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What Do We Owe Our Grandchildren?

The former AARP CEO says two things are essential for them

By Bill Novelli

Editor’s note: In his new book, "Good Business: The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Change the World," former AARP CEO Bill Novelli writes about how we can make a difference in the lives of others and make significant contributions to solving the world's major social problems. The excerpt below has advice from Novelli — a grandfather of seven — on ways we can make a better world for our grandchildren.

Grandchildren video chat, climate change, Next Avenue
Credit: Getty

What do any of us "owe" our grandchildren, the generation that is coming or will come into adulthood in the coming decades of this century?

I see two things: a viable future in the face of a planet in trouble and a strengthening of the American Dream.

Helping Our Planet

As serious as other problems are — including the coronavirus and potential future pandemics — climate change is at the very top of the dangers we face. We can't wait for political sanity to strike our policy makers; we need rapid change.  

Scientific reports are increasingly dire. A November 2019 United Nations report said global temperatures are on pace to go up as much as 7 degrees by the end of the century.

When my grandson Victor, now 12, is middle-aged, many of the present coastlines could be under water, and severe heat could be unbearable around the world.

There are major gaps between where we are today and where we need to be to avert devastating consequences. Scientists say there is still time to act, despite all the dithering, and that if we do, we can avoid much of the devastation.

When my grandson Victor, now 12, is middle-aged, many of the present coastlines, including major cities in the United States and other countries, could be under water, and severe heat could be unbearable around the world.

We must act and aggressively push this agenda forward in the most nonpartisan way possible.

A Fair Shot at the American Dream

The Declaration of Independence calls for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Belief in that "pursuit" is embedded in the American psyche. We believe in fairness, in opportunity, in economic security and in optimism. It's not a guarantee, but rather a strong expectation.

In her book "Happiness for All? Unequal Hopes and Lives in Pursuit of the American Dream," Carol Graham writes that of those in my generation (I was born four years before the beginning of the boomers), 90% of us rose to higher income levels than our parents. But of those born in 1980 (today's 31-year-olds), only 40% have exceeded their parents' level of income. And in 2016, only 38% of Americans thought their children would be better off than themselves.

Washington University sociologist Mark Rank says many American families are just one paycheck away from poverty.

How is this possible in a country with so much wealth and seeming opportunity? Is the American Dream broken or shattered?

In a project at the Georgetown Business for Impact center I founded, we surveyed teens and young adult in five cities across the country. The results were sobering.

These young Americans are both hopeful and despairing. They see themselves as part of a changing country, and they don't see how they can get ahead. Their biggest concern is heavy debt from school and the daily cost of living.

They have limitless information at their fingertips but lack opportunities to use this information to make progress. They feel daily stress about school, family, raising children, jobs — and the need for better employment. They think privilege, discrimination and other factors are leaving them behind, and they know they are the first generation to do worse economically than their parents. They have aspirations and they work hard, but they don't believe older generations are listening or even care.

I came away from this study with a real liking for these young people, as well as feeling that they have, unfortunately, a realistic perspective on how difficult their road ahead will be.

So, the American Dream is still there. But it is more unevenly distributed across our population.

It's tougher to move up from the bottom ranks than it was in my parents' day. There are fewer well-paying jobs for young people with high school degrees and certainly fewer opportunities for those — like my mother — who didn't graduate from high school.

At the same time, the future is bright for the fortunate Georgetown University students and graduates I work with and for other well-educated young and middle-career managers across the country.

The Uneven Distribution of the American Dream

So, the American Dream is still there. But it is more unevenly distributed across our population. It depends partly on your ZIP code, your family advantage, and your resulting opportunities.

Poor kids and poor families can still make it, but the American Dream is less available and less fair. And it's not just about redistributing wealth and resources; it's about creating more wealth for all our citizens, about enlarging the pie.

The answers to today's challenges to the American Dream are not easy to analyze and even harder to act upon. We have good schools in many parts of America, especially in the suburbs, but we also have schools that are not graduating kids with the skills to compete in today's society.

Part of the problem is where Americans live. We are a desegregated society but not an integrated one. We've never solved the problem of high concentrations of low-income, disadvantaged kids in one school district or community and high-performing students in another.

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Funding schools with local resources is not working equitably. Many states spend less on education on a per-student basis than before the Great Recession.

We need much more investment and progress in our schools: to reduce crowding, to hire more teachers and improve teaching and, in general, to make schools a greater priority. That's a ticket to the American Dream.

Improving Health and Dealing With the U.S. Debt

At least two other issues are also important: improving the health of our citizens and paying down (and not expanding) our enormous national debt.

In the United States, we are woefully inadequate in promoting health and preventing disease — actions that would make our people healthier and more productive and cut down drastically on health care (read "disease care") costs, which are increasingly unaffordable.

Only about 3% of U.S. health expenditures go to prevention, which could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars now spent on hospital care, physician and dental services and other costs associated with largely preventable conditions.

Book cover Bill Novelli, grandchildren, climate change, Next Avenue

We can't keep treating disease and watching health care costs go up while obesity and diabetes and hypertension and tobacco use and other risk factors drag us down. We need to be a healthier country if we are going to be able to afford and achieve a bigger and better American Dream.

Another deep hole that we are leaving our grandchildren is the colossal debt that they will have to pay. The national debt (the total amount our country incurs and then owes) and annual deficits (the government budget shortfall each year) are so big that they are hard to comprehend.

But what we can understand is the annual cost of the expanding interest on that debt. Last year, it was $380 billion. It will get worse, and we are leaving future generations holding the bag.

Why is this happening? Because neither Republican nor Democratic leadership shows any interest in fiscal responsibility. Tax cuts are not helping. And while the recent stimulus packages passed by Congress and signed by President Trump to combat the economic downturn from the coronavirus are certainly necessary, they too will add to our problem.

Can we get back to sanity? It would be a big boost to the American Dream. We need to face up to these problems of schools, health promotion and disease prevention, debt and deficits, and other challenges. We created all this. It's our responsibility, nobody else's.

We owe our grandkids — and all those of their generation—a decent shot at the American Dream. They will depend on it, and the future of the United States as a strong nation will require it.

(This is an excerpt from "Good Business: The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Change the World" by Bill Novelli. Copyright 2021. Used with permission from Johns Hopkins University Press.)

Bill Novelli
Bill Novelli is author of "Good Business: The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Save the World" and the former CEO of AARP. Read More
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