If, as A.S. Hamrah and Chris Fujiwara claim in their online Club Havana film review series, "Things That Don't Suck" is the new aesthetic category of the '90s--they explain that "the advertising and publicist types who employ this as a category of worth want you to believe that just because whatever it is they're offering isn't 100 percent offensive or repellent means it's somehow great" —then "Whatever Works" is the corresponding ethical category of the era. These are the debased formulae of people who not only don't have any standards of truth, beauty, or morality, but to whom the whole concept of standards is suspect. Of course we should be skeptical of received notions of truth, beauty, and morality, but skepticism isn't cynicismŠ and even cynicism isn't as grass-eatingly low as the kind of slickly hip will-to-power-passing-as-pragmatism expressed in these phrases. Yet, now that the End of Ideology and What is Art? debates have finally trickled down (up?) from the academy to the street, these aggressively anti-standard standards have become cant in the mouths of would-be Gen X (no room to go into, for the nth time, how misleading and pointless this term is) spokespeople who should know better. Meredith Bagby is one of these—she's of the "Whatever Works" school—and this review is of her recently-published and highly-praised book Rational Exuberance: The Influence of Generation X on the New American Economy.

Rational Exuberance was, I imagine, sold to Dutton as a happy-smiley slap in the face to all those whiny twentysomethings still bitching about how they couldn't afford to go to college and have to live with their parents. As such, it contains a bewildering onslaught of sidebars profiling "key Gen X players": fund managers, speechwriters, political activists, entrepreneurs, hacks at such Gen X media ghettoes as Swing magazine (which, ironically, just bit the dust) and CNN's Financial Network: experts all, one is led to believe, in the science of Gen X-ology. "We" anti-slackers, it seems, are "taking on the economic challenges inherited from older generations" and influencing the American economy through "greater savings plans, successful entrepreneurship, education reform, and bottom-line politics" —I quote from the press release. But as annoying a book as that in itself would have been, Rational Exuberance is worse than that, much worse.

Americans born after 1964, "economist [and] renowned Gen X'er Bagby" (press release again) suggests in her introduction, have been unfairly characterized as depressed, directionless losers. But in fact, she counters, what look to "our" (I can't go on putting "we" and "our" in quotes, so I'll just stop here) elders like weaknesses—our deep suspicion regarding the idea of a "steady job," our inborn mistrust of Republicans and Democrats alike, our "No Future" certainty that Social Security will be bankrupt by the time we're 65, even though we're paying into it now--are actually strengths. Scorning the idea of climbing the corporate ladder, we're a generation of risk-taking entrepreneurs! The non-voting apathy of our older brothers and sisters has obscured our own grassroots activism! And as for the Social Security thing, well, some of us are lobbying for entitlement reform, while others re-learn the lost art of planning for the future! "Compound interest" sound familiar? But I don't really have a problem with any of this. (OK, I do have a problem with the idea that any intelligent person could possibly imagine that what the Sex Pistols were talking about in "No Future" had anything to do with vanishing welfare for the elderly.) What bugs me is the whole "Whatever Works" thing.

According to Bagby, who brandishes charts, graphs, and public opinion polls (the first profile she offers is of a hip Republican pollster, already proving her book is a work of fiction) to prove her various points, "We [Gen X'ers] are not worried about staying within the guidelines of any particular [moral, political, philosophical] system; rather, we seek the avenue that produces the greatest results. We adjust, maneuver, manipulate our choices around what seems to work in today's complex world." "Results" is the red flag here: The holy grail of a certain kind of economist, results by definition justify the means used to achieve them. In fact, Bagby takes great pains to dismiss those dangerously idealistic types (she includes lawyers!) for whom means cannot be separated from ends.

In Chapter 2, "A New Moral Order: The Age of Economics," Bagby forcefully insists that religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and even political lenses for viewing social issues may have been fine for past generations, but they just don't make the cut today. On the abortion question, she scoffs, "a philosopher might begin the debate with questions" (a word I imagine her saying with a sour expression on her face) about when life begins, moral responsibility and choice, and so forth; and a lawyer would waste everybody's time mucking around with issues of legal precedent. An economist, however, would cut through all the mumbo-jumbo by seeking "what is common among differing factions and build[ing] a solution." Moralists and politicians take their lumps, too, for being so wishy-washy over the death penalty. When it comes down to a choice between execution and life imprisonment, Bagby airily concludes, whichever one costs society less money is the right answer.

Economists like herself, Bagby boasts, seek results, results, results. Unlike those querulous old fogies who'd hold us all to one universal ideal or another, economics is about the greatest benefit for the greatest number, and it's not afraid to write everyone who isn't part of the greatest number off as a loss. To Bagby, this is what the world needs now. With the end of the Cold War, she suggests, came the long-heralded End of Ideology. Democracy and capitalism have won, and the only challenge that remains is making the system work, dammit. "Our role in American history seems clear: If our parents' generation was about dismantling the status quo, our generation will be about building new institutions, moral codes, families, churches, corporationsŠ If our parents were the revolutionaries, then let us be the rebuilders." To this exalted end, Bagby (or should that be Carpetbagby?) offers pat, sketchy advice on everything from rebuilding our schools to rebuilding our communities, our families, and the economy. Of course, much of what passes for advice—on, for example, not being manipulated in the workplace, or by wily advertisers--is actually how-to advice for the book's real audience: those seeking advice on exploiting and manipulating Gen X'ers. But that's obvious, right?

