{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Episode 35 - The Theft of a Decade with Joseph Sternberg","description":"\u201cThere are burglaries and heists and capers and robberies, but few thefts in history can match what Baby Boomers have done to Millennials since 2008: they stole their children\u2019s economic futures right out from under them.\u201d  So says Joseph Sternberg, editorialist and columnist for the Wall Street Journal and author of the new book The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials\u2019 Economic Future.   One generation looking down on another is all to common these days.  Yet, in spite of the book\u2019s provocative title, Joseph\u2019s arguments are surprisingly nuanced and even sympathetic to Boomers.  Both Millennials and Boomers came of age and entered the workforce at a time when the economy was suffering.  However, Boomers learned all the wrong economic lessons of their childhood by mistaking economic outputs (rising wages, an explosion in home ownership, pensions, healthcare, etc.) with economic inputs (investing in the equipment, labor, and knowledge that drove the economy).   As a result, Boomers have largely been pursuing economic policies designed to re-create the robust economy of their youth.  But because they\u2019ve been focused on the wrong end of the spectrum (outputs instead of inputs) much of their efforts have led to distortions in the market that have had a profoundly negative impact on their children\u2014the Millennial generation.   Joseph contends that one of the more surprising aspects of the political battles over the past few decades is not how much had changed but how much stayed the same.  Our past four presidents have been Boomers and three of them (Clinton, Bush, and Trump) were even all born in the same year of 1946.  Boomers held enormous power\u2014both as the largest voting block and as our leaders\u2014and regardless of what party or president was in charge, much of the economic policies of \u201cinvesting\u201d in things like education and cutting taxes to spur the economy remained relatively the same.   Millennials are anxious to break outside of the narrow lane created by the Boomer generation as we perceive we aren\u2019t doing that well economically.  And Joseph would definitely agree Millennials have a real beef.  Lurching to the Left\u2014as we\u2019ve seen with the rise of socialism and candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren\u2014is one way to break outside of that lane.  But Joseph is hopeful Millennials will find more market-friendly and pro-capitalist means of breaking outside of the narrow lane created by our parents\u2019 generation.  And he invites us to engage in the generation-wide conversation of what economic policies make sense for us today.  And that conversation begins with a better understanding of what our parents got wrong in the first place. ","author_name":"Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values","author_url":"https:\/\/www.savingelephantsblog.com\/","html":"