|
The
year is 2030.
The
youngest baby boomers are midway through their
sixties and starting to claim their Social Security
benefits. And none too soon, since the coffers are
nearly empty. As many boomers say with only a touch
of irony, at least we got ours.
The
fittest boomers still boast that eighty is the new
sixty, but the rest of the country has gotten tired
of footing the bill for their lengthy retirement.
After a seemingly endless run, America is ready for
the baby boom generation to finally get off the
stage.
With more than one in four Americans over sixty in
this future society, generational conflicts abound.
Walkers outnumber strollers; nursing homes
proliferate while schools close. The millennial
generation, now mostly in their thirties and
forties, have taken "extreme working" to new
heights, pulling extra shifts to support not only
truly needy children and the elderly, but also a
vast cohort of "greedy geezers" spending one-third
of their lives on subsidized vacation. California,
with the nation's largest population of individuals
over sixty, is the first to experience the ethnic
division exacerbated by the aging crisis, as an
older, largely white minority confronts a younger
and largely Latino majority in the annual budget
wars.
The
nation owes a debt to the boomers, in the form of an
intractable deficit pushing the country ever closer
to default. Spending on boomers' pensions and health
care has replaced nearly all investments in the
nation's future. Not only children, but the
environment and the economy are suffering from these
lost opportunities. America, like its swelling
population of pensioners, is visibly and painfully
well past its prime.
As
the 2032 presidential election nears, boomer
political power is finally on the wane. But the
generation's legacy is assured. Boomers will be
remembered as a self-absorbed, self-serving horde of
overindulgers who used their votes and their dollars
to push their own interests to the forefront,
posterity be damned.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now
imagine a different scenario.
It's still 2030. The boomers are indeed starting to
leave the stage. But their encore has been a rousing
one and the legacy they leave is far different.
The
hysterical predictions of academic economists and
assorted policy experts that once dominated
discussion about the inevitable demographic trends
have proven false. Few even remember concerns that
the nation was headed to hell in a handbasket
because of the huge population of "retiring"
boomers. The feared "Gray2K" was a nonevent, just
like Y2K before it.
Instead, there is a palpable sense of progress.
Longevity, demography, human development,
generational experience, fiscal imperatives, labor
market dictates, and the particular historical
moment combined to lead boomers to contribute longer
and to use their education and experience in areas
with jobs to offer, deeper meaning to confer, and
broader social purposes to fulfill.
Faced with the practical necessity of extended
working lives, boomers have made it a virtue,
getting busy on their next chapters, second acts, or
Careers 2.0. Some of the ills that seemed
intractable at the beginning of the twenty-first
century are fading, and others that appeared only to
be worsening have made a 180° turn -- all thanks to
boomer labor power, now known as the "experience
dividend."
Now, nearly everyone looks forward to an encore
career. The oldest members of the millennial
generation, entering their fifties, are getting
ready for their own second acts, and younger people
clamor for "purpose-driven jobs" in the same way
earlier generations embraced early retirement. The
goal now is to be able to stop climbing the ladder
and start making a difference, to trade money for
meaning, to have the latitude to work on things that
matter most.
Copyright Copyright 2007 Marc Freedman
Author
Marc Freedman is founder and CEO of Civic
Ventures. A former visiting research fellow of
King's College, University of London, a frequent
commentator in the national media, and the author of
both Prime Time and The Kindness of Strangers,
Freedman spearheaded the creation of Experience
Corps and The Purpose Prize. An Ashoka Senior
Fellow, he was recognized in 2007 by Fast Company
magazine as one of the nation's leading social
entrepreneurs. He is based in San Francisco.
Photographer Alex
Harris traveled across the country to make the
portraits in Encore. A 1991 finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, Harris is currently
Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at Duke
University, where he founded the Center for
Documentary Photography. Harris also co-founded
DoubleTake magazine. He lives in Durham, North
Carolina.
|
