ginandtacos.com

It's finals week, which can only mean one thing: dozens of students at a university with none-too-stringent admissions standards, a "the customer is always right" attitude toward student evaluation, and staggering grade inflation whining, pleading, or negotiating for higher grades. What follows is an actual email from a 19 year old freshman in a mandatory Intro American Government course. The last two sentences in particular are amazing (emphasis mine).

I received a (redacted grade) in your class. My grade is an error because of discriminatory inconsistencies in requirements between the separate breakout sessions. I was in (redacted)'s breakout session and though he was a great teacher, the work he assigned differed greatly from other breakout sessions. There were additional tasks assigned to my class that were inconsistent with the level of effort versus other classes. For example one TAs breakout session was based solely on attendance; I went to every breakout session, therefore i would have received a 100% in that class. If i was graded according to the other break out sessions i would have received a 100%. I expect my breakout session grade to be changed to 100%, due to the fact that i feel my grade my discriminatory. This grade is an error, and i expect this error to be corrected because of the points above, and due to inconsistent requirements.

A couple things.

First, the student did not bother to note that if I agreed to her request and changed the grade to 100, it would not make enough of a difference to raise her course grade. Right off the bat this entire exercise is a moot point, but I suppose Special Princess never learned how to do math.

Second, all grades from discussion sections are adjusted so that there are no discrepancies among different teaching assistants, each of whom has discretion over his or her own sections.

Third, nice attitude you've got there, asshead. In my response, I politely suggested that she reconsider her tone, phrasing, and attitude of entitlement when making such requests in the future. Frankly I'm just proud of myself for not finding her and hitting her over the head with a cast iron frying pan, cartoon-style.

I haven't been teaching long enough to say whether this type of thing is becoming more or less common. One thing is for certain, though; it happens a lot. Regularly, even. I read or hear things like this all the time and my mind goes to Joe Pesci in Raging Bull: Where do you get the balls big enough to ask me that?

By now we're all used to students who think that showing up entitles them to an A and every time they pester me I try to imagine what sort of sequence of events and influences would need to come together to make someone a douchebag of this magnitude. This is a truly awful human being, and she will make your life unpleasant eventually. She'll flip out, yell at the manager, and leave a 5-cent tip because you forgot her ranch dressing. She'll wait until you install her new carpeting and then refuse to pay for it because the color isn't right. She'll call tech support and scream at you because she's too stupid to figure out how to use her cell phone. She'll spend the greater part of what will only loosely be labeled "adulthood" suing or threatening to sue people – neighbors, employers, employees, family members, and random strangers. She will talk on her phone in movie theaters, cut you off in traffic, and fight with the Little League coach if Dakota and McKenzie don't play enough.

The scary part is that the student is taking this approach, most likely, because it has worked before. This is how some of these kids learn to get through life – their options are to attempt to solve the problem with money or flirting or, failing that, to threaten to have Daddy hire a lawyer. The world today makes more sense if you picture the adult version of this student on the other end of the phone the next time you try to resolve a problem.

Most children figure out how to get a rise out of people with shock value by the age of about three. We learn that when we scream as loud as possible all of the nearby adults will pay attention to us, or that when we say "poop" or take off our clothes everyone will laugh. Unsurprisingly, as we get older and/or mature we begin to understand this as a cheap, lazy way to get a response. Yes, a comedian can get on stage and talk about masturbation for five minutes and get some cheap laughs, or an artist can dunk a crucifix in urine and become a household name when everyone predictably flips out. It's a fine line, however, because many things we consider to be important or artistically valuable have some element of shock value. This includes countless films, books like Tropic of Cancer or A Clockwork Orange, and artworks as diverse as Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon or Duchamp's "Fountain", all of which were banned at some point and debuted to considerable controversy. So there is a relevant distinction between things of intellectual or artistic value that are shocking and things that have nothing to offer except shock value.

I am increasingly annoyed by the extent to which no-name hack writers and peripheral media personalities have taken to relying on shock value to draw attention to themselves and advance their careers to some level beyond complete obscurity. We see the anonymous guests on Fox News trying to say the most ridiculously outlandish things they can imagine – "Maybe I'll be the next Glenn Beck!" – and legions of fourth-rate Free Republic commenters filling blogs with as much vitriol as possible to attract attention. Basically anyone who can figure out how to use Blogger is trying to one-up the herd. There are Regnery book deals to be had, after all. And the situation is only exacerbated by highly trafficked, even mainstream media outlets giving a platform to these voices due to the same need to stand out and get attention.

