dispatches from the new world of work

Get the Young Whippersnappers Off Their Fannies ASAP!

In Christopher Buckley's wonderful Boomsday (mentioned here before), Gen X revolts successfully against a future of, in effect, watching their earnings disappear into the aging pockets of the emergent Boomer Nation.

The issue Buckley so effectively satirizes is indeed very real—earthshaking, actually, unprecedented in human history, in fact. But there's reason to believe the results may be quite the opposite of Buckley's plotline. Or at least that's the story from Sunday, May 6, 2007.

All the coverage here in Europe (I'm in Munich, on the 8th, heading for Dubai as I write) tells us that Mr Sarkozy trounced Ms Royal to make it into Élysée Palace. Indeed, in electoral politics a 53%-47% beating is at least a semi-trounce.

But one small story in Britain's Independent, digging an inch or two below the surface, caught my eye, then fully grabbed my attention. Call it Boomsday Reverse.

Mr Sarkozy, a tough cookie, ran on an uncompromising platform that aims to deal with France's dire slippage in global competitiveness. Some are predicting he'll be France's Margaret Thatcher. He aims to lengthen the work week, cut taxes, hammer the unions, and such to get the French economy in tune with 21st century economics. Ms Royal, on the other hand and in stark contrast, effectively ran on a "What's all the fuss?" platform, claiming that the hyper-liberal French employment practices can be retained without further damage to France's ranking in the global competitiveness polls. So, the rather straightforward story goes, "the voters" went to the polls in record numbers, bit their collective tongues, prepared to accept the bitter medicine—and awarded the powerful presidency to Atilla the Economic Reformer.

Not so fast ...

The real story is far different. As to "the trounce," Trounc-ee Royal was in fact the trounc-er with a "very interesting" "little" slice of the population. She in fact handily topped Sarkozy among those who are in the 18-59 demographic. That ain't Gen X, my friends, that's more or less everybody on active duty in the workforce!

So how, in the end, did Sarkozy become the Ultimate Grand Trounc-er? Simple. He beat the bloody hell out of Royal among the 60-and-up crew. "Beat the bloody hell out of" equates to unheard of margins that were above 2-1.

That is, Team Elder exerted incredible, decisive de facto unity and power in France's demographically old-and-getting-older-and-we're-healthy-and-will-
be-around-for-a-long-long-time population. It's not that Sarkozy beat Royal. The actual story is that the 60+ geezers have ordered the wee 60 minus crew to get the hell to work and stay the hell at work ... so the Six Zero Plussers can get their hands on the loot they need to spend their remaining winters in Nice, or some such.

Boomsday was a fable about a very real issue, and a hilarious one at that. Boomsday Reverse, Variety Française, is episode one of Ultimate Reality TV—and it's going to be a long-running show, from France to Japan, with impact that buggers the imagination.

Stay tuned ...

Tom Peters posted this on 05/08/07.

Comments

Boomsday's premise is an intriguing one. I'm going to have to get my hands on a copy.

Posted by Rhea at May 8, 2007 9:48 AM

1. TP - fun try on a spin slant - one may also conclude per the 2 paragraphs below from the article though that the creatives & free enterprise [radicals] 82%!!! landslide ruled the wonderful vote day - whereas the low-IQ socialist front-liners came up losers with le deviant Ms. Royal:

"In sociological terms, the vote was relatively predictable. Mme Royal won among students, public-sector employees, blue-collar workers and the unemployed.

M. Sarkozy won among private-sector employees, small businessmen, professionals, farmers and the managerial classes. He won an absolute landslide - 82 per cent - among shop-keepers and small tradespeople who suffer from the highly-taxed and bureaucratic French economy."

Posted by sean_luxury at May 8, 2007 10:58 AM

There is a niche angle to this as well. Here in the UK we have a BIG pension problem.

Those who retired in the 1990s are well placed. Often taking early retirement with earnings related pensions, they were able to supplement their income by continuing work (sometimes believe it or not doing the SAME job but as a consultant). With pensions "artificially" high because of the vagaries of the stock market they are sitting pretty.

Compare them to the present workers. Earnings related pension schemes (final salary schemes) are disappearing fast and those with lower quality pensions are dependent on stock market performance and annuity rates neither of which are good. To add insult to injury they are having to contribute to the deficits in large private sector pension schemes through increased prices or public sector schemes through increased taxes.

This is a HUGE problem and one which is largely ignored by the politicians in the UK.

