New Book Blames Yuppies for Trump, Housing — Basically Everything

We also meet Richard Thalheimer, scion of an Arkansas department store empire, who parlayed jobs selling encyclopedias, yogurt machines and photocopier supplies into the Sharper Image, a $60 million catalog business that peddled gadgets such as digital watches, BMW-shaped pillows and suits of armor.

McGrath even takes us back to some of the original writers, like Rottenberg and Cathy Crimmins, who helped popularize the term “yuppie” in their regional reporting for Chicago magazine and Philadelphia City Paper, respectively.

‘Gluttonous Desire for Wealth’

Pointedly, for our contemporary era, McGrath provides texture to the dire economic situation that surrounded the yuppies’ rise: how their move into cities was catalyzed in part by generational downward mobility, combined with double-digit mortgage rates that put home ownership out of reach; and how they spent their money lavishly — almost nihilistically —because rampant double-digit inflation disincentivized saving or considering the future.

A gluttonous desire for wealth ultimately led the yuppies to help dissolve post-war political orthodoxies like corporate responsibility for its workers, progressive income tax on higher-wage earners and protections for unions and American jobs.

These led them to support right-winger Ronald Reagan and his supply-side economics. Panaceas such as tax cuts for the wealthy, shrinking of government programs, deregulation of industry and deficit military spending emerged as de rigueur Republican positions.

McGrath details the ruinous historical results: The rich got richer, while everyone else floundered. Middle-class manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas as executives privileged shareholder value and their own compensation. Social programs were slashed, harming working people and the vulnerable.

Big Highs, Big Lows

The yuppies, at least for a time, got exactly what they wanted. Wall Street boomed, riding an unprecedented wave of cheap money and ushering in the iconic era where greed was good. Until it wasn’t. The market, and the yuppie allure, crashed in 1987.

That these same economic and social tensions are political flashpoints today shouldn’t be a surprise, McGrath argues. Yuppies are now in charge of the country’s financial, political and legal institutions, their legacy a blueprint for a litany of contemporary horrors.

These include ever-increasing income disparity, a celebration of ruthlessness, punitive disregard for workers and the environment, a reckless worship of short-term gain and an insatiable fetishization of brands.

He even ties our contemporary worship of venality, callousness, mendacity and flash to the foundational roots of that most ’80s of characters: Donald Trump.

McGrath focuses almost solely on white, heterosexual yuppies, ignoring racial and ethnic permutations and avoiding (perhaps too kindly) the pioneering role that ’70s urban queers had in establishing the gentrifying DINK (Double Income No Kid) lifestyle of brownstone renovations, bistros and bars, private gyms and conspicuous consumption.

Triumph of the Yuppies is at once illuminating and extremely depressing, a reminder of the havoc the boomer generation has wrought — and will continue to wreak, since it now plans to live forever. But the book also provides a useful reverse roadmap for reviving a more humane existence.