Perch "The Thoughtful Pause Podcast"
The concept of Perch is simple yet profound. It represents more than just a moment of stillness; it embodies a philosophy of life. Perch stands for Pause, Evaluate, Responses to Circumvent, Harm. It’s a call to rise above the noise and seek higher ground to gain a clearer view of the world around us. When we Perch, we create space to see the bigger picture, understand different perspectives, and make decisions that reflect our highest values.
Navigating complexities with empathy is one of the most significant challenges we face today, and it is the ability to understand and empathize with those who hold different views. Our experiences and backgrounds deeply influence our beliefs and the environments we are exposed to. Where you sit determines what you see, and what you see determines what you do. When we Perch, we acknowledge this truth and strive to see the world through the lens of others.
Perch "The Thoughtful Pause Podcast"
From Boomers to Gen Z: Understanding Generational Challenges
In this episode, we explore whether Generation Z is destined for a lower quality of life than previous generations. We discuss factors like income inequality, cultural shifts, and the rising cost of education. We also emphasize the importance of understanding, empathy, and generational respect while addressing evolving work dynamics and economic challenges.
Let's all keep searching to expand our view!
Welcome again, fellow perchlings. As you can see, our environment has changed as we've migrated ourselves the great northern migration back up to northern Michigan and back in Casa Norte. So great to see you all again. How's it going today?
Speaker 2:It's going well. I had a salad. That's not making me happy.
Speaker 1:Oh well, an unhappy salad.
Speaker 2:But yes, tree is wearing a jersey. And then why is Tree wearing a jersey?
Speaker 1:So tonight Panthers game six in Edmonton. I hope that this podcast ages well. I hope we're not eating crow in a couple of days, but hopefully the Panthers can wrap it up tonight and make history right.
Speaker 2:And so for all of you to like, treat a hockey fan no, I'm not a hockey fan, I'm a Panthers fan. There's a difference Not a hockey fan, but a person, plus this jersey's cute.
Speaker 1:Panthers have never won the Stanley Cup. For those people who aren't into hockey, so this would be historic. So let's hope that, as I said, this podcast ages well, if not, we gave it the old college.
Speaker 2:Try we did.
Speaker 1:We did all we could. So call out to Mark again. Mark is with us again this year helping us with our podcasts up here in northern Michigan. So great to see him back again.
Speaker 2:Mark is behind the camera, of course, but Mark gives us a lot of feedback. Right, it's all VST now. Right now, after a podcast.
Speaker 1:Mark is always like. You should have talked about that. You should have talked about this. One of these days, we're going to probably put him on this side of the camera.
Speaker 1:So who knows, we'll probably get to that point, but cloudy day up here today. It's been hot this week up in northern Michigan and Canada, so we're hoping for a little bit cooler weather next week. So, anyway, great to have you all with us again today. So our topic today is going to be a little bit heavy, but it's something that's really kind of caught, I think, most people's eye, and especially as we're starting to look at the presidential elections and how people are starting to line up, Don't say presidential election.
Speaker 2:We don't want people to turn off Well.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying you know the state of basically what's going on in our country, dare say world, about just the life that we live, and there's all kinds of troubling news about the fact that this generation, maybe for the first time, perhaps ever, their quality of life may not be as good as the previous generation, and that's unheard of in terms of modern history. And I want to talk a little bit about what's causing that, what's bringing that on. There's been some interesting things written. I think that there's like most of these, there's no clear-cut answers to what's going on. But there's certainly some conditions and we want to take some time and have your feedback, obviously through notes and comments, about what you think is really going on. But there's some interesting dynamics and things going on that are creating this unfortunate imbalance in income, imbalance in opportunity, imbalance in quality of life. Quality of life I think some of it is brought on by our, by kind of our change in, perhaps, culture perhaps change in basic values.
Speaker 2:But enough about that. You have some thoughts to start with, I do. For me, this has been a conversation that's been, I guess, in my head for a while, been, I guess, in my head for a while, and it's one that it's a few conversations that I don't approach lightly and so I'm all put off, like DEI. That's a topic that's really big and it requires sometimes more than just 45 minutes to an hour or whatever the time is. But I do want to say, before we get into it, for me this came about Well, disclosure told me, and I collectively have four children and our four children they're all in the same generation, they're all in Generation Z, and so it's a lot for me here in the back and forth, finger pointing, blaming from generation to generation. You know, I hear my children, you know, talk about the boomers all the time. So what I really want to quickly do, because not everyone understands how we define generations. So did you have that?
Speaker 1:Actually, I have it in here too, but go for it.
