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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  12d ago (text post)   392 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for April 8, 2025

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I've started cooking up this idea in my head for a non-fiction book that deals with the growing generational divide in Canada, which is playing out largely the same way as it is in the US and other Western nations.

The idea is to delve into different dimensions of the divide with both lots of stats and lots of opinion, building up a cohesive framework for thinking about the issue that ultimately lends itself to political solutions. I have a stats and data visualization background and I think my book would be heavy on charts. I envision having case studies in each chapter of other countries that provide examples of either how bad the issue can get, or how to deal with the issue effectively.

I would appreciate any feedback, particularly if anyone has any suggestions for background reading, case studies, prior art, or helpful stats and research. Cheers!

Part 1 - Problems

Education and skills:
  • Test scores are plummetting, we can no longer blame COVID
  • I've heard enough war stories from high school teachers to know that kids are just not as capable or interested in learning anymore.
  • Ask the teachers why not? Mostly, phone addiction, but also just generally lower standards of conduct and a lack of optimism for the future
  • Outside of school, I have a strong hypothesis that kids these days are shittier drivers, can't mend a fence, can't do their taxes, etc. and would like to tell this story through stats
Housing:
  • Enough has been said on this topic already in our national conversation that people are highly aware of the issues. Highlighting the generational aspects is still not done enough however.
  • Home ownership has created two classes of people within our society
  • Home owners are generally older and there are enough to form a voting cadre to dominate our political system. Falling fertility and lower rates of immigrant home ownership means it will stay this way for a long time (can run some numbers).
  • This cadre has appropriated our government's fiscal policy to enrich themselves for a long time and every election is full of campaign promises to give more money to potential homebuyers, thus inflating their asset value while doing little to create more supply. At the same time, our central bank treats them as "too big to fail" now and this influences monetary policy. So non-homeowners are doubly screwed.
  • Membership in the homeowning elite is highly correlated with your age group, so this is a huge generational divide.
  • Hardly needs mentioning anymore that high levels of immigration contribute to the problem.
The economy (big section):
  • Youth unemployment rates are high and currently skyrocketing
  • Immigrants compete in particular with Gen Z/Millenials for unskilled/entry level jobs, while Boomers/Gen X are safe in their managerial roles
  • Older folks own their businesses, have equity in their employers, or have pseudo equity through managerial oversight of P&L statements. They represent the capital side of the equation, while youth and immigrants represent the labour.
  • The economy has grown while capital has kicked labour's ass for the last 40-50 years, leading to the unprecedented wealth of boomers.
  • Low-skilled union jobs that young people used to get have been hollowed out by foreign industry through free trade policy.
  • All future growth now seems to be predicated on AI. But AI represents the penultimate triumph of capital over labour. There is nothing coming to replace our current set of career paths that are gateways into the PMC.
  • Robotics may represent the ultimate triumph of capital over labour and take away the remaining trades jobs.
  • Kids can't all just be influencers that produce nothing, they will be turned into an underclass. We also tried paying people to do nothing during COVID and our version of UBI just ended up in declining well-being and mental health.
Pensions/entitlements:
  • Pensions including Canada Pension Plan were set up on an idea of a good ratio of workers to retirees as well as economic growth above inflation.
  • CPP for instance used to just invest in government bonds, that gave them enough yield. Now they're putting more on the line by diversifying into risky investments. This is predicating their success on a different kind of growth (capital markets), which may not pan out.
  • Pensions are at risk of being underfunded and imploding one day. This is a total breach of the contract that says "We will take 5% of your paycheck and sock it away so you can collect a pension check in the future" and turns it into just a wealth transfer tax from workers to retirees.
  • Old Age Security and other government entitlements are also unsustainable financially. Rich boomers inexplicably get a check every month just for being old; this has been part of the national conversation lately.
Healthcare:
  • Healthcare systems require two things: funding & staffing.
  • Funding is predicated on economic growth. Funding rates are subject to political whims by province, are not institutionalized by say tying to GDP growth or projected demand.
