Sixth in a series of essays
Ruben Navarrette recently criticized young Americans who are lobbying the government for financial assistance in these tough times:
Young people usually don't have mortgages to pay off, or spouses and children to support. That gives them an enormous amount of freedom whether they realize it or not. They also have an advantage in the job market because they can travel the country and go where the jobs are. Or they can simply follow their passions and build careers of their own designs. Instead of seeing obstacles, they should see opportunities.
And yet, when young people ask government to throw them a life preserver and save them from the choppy waters of a rough economy, they've all but given up. Even if they get the short-term economic aid they're seeking, they'll lose their self-sufficiency in the process and become dependent on an unresponsive bureaucracy. That's not good. In fact, it's dangerous.
So you have to wonder where young people picked up this distasteful and destructive behavior. It's obvious. It was from watching their elders with outstretched palms, a sense of entitlement, and a tendency to see government as the solution to all sorts of problems. And to think there are people who actually believe that.
Navarrette misses the point. As he himself notes earlier in his column, young Americans are more disproportionately unemployed than other demographics. But the problem is much deeper than jobs.
Just like Generation X two decades ago, Generation Y is increasingly bitter and frustrated to the point of losing all hope that they will one day have a life at least as secure -- and not even as prosperous -- as the Baby Boomers did in their middle-aged lives. (For the record, my birth year -- 1980 -- is stuck between Generation X and Generation Y, so I can empathize with both.) It is hard to quantify the pessimism and anger that pervades the younger generation, but a writer named Squashed comes close:
The word “entitlement” has picked up a negative connotation it shouldn’t have. If you go to the bank and deposit $20, you are entitled to get your $20 from the bank. If you fulfill your half of a contract, you are entitled to the other party’s performance. Sure, its a problem when you feel you deserve something you don’t deserve—but there is nothing wrong with acknowledging a legitimate debt. So let’s ask why some people in their 20s might feel the older generation hasn’t kept its end of the bargain...
For those who just graduated, there was no job. That’s not technically true. There was a job—but somebody older has it and isn’t letting go. It turns out the whole system is rigged. Education and intelligence and everything we were told was important turn out to be worth nothing next to seniority and experience...
Take health insurance. Decades of pressure to lower wages for new hires and cut benefits means that the employer-provided system means that even if you can find a job, it probably won’t offer health insurance. Paying for insurance out of pocket is prohibitively expensive if you’re healthy and coverage is entirely unavailable if you’re not. And if you have a minimum-wage job serving coffee, you’re still getting a chunk taken out of your paycheck to finance a program that won’t be solvent by the time you’re old enough to use it. But any effort to change this system is met with seniors screaming about communists taking away their medicare. And if 20-somethings back a legislative initiative that would help them obtain coverage, they’re slackers living in their parents basements. And let’s not even get into the individual mandate in the health-reform bill that will require the healthy and young to subsidize the health-care of their older and generally wealthier parents.
Should twenty-somethings who have done everything asked of them their entire lives feel like somebody pulled one over on them? Probably—but bad things happen. And hopefully all those years of education taught us enough empathy not to be vindictive. Call us gullible—but don’t call us lazy or selfish. If some of us push for a few reforms that could help us succeed even when our parents have dropped the ball—back them, and be thankful that we’re not talking outright revolution.
In an earlier essay, I also described the reasons that people my age are -- to put it bluntly -- pissed off. Please take a minute to read the post and its comments. Now, for the specific data from the Pew Research Center:
Now, what facts can be determined from this data?
- The percentage of workers who are approaching or older than 65 is increasing while that of younger people is declining or remaining static.
- Most workers who remain on the job past the age of 65 do so out of desire rather than need.
- Still, some older workers have delayed retirement due to the recession.
In a nutshell, it is the Baby Boomers' own fault that their children are working at McDonald's or sleeping in their basements. For the most part, the older generation is refusing
Related posts:
Just what the Internet needs, more Gen-X whining. “My generation REALLY is different. Blah, blah, blah. In 5 years you’ll be back to your young arrogant American self fuming about taxes and government regulations and welfare for the lowlifes. With a real bank account you’ll be screaming for government to get off your back. Gen X is so boring. I’ve been there, done that! Well, except for the real bank account.
Thanks for your intelligent contribution to my blog.
Interesting blog, but it’s missing an important part of the equation: Generation Jones (born 1954–1965, between the Boomers and Generation X). Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a ton of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term. In fact, the Associated Press’ annual Trend Report forecast the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009. Here’s a page with a good overview of recent media interest in GenJones: http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html
It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down more or less this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946–1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942–1953
Generation Jones: 1954–1965
Generation X: 1966–1978
You are welcome. Always happy to point out the flimsy and feeble. Hey, without superficiality, this would be an interesting medium, something we need to avoid at all costs, right? Then we wouldn’t be able to read about yet another generation that has lost all hope.
