8 ms·

I sort of went down the rabbit hole in The Guardian's Generation Y coverage, and ended up in an article with Millennials confessing their greatest fears: “I wo

I sort of went down the rabbit hole in The Guardian's Generation Y coverage, and ended up in an article with Millennials confessing their greatest fears: “I worry that I’m never going to live up to my own expectations. I live in terror that I will wake up on my 50th birthday in a perfectly ordinary house, with a perfectly ordinary family and unremarkable job – living an unremarkable, ordinary, average life. If these are your biggest fears in life, take a step back to realize what you've got. Entitlement and bizarre expectations about what "life" is are to blame here. Not every one is above average.

fucking_tragedy 11y ago
I can find someone out of touch with reality in Generation ___, as well. Those are the fears of someone who has never had to worry about their next meal, a roof over their head, whether they can afford to see a doctor or if their kids will have a better life than they did. There are plenty of people in Generation Y who would recognize that this person has been driven somewhat delusional through boredom and wealth.
jahnu 11y ago
Yeah some people do seem to be very entitled. But at the same time this shouldn't preclude a conversation about why, given the massively increased pool of wealth that has been created in the last few decades, the poor and middle classes are expected not to share in it. It's definitely healthy for me to recognise that I as a middle class westerner live better than almost everyone in a developing economy but if the answer to "where has all the new wealth gone?" is not "too the poorest economies!" then I think it's only natural to feel cheated if the answer is "be happy with what you have and stop asking questions!"
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  What specific goods and services do you believe have become available, but not for the poor and middle classes? Can you name a few? It's definitely healthy for me to recognise that I as a middle class westerner live better than almost everyone in a developing economy but if the answer to "where has all the new wealth gone?" is not "too the poorest economies!" Luckily, the answer is "to the poor and middle class". https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-may-be-the-most-important-chart-for-understanding-politics-today/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-...
  - notahacker 11y ago
    Since the subject is "where does the money go", how does that graph look if the changes in income are absolute rather than percentage changes of a power-law shaped pre-existing income distribution? As you would be the first to agree though, wealth increases need not be zero sum. For the most part, growth in developing and middle income countries isn't at the expense of wealthier countries at all. On the other hand, rising costs of London property - referenced in the article as a key concern of "millenials" - is pretty close to a zero sum game, and it's generally not poor and middle class people, and certainly not the lower deciles of world income, that are winning it.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Since the subject is "where does the money go", Actually I'm trying to change the subject from money. Who cares about green pieces of paper multiplied by chained CPI [1]? What matters is goods and services. As noted above I don't think you can name a single good and service that the bottom has less of, beyond maybe obsolete goods like land lines or investments like "shares in BRK.A" or "land in central London". The graph I link to demonstrates things are definitively not zero sum - virtually everyone has experienced gains. [1] Chained CPI is meaningless over time, since the basket of goods changes every year. Not to mention the biggest contributors to CPI growth - health care and education - are not hedonically adjusted.
      - notahacker 11y ago
        But the subject of the article is younger low/middle income people in wealthy countries like Britain now getting a raw deal relative to older asset-rich people because the young people spend most of their incomes on maintaining a level of property older people paid for at much lower cost (in terms of real goods or as a proportion of income), whilst simultaneously having more of their income diverted to the older, often asset-rich people's rising-in-real-terms public pensions. Your graph of world income changes does not demonstrate that British public policies aimed at boosting house prices and transferring a greater proportion of national income to today's pensioners aren't [close to] a zero sum game stacked against the young, or that the chief beneficiaries of this increase in economic rent captured by older generations and the asset-rich in Britain are the global poor, which obviously isn't true. It might be open to question how many young people with much less living space than previous generations actually are worse off given that thanks to economic development they'll live longer and have access to digital goods that didn't exist and more opportunity to avoid expensive housing through increased relocation opportunity than their elders did at the same age. But then again, if I wanted a graph which indicates a large fraction of people in countries like Britain who would be considered low-mid income by national standards are actually worse off, I could always use yours...