That, in not-so-short, is how the Chronicle of Higher Education and some nobody named Naomi Schaefer Riley teamed up to subject the public discourse to a mound of dreck entitled "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations."

As the title portends, Riley uses the laziest, cheapest technique for taking potshots at Them Ivery Tower Libruls. Academic writing is loaded with buzzwords, jargon, and pretentious phrasing, and it often covers subjects of almost comical obscurity. So for AM Radio hacks and semi-literate bloggers there's nothing easier than looking at the names of courses or the titles of papers and working themselves into a diabetic frenzy deriding the material without knowing anything about it. Riley does not disappoint. Her MO is to list some dissertation titles from the Northwestern Black Studies program and then laugh about how stupid she thinks they sound.

If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.

That’s what I would say about Ruth Hayes’ dissertation, "'So I Could Be Easeful': Black Women's Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth." It began because she "noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature, which led me to look into historical black midwifery." How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in "natural birth literature," whatever the heck that is? It's scandalous and clearly a sign that racism is alive and well in America, not to mention academia.

Then there is Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of "Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s." Ms. Taylor believes there was apparently some kind of conspiracy in the federal government's promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. Single family homes! The audacity! But Ms. Taylor sees that her issue is still relevant today. (Not much of a surprise since the entirety of black studies today seems to rest on the premise that nothing much has changed in this country in the past half century when it comes to race. Shhhh. Don't tell them about the black president!) She explains that "The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market." The subprime lending crisis was about the profitability of racism? Those millions of white people who went into foreclosure were just collateral damage, I guess.

What could possess the Chronicle to give this the time of day, especially given that the author has zero academic credentials to suggest that her opinion on this topic might be relevant? Well, it has been a few weeks since anything in that publication has attracted widespread notice, and they like to keep things exciting. So why not toss out something that will cause its academia-centric audience will flip its lid? Look at all those site visits! Who cares if she made zero effort to engage this work on any remotely serious level. Them titles are funny!

There are two ways to make it as a writer, and one of them – having some combination of talent, creativity, or intellectual merit – is unavailable to this author. So she does what every other unknown, unaccomplished hack toiling away in obscurity realizes is his or her only chance to be noticed. She sits down and basically writes a 500 word version of "HAHAHA NIGGERS AMIRITE? LOL!" and waits for the call to appear as a guest on O'Reilly. Maybe she'll even get booted from the Chronicle and become the latest right wing martyr to get a speaking tour and book deal. "I was ostracized by the Liberal Establishment!"

I am going to puke blood the next time I have to watch, listen to, or read these blatant attempts by failures to throw a bunch of red meat into the public sphere and kick back and wait for that call from Fox or the Daily Caller. In truth she and her drivel are hardly worth our attention – and the Chronicle goddamn well knows it – yet here we are. Congratulations, Naomi. You've got our attention now. Too bad writers like you (i.e., shitty ones) are a dime a dozen, or else your plan might have worked.

No one should reach adulthood without being given in earnest the sage advice, "Never lend money to friends or family." It's genuine wisdom, although not a hard-and-fast rule. For example, if someone I know well was fired or had cancer or (fill in the tragedy) I would certainly give them whatever assistance I could muster, and if they did not ask I would offer. But for less life shattering reasons, there is something unavoidably uncomfortable about being solicited by people we know well.

Your brother-in-law who tries to sell you a timeshare. The guy with a "great idea" for a business that requires your start-up capital. Your friend who has candle / makeup / jewelry / etc parties at which guests are expected to make purchases on which she gets commissions. The co-worker who corners you with Amway pitches and endless requests to buy candy for little so-and-so's school fund raiser. Or the people who just flat-out ask for money for no discernible reason beyond suspecting that you might be willing. They are all violating one of the basic rules of interpersonal relationships: We are friends/family, not business partners. I am your co-worker, not your customer. I am your friend, not a venture capital fund.