Speaker 2:OK, good, so I'm just going to go back. So, the first generation well, not the first generation, the greatest generation, that was the generation that was born between 1901 and 1927. The silent generation was born between 1928 and 1945.
Speaker 1:That's because they're all dead, of course they're silent.
Speaker 2:They're not all dead. What year did they?
Speaker 1:1945. Oh, 1945. I was going to say 1905. I was going to say, of course, they're like in the grave.
Speaker 2:For those of you who are in the silent generation, forgive them.
Speaker 1:Keep your mouth shut.
Speaker 2:You're not there, I hope you're watching. And then there's the baby boomer generation born between 1946 and 1964. Generation X, which is my generation, which I say is the best, because that's just me Generation born between 1965 and 1980. And then the millennials born 1981 to 1996. And generation z, which are children, 1996 to 2012, and for those of you who knew that, that's great for those of you. So when we have this conversation, you know where you fit what's the latest generation like right now?
Speaker 2:um, I had it down there too. I shouldn't say they weren't significant. They are Ouch. I looked at it and I was like because we're not talking about? They're too young to be a part of this conversation.
Speaker 1:I know what it is and I looked at it and so I'm like a cusp boomer, then right, I'm like a yeah you, If I was like horoscope.
Speaker 2:I'd be a cuss boomer.
Speaker 1:You're on a boomer X, you're an ex-boomer Got it Okay, so right on the edge. Okay, all right.
Speaker 2:So for me, part of that is you know, I don't like finger pointing. That's just me as a whole. I don't like finger pointing. I don't like the blame game and put your finger down. Um, I said because I feel like finger point pointing doesn't equal, equate to resolve. So the reality is, I think the one thing that we all can agree on is that we have a lot of work to do in our society collectively. We have a lot of work to do in our society collectively.
Speaker 1:I had a conversation with Tasia and I'm going to call her out on it because we just talked about it.
Speaker 2:Tasia, my daughter, my youngest, my youngest generation Z and we've had this conversation. I said I respect the fact that you guys, I believe firmly in anything. You can't change what you don't acknowledge. So you do have to acknowledge our missteps and what we got it wrong so we can fix it. I get it. But you know, when I hear younger generation say you know those boomers, you know they destroy, you know the environment, those boomers, they destroyed this boomer, boomer, boomer, and I was like but for the grace of God, go. I, first of all, we all have our hand in this. And before I get too deep and go down my diet, trevor, I just Are you okay with it? Yeah, it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 1:I mean, as you could probably guess, there are some things that I'm going to try to.
Speaker 2:Put a different spin on. So that's fine. But I want to take this back to perch and for those of you who are watching perch the first time and say what is this podcast? Perch is an acronym, Perch. It says pause, evaluate, response to circumvent harm. To circumvent harm.
Speaker 2:This is a great perch topic. This is a topic where I think, in order for us to even not that we're going to resolve this issue today, but we really are going to have to pause and evaluate our responses to circumvent harm. Because what I said to her is I said some of the issues and we're going to get into it, because I have a lot of my notes come from Scott, Scott Galloway. Um, and I'll tell you he's Scott Galloway, as a professor at the university um, um of New York, but he has a book out and a New York times bestseller is the algebra of wealth, and he he makes the claim how, um, we're coming into the biggest transfer of wealth in American history, with over 73 million baby boomers retiring and all of that Social Security and all of these things are going to go to, you know, some of the most well-off generation ever before. I have my own data on that, but that's where I am to start.
Speaker 1:I got a lot I want to get into. I just want to make sure we flow together yeah no, and there's a lot of pieces and a lot of ways to go at this one and, as I try to typically do, there's some data that I wanted to just put together out there, because one of the fallacies is that Generation X, gen X don't make as much money as boomers did.
Speaker 2:Gen X and the millennials and millennials yeah, and that's actually not true.
Speaker 1:One of the other interesting fallacies is that Gen X and millennials are much more educated, so they tend to value education higher than than previous generation. Now the question is whether that's because of the availability of education or the need for education. But the younger generations do covet education. Now that brings up a whole new challenge about. Look at the cost of education. Cost of education is absolutely skyrocketed through the years of education has absolutely skyrocketed through the years, and Scott makes a pretty violent argument around the fact that a lot of this is just self-gratification.