matwood 11y ago
> Not every one is above average. Also important to remember that almost everyone on this site is going to be way above average income wise. Sometimes I get the feeling like you were responding to, and then I remind myself that I grew up with next to nothing. I was lucky enough to realize in college (computers were just becoming ubiquitous when I started college) I had a knack for programming and it was the right time to have that knack. I have had experiences I never thought possible when I was a kid. But there is a benefit to the feeling - the drive work hard.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >But there is a benefit to the feeling - the drive work hard. I agree with the sorts of benefits that this feeling can induce in the best of cases. On the other hand, I don't think that everyone really understands what "hard work" means. To the self-entitled it means "got a college education" and "show up for work every day". Well so did everyone else. I don't know, I have mixed feelings about this. I realize that this generation is getting stiffed in a sense, by circumstances beyond their control. But hey, we aren't growing up having to go to war in Europe, or during the Depression, or the Bubonic plague for that matter. So we've got that going for us, which is nice. Ever rising economic standards on a magnified level (meaning every generation is richer than the previous, not just by overall trend) doesn't seem plausible over the long-term. We need to get used to that.
  - beisner 11y ago
    But on the third hand, defining "hard work" relatively rather than absolutely is misleading. Sure, what you described might be the norm and not exceptional, but that should not mean that its value is lessened by relative comparison. If everyone works 40 hours a week for 50 years straight, do they not deserve at least some sense of economic viability and material success in a world that is literally teeming with economic riches? I think far fewer people would be upset with mediocrity if mediocrity were comfortable.
  - matwood 11y ago
    > On the other hand, I don't think that everyone really understands what "hard work" means. To the self-entitled it means "got a college education" and "show up for work every day". Well so did everyone else. I agree. Going to college and showing up is baseline. I do think that kids today come across as entitled, but I'm sure I was the same way at 18 years old. Having grown up helping my dad do labor type work for 2-3 jobs while trying to make ends meet, I know hard labor work. That is something I never want to have to do again. Is this generation getting stiffed? There really are more opportunities now than ever before. College is simply not required for anything in IT. The rise of free online education is amazing. $5/month gets you a server on the internet that lets you start any business you can come up with. Many of the traditional barriers are gone. What has changed though is that people are required to be self reliant, which can be a tough thing for many. IMO, the main people getting stiffed are the poor and blue collar workers. The people who would never have gone to college regardless of cost. The people who would have had great lives in a factory situation.
speeder 11y ago
I am 28 years old. My biggest fear in life is waking up on my 50th and not owning a house, not having a family, and not having a ordinary job... because so far is how my life is going. I currently live with my parents, have negative net worth, have no friends, no girlfriend, no job, and can't afford to buy a new PC, and my current one is trying to die on me, and I need it to do the occasional odd-job that shows up.
- miseg 11y ago
  What kind of tasks do you need a computer for? From that you could determine how much you need to spend on a replacement one (probably a free one or a cheap second-hand one).
- ericcholis 11y ago
  Some people might view your situation as very advantageous. No ties, no strings attached, nothing to hold you back. Your opportunity in life is a blank slate, in a good way. Take every odd job that shows up, and amass some savings towards a long-term goal. Travel the US, or the world if you can manage. Making friends is easy, keeping them can hard. Join some local clubs/organizations and put yourself out there. Fear can be a motivator if you let it, use it to help you avoid the undesirable outcome. Some of these sound like platitudes, but they do hold substance. It's easy to find yourself in a situation that seems hopeless. What you do from that place is important.
- kingkawn 11y ago
  Obviously if your life is not matching the expectations built into you from before you were aware it was happening it is because the expectations are bullshit. I am looking forward to a return to communal living and away from these ridiculous status markers being labeled independence and success.
  - mineshaftgap 11y ago
    Communal living is great in theory, in reality it is a shitshow. Boundaries are important.