  • Staffing is done by young, educated, motivated doctors, nurses, and admin/support staff. Doctors in particular need to sacrifice 20 years of their lives in education to delay the gratification of helping people & making good money. We are fast losing the types of kids who can or want to be doctors.
  • Our ageing population is piling more burden onto the system each year.
  • The result is the current predictable implosion of our healthcare system. There will be nothing left once younger folks are old enough to need lots of medical attention. There is already little left if you have a problem as a working-age individual, age is not (perhaps rightfully so, perhaps not) a factor in determining your place in line.
National debt:
  • Governments are supposed to run deficits to invest in projects and programs with good enough ROI in the form of economic growth to pay for themselves through tax revenue.
  • Our governments, particularly since 2015, have instead ran huge deficits just to spend it on social programs that have no hope of ROI while taking economic growth for granted. Many of these social programs benefit older folks disproportionately (I have a hunch it would come out clearly in the numbers. also see housing, pensions, medical). Long term infrastructure is often neglected.
  • Wasting money in this form is ultimately just borrowing from the kids' futures so Grandpa & Grandma can build a nice patio.
The burden of military service:
  • Militaries need lots of 17-30 year olds, increasingly so due to current geopolitics
  • Immigration does little to help because most immigrants in our system are being brought here purely for their educational qualifications. We have opened up eligibility to PRs (green card holders), many are interested and are joining the Reserve Force, but the numbers are small potatoes.
  • Most of our valuable Regular Force recruits come from rural heartlands in the Prairies, Ontario, Atlantic Canada, and Québec. These guys are a dying breed because of low fertility rates.
  • It would be easy to project the numbers out and show that an unrealistically large percentage of Gen Z is going to have to serve.
  • Meanwhile, Gen Z is the latest "least fit generation ever" and less patriotic and interested in serving than previous generations.
The environment and natural resources:
  • I don't need to say much about climate change. It's an obvious point but worth mentioning that climate change is a problem caused by older folks that hits younger folks the hardest.
  • I would like to go into specific, more tangible cases here and ones that are easier to think about solutions to. E.g. less opportunities and space for fishing, hunting, national parks, etc. for younger folks that older folks got to enjoy in their time. Our natural spaces, clean air, clean water, etc. are a legacy that needs to be preserved and handed down.
  • Resource exploitation is how the older generations made this country one of the wealthiest on the planet, at one point. Now that the older generations are sitting on that wealth, we have decided we will no longer exploit our natural resources, taking this opportunity from our young people.
  • A great case study that comes to mind is the 1992 cod moratorium. In the Atlantic, we once had a big cod fishery and nearly killed off the population through mismanagement, leading the government to ban this industry in 1992. This basically led to a lost generation where all the young people had to leave Atlantic Canada to find work and Atlantic Canada especially Newfoundland has never recovered.
Culture:
  • Film, TV, and music are built around celebrities that are all getting old. There are fewer opportunities for young people than there were.
  • I have a weak hypothesis that other forms of media (books, radio, etc.) are being gatekept by older folks as well. This is probably at least partially because young people consume them less.
  • Young people instead create their culture inside social media, with memes, TikTok videos, etc. This is a shitty excuse for a culture industry and is having negative effects on our values.
Mental health & optimism for the future:
  • Kids are reporting plummeting well-being and mental health, suicide rates, attempts, and self-harm rates are up.
  • Lots has been said on this topic, especially with regards to social media
  • Another (anecdotal) aspect is optimism for the future: why try, better yourself, put yourself out there, etc. if the future is so bleak? Maybe there is data to corroborate this way of viewing mental health
Politics:
  • Younger people have become more radicalized in their views. See the extreme right, extreme left and their popularity on social media/YouTube.
  • IMO more moderate views is what happens when people get together and have political discourse through more local means, e.g. town halls, party politics. You're more likely to make a compromise with a neighbour who you can't cast as a far away member of some outgroup.
  • Younger people in general are less likely to vote, less likely to become involved in party politics, attend town halls, watch debates, etc. Old people dominate these discussions.
  • Here in Canada we don't have the same level of gerontocracy as in the US, but in general politicians themselves skew older (data needed).

