Friday, February 18, 2011

Senior Moment

Remember the GM Card? There was a huge advertising campaign for the card that would earn you points toward a GM vehicle. It had a website on the commercial. That’s the first one I can remember. That was 15 years ago. All young teenagers right now have no memory of a time before websites. Probably many 18 year olds, for all intents and purposes, are the same way.

Around that same time gas hung around a dollar a gallon. It first went over a dollar back in 1979, of course, but then a barrel of oil cost just of $15. So those 16 year olds that have always had websites have also always known gas to be more than $2 a gallon.

The average price of a house sold in 1995 was a little over $150,000. Today, it’s $270,000. The average U.S. wage has gone from $25K to $40K in that same time. But that’s only for those people with wages to begin with. And, of course, legal wages reported to the government.

At a very rapid pace, the youth are smarter and have more skills then the middle aged. “But we,” say the middle aged, “have more experience.” Yes, but our experience has lead to a very long war, huge deficits, and a failing infrastructure. So we must ask, does our experience count for anything?

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