Speaker 1:He brings up in one of his videos, which we'll put a link to, I guess, on the website, about the fact that Harvard is no longer an educational institution. It's basically a hedge fund, and they've made the case now that during COVID and this is to me it's really offensive Harvard took the high line during COVID and said we're high and mighty and we're not going to even have classes because we're worried about the education and the health of our students. The reality is Harvard makes more money from its endowments than it does from its enrollments. Think about that for a second. Let that sink in. Harvard doesn't make money educating your kids. They make money on the endowments of the kids once they get out of college and give money to the university. And the university has tens of millions, if not billions, of dollars Look it up in their endowment. And they're not alone. I'm not going after Harvard alone, but it's no longer a case where many of our higher institutions are in the business of educating students.
Speaker 2:And this really came home to me. Yeah, I really rattled about that.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a racket. And now, if you look at a lot of the state colleges, they stayed open, and some of the people in the press and some of the higher educational institutions criticize the state universities. But there's something funny about the state universities they're actually educating. They're not more concerned with endowments and just growing an endowment fund. So education as a whole needs to be overwritten and hopefully at some point we'll do a perch on it, because I think, frankly, education is becoming one of those things that everybody should have a right to, and I'm a firm believer that some version of higher education, whether that's a state university or a community college, should be free for any, for any student who has the grades.
Speaker 2:But I think that Scott Galloway made another great point. He says a lot of things I agree with, but where I disagree, I strongly disagree. And that's fine with all the title to opinion. But he said and this goes back to what you were saying in reference to education he's like. The problem is, he said, stop telling children to find their passion.
Speaker 2:He goes says find your talent over passion. He goes says find your talent over passion. And it's a very valid point to make, because if you find a thing that you're talented at, the chances are you definitely be more financially sound. The chances are, if you're so talented that then you get rewarded and be a financial but it will give you a reward to. It sometimes becomes your passion because I'm so good at this. I found a thing that I'm so good at that there is a need for and it was like, and if we based our education off that, then the trades and other industries will be more expansive. Because I'm good at being a plumber, or I'm good at you know electrical, whatever it is, electrical, whatever it is, it's necessarily being talent to need base as opposed to just you know, this is my passion and it gives me, you know, fulfillment. I hate to to bring up a sour note, but bill cosby hopefully no one- got triggered by that name.
Speaker 2:But bill cosby did a show and, and and it was so poignant to this message where, you know, here he is a doctor and his wife on the show as a lawyer. And then when they, kids, start finding themselves, you know they, like his daughter, went to africa and she said you know what? I was out there with the wildebeest and I want to go to Africa with the lake. How are you?
Speaker 1:OK, because I'm passionate about that.
Speaker 2:But what are you going to do? And then she was trying to figure out how to create a business in the jungle. It was ridiculous.
Speaker 1:But you know what. You bring up an interesting point. I mean when, again, as we talked about, I'm a cusp boomer. So I grew up with parents who worked 12 hour days. My father worked, my mother didn't that was kind of the makeup of the families in the 70s and perhaps 80s, and so I grew up watching my dad work these long days and that was part of my upbringing.
Speaker 1:So, and I was always taught that you had a job and a job wasn't supposed to be fun, it was supposed to be a job that's why it's a four letter word called work and that you had things you enjoy playing with. And you know, so I would play baseball on the side and I would do this on the side, and I'd bike ride on the side and I'd do photography on the side. But those weren't careers. You had to have a job and you had to make money. And I'm not saying that's right, but that was the mantra back then. And I think what's happened over time and I'm not passing judgment but now people have blurred those and they've said I really like playing computer games, so I'm going to do that for a job and you're like, hold on a second Can you really make enough money.
Speaker 2:So you will say, yes, you can. But that was a great lob to set me up to say this. This is a very important moment and I'm hoping it's an aha for both generations. I think we fail to realize that we all sit on a different perch. And what a perch is for people who don't understand me using that a perch is my belief is everyone on this planet sits on a perch and, depending on what you've been exposed to, what you've been able to see and experience, the more you get to travel and have experiences and meet with different cultures, your perch gets higher and higher and higher, because the way you see it becomes different. Then you won't be so jaded when you make stands about poor when you've never been poor in a day in your life, or you make stands about the rich when you've never lived that experience as well. So, using that same analogy, stay with me the youth sits on a youthful perch and some of them have bigger exposure. But the older you get not always, but a lot of times you are exposed more. You've lived a little longer. You've had more experience. You've dealt with life and death experiences. Some of us are blessed to travel more. So our perch and our view is different. Where we don't give each other the grace and I think this is part of the issue with the great divide on the war on the young and the war on the old is the youth sometimes find it difficult. So let me let me back it up.
