Young people suck. Much attention has been focused recently on the out-migration of young people from the Pittsburgh region, consuming significant efforts by everyone from state and local government to the grand poobahs at the Allegheny Conference and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.

Why?

Young people, loosely defined here for the sake of convenience as twenty-somethings, in fact contribute very little to the community. They tend towards near total self-absorption, consuming alcohol and other mind-altering substances at disproportionate rates, driving up auto insurance rates, paying virtually no property or school taxes, disposing of nearly all of their meager disposable incomes on disposable goods, and almost never voting for anything in any election at any level. Their contribution to the local community seems to be limited to urinating on South Side streets Thursday through Saturday, (somewhat surprisingly not limited to just drunks of the male persuasion), and, in general, their universe is largely limited to a five-foot radius surrounding their genitals. If this is the Creative Class, let them out-migrate in droves.

The usual argument for keeping these folks in town is most commonly based on a presumed need to “grow the region” – a specious strategy at best. Statistically, the out-migration from Southwest Pennsylvania is about average for the U.S. in general. It’s the in-migration that’s lagging far behind the cities with which we hope to compete – an intriguing turn of events for a place and an economy essentially built by immigrants. The distinguishing factor appears to be that, historically, the founders were largely “the good immigrants,” i.e. Caucasians from Europe. Now that the group demographics have shifted to “people of color,” the European ancestors of those original immigrants have suddenly become staunchly intolerant. The fact that Asians and Hispanics have migrated to large portions of the U.S. without taking our jobs and raping our women has been largely lost on the descendants of Pittsburgh’s founding fathers. (Mothers, as our history books would have us believe, apparently didn’t do much back then.) If this keeps up, when we do get around to encouraging in-migration, all the good minorities will be taken, and we’ll be left with only Muslims.

This seeming tangent on immigration policy is not unrelated. If we shift our focus from hand-wringing over the departure of the aforementioned young people, we’ll need to make sure that we don’t just import more of the same. There’s no evidence to suggest that young immigrants suck any less than their counterparts that we allowed, nee encouraged, to leave. They have all the same characteristics. (See paragraph 3.) Instead, we’ll need to focus on the generation that’s ready to buy real estate, that’s used to living in already established urban areas instead of desecrating the remaining green spaces, that’s ready to reproduce, adopt, or otherwise populate K-12 school buildings – those who have progressed to the point in their working life that they’re interested in purchasing something besides this seasons’ clothes and this weeks’ hottest DVD. Those are the kind of folks that are needed to “grow the region.” Oh, and they vote.

Twenty-somethings don’t vote. In massive numbers. They’re so inconsequential that pollsters don’t even ask their opinion on the issues because they’re not even aware that there are issues. A recent survey revealed that the overwhelming majority of what twenty-somethings know about national and international affairs consisted of whatever they could remember from last night’s Jon Stewart monologue. (Seriously. You can look it up.) And the reason given for not voting is usually along the lines of “that stuff doesn’t really affect me,” or “those things don’t really interest me.” Well, it’s not all about you, asshole; in addition, you’re completely wrong. Government and politics may not interest you, but they most certainly affect you, in virtually every aspect of your daily life.

Young people, (who suck, by the way), love to bitch about the lack of good paying jobs in Pittsburgh, (apparently a requirement to add to their woefully inadequate CD collection). Consider, just for a moment, what the impact on the regional economy would have been if the politicians (whom you didn’t vote for, remember), had channeled the $70M subsidy they gave to a now-vacant downtown department store into a small business incubation program. If all of you Creative Class types are as creative as Mr. Florida would have us believe, the growth in jobs and personal wealth-building from a $70M investment could have resulted in a significant amount of filthy lucre ending up in your possession, for you to piss away in any manner you deem appropriate. It didn’t happen, of course, because the politicians that you didn’t vote for (because you didn’t vote at all, remember), chose to run up the City’s long term debt load instead, which will be left for you to pay off, if you end up sticking around (which we hope you don’t). All of this is predicated, of course, on the dubious assumption that you would, in point of fact, actually have a creative idea, and possess the vision, guts and tenacity to implement it.

The missed opportunity symbolized by the failed Lazarus department store described above is not a missed opportunity elsewhere. Not young people voting, of course (they suck everywhere), but opportunities in growth regions throughout the country are being created for young people by old people, (i.e. those over 30, those who don’t read this magazine, those who are homeowners, voters, et cetera). All those places that young Pittsburghers and visiting college students are supposedly out-migrating to have created economic growth engines predicated not on an outdated industrial recruitment model (like Southwestern Pennsylvania), but on an intellectual property development model. Those ideas sometimes lead to the manufacturing of durable goods (someone actually has to make those robots that dispense pharmaceuticals in hospitals), but that evolves naturally from the original idea. With the world-class educational and medical institutions that already exist in the Pittsburgh region, we could easily exceed the economic development successes of competing regions blessed with far less in the “eds and meds” sector. That would require public policy to support that approach to economic development, which in turn requires elected officials with the foresight and intellect to comprehend the wisdom of the strategy, which in turn requires voters who would benefit from those policies to get off of their collective posteriors and vote for said politicians…

The only good thing about young people is that they don’t stay young. For those of you that the Cheney administration doesn’t get killed in Iraq, you’ll eventually become old people, and by that time, hopefully you’ll have gathered enough wisdom to make a positive contribution to the world around you. God knows we’ve already got enough old people who still don’t get it. Perhaps you’ll do better when your time comes. But why wait?