  - 11y ago
gerbilly 11y ago
Reminds me of this Zen story: A rich man asked a Zen master to write something down that could encourage the prosperity of his family for years to come. It would be something that the family could cherish for generations. On a large piece of paper, the master wrote, "Father dies, son dies, grandson dies." The rich man became angry when he saw the master's work. "I asked you to write something down that could bring happiness and prosperity to my family. Why do you give me something depressing like this?" "If your son should die before you," the master answered, "this would bring unbearable grief to your family. If your grandson should die before your son, this also would bring great sorrow. If your family, generation after generation, disappears in the order I have described, it will be the natural course of life. This is true happiness and prosperity."
- jrs235 11y ago
  Related: An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village, taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replied, only a little while. The executive then asked, why didnt you stay out longer and catch more fish? The fisherman replied, I have enough to support my family for a little while. The executive then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time? The Mexican fisherman said, I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life. The executive scoffed, I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise. The Mexican fisherman asked, But, how long will this all take? To which the American replied, 15-20 years. But what then? The American laughed and said thats the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions. Millions.. Then what? The American said, Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.
callinyouin 11y ago
I find it pretty hard to believe that the quoted fear is particular to millennials. The fear of not meeting life expectations, personal or otherwise, has been a worry for young people since forever. Millennials certainly aren't the first to "dream big".
sdgsfsfgfg 11y ago
You are not engaging with the article. You are seeking out one individual's opinion and lampooning it. You are being dishonest, your writing is based upon what you want to be true, rather than a search for what is true.
branchless 11y ago
This is something you've chosen to quote and is not representative, and I don't agree with it. There is genuine generational inequality.
wcummings 11y ago
I don't think it's about being "above average" or achievement, I think it's more about being railroaded into the bourgeoisie family ideal. Obviously this is a very middle class problem to have by definition, but I don't think that it's "entitled" or "bizarre" to feel stifled by social pressures. This anxiety is hardly specific to millennials.
cryoshon 11y ago
To put this into context, the people around my age that I know are worried about being able to pay rent, having enough money to marry, paying off their student debt during their lifetime, and being so handicapped by a lack of money that they never get to retire, vacation, or travel.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "If these are your biggest fears in life, take a step back to realize what you've got. Entitlement and bizarre expectations about what "life" is are to blame here. Not every one is above average." That's not what it's about. I'm a Millennial and whilst I would never word it like the author did, I understand where they're coming from. The issue is with one of courage vs. conformity. The author fears those things because they see the paths that are expected of them, and doesn't like where they lead. If they were happy to live a simple life (and there's nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want) then they wouldn't have those concerns. Speaking as a Millennial in my 30s I've realised I'm prepared to give up on quite a lot in order to keep my own dreams alive. I'm not ready to 'settle down' into a life I do not want. My opinion may change as I get older, but for now I would rather avoid the trap of a huge mortgage and the lifestyle that must be maintained to support it (i.e. reduced career options, reduced travel options, etc...). It's not about entitlement, it's about recognising I have options.
CuriouslyC 11y ago
I can empathize with that person's fear. I wouldn't say that is my "greatest" fear (being horribly crippled and disfigured by some kind of nasty accident, and living in pain and dependence takes that spot) but it is definitely something that I think about. At least in my case, it isn't so much that an average life is "bad"; I am obsessive about personal development, and I push myself extremely hard. Ending up "normal" would basically mean my work had been futile, which would be pretty depressing.
unprepare 11y ago
To get there you had to scroll past: >I worry I’ll never afford my own home, or always have to flatshare >Salaries don’t, and never will, reflect the rising cost of living >My degree was a waste of time But i guess wanting to be a grown adult without having to have rommates is entitlement. Retirees capturing more wealth than an entire generation of working college graduates? Dont be ridiculous, thats not entitlement.

