At this point, nobody doubts that 30-year-old Americans are financially screwed. The questions now are just how screwed they are, and for how long, and why. Last week, the Center for American Progress released data showing that, during the period of massive economic expansion between 1984 and 2014, the wages of 30-year-old Americans have more or less stayed the same. The state of young people in the developed world is, according to analysis from a new series on The Guardian, "the first time in industrialised history, save for periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have fallen so far when compared with the rest of society." (Note: Various British-isms follow throughout this piece on account of the data. Sorry.) This crisis is, by now, well-established and ongoing. It will have consequences on the earning potential of current 30-year-olds for the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately, the disaster brewing for the current 30-and-under cohort is much worse even than it looks. Just in time for millennials to enter their most productive years, work as we know it is going to disappear.

A 2013 U.K. study on the future of employment asked the question "How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?" The answer should be chilling to anyone who is planning on earning a living in the near-to-mid-future: "According to our estimates, about 47 percent of total U.S. employment is at risk... Wages and educational attainment exhibit a strong negative relationship with an occupation's probability of computerisation." So even if a computer doesn't take your job, it will make it a lot harder to make a living doing whatever it is you do. You will need to have more education to find that job in the first place, too.

This information is not new, either. But a study released today by the Pew Research Center shows how unprepared we are. Everybody knows that an automated world is coming, but nobody thinks they have to prepare for it. From the report:

Fully 65 percent of Americans expect that within 50 years robots and computers will "definitely" or "probably" do much of the work currently done by humans. Yet even as many Americans expect that machines will take over a great deal of human employment, an even larger share (80 percent) expect that their own jobs or professions will remain largely unchanged and exist in their current forms 50 years from now.

In short, in the world of work, the American people, including its 30-year-olds, are living in the realm of magical thinking. The fundamental nature of employment is about to change, but everybody personally thinks he or she is going to be fine.

What is so distressing about this research is that it shows how unwilling we are to confront, much less deal with, the incipient crisis that the vast technological revolution is bringing with it. "The situation is tough for young people," Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, told The Guardian. "This is a problem we must address now urgently." The financial crisis that is facing young people is systemic and will require the kind of bold thinking that our political and economic leaders are determined to avoid.

Only the most extreme ideas, like a Guaranteed Basic Income, even address the situation, but needless to say, no one even remotely close to power in the United States so much as toys with such ideas. Inertia is the dominant political spirit, from both left and right. Letting things happen led to the current state of the 30-year-old set, of course. Fifty years from now, we won't have to guess why they will be broker, at 80, than any generation that came before them. We'll have already known the answer for 50 years.

Stephen Marche Stephen Marche is a novelist who writes a monthly column for Esquire magazine about culture.

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