(Not so) Respectfully submitted by:

KENT A. EDWARDS
Old Person

P.S. Note to the Editors of Deek Magazine: This entire article only contains the word fuck once. Just now. Grow up.

College people are few and far between, and the city would do well to keep them. College students, those brats whose mommies and daddies pay their rent and electric bills and parking tickets and court costs, well, they’ll leave when they finish. They never considered the city to be anything other than some sort of brave experiment anyhow, for the most part. So they get their degrees (some of them, anyway) and then they go back to Philaburbia or Penciltucky or wherever else a job awaits them at mommy’s firm or daddy’s company. The brain-drain hand-wringers should kiss them goodbye (good riddance?) and instead, concentrate on those people who’ve always been here and plan to stay, and those who come here for college or whatever else and decide to stick around.

We exist. In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I in fact moved here from Philaburbia seven years ago to study at Pitt. After two years of being a dorm twit, I realized that no one over 16 ought to stay at sleep-away camp, even if it’s for two whole semesters a year. So I cut the cords and moved to Pittsburgh. I got a full time job right out of college because I decided that Pittsburgh was my home, and I was staying, dammit. I was never wooed by a PUMP event. I just decided to be an adult here, because I love it, and because I was certainly part of the drunken howling masses for a few years – for which I am truly penitent. It comes with age, I suppose, and maturity.

Many of my peers are the same way. My best friends from freshman year are here, and we all moved here from relatively far away. We contribute. We work here, we pay taxes here, we play here. We vote, we read newspapers, we know what ACT 47 is. Some of them will move eventually, to pursue further education or career opportunities – but while they’re here, they live here.
My esteemed Punk seems to fail to differentiate between the overwhelming majority of the college kids, who will hopefully grow out of it one day (but not until they have a corner cubicle and a townhouse and a leased Camaro in Delaware or wherever the hell they crawled here from), and the young people who live here. It’s a disservice to both groups to lump them together.
The street-pissers, by and large, find Pittsburgh to be a sort of clever joke, along the lines of Pabst Blue Ribbon and trucker caps. These are the kids who move back in with mommy and daddy every summer, and looked at me like I was joking when, senior year, I said I wanted to stay, despite having parents who live near...drum roll please...that urban utopia of Philadelphia. “You’re not going back East?” I was asked, with more than one disbelieving shake of the head.

They see a kitschy-ness here – one they think is quaint and will suffice for the four more years they sponge off mommy and daddy. “Guess what? They put French fries on their ‘sammiches’ that they get ‘dahntahn!’ Isn’t that funny?”

They’ll drink free Penn Pilsner at events meant to convince them that Pittsburgh is a real place, but nothing will convince them to stay. They’re terrified of anyone with different vowel pronunciation than them, and they think mullets are compulsory here. Fuck ‘em. Send ‘em home.
But my esteemed Punk believes that no one under thirty is capable of getting a job, or buying a home, or building a career here – or starting anything good and new and innovative (and, ahem, last time I checked, dear esteemed Punk, your editor and mine was well under thirty).

So where’s the disconnect? Yes, Pittsburgh is hemorrhaging money, and therefore jobs, and opportunities to buy homes and fill those K-12 schools. But those vilified under-thirties my esteemed Punk wishes to blame? Um, yeah, they couldn’t vote when the festering incompetence that led us here was just beginning. So blaming them is a little silly. But, by all means: Go ahead. I respect my elders, and I haven’t pissed in the street since freshman year, when, admittedly, I was subhuman and lived in a dorm and didn’t count for anything.

Both my esteemed Punk and I are being a bit unfair, of course. There are those college students who come to Pittsburgh with no intention of staying, because they’ve always dreamed of living in China, or only came here because of our superior educational opportunities, or, hell, because their family ties are just that strong. Many of these kids are decent, temporary citizens who spend a little money, patronize businesses, behave themselves and leave. It would be nice to get them to stay, too. But they won’t, and my esteemed Punk and I are both guilty of directing hostility at them that they don’t deserve. It’s not their fault that Pittsburgh is in crisis and the pundits have pointed their fix-it rays straight at college kids. This is a city with spectacular colleges and universities, and that means temporary populations. It’s the nature of such an economy. While it’s irritating to be unable to park when school’s in session, things would be an awful lot bleaker around here if all the colleges shut down. Both curmudgeonly Punk and curmudgeonly Counterpunk ought to reckanize.

A lot of young people come through this city. Many would stay, if there were jobs. By and large, there aren’t, lest we forget that fact – which no one under thirty can rightly be blamed for. There are two battling cultures – one that considers the city a playground for the young people privileged enough to go to college, and one that lives and grows and dies here, and knows its home. The city wouldn’t survive the loss of the dorm kids, irritating and juvenile as they may be. But blaming them isn’t entirely fair, because when they arrive here, they are children, and mostly children of some wealth, mostly children whose parents have agreed to do the thinking and paying for them for at least four more years. And they encounter crusty bastards such as my esteemed Punk and myself, and a bleak job market, and they leave. Easy scapegoats, aren’t they?

It’s a little easier to step over collegiate puke in the street, I think, and excuse the actions of silly children – esteemed punk, were you ever one? – than to cut off one of the city’s major lifelines, one of the few industries, along with the hospitals, that has us limping along.

– MELISSA MEINZER