Move, page 8
Activist education has political consequences. Hong Kong’s mandatory liberal studies curriculum, which emphasizes civic engagement, has been cited as a key factor in motivating the waves of anti-Beijing protests since 2019. Pro-Beijing officials quickly denounced the curriculum as a failure; students view it as perhaps the only thing the government has done right since the 1997 handover of the island to mainland China—which is why they continue their defiance against Beijing’s 2020 National Security Law that would further curtail their freedoms. A survey in mid-2020 revealed that three-quarters of the island’s youth view themselves as Hong Kongers first, followed by “global citizens” and “Asians”—“Chinese” ranked last.
Summarizing the millennial or Gen-Z mindset is not difficult: They want to work to live, not live to work. They want to be happy, do good, and not be poor. It’s plausible that the pendulum may swing back to focusing on hard work in pursuit of wealth, but the growing divide between capital and labor suggests that being devoted employees is no guarantee of material or spiritual fulfillment. Corporations are picking up on the shifting tides of employees’ interests, offering a wide range of opportunities for personal and professional growth. Credit Suisse has a “Global Citizens” program that allows people with two years of experience in the bank to take two months in the field, volunteering for the Red Cross, microfinance organizations in Africa, education nonprofits in Latin America, or various other charities the company supports. Paid volunteering builds loyalty, character, and camaraderie, while also providing tangible social benefits.
It’s unfortunate then that since the 1990s the term “global citizen” has come to be conflated with the untethered capitalist elites derided by the late Harvard professor Samuel Huntington, who coined the term “Davos man.” Far more non-Westerners identify as “global citizens” than Westerners. Indeed, according to a BBC Globespan survey from 2015, the vast majority of self-proclaimed global citizens come from developing countries such as Nigeria, China, India, Kenya, and Pakistan. The archetype of the global citizen is not a hedge fund billionaire in a private jet but the Indian child rights activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, who describes himself as a “global citizen” both because of his universal cause and because his own government has been so derelict. Most people need to look beyond their borders for noble inspiration, and the best global citizens make heroic efforts to act on it.
The next generation of philanthropists aspires to follow in the footsteps of George Soros and Bill Gates, who have turned corporate fortunes into war chests for humanitarian causes. They view being young and rich as an obligation to be a better global citizen, and often wear their dual mission of enterprise and social justice on their sleeve. Each major private bank now has next-gen programs to help guide their clients’ philanthropy, while organizations such as Synergos and Nexus cater to youth who have either been successful entrepreneurs or inherited substantial wealth and want to make social impact investments. Whether Western, Asian, Arab, or African, it has become a generational mission to advance the kind of transformation that politics will never achieve on its own.
There are many historical, philosophical, and literary inspirations for would-be global citizens. The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that the citizens of any state should be treated in accordance with the natural law of equality. Animated by the spirit of universal humanity, the American revolutionary and founding father Thomas Paine wrote in The Rights of Man, “My country is the world.” Both Kant and Paine are revered as talismans of cosmopolitanism, the idea that ethical, cultural, and even political communities exist beyond states alone. We have come to exist in what the late London School of Economics political theorist David Held called “overlapping communities of fate.” Held argued that a universal human community requires political and legal authority to be relocated above state sovereignty. At the same time, the way to get there is bottom up. More than a utopian idealist, Held was an intellectual activist, what academics call an “ideas entrepreneur.” Together with famed sociologist Anthony Giddens, Held crafted the “Third Way” social democratic concepts that guided Tony Blair and Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Their agenda was international as well. Held argued for a “cosmopolitan democracy,” insisting that the ideals of democratic government should not stop at the borders of nations but also apply to our global institutions. Only then could we “globalize democracy while at the same time democratize globalization.” This remains the agenda that animates most “global citizens” today.
