From: nebusj-@-rpi-.edu   
      
   allbell@vnet.net writes:   
      
   >People born from about 1965 to about 1970 had about 25 years of Cold   
   >War and stories about how we would all end up living in bomb shelters   
   >scavenging for canned goods in supermarket ruins.   
      
   	There was plenty of fear and worry going around for those in the   
   early 70s too.  Though it does occur to me that that fine old question   
   you asked years ago -- is Conan's appeal more to 20-to-40 year olds, or   
   is it more to people born 1960 to 1980 -- is very near being able to be   
   pretty convincingly answered.   
      
      
   > Then about 7 good   
   >years of joy and optimism that coincided, oddly enough, almost exactly   
   >with the time Andy Richter spent as Conan's sidekick. Then Andy left,   
   >and bam, the stock market tanked.   
      
   	Oh, now, see, it's such a pity that with the AOL pullout we don't   
   have Kansan anymore, because I'd love to see if he could explain anything   
   useful by considering the career of Andy Richter and how often he met up   
   with Heidi Klum on any purpose.   
      
      
   >Then, bam, 16 months later, GenXers   
   >now have the joy of looking forward to old age in A) a world of   
   >gradually increasing poverty, in which we starve quietly on the street   
   >or in miserable rooms as we try to get by without health care, or  B) a   
   > world in which global warming has destroyed civilization as we now   
   >know it and given us the opportunity to scavenge for canned goods in   
   >supermarket ruins . . .   
      
   	Actually -- and James Nicoll, resident master of rec.arts.sf.written   
   has gone on about this a good amount -- if one studies the actual track   
   record of human beings, and of resources available, there's not much   
   reason to expect the future won't be one of increasing prosperity for   
   much of the world.  That's not to say there won't still be relative   
   poverty in much of the world, and not to say that there won't be trauma   
   for (for example) people whose manufacturing jobs disappear to places   
   with lower production costs, now that transportation costs have collapsed   
   so thoroughly.   
      
   	But, somehow, the United States (for example) has lost almost all   
   the agricultural jobs it had a century ago, and a huge fraction of the   
   manufacturing jobs it had half a century ago, but there isn't widespread   
   unemployment and poverty as a result.  People on average found better   
   jobs.   
      
   	Of course, that's harder to make jokes about.   
      
   --   
   								Joseph Nebus   
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)