Criticized in the book, big business. [inaudible conversations] if i could have your attention please. We will get started. The president is on the west coast for a fundraising trip so i am the president is on the west coast of the fundraising trip so i am filling in for him. So now to introduce our distinguished introducer. Magin is a Washington Post columnist economics and government policy and a correspondent for the ndeconomist. Have appeared in reason and salon and the new york sun. And started the asymmetrical information with the upside of down. Failing well is the key toe success. As a commentator on fox news with a degree from the university of pennsylvania mba from the university of chicago. Welcome megan mcardle. [applause]. When asked to speak there is so much written about millennials and how they are all scratching out a living by picking through garbage. If anything is on the wellworn topic but yes something can new lawn new can be. I like the way he is a new old friend. How do you summarize the book . Am not advocatingg war yet. Then we all head into the season with that between the millennials. And that none of them have dragons. And then also selling into the british market that the United States does have a market for the data driven serious attempts that screeching that your enemies are destroying the world. And that is what is great about this book just the data but really the way he treats the opponents argument so fairly which is really unusual. It so heartening to see. So let me run you through the best possible version of what im about to argue against. It is incredibly rich but also subtle questions not do they have too much student debt but how do they have too much student dead it is that bifurcation the median and the mean. Was some eloquent writing. Not just millennials with the rest of america. The financial future of the government especially the millennial generation but if you say at some point part of the s reason they have it so bad as those baby boomers did not understand what happened and in doing so it worsened it instead of fixing the problem. Its not just great to read it is very good for that. To check erosion in the gullies. So this is seriously a book worth buying and reading and keeping. Please lets have a round of applause for the author. [applause] talking to some of you as we sat down to lunch i hope you brought your pitchfork and torch but then after im done with a talk today. Thank you for that kind introduction i only hope i live up to everything you said about me. Before i go further i also want to think our host at the Manhattan Institute where there is a lot more heat than light and then into the millennial issue its nice to ehave those institutions and with that spirit with my own very modest contribution. So with the theft of the decade so telling the story of the avocado. And for the millennial generation here we are. And with the summer of 2017 withhi that property magnate who happened to be an older millennial himself took to the airwaves to argue the reason millennials cannot afford the down payment on the house is because were spending too much money on avocado toast. [laughter] you will not be surprised to hear this comment went viral on twitter. And now one quipped sarcastically he would have if he did just blow 44000 on brunch. The New York Times calculate how much you have to scrimp and save by skipping brunch in order to afford a 20 percent payment it was 113 years. And of the left weighing guardianty to go structural inequality. And then very differently and then like tim. But the bigger point he was trying to make that they seem to lack that work ethic. To take like a fancy brunch or two scrimp and save to get ahead. We have all of these bold visions what we want the future to look b like social media and instagram but we dont have a clear roadmap how to gette there and then we get frustrated when our parents dont give it to us. So i suspect theres one baby boomer whos been nod your head i will not ask you to raise your hand. And then to dig into the last decade who is right . Im sorry to tell you its not you. Because millennials do have a point with these argues about generational families with those to explain why three points this afternoon first to explain what the millennial is and what is happened over the past decade. There is a lot of confusion and then to convince the boomers it really is all your four t fault and then with a few scattered thoughts that we all really want to know the answer to what this means for the 2020 election andn beyond. To define a millennial year older than we think we are there is no universal definition that most sources people born around 1981 through 1996. I am a child of 1982 myself and there are a lot of us. There is around 71 million of us there is some disagreement about the precise number that they are not already bigger than the boomer generation but they will be soon. And the other interesting fact is we are very different from the boomers they tend to be more diverse because our numbers tend to be augmented there is a lot of millennials annoyed because of our parents but the large influx of population. But the demographics in the economy it has been a tough decade those born in 8182 graduated the year 2000 and went to college were hit the labor market around 2004 so that would be just around the time the housing boom was entering the manic phase for the oldest of us ifou we were lucky we managed to crawl our way onto the career ladder just past the entrylevel job before the financialit panic hit with the Great Recession. Those born in 1996 just about graduating college into the trump economy but most of us entered in the aftermath of the Great Recession in her first years were really shaped by this experience. And this is now generation fee. It is important to understand it was awful but with those terrible numbers for the Unemployment Rate it was consistently higher than that. That was after Labor Force Participation had plunged one of the