At this point many of you are wise to the imminent Kickstarter rant. I have done what I can to make it less rant-y. In all honesty, it sounded like a great idea when I first heard of it. It did not take me long to sour on it, though, aided substantially by the half-dozen weekly requests that float across social media. Part of the problem is that the vast majority of my friends are writers, artists, comedians, musicians, or wannabes of any of the preceding. This is Kickstarter's prime demographic. I understand this. That does not make the constant panhandling any less irritating.

In the past two weeks, I have received requests from:

- The Baffler, which is basically my favorite thing in the history of the written word, asking subscribers (who already pay over $10/issue for the privilege) to fork over more money to meet some nebulous $20,000 "goal".

- Two local musicians with $5,000 and $10,000 goals, respectively, to record an album. Aside from the Andy Rooney-ish "Get the money the old fashioned way – play shows, you ingrates!" response, please note that it costs nofuckingwhere near that much money for a local band to record an album. My old band recorded two, both of extremely high technical quality, at a studio used by Big Time Bands, with an engineer who is well respected in the field, and with mastering by an indie rock legend. I don't think it cost us $3,000 combined. And we could have cut some corners, too.

- An artist, also aiming for $5,000, who appears to have all of the necessary supplies to produce a series of paintings and who apparently wants to raise the money to pay rent and utilities so she can paint in lieu of working. As opposed to the rest of us, who enjoy working and cannot think of any way we'd prefer to spend our time.

- A guy trying to jump on the Food Truck bandwagon. Good luck, pal.

Yes, in an ideal world we would simply throw open our palms and have people give us money to pursue our ambitions. I would certainly like it if a bunch of people sent me $50,000 so I could devote all of my time to writing and telling jokes. What, however, would lead me to believe I've earned that? Where does one get the self-confidence and complacency to ask one's social circle – most of whom are just as hard up for cash, mind you – for financial support? Were other sources of potential funding exhausted before resorting to friends as a last plea, or was the Kickstarter set up first because it's so easy?

This brings us to the second problem: People who don't actually need the money asking for it. Why would actor and director Colin Hanks, son of bajillionaire Tom, waste $50,000 of his pocket change to fund a documentary project when he could just ask his fans to give it to him? It's not like he shits money or anything! Did megacorporation Electronic Arts need $8.5 million dollars (!!!) of its young fans' money to produce the Madden '13 video game? I didn't realize this small, struggling company needed our help getting off the ground. Does Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls) need a Kickstarter-record $460,000 to record a fucking album? It's good to hear her whine/note that this is hundreds of thousands more than the mere $100,000 her old record label offered her as a recording budget. I feel for you, my little lamb.

Tacky, gaudy, crass, and other words come to mind when I see things like this. Yes, I know, free will and open access and no one forces anyone to give and yadda yadda yadda. This is one of those issues in which can and should are two very different questions with, in the vast majority of cases, two different answers. I'm specifically NOT claiming that no one can/should ever ask for money; what bothers me is the ease with which it can be done now and the lack of forethought that appears to go into it. "I'd like to record an album. Let's just ask our friends to give us money." Requests for money, as any fund raiser can tell you, have rapidly diminishing returns. Whatever potential Kickstarter might have had to fund the next great inventor or the next great artist has been diluted rapidly in a crowd of outstretched hands, palms up and open.

The 2012 presidential race has begun in earnest, notwithstanding the six month Gathering of the Juggalos / circus sideshow / island of broken toys that was the GOP nomination process. The Romney vs. Obama square-off is all of about 2 weeks old, and I'm already consumed with cold dread at the prospect of sitting through six more months of this.

Now that we've just passed the one year anniversary of the death of bin Laden, Republicans are courageously asserting that no president worthy of the title would ever make a campaign issue out of a foreign policy success.

Read John McCain's incontinent, 74 year old hissy fit. Then read the comment thread.

I can't, people. I just can't. I'm so full of Can't and Nope. I really don't think I have it in me to handle six months of this stupidity. Can't we just fast forward to November 15 and let the GOP focus on its post-election excuses? Do we really have to sit through half a year of hysterical nonsense and irrelevant "issues" blown out of all sense of proportion? Wouldn't it be great if we all consciously declined to talk or think about this meaningless noise and instead, like, read a book or something?

