By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

EDITOR’S WARNING!!

CAUTION: The following article contains generalizations. They are valid ones and not hasty, but THE PLANET realizes that in this age of political correctness, words can incapacitate the ability of a small but loud minority to entertain thoughts deeper than Kim Kardashian. We do not apologize for any hurt feelings.

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 3, 2014) — They all have smartphones. However, they themselves aren’t so. Smart, that is, if we define intelligence as the capacity to see things as they are.

You’ve seen him, that 30-year-old self-obsessed under-achiever who thinks he has the work ethic of a prisoner in a labor camp but who spends most of his time in the cubicle texting, net-surfing, and taking credit for work he didn’t do. You’ve seen her, too, the 27-year-old precious princess who malingers through her day on latte mocha lazy-ola. She got the job because her daddy pulled strings. She loves herself.

They are the millennials, young people defined demographically as those between the ages of 19 and 34, also known as Generation Y. A “Life Style Study” released by DDB U.S., a marketing firm, confirmed what the mounting mass of evidence shows: Millennials are the laziest generation and yet the one most likely to see work as a source of great personal fulfillment. The study explains this apparent contradiction by pointing out that compared to Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers, millennials haven’t had enough adult experiences to discover that for most of us, the greatest satisfaction comes in intimate personal relations.

Perpetual Adolescence, but Armed and Dangerous

It is a generation locked into the strangest form of adolescence anyone has ever seen: emotionally immature yet endowed by “smart” technology with frightening (although virtual) power. Gen Y doesn’t know it, but they have already been bought and sold by Big Data, making them the first so-captured captive.

CNBC, in a report on the study, put it bluntly: “That millennial you’re working with may be a jerk.”

They are the ones who have always been told they were great. Their kindergarten finger paintings rivaled Picasso. Their finger jabbing at the piano, they were told, would make the world forget about Mozart. They were the first generation where everyone made the team, everyone played, and at the awards banquet, everyone received a trophy.

Now they are hitting the workplace. Unfortunately for America’s global competitiveness, Gen Y has brought its slacking entitlement into Job 1. “Y”s are digital natives raised on bits and bytes and programmed to be reactive about life. They wait for instructions. They have no attention spans. They need “adults” to organize for them. They push buttons and expect instant change.

For all the facile pop sociology and psychology written by Gen Y about how Gen Y is shaping the workplace, the reality is that these slackers are forcing employers into “some of the biggest management challenges they’ve ever encountered” (huffingtonpost.com). That’s a polite way of saying that the millennial in the cubicle next to you will not give loyalty to anyone but himself — that’s what a lifetime of coddling spoiled brats will do. The brats lack people skills and possess a positively toxic combination of being unable to grasp strategic thinking (where short-term gains are often sacrificed for long-term advantages) while at the same time thinking every idea they have is akin the squaring the circle.

Losing the Global Economic Competition

Pew Research notes that Gen Y and its inhabitants are “unmoored from institutions”  (huffingtonpost.com). That’s a polite way to say they don’t give a crud about anything but themselves. They will find, however, that most enlightened companies won’t ]give a squat about such facile navel-gazing. Those companies will either alienate its Gen Y workers by failing to adapt its management techniques or, some say, even worse,  some will adapt. Then it’s “kiss it goodbye” for the simple reason that America will lose the productivity battle, the current gold standard for world-market success.

Competing and winning in the global marketplace is about three things:

1.) Improve quality

2.) Increase productivity

3.) Do it at a lower cost.

There is, after all, a reason why on many key metrics, China has replaced the U.S. as the world’s #1 economy.

The end result will be the continuing fall of America in the global marketplace. If you want to know who will rule the present-started future, look east. Three of every four doctorates in science, engineering, high tech, or other “hard” fields last year were earned in the Pacific Rim.

The dismal performances worldwide of the broken U.S. public school system has finally hit the marketplace with Gen Y, and the results will be catastrophic.

Given the inverse relationship between how much money we as a society have poured into public education since Ed Reform came to the state in 1993 and the concomitant and continuing decline of the product of those same schools, this is as local an issue as you can get. This is especially true considering that The Suits in Pittsfield have made up their minds to destroy the last remnants of the middle class in the city by building a $130 million new high school when neither enrollment nor performance warrants that investment. Only one of 17 members of the School Building Needs Commission had the combination of intelligence and intestinal fortitude to tell the truth about this ruinous project. Chuck Vincelette, The Man from Mensa, was the lone conscientious objector in this declared war on Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski, the bedraggled Pittsfield taxpayers.

Chuck, are you interested in running for mayor?

THE PLANET is not worried, however, since our generation will use up all that’s left of Social Security and Medicare. We timed it right. Gen Y will have a lot of growing up to do and right quick. It won’t happen, of course, and it pleases us. We are set. As Plan B, we heartily recommend a careful reading of Jonathan Swift‘s “A Modest Proposal.”

We understand that baby flesh is delicious, mild and succulent, out-vealing veal.

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“Be not sad because all men / Prefer a lying clamor before you: / Sweetheart, be at peace again — / Can they dishonor you? // They are sadder than all tears; / Their lives ascend as a continual sigh. / Proudly answer to their tears: / As they deny, deny.” — James Joyce, poem “Be Not Sad,” from the collection Chamber Music, (1905).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.