interesting things and not to go into the labor market at all but instead you saw more and more people reaching for a bachelors degree you may not have doneed so are going into graduate education because after they got the undergrad degree the market wasnt set up. These trends were already in progress it is true that College Enrollment has been increasing in with the from 2009 is striking. There was a change in the economy at that point with those trends that are developing. As for those millennials who did manage but to be uniquely vulnerable. And to find a lot of Interesting Research for those that gradually into that. The higher the Unemployment Rate and then to get your first job to lower your earnings y to be very difficult to recover from that. But look at todays unemployment data because they have starteded to move back into the labor market and successfully sell but to still stronger to recover from the economic aftereffects. So one reason this happens so what weie experienced after the Great Recession put a lot of people out to work to compete was skilled Older Workers for the sameam entry level jobs. And that is a real problem so that you can start acquiring job skills over the longerterm. And the ability to job pop to stay in the entrylevel job for a year or two that hop to the next. And then they gave more skills more knowledge and more experience and also the salary ladder. And thatjo cuts off opportunities and then to struggle that these are things the economists observe in every recession and to put all of these negative effects on steroids there is lot of evidence those that were hiringre those harnessed areas with those job applicants entrylevel jobs. And once has said it didnt require any previous experience and to find those slightly Older Workers competing for those other jobs. And then hanging on for dear life and those millennials would stay there for a lot longer because there just were not other jobs and partly because we didnt want to give up on whatever perceived security we had. And with that Great Recession with the historical averages and then to establish 55 million opportunities to hop between jobs as they work their way to the latter. Its important to keep these numbers to corrective discussions even today. Because some made it. If you work in silicon valley, congratulations i wish you many happy saturday mornings shopping at whole foods but also if you aree a tradesman who specializes in solar panels because that is one profession where millennial workers outnumber boomers. But many more have different experiences its important to keep that in mind to come back to these experiences. So that is an important part of the story i tell them the book because that has an influence on so many other things to talk about melodic loan millennials. They will always go to college in larger numbers than previous generations so you can make a good case that we ended up pursuing for their education. And those to take on more student debt also those marginal students were more vulnerable to those negative effects if they graduated at all. And those that were referred to is the student loan crisis thento to filter into that discussion. So the crisis but normally they are worth 5 percent andd the default rate is lower. The reason is those who have that level have probably gone to graduate school and have looked for social capital but then into the jobs where they would be to be be paid. Its actually those that owe less than 25000. Especially among those because they were told that college will be the pathway to toreconomic security. And now for a lot of students it would be better for them to work financially if work had been available. And especially in the high priced urban areas and that with those detailed statistics and then to with that downturn they have sent an experience kbecause to have a long debate whether its the best thing the household can invest in. With the investment account and those of the amortizing mortgage it was a big pathway and to struggle so mightily to crawl our way onto the propertyw lateral one ladder in the highpriced areas. And what i discussed in the book some could reply excuse me because they it went wrong for one that does it mean the boomers did it. But economist have fallen into the financial panic in the Great Recession or the aftermath thatse it just happened in the forces of the ndeconomic nature and something that was no ones fault. But my argument is those boomer politicians that manage the aftermath dont get off easy. Throughout the past decade or earlier to worsen the effects of the recession and then to redistribute away from boomers once the downturn happened. I may have done that but i just want to focus on some examples. Hopefully they will find provoking. So i tried to tell the story about our economy and that they are going haywire the entire time and i mentioned a few i months ago that the job market works really well for some and badly for others but it is a consequences to create an economy that is really bad at investing in others. I think the main boomer era sofo to focus so much on the financial plumbing of the economy to work so where does that money misses into complaint of the financial industry but i spent my life working i can tell you that they wish they had a Financial System that works as well as ours does. But the Financial System to work that has been too close more and more channels off. As a result and of that platform of some sort some of the Biggest Companies are digital advertising. If you want to do anything that involves manufacturing then have it help you because a lot of those industries the more laborintensive ones more regulation and higher cost ranging from the environmental regulations and then they react with surprise and shock and horror to discover the economy is skewing in favor and not creating enough opportunities. So the main feature is where the boomers double down into that experiment surprising extent they seem calibrated to price the labor out of the