Part 2 - Solutions

The economy
  • Exact proportional, credible tariffs. Make the rate commensurate somehow with the negative impact on employment for young/working class Canadians.
  • Enact broader industrial policy to protect industries that are crucial for our national sovereignty. E.g. we should have our own parallel IT sector (including AI companies) to not be so dependent on the US. This will create a tonne of jobs for bright young people.
  • Bring in foreign investment to build things/make things here. Do this by removing punitive taxes, reducing red tape, and in general creating a friendlier more stable climate for business.
  • Bring back Canadian capital to be invested in our own economy. Boomer wealth has fled to other parts of the world with cheaper labour in search of returns. Bring it home through incentives, plus mandate that public pension funds need to invest more at home.
  • Create an abundance of cheap energy, which is a crucial input to manufacturing, building, etc. Do this by resurrecting our once-exceptional nuclear industry.
Immigration policy
  • Immigration can provide relief to certain demographic problems. But immigration is essentially outsourcing childhood to other countries. This itself is a source of intergenerational tension.
  • Enact a reasonable immigration policy that brings people in with valuable skills and respects the capacity of our country's resources (housing, healthcare, etc.). Otherwise young people become victims.
  • Kill the Temporary Foreign Worker program for low-skilled areas.
The environment and resources
  • Balance environmental conservation with creating job opportunities for young people. Recognize that draconian policy on climate change is just an extremely costly form of virtue signalling without cooperation from the rest of the world (which increasingly, there isn't).
Housing
  • Remove red tape, push back zoning restrictions (already part of the current conversation)
  • Bring back wartime government home-building programs (being talked about, probably will be done).
  • Tax land value only and not building value (i.e. Georgism). This will improve the economics for building more density.
  • Build new cities away from NIMBYs. Draw people away from the big cities with special tax incentives, government employment, and highly accommodative policy towards potential private employers.
Education
  • Expand the trades, entrepreneurship/project-based learning, and other paths rather than pushing everyone towards book learning and a university degree they won't use.
  • Greater emphasis on life skills, fitness, civics, etc. (I got very little of this in my high school years)
  • Mandate that a large majority of positions in Canadian universities go to Canadian kids. Foreign students should largely be limited to elite schools and programs, instead we have the opposite happening with degree mills.
Retirement
  • If pensions are underfunded, decrease entitlements instead of taxing workers who may never get their turn to collect if the system falls apart.
  • Seniors should be willing to take a lifestyle hit to take care of the young, if not, they're shitty elders.
  • Less handouts (such as OAS) for old people who are already wealthy.
Healthcare
  • Prioritize the young, prioritize preventative care (again, think ROI)
  • Keep MAID/euthanasia, it's a good idea when it's not pushed on people
  • Expand doctor training capacity. Create a corps of doctors that pays medical students a working wage while they are training, as an incentive and to open the opportunity up to more socioeconomic backgrounds.
Fiscal policy
  • Stop deficit spending to fund social expenditures. Make it illegal, even.
  • The government should step up in building infrastructure projects that are justified in terms of economic growth/ROI.
National service
  • Bring in mandatory national service for young people. This could be in the military but also in other organizations. Force them out of their comfort zones and into new places and areas of their community. This is a nation-building exercise.
  • Youth unemployment is high, think of it also as a jobs and skills program.
Social media & culture
  • Ban social media under a certain age.
  • Ban TikTok outright

Part 3 - Call to action (written towards Gen Z)

  • Stop doomscrolling, touch grass. Think critically about media. Don't get all your info from foreign psy ops.
  • Organize locally. Become involved in your community. Talk to and become friends with people you disagree with.
  • Find a way to give back and render service. It could be helping your family, someone in your community, or even serving your country. It will change your perspective.
  • Aspire to have kids. Aspire to create a child-friendly society. Aspire to raise the next generation well. It's the best thing you could ever do with your life.
  • Basically, get fucking involved in politics. This is a pre-requisite to changing policy. If Gen Z and Millenials were to band together, we could have any kind of society we wanted for us an future generations. It starts with us, right now.

Can I just give some honest feedback, and you take it with a massive grain of salt because I'm just a random anon.

While I agree that most of your theories are true, I extremely disagree with the approach "here is what my theseses will be, and I'll add a bunch of case studies (anecdotes) and data that supports them".

You literally have a detailed plan, chapter by chapter, on what your book will argue. Why then collect data at all? Why bother interviewing people? You already know what you're saying, no?

But you want to add data and charts because you see them as effective weapons in persuading people.

I feel like if that's the starting point of your book, the absolute best case scenario is that it ends up being yet another airport book + ted talk. It will not be actually new, fresh, and practically influential, because you have arrived at your conclusions by normal life and passive media consumption - I'm sure you're smart/observant/analytical, but you need to actually be open to any conclusion before seeing the data and talking to the actual people.

Like this one:

Organize locally. Become involved in your community. Talk to and become friends with people you disagree with.

It sounds nice, but if you think about it...

What does that even mean? Have you seen teens lately? They're barely literate phone zombies. What does it even mean for them to "organize locally"? Organize to do what? What community? There is no community, cities are just a big pile of strangers that don't make eye contact very much.

Do it.

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