The campaign seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest it.

Whether regular readers realize it or not, I read every comment that is posted here even when the daily total reaches triple digits. I remember well when I started this site and it felt cool to get one comment per post, not to mention the (eventual) thrill of seeing the occasional comment from strangers who were not my immediate friends. In short, I don't take it for granted that people bother to spend their time reading this stuff and writing some kind of response. It seems like the respectful thing to do to read the comments. Even the stupid ones. But I kid.

On Monday's post, we see an exchange in the comments that typifies one of the differences in mindset between liberals and conservatives in this country. It's one of the most common sources of irritating, time-wasting arguments on the internets: one person makes an assertion, and another says, in essence, "prove it". Explain it in great detail and show your work.

One of two things is true in this situation. If we assume that the skeptic has good intentions – i.e., he is legitimately interested in exchanging ideas and perhaps learning something or correcting his misconceptions – then the issue is merely laziness. Take this hypothetical exchange:

Al: "Barack Obama supports keeping troops in Afghanistan until 2050."
Bob: "No he doesn't. That's ridiculous."
Al: "O RLY? LINKS PLS."

The correct response on Bob's part, assuming that dealing with delicate feelings is not one of his concerns, is "Google it, pal. I'm not your research assistant." Even if in this instance Al really is curious but is limited by inaccurate information, it's not others' responsibility to fix it. If you're the one who's mangling the facts, be a grown up, read something that isn't written by an AM Radio host, and update your beliefs accordingly.

The second possibility is that Al isn't making a real good faith effort to engage and discuss something. He is just out to waste your time. The goal is for you to respond with a thousand word treatise full of links and examples, all of which he will dismiss out of hand, followed by changing the subject or expressing more skepticism (Your sources, for example, are probably "biased"). Getting sucked into such an exchange will accomplish nothing because it's not a conversation, it's a game. In 2004, the Bush campaign utilized Karl Rove's strategy of throwing out topics off the cuff, watching with delight as the Kerry campaign devoted lots of time and resources to responding, and then simply ignoring it and moving it on to something else. They called this "chasing the rabbit." Kerry's campaign took the bait repeatedly, wandering off message and wasting time.

When someone expresses skepticism over something that is either totally obvious ("Since when does the Republican Party take contradictory positions on issues? I NEED LOTS OF EXAMPLES.") or a simple factual question ("McKinley is taller than Mount Hood? LINK PLZ.") it is probably not sincere. "I'm not your secretary. Google it." is the preferred response, possibly followed by a comma and "dumbass" if the situation calls for it. At this point, he or she will dismiss your viewpoint – "See, you can't find any links because I'm right!" – which may tempt you to respond. Rest assured that a factual, detailed, response would have been dismissed just as summarily.

If people actually want to learn something or verify facts, there are amazing new technologies that allow them to do so. If they don't understand how to find things on the internet quickly, you shouldn't enable their ignorance / laziness. It's far more likely, of course, that they know damn well how to find things on Google but they'd rather let you do all the work and then follow up with a "NOPE!" afterward.

These exchanges rival watching paint dry in terms of thoughtfulness and informational value.

The study of public opinion has been a sixty-plus year long search for what we call constraint – the degree to which a belief held by an individual is predictive of other beliefs. A constrained belief system is an internally consistent one; for example, if you believe in lower taxes we would expect you to believe in lower spending as well. This seems like a remarkably obvious concept, but since Converse we've found that frighteningly few Americans organize or constrain their beliefs about politics into anything approaching a coherent worldview. This is why so many voters hold ideas that make absolutely no sense together, even when the conflicts are glaring.

The modern Republican ideology is often criticized for inconsistency on the grounds that it abhors Big Government but promotes government involvement in our private lives through social issues. It is strongly pro individual rights in theory but with dozens of "exceptions" in practice. That said, I see a kind of constraint across prominent political issues in the contemporary GOP: they generally believe that problems have supply side solutions. Poverty exists because the welfare state enables it; without food stamps and TANF, people would be working. Illegal immigration is solved with guns and border fences, not by eliminating the demand (American employers who knowingly employ immigrants of dubious legality). You get the picture.

