The distinctive path into adulthood of the millenials and other news and views for Saturday 8 March

The Pew Research Center, in a major study of the differences in views between generations, describes the Millennial generation as forging a distinctive path into adulthood.
Now ranging in age from 18 to 331, they are relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked by social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry— and optimistic about the future.
They are also America’s most racially diverse generation. In all of these dimensions, they are different from today’s older generations. And in many, they are also different from older adults back when they were the age Millennials are now.
Pew Research Center surveys show that half of Millennials (50%) now describe themselves as political independents and about three-in-ten (29%) say they are not affiliated with any religion. These are at or near the highest levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics.
At the same time, however, Millennials stand out for voting heavily Democratic and for liberal views on many political and social issues, ranging from a belief in an activist government to support for same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization.
2014-03-08_institutionsThe Pew research finds Millennials have been keeping their distance from that core institution of society—marriage. Just 26% of this generation is married. When they were the age that Millennials are now, 36% of Generation X, 48% of Baby Boomers and 65% of the members of the Silent Generation were married.
2014-03-08_generationsdefined
2014-03-08_generations1

  • Are Calorie Counts on Nutrition Labels Making Us Fat? – “Misleading calorie counts on nutrition labels may be steering us toward energy-dense, processed foods.”
  • The Death of a Language – “When does a language begin to die? When children raised to speak it struggle to acquire a native-speaker level, and therefore the “language community” fails to regenerate itself linguistically, Joe Mac Donnacha argues. According to that definition, the evidence suggests that the condition of the Irish language has indeed become terminal.”
  • Monnet’s Brandy and Europe’s Fate – “Strobe Talbott tells the story of Jean Monnet and demonstrates how his vision of European integration may serve as a guide to ending the current eurozone crisis.”
  • Why Russia Can’t Afford Another Cold War
  • London’s Laundry Business – “Britain is ready to betray the United States to protect the City of London’s hold on dirty Russian money. And forget about Ukraine. Britain, open for business, no longer has a ‘mission.’ Any moralizing remnant of the British Empire is gone; it has turned back to the pirate England of Sir Walter Raleigh. Britain’s ruling class has decayed to the point where its first priority is protecting its cut of Russian money — even as Russian armored personnel carriers rumble around the streets of Sevastopol. But the establishment understands that, in the 21st century, what matters are banks, not tanks.”

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