Gen Y Values: Gen Y Traits and Gen Y in the Workforce

Fourth in a series of essays

I’m 27 years old. The more I read the head­lines every day, the angrier I become over the bad finan­cial advice and the lack of finan­cial help given to my gen­er­a­tion. The more I see my peers dis­cussing the head­lines of the day on pop­u­lar Inter­net forums like Fark.com, the angrier I see them become.

Gen Y in the Workforce

At first I thought that this is the typ­i­cal, over-dramatic angst that so many young peo­ple feel, but then I real­ized that we nat­u­rally out­grew those feel­ings after we had left our hormone-driven teenage years behind us. Instead, I think we all know that we have been screwed over. We see what the Baby Boomers have done to the United States, and we know that we will be the ones who pay the price. And the price will be huge.

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We grew up see­ing Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton impeached after a polit­i­cal witch-hunt had forced him to lie under oath about a blow job, but then we saw that no one had the courage to impeach George W. Bush after he mis­led the Amer­i­can peo­ple — or per­haps even out­right lied to us — about the threat posed by Sad­dam Hus­sein and then caused the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple our age in a mis­taken war.

We saw Saudi Ara­bian ter­ror­ists kill thou­sands of our coun­try­men from a base in Afghanistan, but then the United States decided to invade — Iraq.

We hate that Osama bin Laden is still alive.

We were told that every­one needed to go to col­lege to have a good life, so we gladly took out tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in stu­dent loans to get a bachelor’s degree. When we saw that we had no com­pet­i­tive advan­tage because every­one else had a bachelor’s degree as well, we took out tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in addi­tional loans for a master’s degree. Now, we have tens upon tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in debt by the time we are thirty, but we see that plumbers and mechan­ics are earn­ing more money than we do.

Gen Y Values

We are dis­mayed that peo­ple who stu­pidly took out mort­gages that they could not afford are get­ting assis­tance from the gov­ern­ment, but no one will ever help us with our stu­dent loan pay­ments. In fact, the gov­ern­ment even amended bank­ruptcy laws so that stu­dent loans are now pre­vented from being erased in bank­ruptcy proceedings.

We have jobs for which we prob­a­bly didn’t even need the col­lege degrees in the first place.

We were gullible chil­dren at the age of eigh­teen when our uni­ver­si­ties allowed preda­tory credit card com­pa­nies to give us numer­ous credit cards, which we then pro­ceeded to use stu­pidly. Now most of us have thou­sands of dol­lars of credit card debt in addi­tion to our stu­dent loan debt.

We are harassed by our par­ents and grand­par­ents, who ask when we are going to get mar­ried, buy a house, and have chil­dren – but we are sad­dened because we know that we won’t be able to afford them for years, if not decades.

We work for com­pa­nies that are cut­ting our health insur­ance, no longer offer­ing pen­sions or retire­ment plans, and con­stantly think­ing about ship­ping our jobs to India or China, and we will prob­a­bly never have Social Secu­rity because the pro­gram will be bankrupt.

We see the Baby Boomers — our col­lec­tive par­ents and grand­par­ents — self­ishly screw­ing over their col­lec­tive chil­dren and grand­chil­dren through lob­by­ist orga­ni­za­tions like the AARP that are not allow­ing enti­tle­ment pro­grams to be saved by being reformed.

We see that Baby Boomers are refus­ing to retire and allow us to obtain higher-level posi­tions in com­pa­nies so we can now afford homes, fam­i­lies, and student-loan payments.

We see the United States going bank­rupt in our life­time because of its ever-growing national debt, the sky­rock­et­ing cost of the war in Iraq, and the $40 tril­lion in future debt owned to enti­tle­ment programs.

We hate that our ide­al­is­tic coun­try must suck up to despotic regimes just because we are addicted to their oil. We hate that our gov­ern­ment has done noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant to wean the United States com­pletely away from oil, even though it will likely run out or be sig­nif­i­cantly rarer in our lifetime.

We want our politi­cians to have seri­ous debates on the impor­tant issues that the United States is fac­ing, but instead they focus only on triv­ial bull­shit like lapel pins and whether a can­di­date had his hand over his heart dur­ing the Pledge of Allegiance.

We are sad­dened that we fake news pro­grams like “The Daily Show” are more insight­ful than the evening news, cable tele­vi­sion, and many news­pa­pers — the media out­lets that are sup­posed to search for the truth and stand up to those in power.

We hate that for­eign­ers always equate us with an idiot like George W. Bush when­ever we travel abroad. We hate that 23% of Amer­i­cans still think he is doing a good job. Who are these people?

We are sick­ened by the fact that the media is obsessed with real­ity tele­vi­sion, entrap­ing pedophiles, and celebrity hijinks rather than address­ing the dire issues that are fac­ing the United States.

We are the most diverse gen­er­a­tion that has ever existed in the United States, but we are dis­mayed that older Amer­i­cans are still sus­pi­cious of other races, gen­ders and reli­gions — and we have seen this dis­crim­i­na­tion in areas rang­ing from the cur­rent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to the per­va­sive dis­crim­i­na­tion against non-Christians in the United States.

We are dis­heart­ened that gov­ern­ment offi­cials are always crit­i­ciz­ing vio­lence and sex in movies, tele­vi­sion and video games when the most immoral actions are always occur­ring in the White House and the halls of Congress.

We won­der how much the cli­mate will change in our life­times — and those of our chil­dren – as a result of global warm­ing and the lack of rad­i­cal, sub­stan­tive action to pre­vent it.

Gen Y Traits

I write this essay not to whine about my generation’s plight. Every gen­er­a­tion — from the Great Depres­sion in the 1930s to World War II in the 1940s to the Cold War in the 1950s to Viet­nam in the 1960s to stagfla­tion in the 1970s to the reces­sion of the early 1990s — has faced its share prob­lems. But we seem to be fac­ing so many prob­lems in so many dif­fer­ent areas that it can feel over­whelm­ing — and, more­over, it seems that our par­ents’ and grand­par­ents’ gen­er­a­tions are doing lit­tle to help us by solv­ing these press­ing issues. Rather, we are left to rely on things like bad-debt car finance, finan­cial spread-betting, and guar­an­teed car finance.

This is why young peo­ple are over­whelm­ingly sup­port­ive of Barack Obama for U.S. pres­i­dent. All of the politi­cians in liv­ing mem­ory have done lit­tle to help my gen­er­a­tion, so we are look­ing for some­one as com­pletely new and dif­fer­ent as pos­si­ble. More than any other can­di­date, he sym­bol­izes dras­tic change on all lev­els. Plus, Obama exudes hope and opti­mism — and my gen­er­a­tion needs that more than anything.

Prior essay: In Defense of Free Trade and Glob­al­iza­tion. Related: The Upcom­ing Gen­er­a­tional War