Yet much like “global citizen,” the term “cosmopolitan” has also been used as a dismissive epithet. Here again it’s all too easy to forget that the original philosopher of cosmopolitanism, the Greek stoic Diogenes, declared himself to be kosmou polite (“citizen of the cosmos”), not as a rich man but as a beggar who often slept inside a large ceramic barrel. Diogenes believed that to be virtuous, one should practice what one preaches. In his wanderings around the ancient Greek isles, he defied the assumption that only the polis into which one was born could be one’s primary source of identity. Instead, he argued that there are larger moral obligations beyond oneself and one’s immediate family to the shared community of humanity. This is the essence of being a global citizen.
What about “citizen of the world”? At its simplest, this phrase widely connotes someone who has traveled and lived in many places. Like “global citizen,” the term also came into vogue in the 1990s to capture the growing ranks of expats and global nomads, whether students, backpackers, executives, entrepreneurs, or others whose international experiences imbued them with a pluralistic sense of identity—a global loyalty that complemented their national one. “Citizens of the world” also wear the moniker with pride as they chase experiences and opportunities wherever they may be. To be a “citizen of the world” is to be rootless by choice. As the meditative traveler Pico Iyer reflects in This Could Be Home, “When I was a boy, the first question you’d ask of someone was ‘Where do you come from?’ Now the more relevant enquiry is, ‘Where are you going?’ ”9
Younger millennials and older Gen-Zers are particularly footloose. Ivy League colleges such as Princeton and others encourage and even pay for students to take traveling gap years before enrolling as undergraduates. (The coronavirus all but made this necessary.) Minerva Schools and other colleges have campuses spread across the world among which undergraduates rotate. Lonely Planet does brisk business with books, such as The Big Trip, that advise on study abroad, gap years, and sabbaticals. A host of boutique associations (such as Me to We) promote sustainable travel experiences, shifting from the selfie-obsessed “me” to the more collective “we.” They are all training today’s young citizens of the world.
As with “Davos Man,” perhaps nothing did more to elevate the visibility of the term “citizens of the world” than a petty broadside against it. This time it was former British prime minister Theresa May, who in late 2016 declared to her fellow Conservative Party members, “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” The ironies of her speech have been duly picked apart by her countrymen. After all, the UK’s globally mobile elite is mostly made up of Conservatives who supported Brexit while shifting their own assets offshore. British expatriation to Spain, Germany, and France surged by more than 500 percent in the wake of Brexit.10 One is reminded of the author Suketu Mehta’s wry comment that “a globalist is a nationalist with a passport.”11
There are many legitimate ways for individuals, social groups, and societies to construct identity beyond just waving one flag—and many of them overlap. It follows then that inhabiting nations no longer means belonging to them exclusively. The great liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin cautioned against viewing nationalism as the main mode by which humans identify themselves, given how our individual lives are shaped by the complex interplay of family, ethnicity, business, religion, and other bonds. Loyalty still exists, but it’s dividing and multiplying. Identity is plural rather than singular, self-defined rather than only inherited. Identity is alchemy, not dogma.
Theresa May concluded her now infamous “citizen of nowhere” invective with the line “You don’t know what citizenship means.” Who does? It once stood for a compact between government and society in which people contributed to national well-being through work, taxation, and military service in exchange for legal, political, and social rights. But today’s youth have tipped the balance of obligation, claiming their right to environmental sustainability, digital access, universal healthcare, education, and a government that complies with international norms as well. Doha Debates, an independent civic media initiative, asked young people around the world what they thought of when they heard the word “citizenship.” The respondents spoke of “protection” and “privilege”—none associated the term with ethnic identity or legal duties. The young are claiming the individual’s right to determine what citizenship means—and are willing to fight for it.