Speaker 2:The older generation, my generation, your generation, older generations, because we came from that background where we saw our parents work and work, and work, and that's the way they show love. I provide, I provide, work, I provide, and we don't shame them because they did what they were taught to do. What our generation failed to realize is we pass, we double talk, so we lie to our children. So we told our children you know, I want you to relax, I don't want you to have to work as hard as I do, I don't want you to have to suffer as much. So we gave them those things. But what we didn't realize when we gave them those things, what the generation, what that generation did is listen. And so that generation said what that generation did is listen. And so that generation said and I had to tell this to my daughter today I said that generation was the first generation of millennials in Generation Z to create what's called work-life balance.
Speaker 2:So they said okay, you're right, I saw how hard mom worked, I saw how hard dad worked. And they said you know that wasn't balanced for them. So I'm going to create balance. And when they did that, our generation complained about it and said you're lazy, look at you you don't want to work, you just want to.
Speaker 2:What's this work-life balance? So, if we can look for edit from that perch to say we all have a hand to play in this, because the youth in turn didn't give the generations before them the grace to say to see, you can ask for work life balance and you can demand it and you can have all things because we paid the price for you to have that luxury.
Speaker 1:But is it, I mean, one of the things I read? Really, I think that was profound.
Speaker 2:I think we should pause right there. All right.
Speaker 1:Ok, now pause Great, All right so when we talk about work-life balance, I mean, that is a concept that really wasn't really even used back when I was starting Foreign foreign. And it was you work hard, you work hard, you work hard.
Speaker 2:We've talked about it and work harder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in other podcasts you know you stayed at the same job for 5, 10, 15 years, otherwise you're considered a job hopper. I mean, and today we've got you know these terms like quiet quitting, we've got people with side gigs, we've got all of these things going on that are so antithetical.
Speaker 2:I heard today something a new term it's like vacation, sitting Like vacation, work, vacation work something, something where you like vacation and work in the same time like you're not really working you, your job, is now your vacation and part of it is a personal thing.
Speaker 1:I've worked for 40 years of my life and I'm getting to. You know, I'm on the back nine here and I'm looking to start slowing down. And I look at people that are younger than me, who are working even slower than I am. I'm like, wait a minute, you didn't put in your dues. And I mean, and that's my mistake, that's my fault, I have to live with that and that's something I have to get past.
Speaker 1:But to me there's such a change in terms of what we expect out of life and I think, quite candidly, it's probably for the better. You know, fewer people having heart attacks at younger age. People worry about their health more. There is a greater concentration on quality of life.
Speaker 1:But one thing that came to me and I thought about this because I was reading an article about a teacher he's an English teacher in Japan and somebody asked and said hey, would you recommend this as a career vocation? I really I'd love to go to Japan, I'd love to teach English. And his comments were so poignant, it took me back to my childhood days and the person said sure, you can come on over, but don't expect to make a living wage teaching English in Japan, as if that was an assumption. So here's an educated person who's got at least four years of college, perhaps eight and saying, oh, but you're not going to make a living wage teaching this.
Speaker 1:And I thought to myself we complain here that somebody working at Burger King can't make a living wage. But here's a person who's got at least eight years of college education saying, oh, you can't expect to make a living wage teaching English in Japan. He talked about the fact that the average person works 14-hour days in Japan. The manager you know it's an open office, so everybody sees everybody. You know there's a high level of stress and people have stress-related illnesses. And it just threw me back to the days of when my dad was growing up. And so I think part of the challenge is we've become I'll use the term, and it's a bad term we've become a little soft about what our expectations are in terms of a quality of life here.
Speaker 2:But yet these other countries that turn around say, well, you can't expect to live on that wage, but that was interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, why do you say we become a little soft? Because there's an expectation that every job in our economy you should be able to live on and yet here's a case in Japan where a educated person, a teacher, can't live on that wage.
Speaker 2:So let's have real conversation though, because at one point that Scott Galloway and I don't want to keep making this about him, but a lot of the reference for today came from him he made. That I definitely agree with for those people who have an issue with minimum wage because you didn't say that that directly, but that's where I'm going For those people who have an issue with minimum wage getting $15, $20 or whatever it is. The actual fact is, have we not been so Okay? I got to put this more loving. It was coming out another way.
Speaker 2:The fact is, have we adjusted the minimum wage according to, like we did, everything else in corporate America and across America, how we adjusted to the living wages at the time and not feel the need to say see this as a class that wasn't entitled to any adjustment? Had it changed with the actual inflation rate, we would have been there anyway and everything else did but minimum wage. So what does that say? So we decided as a nation because we're all in this together, whether we like it or not when we vote and we get what we get, but we're one nation. So when we decided to have minimum wage not adjust with current inflation, we had a huge catch up to do.
