I also know many other groups that applaud and seek to model the influence Gen Squeeze has created.
So, in sum, thanks for encouraging us to be better at building power in the world of politics. But please be careful with your tone of engagement in the future, because you are not modeling a style of non-judgmental and inclusive engagement that will motivate participation from a wider range of people in our community.
I know I am beating a dead horse. Astra Taylor in her introduction to her March 2024 book Solidarity says why academics are poor at solidarity. Ian McGilchrist in the Matter with Things points out that how academia looks at problems is the problem. Professor Melvin back in 1982 told me of the sickness of academia. I knew it wrote about it as a student and he confirmed it. That was risk taking! Pleasing people climbing the academic hierarchy getting marks being nice was not my priority. Professor Melvin was amazed at my risk taking and my insights. “But Glen, you don’t know the half of it, the games the lies...of Academia.” The corporatism, the pleasing of the powers that have increased in universities greatly since 1982! I have been beating a dead horse for a reason, Generation Squeeze is but one of many foils/fools in my story, an example of what got us into this mess and keeps us in the mess we are in. But you gave me more than ample evidence over a year ago.... I should have moved on right after I read Paul's’ Forget Occupy-Wall Street... but I hoped to make inroads... but back in the early 70s Patrick Watson and Ivan Illich told me you can’t with minds so closed-so schooled not to think unschooled. I even punished myself and gave Gen Squeeze another $365 saying now let go of it...let go of it Glen. Move on...but hope is a terrible thing to give up on a thing that has some good intentions.... Finally, I will leave you with this. Two professors recently wrote a book titled: Academia all The Lies What Went Wrong in the University Model and What Will Come in its Place. It's a really thick book-a door stopper.
Glen,
You have not responded to our request that you apologize for calling younger generations “individualistic whiners.”
We are creating our Substack community to be a place where ideas can be shared without name-calling. A place where younger and older folks can gather, share and disagree in solidarity and support, without condescension. For this reason, we will be removing you from our substack community.
We will be happy to engage with your ideas on Twitter/X where a more derisive tone is part of that social channel’s online culture.
See you there.
Paul
TVO' s The AgendaThe Conservative Party's support among young people appears to be on the rise. What's drawing them to the party, does that echo trends elsewhere in the world, where parties on the right are appealing to the youth vote? Have tough economic times and social media brought a whole new generation of voters to the conservative fold?
Episode: What's So Attractive About Right Wing Politics?
Steves jaw kept dropping as he pointed out to the young voters that a slogan is not a policy!
Lighten up Paul you are too defensive and self-promotional. Narrow mindedness is what I see when those squeezed complain about not being able to be as affluent as their parents when they, their parents and great grandparents didn't give a shit about our natives living conditions of yesterday or today. I am saying redouble your efforts at collective protest. There is nothing equal to the power of that. No generation is any lazier than another. What's lacking is the collective will and the will to come together as a collective to be a force to be reckoned with. And selfish individualism is not particular to one generation but a civilizational sickness. Paul needs to have the balls to challenge PP in public with more vigor rather than going after me who was writing political science papers arguing for taxes on wealth for universal basic income when UBI was hardly known and when Paul was just a child. The late Patrick Watson, Canada's greatest journalist- broadcaster- producer wrote an eloquent piece on niceness ending with nice people are the most dangerous people. When Paul goes on TV the journalists know and even say we know you wont take sides…being nice but be nice to all parties. Paul Kershaw is not one of the most dangerous people I know but he fits Watson’s description niceness to a T. I am not interested in being nice. I am interested in setting a fire under Gen Squeeze, so you play better and win. NOT that YOU win, but that the cause of reducing the Squeeze to our natives and all being squeezed wins. Generation Squeeze will carry on and be fine regardless of whether your cause wins. The cause is bigger than you and it's bigger than me. I wish you luck. Take care,
Sincerely,
Glen