The clash of generations
The modern social contract dictates that the young should care for the old by paying taxes into pensions and staffing social services for the elderly, a process that is supposed to repeat itself generation after generation. Today’s youth should appreciate that it was the diligent savings of today’s baby boomers that financed the infrastructure they now take for granted. But the elderly also represent a $78 trillion debt bomb of pension obligations no young person wants to pay taxes for—at least, nobody who can instead go elsewhere, leaving others behind to pay for it.12
This clash of generations is playing out in fiscal debates across the West. Whereas baby boomers benefit from generous retirements, youth demand that the elderly’s accumulated savings be spent on affordable housing, broadband Internet, and skills training. At the moment, the old and rich are sitting on overpriced and oversized homes they refuse to sell, while the young gigonomist class can’t pay the rent.13 They assume that once the elderly have perished, developers will rebuild in line with their downsized needs. No wonder one Gen-Z intern in Los Angeles lamented to me, “I can’t wait for the boomers to die so that we can afford a place to live.” But baby boomer mortality is only predicted to accelerate in the 2030s.
And while boomers are alive and kicking, governments are raising retirement ages from sixty-five to seventy and beyond while benefits shrink, forcing many of them to stay in the job market and compete with youth for Uber fares and IT gigs. In America, two-thirds of AARP members report facing discrimination in the workplace, prompting Congress to pass legislation against ageism in 2020. This is a reminder that many aging Americans are struggling as much or more than youth, but with less time to sort out their future.
As this intergenerational drama unfolds, how many youth will accept a lifetime of higher taxes to pay for a system that will crumble before they’re old enough to be rewarded for their sacrifices? Europeans already pay enough taxes in the name of social equity and can’t afford a larger burden. In America, 60 percent of millennials don’t have sufficient savings to cover their already low taxes (compared to Europe). The fact that Social Security is expected to go broke in 2034 (well before they’re due to retire) is yet another reason to fear the future. For the majority of today’s American youth, inheritance will be a small reprieve. If and when they inherit a home, the first thing they’ll do (especially if siblings get an equal share) is to sell it for a shameful loss and use those proceeds to pay down credit card and student debt.
Meanwhile, the majority of the estimated $30 trillion in global wealth being transferred from boomers to their offspring will remain in the hands of rich Americans, Europeans, and Asians. America’s super-rich will invest their windfall in tech stocks, holiday homes, cryptocurrencies, and perhaps offshore assets and foreign citizenship. European wealth is traditionally more rooted in national industries such as automobiles and grocery stores, but with half the world’s outstanding pension payouts in Europe, the next generation may just sell off their family businesses and head to Switzerland. Private equity firms are already pushing for layoffs and cost-cutting measures at European firms, clashing with the prevailing pro-labor culture. France’s experience with a wealth tax already pushed an estimated fifty thousand millionaires out of the country, something Britain hopes to avoid even though an inheritance tax would raise desperately needed revenue. After all, with little prospect of an economic rebound in the UK, British youth would rather sell off their inheritance than watch it depreciate. France hopes they’ll do just that and be lured by schemes launched by its new Ministry of Economic Attractiveness, such as five-year tax holidays for foreign investors. Taxes are a hot button political issue but a much more slippery reality.14
In Asia, calls for higher taxes on the wealthy are prompting them to preemptively engineer inheritance windfalls. In 2019, China and India lost the most millionaires of any countries, with Australia and America the largest beneficiaries. Rich young Chinese have fund managers hard at work spreading their inheritance globally to ensure they have an exit hatch in case Xi Jinping’s apparatchiks descend on them. In Korea, where inheritance tax can reach 50 percent, toddlers are being granted shares in parents’ and grandparents’ companies to avoid tax. What can young Koreans do with this money in a country that’s aging? Not much, so they’re moving it to Singapore or Australia. And so it shall come to this: Aging countries’ pension funds will go broke unless they invest their assets in the places where their own youth are going—wherever that may be.
Youth of the world, unite!
