Unexpected Wealth
Andy Crouch
October 1, 1998
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Back when Douglas Coupland still was willing to say the words "Generation X," when grunge ruled and Starbucks was a Seattle coffeeshop, we Xers were handed the perfect metanarrative to underwrite our cynical suspicion of life. We, the economists intoned, were never going to do as well as our parents. It was the early '90s, and about all there was for college graduates was a selection of uniformly unappealing McJobs. The Boomers were taking the workforce by storm and leaving few crumbs under the table. We were doomed to be "Clerks," contributing our soaring social security payments to fund their retirement. While all this financial doom-and-gloom was, well, gloomy, it had its advantages. Free from the oppressive upward mobility of the American Dream, Xers would be able to see through the vapid consumerism of our predecessors, reject the "branding" of corporate America, forge a more authentic life out of $1.99 Urban Outfitters basement specials and home-rolled cigarettes, and suck the marrow out of life. The future was, if not bright, at least intense. Er, right. It hasn't exactly worked out that way, for a simple reason: We're making too much money. After all, in 1992, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was idling around 3300. The World Wide Web was known only to computer science majors. Since then, those two forces alone have brought untold economic opportunities to Xers, who were disproportionately more invested in the stock market than their parents, and who had the tech savvy to jump into the biggest frontier to be opened up since the railroads. Even for those who weren't into stocks or html, the rising economic tide has floated a lot of boats. Not everyone's, of course—I can see my email box ...
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