Speaker 1:We have never adjusted with no, it hasn't.
Speaker 2:And they have the numbers and I think I had it here somewhere and I'll pull it up in my notes. But we were stagnant for almost a decade where it was so far behind the trend line. So, even though you know, now we're looking at places like you bring up California and other places in the past and previous podcast people are freaking out because now they say, well, we can't afford to pay $15 for a burger. Well, we can't afford to pay for all of this. We can, we just have not adjusted.
Speaker 1:It's a wake up call, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, so I just wanted to call that out.
Speaker 1:And unfortunately it tends to negatively affect certain industries. One that we're obviously very close to, I mean the restaurant industry in general, is being, I think, very much targeted by this, because if you look at an industry that has a lot of minimum wage employees, it would be the restaurant industry. So I think this is kind of the perfect storm for the restaurant industry. You know, coming out of COVID, you know we had all of these supply chain issues. Again, we're not talking about the restaurant industry in general, but they seem to be very adversely affected by this.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that- but even that though, and I get it, and full disclosure, I'm a former restaurant owner, and get it. And, and full disclosure, I'm a former restaurant owner, and so I, if anybody has an affinity for restaurant owners, I do in the work that they do, I definitely do. However, these corporations and and he makes the point too um, and the algebra of of wealth, these corporations. We have to be able to speak truth to power, because it's easy to pick on a little guy. That's what we do. That's how we got in a state with minimum wage, because you're talking about poor people, so it's easy to to punish poor people, because most of the time, those are the voices that are less heard. We won't take on corporations.
Speaker 2:And when he goes on to say some of the biggest corporation paid no taxes and some that did pay taxes one or two percent, the biggest corporation paid no taxes and some that did pay taxes one or two percent, that's shameful. But where do we get a society where we celebrate you know, where we celebrate capitalism by making capital like? We literally turn around and say when we have allowed corporations? We are seeing it all across america. Corporations are cutting staff left and right, and not that they haven't turned a profit, but they do it because that's what turns the needle when it comes down to Wall Street, because Wall Street wants to show that you made an adjustment so you didn't make the money that you wanted to make. So you cut people, which adversely affects the economy, because these people keep the economy going, just so you make a profit, and so all of this is connected.
Speaker 1:But so we can't talk about, you know, the young people and money, and we had so much we barely know, in terms of, as it relates to Wall Street, that one of the articles I read said that more millennials and Gen Xs are involved with wealth in terms of stock market than they are in terms of holdings like housing. And I know in the next section here, the next half of this podcast, we're going to talk a little bit about just not only why houses are no longer affordable.
Speaker 2:Oh my God that's what I have. Exactly I promise you, that's what I have, exactly.
Speaker 1:I promise you, that's what.
Speaker 1:I have, I mean it's just the gap and the divide between income has moved up. I mean, there's clear indication that income has moved up through the years, but the gap, the ratio of affordability, the affordability index, has reached the point where things like homeownership, unfortunately right now in many cases are unattainable for the young people. So in the next section we want to talk about some of that. The fact that while income has increased, there have been some extenuating circumstances. Almost the perfect storm has occurred over the last 10 years.
Speaker 2:What I'll tell you. You guys definitely want to tune in to see this. These numbers are staggering and it's shocking.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you have and what information you have. I know what I have, but I'm sorry time went so fast. We didn't get much. I feel like we just started talking.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go. So on the next piece, we'll talk a little bit about the affordability index. We'll give you our thoughts in terms of maybe some ways to solve this. It's not an easy problem and it's not going to happen overnight. It didn't happen overnight. It's not going to be resolved overnight, but hopefully, with people kind of stop pointing fingers and trying to place blame, maybe we can come up with some solutions that in the long term, will work. And unfortunately, some of it's political, so we've got to get our politicians talking together as well. So, anyway, we'll reach you on the other side.
Speaker 2:But before we go, this is what I will ask for us all to perch on in this moment, because we packed a lot in in a short period of time and want to say you know, it doesn't matter which generation we're in, it doesn't matter where we came and we're here, the the fact is, we're all here, we're all on this planet, um, and it's an elephant?
Speaker 2:no I'm serious yeah, seriously, I mean because I do. I mean I don't like it, I don't like it. I mean I love the youth and I was raised to respect my elders, so I love everyone, I love every generation and we all have something to give and we all have something to add. So we just need to come with open ears and open hearts, respect each other's struggle, respect each other's perch, try to understand it. You know and you know and see each other from the perch that we sit on until we meet again. Take care.
