I am a security guard at a beach resort. We get "Spring Break" crowds and we get the summer people. It has been my observation that the college age kids and those up into their thirties each year are dumber than the year before. This year the decline is precipitous rather than a continuation of what had seemed to be an even progression of decline. People do not recognize standard hand signals for "proceed" or "hi." I find myself using shorter and shorter words and limiting my sentences to three words with as few adjectives as possible. Foreigners with little English are much easier to communicate with than American students and young adults. This is the cohort that will be our next generation of managers. this is the group that will be supplying our government functionaries and electees. I don't think we are going to come out of this depression.
All the good that solid conservatives might do in Washington and the state governments must come to naught because these kids will be their successors.I suppose it is not a scientific sampling and perhaps this resort is experiencing some odd confluence of college retardation and modern noneducation this past half decade but I am not optimistic.