Sorkozy's appeal to the "private-sector employees, small businessmen, professionals, farmers and the managerial classes" is their only hope.

Posted by Stuart Jones at May 8, 2007 11:19 AM

I'd be interested to see how the under-25's voted, where unemployment is running at 20%+ and Sarkozy seemed to have some support from people who want to work. Most interesting will be to see if the new President can get this legislation through Parliament and then into general public acceptance. Some French unions are very powerfull and very socialist. Sarkozy's line of, "tough love, law and order, make 'em work" is always a popular one at election time but notoriously difficult to follow through on. As Tom's old boss might have pointed out, it's the other 98% that really matters now - i.e. the implementation.

Posted by Mark JF at May 9, 2007 1:31 PM

Tom

A point of note on the usage of the term "Gen-X". It just so happens that I'm reading Boomsday right now. The term itself, of course, refers to 65 years after the theoretical day when the first Baby Boomer was born -- January 1, 1946. That day, then, would be New Year's 2011. I believe that the book is set around that time (please correct me if I'm wrong), meaning the protagonist, Cassandra, who is aged 29 years must have been born in or around 1981 or 1982.

According to the rock-solid authority of Wikipedia, the term Gen-X generally applies to those born between 1963 and 1978, or "anyone who was in their 20s some time during the 1990s."

Douglas Copeland, who coined the term in its modern usage, suggested that Gen-X referred to anyone born between 1960 and 1965 and was meant to describe an essentially indescribable generation. Meanwhile, Neil Howe and William Strauss defined the term at its most broad, "anyone born between 1961 and 1981 in the United States".

I'm 31 years old right now and I've always felt that Gen-X refers to anyone who could have been blown away the first time "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was featured on their television. (I was 15.)

In any case, this means that Cassandra Devine is, at most, on the extreme edge of being a Gen-Xer and that the fictional youths she was inciting on the golf courses and cemeteries were most certainly of the next generation.

Now, I'm not getting picky on your usage. I'm interested in understanding at what point would someone in your line of work consider to draw the line in order to distinguish Gen-X from, say "Gen-Y" or whatever the proper terminology is.

Or perhaps it's time for a change and start describing any subset of the twentysomthing demographic who feel lost or alienated as "Gen-X" and refer to the original Gen-Xers by a new term?

Personally, I would prefer the "Last Lost Generation", as described by the Canadian band, Lowest of the Low, but that's just me.

Posted by Rob Huck at May 10, 2007 12:46 PM

Rob - if the definition is based around your reaction to "Smells Like..." then I too am a Gen-X'er. I was 34 when it came out and I saw it!

Posted by Mark JF at May 10, 2007 1:14 PM

Claiming a Sego majority among the overall 18-59 age group as opposed to the 60+ is a little bit of an oversimplification. The article referred to gives in its last paragraph some slightly more differentiated numbers:
"18- to 24-year-olds voted 58 per cent for Mme Royal. The 25- to 34-year-olds voted 57 per cent for M. Sarkozy. The 45- to 59-year-olds voted 55 per cent for Mme Royal. The 35 to 44 generation split 50-50".

So, hereÂ´s yet another interpretation:

Age 18-24: still wet behind the ears, hardly own experiences of the real world as yet, hence susceptible to socialist propaganda - but who wasnÂ´t at 20? Votes Sego.
Age 25-34: old enough to have realized the current socialist system offers them dole money, but no future - young enough to still want to have a future. Votes Sarko.
Age 35-44: neither here nor there, it seems.
Age 44-59: grew up around the 70s, the Golden Age of the welfare state - irredeemably addicted to the system, though itÂ´s falling apart around them. Votes Sego.
Age 60+: too old to really worry about their own future, old enough to worry about their grandchildrenÂ´s - also still can remember the times before welfare bureaucracy. Votes Sarko.

Posted by FAB. at May 10, 2007 1:53 PM

Tom, the NYT had a very interesting breakdown in terms of categories showing who had voted for Sarkozy vs. Royal. Interestingly, the breakdown is not posted on NYT.com [I'll email you a scan of it if you haven't seen it], but shows some fascinating bits of info:70+ were 68% for Sarkozy; 25 to 34 = 57% sarko, self-employed 77% for Sarko; retirees, 65% for Sarko; this one really surprised me: rural areas 57% for Sarko [vs. 50% in Paris]. I have family and friends in France and it is FASCINATING getting their take of this.

Posted by C.B. Whittemore at May 14, 2007 7:05 PM