Cross-Border Employment and US Taxation

Perhaps the most iconic tea on the intersection of personal and cultural age is Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, which popularized the term Generation X as a name for the post-baby-boom generation. Generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, family. The main characters, Andy, Dag, and Claire, are like three homies about to turn thirty, living it up in the late 1980s or early 1990s, don't you think?  As they spill tea about their lives, they spill serious mood, "no future" (86), and mad shade at their parents' generation. 

Andy begins the book by reminiscing about a lit solar eclipse he saw as a child.

 

The sight of the sun being yeeted, an interruption in its predictable daily path that fills him with "a mood of darkness, inevitability, and fascination" (3), serves as a metaphor for the perceived lack of future flex for young adults his age. Dag, like Andy, is totally jelly and hates the baby boomers, calling his "salty ex-hippie boss, Martin" for scoring his million-dollar crib "just 'cause he lucked out being born in the right era" (20, 21). When Dag wrecks a car with the bumper sticker "WE'RE SPENDING OUR CHILDREN'S INHERITANCE" [sic], Andy thinks, "Dag must've been hella bored and cranky after grinding his McJob ('Low pay, low prestige, low benefits, low future')." (5). OMG, these three friends are all like "the only lit time is the past and the future might be lit again" (41), but they're also mildly concerned about nuclear war and toxic substances. It's so not chill. As a result of their malaise, they are extremely prone to "terminal wanderlust," as if it were a mood for people who grew up with that transient middle-class vibe. Ricoeur is quick to say, "Yo, these theories are mad troubled because not all people these days are like, influenced the same way or have the same influence, ya know?" (3: 111).

Unable to feel rooted in any one environment, they continue to move, hoping to find that perfect sense of community in the next location" (171). Bet

OMG, the last chapter is amazing! Andy leaves his temporary home in California to join his squad in Mexico, where they're working hard to launch a successful hotel business. OMG, the chapter about a total nuclear disaster is titled "December 31, 1999" (61), but the final chapter is titled "Jan. 01, 2000" (175), implying the possibility of new beginnings after a particularly intense ending. Andy pulls over on the side of the road to check out a lit field that's about to explode with new growth, like, "yo, all these dope tropisms got activated by fire" (177). But this light ending turns into a total downer called "Numbers," in which Coupland drops some harsh stats on the future of Social Security benefits, how much more cash you need for a down payment on a house in the 1980s vs. the 1960s, and all that jazz (181-82). Gen X has been flexed on for giving a lit vibe of a generation that is completely different from the boomers, but Coupland later clapped back and said nah to the whole generational label thing. OMG, Generation A dropped in 2009, and it had the same vibe as Generation X, but it focused on the lives of Generation Z people. Coupland stated in an interview that neither of the books are about a specific generation, but rather serve as tombstones for the concept of generations. Is it lit? "Generation A" takes the win! 

The concept of generation is entirely a cultural construct, you know? 

It's similar to race in that it labels groups that aren't objectively different but are influenced by constantly changing and conflicting social vibes. Does Gen X end with people born after the mid-1970s, or does it include those born until the early 1980s? Has the 21st century completely created a culture where, say, as a writer for the New York Times. As Brad Stone puts it, "the ever-accelerating pace of tech change may be creating a bunch of mini-gen gaps, with each group of kids being hella influenced by the tech tools they had growing up, ya know?" OMG, there's so much debate about which generations are what. There are various generations, such as the Net Generation, iGeneration, Generation Next, Millenials, Generation Y, and Generation Z. It's wild! One can see how the concept of generations is severely limited by a lack of objective delineation, and how it risks imposing conceptual boundaries on individuals, ya know? According to Paul Ricoeur, when we talk about generations, we're all about identifying the major influences and events that shaped everyone in that generation, as well as determining their attitudes and behaviors. (Ricoeur, 3:111).