There are, however, two glaring exceptions to the supply-as-constraint idea. First, the drug war is very much a demand side problem to Republicans. Sure, some efforts are made to stop the importation of drugs at the border, but the vast majority of law enforcement resources (including manpower and time) in the War on Drugs is devoted to rounding up users and small-time dealers (who are merely the retail kiosk of a system that generates supply much farther up the food chain). Second, gun violence is emphatically a demand-side problem. The supply and availability of guns certainly isn't seen as a problem. The problem is what some individuals ("Bad Apples", of course) decide to do with the plethora of firepower to be had.

I'm sure there are other examples of issues that Republicans define as supply problems as well as others that are considered demand problems. I find it interesting and somewhat revealing that two prominent issues that contradict the overarching supply side understanding of socioeconomic and political issues are the War on Drugs – when seen as a demand problem, the state responds by putting countless poor and/or dark-skinned people in prison – and gun politics as a whole, where a demand-based explanation ensures widespread access to the guns people need to make themselves feel secure and/or powerful.

So I'd argue that the average Gingrich / Perry voter does have a constrained set of political beliefs. The problem is that their underlying motivations – dislike of the poor/dark and gun fetishism – are stronger than any ideology or worldview that might attempt to constrain them.

Ever have one of those days where you feel like everything you do is right? Like you're in the zone and nothing can stop you? Yeah, me neither. But apparently it happens to even the lowliest among us sometimes.

I'm on record as an admirer of the perfect game, a feat so rare that despite an anomalous burst of four in four years, there are still fewer people who have done 27 up, 27 down in the Major Leagues (19) than have orbited the moon (24). Baseball fans are unsurprised that the list includes legends and Hall of Famers like Sandy Koufax, Randy Johnson, Catfish Hunter, Jim Bunning,* and Roy Halladay, or solid All Star players like David Cone, David Wells, Mark Buehrle, Kenny Rogers, and Dennis "El Presidente" Martinez. We might expect that in a large sample of pitchers of that caliber, a few of them would accomplish a statistically improbable feat over time. What is more surprising, and I think more interesting, is the presence of pitchers like Don Larsen (Career record: 81-91, ERA+ 99), Len Barker (74-76, ERA+ 93), Dallas Braden (26-36, 4.19 career ERA), and, as of Saturday…Philip Humber?? Philip Humber, he of 12 career wins, zero complete games, and, on Thursday night, nine runs surrendered in his follow-up start? How does that happen?

This, I think, is one of the more intriguing aspects of baseball in particular and sports in general – the potential that on any given day, some slob can stroll out on the field/court/etc and enter a zone of complete perfection. We expect to see Michael Jordan or Arnold Palmer or Roger Federer approach perfection. They do it all the time. We never expect to see the guys we've never heard of come out and accomplish things that even the legends of the game rarely approach.

In 2001, I was watching so much baseball that it was probably detrimental to both my health and my personal life. Yet on September 3, 2001, just a few days before sports became the last thing on our minds, a gentleman by the name of Bud Smith, allegedly of the St. Louis Cardinals, threw a no-hitter. It's not quite on par with the perfect game, but it is a rare and difficult feat in its own right. And I looked at the TV and said aloud to no one, "Who in the hell is Bud Smith?" Bud threw the no-hitter in his 13th career start, aged 21. He was not considered a hot prospect. He would start less than a dozen more games in the majors after that day. He was out of baseball by 23. Career record: 7-9. ERA: 4.95. Bud Smith, ladies and gentlemen.

The sheer randomness of such feats from a player who either has no talent or is clearly unable to harness his talent even semi-consistently is fascinating to me. I suppose it comes down to the law of large numbers, of the million monkeys with a million typewriters who, given the time, will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Psychologically it must be very challenging to try to re-create that level of perfection throughout one's career only to face the cold, hard reality of regressing to the mean – that is, returning to mediocrity. What did I do on that day that made me perfect, and why can't I do it again? I don't expect that Philip Humber will be out of baseball in a year like Bud Smith, nor will he become a dominant player. We often write off failures to randomness and bad luck – Don't worry about it, it just wasn't your day! – but are less eager to do the same for successes. "Luck" is not the right word here, but the fact remains that people like Humber can simply have a day where everything goes their way. Every stoplight on the way to the stadium is green, the wind is blowing in the right direction on every pitch, and the players on the other team are all in slumps. If and when such a day ever comes for me I hope I'm able to recognize it while it's happening and enjoy it, knowing well that it's unlikely to happen again.