fucking_tragedy 11y ago

I can find someone out of touch with reality in Generation ___, as well. Those are the fears of someone who has never had to worry about their next meal, a roof over their head, whether they can afford to see a doctor or if their kids will have a better life than they did. There are plenty of people in Generation Y who would recognize that this person has been driven somewhat delusional through boredom and wealth.

jahnu 11y ago

Yeah some people do seem to be very entitled. But at the same time this shouldn't preclude a conversation about why, given the massively increased pool of wealth that has been created in the last few decades, the poor and middle classes are expected not to share in it. It's definitely healthy for me to recognise that I as a middle class westerner live better than almost everyone in a developing economy but if the answer to "where has all the new wealth gone?" is not "too the poorest economies!" then I think it's only natural to feel cheated if the answer is "be happy with what you have and stop asking questions!"

yummyfajitas 11y ago
What specific goods and services do you believe have become available, but not for the poor and middle classes? Can you name a few? It's definitely healthy for me to recognise that I as a middle class westerner live better than almost everyone in a developing economy but if the answer to "where has all the new wealth gone?" is not "too the poorest economies!" Luckily, the answer is "to the poor and middle class". https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-may-be-the-most-important-chart-for-understanding-politics-today/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-...
- notahacker 11y ago
  Since the subject is "where does the money go", how does that graph look if the changes in income are absolute rather than percentage changes of a power-law shaped pre-existing income distribution? As you would be the first to agree though, wealth increases need not be zero sum. For the most part, growth in developing and middle income countries isn't at the expense of wealthier countries at all. On the other hand, rising costs of London property - referenced in the article as a key concern of "millenials" - is pretty close to a zero sum game, and it's generally not poor and middle class people, and certainly not the lower deciles of world income, that are winning it.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Since the subject is "where does the money go", Actually I'm trying to change the subject from money. Who cares about green pieces of paper multiplied by chained CPI [1]? What matters is goods and services. As noted above I don't think you can name a single good and service that the bottom has less of, beyond maybe obsolete goods like land lines or investments like "shares in BRK.A" or "land in central London". The graph I link to demonstrates things are definitively not zero sum - virtually everyone has experienced gains. [1] Chained CPI is meaningless over time, since the basket of goods changes every year. Not to mention the biggest contributors to CPI growth - health care and education - are not hedonically adjusted.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      But the subject of the article is younger low/middle income people in wealthy countries like Britain now getting a raw deal relative to older asset-rich people because the young people spend most of their incomes on maintaining a level of property older people paid for at much lower cost (in terms of real goods or as a proportion of income), whilst simultaneously having more of their income diverted to the older, often asset-rich people's rising-in-real-terms public pensions. Your graph of world income changes does not demonstrate that British public policies aimed at boosting house prices and transferring a greater proportion of national income to today's pensioners aren't [close to] a zero sum game stacked against the young, or that the chief beneficiaries of this increase in economic rent captured by older generations and the asset-rich in Britain are the global poor, which obviously isn't true. It might be open to question how many young people with much less living space than previous generations actually are worse off given that thanks to economic development they'll live longer and have access to digital goods that didn't exist and more opportunity to avoid expensive housing through increased relocation opportunity than their elders did at the same age. But then again, if I wanted a graph which indicates a large fraction of people in countries like Britain who would be considered low-mid income by national standards are actually worse off, I could always use yours...

matwood 11y ago

> Not every one is above average. Also important to remember that almost everyone on this site is going to be way above average income wise. Sometimes I get the feeling like you were responding to, and then I remind myself that I grew up with next to nothing. I was lucky enough to realize in college (computers were just becoming ubiquitous when I started college) I had a knack for programming and it was the right time to have that knack. I have had experiences I never thought possible when I was a kid. But there is a benefit to the feeling - the drive work hard.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>But there is a benefit to the feeling - the drive work hard. I agree with the sorts of benefits that this feeling can induce in the best of cases. On the other hand, I don't think that everyone really understands what "hard work" means. To the self-entitled it means "got a college education" and "show up for work every day". Well so did everyone else. I don't know, I have mixed feelings about this. I realize that this generation is getting stiffed in a sense, by circumstances beyond their control. But hey, we aren't growing up having to go to war in Europe, or during the Depression, or the Bubonic plague for that matter. So we've got that going for us, which is nice. Ever rising economic standards on a magnified level (meaning every generation is richer than the previous, not just by overall trend) doesn't seem plausible over the long-term. We need to get used to that.
- beisner 11y ago
  But on the third hand, defining "hard work" relatively rather than absolutely is misleading. Sure, what you described might be the norm and not exceptional, but that should not mean that its value is lessened by relative comparison. If everyone works 40 hours a week for 50 years straight, do they not deserve at least some sense of economic viability and material success in a world that is literally teeming with economic riches? I think far fewer people would be upset with mediocrity if mediocrity were comfortable.
- matwood 11y ago
  > On the other hand, I don't think that everyone really understands what "hard work" means. To the self-entitled it means "got a college education" and "show up for work every day". Well so did everyone else. I agree. Going to college and showing up is baseline. I do think that kids today come across as entitled, but I'm sure I was the same way at 18 years old. Having grown up helping my dad do labor type work for 2-3 jobs while trying to make ends meet, I know hard labor work. That is something I never want to have to do again. Is this generation getting stiffed? There really are more opportunities now than ever before. College is simply not required for anything in IT. The rise of free online education is amazing. $5/month gets you a server on the internet that lets you start any business you can come up with. Many of the traditional barriers are gone. What has changed though is that people are required to be self reliant, which can be a tough thing for many. IMO, the main people getting stiffed are the poor and blue collar workers. The people who would never have gone to college regardless of cost. The people who would have had great lives in a factory situation.