I could go on and on (and on) about what's wrong with the methods and conclusions of Rational Exuberance. All I want to accomplish here is a criticism of this "Whatever Works" shit, but it's hard not to get sidetracked. So let's take a leaf from Bagby's book and compromise: I'll complain about something off-topic just one more time, and then get back to criticizing her philosophy. Not happy with this solution? Apparently, in the new roll-up-your-shirtsleeves-and-lose-those-pesky-opinions age, we'd all better get used to feeling that way.

"Fact: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, people aged 24 to 35 work 4.6 percent longer each week than the national average." This context-free statistic is a typical example of Bagby's misuse of the tools of social science to make a seemingly objective point. This particular nugget of data is supposed to disprove the media myth that all Gen X'ers are slackers. I question whether this statistic actually means "we" (sorry, couldn't resist) are hard workers: Doesn't it most likely mean, instead, that twentysomething temp-slave types are more exploited than your average non-Gen X worker? And, while we're on the subject, what's wrong with not wanting to work hard? Is there no middle ground between couch potato and millionaire-in-the-making? ("The 'X' in Generation X is the symbol for multiplication," Bagby sound-bites. "For us the symbol strikes a chord because the most successful entrepreneurs don't win by adding dollars--they win by multiplying dollars.")

Unafraid to contradict herself, Bagby goes on to pay lip service to the idea that Gen X'ers just seem lazy because we refuse to sacrifice our "lifestyles" to our careers, that in fact we work less than our elders. As anyone who has worked for the kind of hotshot entrepreneur Bagby admiringly profiles knows, however, pulling insanely long work days is a lifestyle for themŠ and that goes for everyone at their companies, like it or not. (I should confess here that I have worked for one of the entrepreneurs Bagby profiles!) This irresolvable contradiction hints at the special problem Bagby faced in assembling this book: Her real audience and her pretend audience want to hear different things, and while the latter will just get pissed at her, the former is the one buying the book. OK, let's move on.

All social problems— "the overextension of our government, growing economic inequality, increasing ethnic rumblings, deteriorating education systems, apathy from our citizenry [this kind of phrasing makes me worry that the author is planning to run for office], and an oversimplification of our problems by media and politicians" —can be solved by applying the economist's way of thinking, according to Bagby. "We have entered upon a new era of logic and numbers," she trumpets: "To give us the answers, we have elevated a new breed of experts. Other ages had prophets, witch doctors, soothsayers, and voodoo gods [you might know them as social scientists, political analysts, philosophersŠ]. We have economists." Quoting Francis Fukuyama, Bagby argues that with the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism, we have arrived at not just the end of ideology, but the much-anticipated end of history—so the Big Questions of the past (freedom of speech, liberty, equality) just don't matter any more. Americans want "a government that W-O-R-K-S," Bagby argues, and Gen X is the generation that's uniquely qualified, precisely because it lacks any faith in ideals or standards, to give these Americans the government they deserve. "It is not about ideology. It is about practicality."

In 1933, a twentysomething Marxist sympathizer named Simone Weil shocked her comrades by announcing her fear that the actual outcome of the much-anticipated proletarian revolution would not be the replacement of capitalism by socialism, but something much worse: the replacement of capitalism and socialism alike with a post-ideological society run by "technicians" [i.e. experts for whom the ends justify the means], particularly economists. After all, Weil pointed out, the only thing worse than oppression exercised in the name of some philosophical or religious or even political ideal is "oppression exercised in the name of function." Bagby's central obsession, entitlement reform—that political tar baby which at least serves as a sort of flypaper for annoying trust-funders like the ones who started the "twentysomething think-tank" Third Millennium—is precisely the kind of technocratic "issue" guaranteed to alienate and depress anyone still possessing a shred of political passion.

Although Weil was deeply suspicious of all ideologies, she was an unapologetic idealist. If Weil's vision of a society without oppression has yet to materialize, her writing at least continues to inspire; it's hard to imagine anyone re-reading Bagby in, say, 1999. In fact, Weil's self-imposed alienation from all causes and communities is precisely what the original prophet of the End of Ideology, sociologist Daniel Bell, advocated: Detachment and idealism are not, after all, mutually exclusive. Bagby's "Whatever Works," on the other hand, though surrounded by weakly worded expressions of idealism, is in fact subversive of same. And whenever someone starts subverting idealism, we need to ask: To whose profit? The answer, I think, was expressed by Lewis Mumford, one of those "witch doctors" or "soothsayers" of a past generation, when he wrote (in Technics and Civilization) that "the idea that values could be dispensed with and replaced by mechanical or mathematical solutions is just another ideology" —a utilitarian one, whose only truly hoped-for result is the "clean victory" of capitalism over previous traditions, loyalties, and sentiments.

Like every single carpetbagger who's ever descended upon a war-torn landscape, preaching about new brooms sweeping clean, Bagby is not to be trusted. Whenever she starts spelling W-O-R-K-S, she means M-O-N-E-Y. Beneath her shopworn Gen X insouciance lies an age-old cynical utilitarianism which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing—and that really sucks.