market. To focus directly with the obama care mandates and then also indirectly to have the effect of raising the wage and then not to entice that sideline person off the dole into the labor market. So although i am hardest on president obama because he was in charge for most of the wolen decade and the laying the groundwork and then by a diverting from the Housing Market and it is true some things couldve happened with that regulatory drive is one thing that hasog happened to millennials in recent years. But trade and Monetary Policy to me sounds like we are not out of the woodsf yet. So millennials are older than you think the oldest is pushing 40. Actually do have some gray hair. And that makes these policies more urgent for us. And then before we expect to retire and into the money would we be able to retire at some point . These are the questions to keep us awake at night and sometimes literally. And here on a certain level i dont get it. The main political story to those from the victorian era. And even for a generation like ours but if you look closer we need to discuss that openly but the main project on the right and the left for the nineties or two thousands like bill clinton tried to popularize if only one pulls the right lovers with the productive power of the market. Even the biggest most controversial of the past decade. And then also that is not a singlepayer system with the aggressive attempt to harness the state schools and before that we had the george w. Bush administration creating an ownership society. So that this mode of governance doesnt work and the consequences of that failure like Elizabeth Warren what they can offer looks to be a clearcut explanation of that failure. On one thing from that millennial perspective isnt defending those policies so politicians or likeoc a oc is prospering because they can take pot shot after pot shot at the federal consensus but dont ride us off as incorrigible. And that essay so if you ask millennials you will discover there was support for socialism is different from what has gone before with those entrepreneurs to do a lot of other attitudes for what the government might do that millennials are more openminded and i would add to that analysis with that redistribution elements Social Security and medicare. That only 25 percent expect those programs will be there in a meaningful way when we retire. Is not so much they embrace the socialist left so much as we are just casting around for answers as the political left ins been further along as they played to their own strengths to capture which raises the question. So here we come at last to President Trump. Now some people are trump conservatives some others were never i found myself becoming a trump who conservative because he feels are relevant to a lot of millennials. Politically he creates a big problem because we dont like his political persona but the bigger problem with that Monetary Policy over the last 20 or 30 years and certainly thee tax reform but that steadfast refusal to reform Social Security or medicare is a completely different matter. So what i see at the moment for conservatives that President Trump is just so distracting so to go further and further to the left still trying to figure out what we think about the politician so with the more free market approach i kind of wish you wouldnt but i can say were finally having this discussion and that tendency to dismiss people that it would work itself out somehow. That millennials are demanding just as much policy competition its a good thing for conservatives to engage in and then to have that over the last decade please dont steal from us now the opportunity to have a balance political discussion. And then we will have some questions. [applause] and i think the location of that is millennials are demanding more competition and the Younger Voters seem to be less oil to the teenager parties because they are looking for people who will engage in this kind of political discussion and now the economic experience in the past decade. Some question over here but can we get the microphone over there . A lot of what you said really resonated but it strikes me listening to it that it wasnt the boomers that were at the problem at all but it was the more progressive because everything you talked about that you are committed to the boomers arent really the boomers. Even looking at the trump the bush Financial Issues with homeownership that was all the progressive and that was against what bush was pushing for, not for it. Is it really the progressives or the liberal progressive element or is it the boomers . Theres an absolutely fair point that it does become touchy when you will talk about an entire generation and not necessarily dealt so deeply at least into this talk and into the debate going on within that generation but it is fair to say that you do find in both the insights in the democratic side a certain approach to a lot of these policy issues that generally traveling within a very narrow lane is the way i came to think of it. It is true that many of the policies were championing by the Progressive Left but its also true some of them managed to find purchase or part of the political right to build a consensus about it. Im sorry to have you running. Lets do one more over here. One big disservice that younger people were done by their parents was ridiculous that you have to be to go to college to be a success or that college is a pathway to the middle class and kids who come to the big cities and work in law firms are not the norm. Most kids just want to stay in the towns where they were raised in families and things. Do you see this narrative changing . It is obvious to most everyone a skilled treatment makes more money and more possibility than a Typical Office worker and yet george w and obama will continue to press this idea of universal college. Also, the second part to the question that that cannot be repaid will be restructured one way or another but not safe for it or against it but heavy