I need to give the author credit for not being sucked into the incredible stupid “Jones Generation” fallacy that is receiving so much hype, probably for commercial potentiality. These greedy nuts want us to believe that a generation, which is based upon, roughtly, the reproduction cycle, they want us to believe kids can have babies at 12 years old on a regular basic.
Note this whole Jones silliness is an organized campaign, one that attempts to take a media fad — hey, anything, especially in these hard times, to sell magazines — into a bigger lie. The Jones group is merely a cohort of the Boomers, that’s all. Generations can’t be 11 or 12, which cuts it from its basis of being a generation. Get real folks.
Actually, you are confusing familial generations with cultural generations. Reproduction age is totally relevant to familial generations (e.g. grandma/Mom/daughter/etc.). But cultural generations (e.g. Boomers/Jonesers/Xers/etc.) have absolutely nothing to do with reproductive age. A consensus has emerged among generation experts that, partly because of the acceleration of culture, generations are now approximately 11–15 years.
And further, the evidence is overwhelming that Jonesers are a distinct generation from Boom & X. For example, Boomers are typically the most Democratic party-voting generation, while Jonesers are the most GOP-voting gen, yet they are lumped together as if they are one gen, simply because both gen’s parents happened to have a lot of kids. Ridiculous. Which is why so many experts buy into the GenJones idea.
Actually, you are confusing a popular fad with social substance. Generations are never familial or sub-groupie, but grounded on reproducing. Without that tie “generation” becomes absurd. For instance, then a generation can be two years long? one year? Every day? Hey, each of us can have our very own generation!
Another deep confusion on your part is all generations are broken down into different groups that have certain differences. This was even true for the World War II Generation, which in certain respects was the most recent generation with a tight consensus.
Baloney on your “experts,” which is a select group of individuals often with a vested interest to distort language and perception. At one time the experts agreed nuclear weapon were a weapon for peace. A one time the experts said Blacks were an inferior race. At one time so-called experts have said everything.
Speed of cultural change merely means there can be more diversity in a culture, but this is not a foregone conclusion. Look at Generation Y today.
In the end, the facts will overwhelm you and the Jones Generation will return to what it always was, late-wave Boomers. Sorry to break your bubble but divorcing generations from reproduction cycle is like divorcing marriage from human beings. It has no meaning, which is why you need to quote the “experts,” who in this case have no credibility.
The added point, if Generations were determined by voting preferences, then the entire categorizing of generations would have to be ripped up. For instance, in the Silent Generation there is a age-cohort that would be Boomer, another that would be WW II, still another would be the Revolutionary Generation. Based on voting preferences there would be no coherence to a generation.
The more I read your propaganda the more I think you guys might be seriously deranged.
Yeah, I’m another X’er, and unlike you I’m taking the low road. Hah.
Sorry, but what I call ‘Boomer Derangement Syndrome’ can be found in all parties. Actually for me, it’s repetition, because 80% of the Boomers I know are burdens on their family or liabilities.
For every Nancy Pelosi I can show you someone who I had to call BS on:
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/08/boomers-angriest-generation-please.html
That’s not anger. That’s fear. From a ‘Conservative’ Boomer.
I also agree with you, that ‘Gen Jones’ is tripe. It’s just the shirt tails seeing the writing on the wall that their generation will NOT be remembered fondly. No Boomer will.
I think Obama kind of understands this. Despite that he still surrounds himself with chickenhawks [5 deferment boy Biden, just like Cheney], and Boomers like Pelosi. You know, Nancy ‘rhetoric is assassination so shut up all of you’ Pelosi.
Another thing I’d like to bring to your attention is Bruce Sterling’s final talk at the GenX-Y Hacker Con Reboot 11:
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/09/bruce-sterling-closing-talk-reboot-11.html
The Boomers, of which Barry is the last of the last– is a great orator– but he’s a cheer leader. Not a real leader. Even Sterling can see that.
Where are we headed? Right where Eastern Europe was. Why? See the speech.
Your BDR “can be found in all parties,” do you mean in all people or in all drinking parties? Clarity is not something, evidently, that you value. As one reads through your post one word stands out that explains just about everything, “conservative.” That’s sufficient to sent you into smearing all Boomers and to slam the Speaker. Increasingly Conservative is short hand for alienated pathetic moron, we might call it APM. In this case it appears you have slipped over the line from APM to IM, incoherent moron.
I suggest you stick with the drinking, which you’re attempting to convince everyone, you excel in.
..and I think you mistook Samuel’s ironic ‘complement’ as encouragement to promulgate your incessant blather.
Are we even? My post was about the blog entry, not what you consider ‘discourse’.
Drunken Economist, when you mention eastern Europe, what do you mean?