During the summer of 2005, I was on an exciting road trip in a beat-up old Volkswagen, driving from the Baltics through Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and across Turkey through the Caucasus into Central Asia. Turkey exuded an optimistic vibe. It was early in Erdogan’s tenure as prime minister, the economy was humming, and per capita income had reached $7,500. Factory towns dubbed the “Anatolian tigers” in Turkey’s vast eastern flank were churning out textiles and car parts. Fourteen years later I crossed Anatolia again, but instead of vibrant towns I witnessed a desolate countryside and abandoned playgrounds. Where did all the youth go? To Istanbul, where they took to the streets challenging Erdogan, on his neglect of their provinces, and electing an opposition mayor. Istanbul has been witnessing nearly uninterrupted tension between youth and the government since the Gezi Park protests of 2013, with a wide array of agendas pulling together: anti-corruption, pro-democracy, rural development, better education, women’s rights, and anti-gentrification.
Russia, too, has had its chances to elevate its dilapidated hinterlands. But today there are few more apocalyptic sites than Siberian villages that have been hollowed out for more than a decade: jagged roads cracked by winter ice, shattered glass in every wooden house, rust consuming every metallic surface. Like Erdogan, Putin has either ignored the plight of the millions in the country’s vast east or assaulted their political dignity by sacking their preferred governors. In 2020, tens of thousands of residents of Khabarovsk defied Moscow edicts to demonstrate against the Kremlin.
Across the world, the middle class protests corruption while the working class protests economic hardship. Together they form a constellation of the underemployed and overeducated young men and women who have university degrees and menial work, and the overworked and underpaid blue-collar workers who can’t make ends meet despite putting in as many working hours as allowed. Inequality surely annoys them, but poverty and lack of opportunity is the more proximate cause of their anger. According to scientist Peter Turchin, modern societies have produced too many overeducated underachievers, a prime cause of today’s domestic turf wars.
Chile illustrates the point. In 2019, metro fare hikes in Santiago prompted the first state of emergency since Chile’s return to democracy in 1990, and the first domestic deployment of the military since the Pinochet regime. Owing to the prominent role of mining and banking in its economy, Chile not surprisingly has very high income inequality; these industries produce billionaires. But without them, Chile would be as poor as Peru rather than being the richest country (per capita) in South America. At the time the protests broke out, Chile’s inequality was actually declining, but ordinary citizens didn’t feel it because transport, education, healthcare, and housing were still too expensive for most. The persistent agitation has paid off: In 2020, Chileans overwhelmingly voted to rewrite their constitution.
Youth know rotten governance when they see it. When public transport costs are raised, students riot. When gas and electricity subsidies are cut, mass protests ensue. Wise governments do not repeat one another’s mistakes. The same year Chile raised transport fares, Estonia made all public buses free. Iran regularly cuts off Internet access, while Croatia makes sure that it’s ubiquitous, fast, and free. But the list of countries where governments are proactively focused on housing, education, and employment is very short. As a result, the global underclass revolt continues.
Even in more deferential Asian societies, youth are making subtle but significant political moves against authority. Analysts of Indonesia (the world’s most populous Muslim country) have long feared the rise of Islamism, but the country’s most notable new political party, the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), doesn’t allow members over forty-five and promotes youth and women’s issues.15 Young Indonesians are far more interested in chasing gigs on the Go-Jek super-app so they can afford homes. In Thailand, members of the youth-led Future Forward Party now openly oppose the country’s profligate monarchy, using the three-fingered salute from The Hunger Games as their call to solidarity.
Ironically, youth protest most where they enjoy the most freedom and highest living standards: Europe. Over the past decade, movements such as the indignados in Spain, and the nuit debout (uprising at night) and gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in France have brought together Gen-X and millennials against corruption, the lack of jobs, fuel taxes, and other grievances. During the summer of 2011, one act of police brutality sparked riots across London and a dozen other cities, leading to five deaths and more than three thousand arrests. Agitators and looters weren’t angry only at the police, but at everything. After the fourteenth century Black Death, the Peasant Revolt in England saw the underclass demand an end to aristocratic serfdom and lower taxes. Don’t be surprised if calls to dismantle Europe’s opulent monarchies crescendo not only for the unscrupulous behavior of particular royals but simply for their vast land holdings that could easily be repurposed for genuine public benefit. Europe has many Bastilles to storm.