*Yes, it's common knowledge that Bunning is only in the Hall because he was a powerful Senator at the time of his election. There are politics involved.

The first three posts for this week have been fairly in-depth, and I'm trying to make major financial decisions at the moment. In the meantime, please continue to enjoy Monday through Wednesday. Oh, and this. Chew on this for a while too.

I recently asked my neighbors' little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, are liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?'

She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.'

Her parents beamed with pride.

'Wow…what a worthy goal.' I told her, 'But you don’t have to wait until you're President to do that! You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.'

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, 'Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?'

I said, 'Welcome to Conservatism.'

Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.

I place the odds that this happened at around 0%. But true story or not, it teaches us all a valuable lesson: that the guy who wrote this is an unbearable d-bag.

By now we are well aware of how much it sucks to be a young adult in 2012 America. Yeah, it sucks to be a lot of ages, but the older generations at least have a few consolation prizes – the tail end of pensions and health benefits from employers, and a high likelihood of getting something out of Social Security and Medicare – even if insufficient. There isn't much else to say about unemployed, college graduate twentysomethings working at Starbucks or living at home.

This editorial from a Harvard Business Review writer raises an excellent, albeit incomplete, point about people currently in the 25-40 range before coming to one of the least satisfying conclusions since my visit to the I-10 Massage Cabana next to the Stuckey's (Exit 297).

The rules keep changing while you are mid-way through the game. The bedrock principles of Boomers' financial plans were: (1) A good education will help you get a good job and (2) Putting money into a home is the best way to build the equity for long-term financial security. Both of these rules have failed Generation X.

This, I think, is an important point. When people in my age-peer group talk about our careers and financial status, one of the things that comes up most often is how Our Parents just do not seem to understand that things have changed. We have conversations with our older friends or relatives who say things like, "There's no health insurance? That can't be right. Let me see the forms next time you visit," or, "Why haven't you bought a house yet? Renting is just throwing money away." They mean no harm; if anything, they mean to help (through nagging). That does not make such advice any less frustrating or impractical. People who graduated from college in the 1960s have a hard time grasping the concept of graduating from college and not being able to find a job. You must not be looking hard enough!

Now the goalposts have moved, and the part of the older generation that does understand the new reality has done what it does best: vote Republican and blame us for being dumb enough to take their advice. Why did we sink so much money into houses we can't afford? Why did we borrow $150,000 to go to law school? This requires complete amnesia of everything that our society encouraged people to do for, oh, 75 years prior to 2008, but that's not a problem. They do amnesia well. The author also neglects the important third pillar of the Boomer Advice: stocks. Stocks! Stocks! Stocks! Mutual Funds and whatnot too. Ameritrade! 401(k)! Jackpot! Yeah, that one didn't work terribly well either. Turns out that we're not all sitting at home, retired at 40 and e-trading all day.

Maybe the real problem is that, having realized that the House-College-Career advice is no longer good, relevant, or useful, they find themselves lacking an alternative. The urge to lecture us remains, but they appear to be running out of plausible platitudes. For those who realize that it's in poor taste and logic to play the blame game, the most popular advice these days appears to be:

More than ever, X'ers are being challenged to invent their own path forward. As it has been before, that path will almost certainly be less guided by conventional rules and less dependent on traditional institutions, than by X'ers' own sense of self-reliance and quest for multiple options. I encourage X'ers to re-imagine the next 30-50 years of your life: most of you won't have the institutionally-funded retirement options that many Traditionalists have enjoyed or the housing-based nest egg that provides many Boomers with the flexibility to blend volunteer and paid work over the years ahead. But you have your own ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills with which to build a unique future…X'ers should avoid even trying to follow the Boomers' path and, instead, have confidence to bring your own pragmatic sensibility both to organizational leadership — and to the design of your own life plan.

This is almost indistinguishable from the advice we might give someone on their way to prison: Figure it out, and good luck. Mom and Dad had pensions and job security, we have our "own sense of self-reliance and quest for multiple options." Neat.