speeder 11y ago

I am 28 years old. My biggest fear in life is waking up on my 50th and not owning a house, not having a family, and not having a ordinary job... because so far is how my life is going. I currently live with my parents, have negative net worth, have no friends, no girlfriend, no job, and can't afford to buy a new PC, and my current one is trying to die on me, and I need it to do the occasional odd-job that shows up.

miseg 11y ago
What kind of tasks do you need a computer for? From that you could determine how much you need to spend on a replacement one (probably a free one or a cheap second-hand one).
ericcholis 11y ago
Some people might view your situation as very advantageous. No ties, no strings attached, nothing to hold you back. Your opportunity in life is a blank slate, in a good way. Take every odd job that shows up, and amass some savings towards a long-term goal. Travel the US, or the world if you can manage. Making friends is easy, keeping them can hard. Join some local clubs/organizations and put yourself out there. Fear can be a motivator if you let it, use it to help you avoid the undesirable outcome. Some of these sound like platitudes, but they do hold substance. It's easy to find yourself in a situation that seems hopeless. What you do from that place is important.
kingkawn 11y ago
Obviously if your life is not matching the expectations built into you from before you were aware it was happening it is because the expectations are bullshit. I am looking forward to a return to communal living and away from these ridiculous status markers being labeled independence and success.
- mineshaftgap 11y ago
  Communal living is great in theory, in reality it is a shitshow. Boundaries are important.
- 11y ago

gerbilly 11y ago

Reminds me of this Zen story: A rich man asked a Zen master to write something down that could encourage the prosperity of his family for years to come. It would be something that the family could cherish for generations. On a large piece of paper, the master wrote, "Father dies, son dies, grandson dies." The rich man became angry when he saw the master's work. "I asked you to write something down that could bring happiness and prosperity to my family. Why do you give me something depressing like this?" "If your son should die before you," the master answered, "this would bring unbearable grief to your family. If your grandson should die before your son, this also would bring great sorrow. If your family, generation after generation, disappears in the order I have described, it will be the natural course of life. This is true happiness and prosperity."

jrs235 11y ago
Related: An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village, taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replied, only a little while. The executive then asked, why didnt you stay out longer and catch more fish? The fisherman replied, I have enough to support my family for a little while. The executive then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time? The Mexican fisherman said, I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life. The executive scoffed, I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise. The Mexican fisherman asked, But, how long will this all take? To which the American replied, 15-20 years. But what then? The American laughed and said thats the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions. Millions.. Then what? The American said, Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.

callinyouin 11y ago

I find it pretty hard to believe that the quoted fear is particular to millennials. The fear of not meeting life expectations, personal or otherwise, has been a worry for young people since forever. Millennials certainly aren't the first to "dream big".

sdgsfsfgfg 11y ago

You are not engaging with the article. You are seeking out one individual's opinion and lampooning it. You are being dishonest, your writing is based upon what you want to be true, rather than a search for what is true.

branchless 11y ago

This is something you've chosen to quote and is not representative, and I don't agree with it. There is genuine generational inequality.

wcummings 11y ago

I don't think it's about being "above average" or achievement, I think it's more about being railroaded into the bourgeoisie family ideal. Obviously this is a very middle class problem to have by definition, but I don't think that it's "entitled" or "bizarre" to feel stifled by social pressures. This anxiety is hardly specific to millennials.

cryoshon 11y ago

To put this into context, the people around my age that I know are worried about being able to pay rent, having enough money to marry, paying off their student debt during their lifetime, and being so handicapped by a lack of money that they never get to retire, vacation, or travel.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ZenoArrow 11y ago

> "If these are your biggest fears in life, take a step back to realize what you've got. Entitlement and bizarre expectations about what "life" is are to blame here. Not every one is above average." That's not what it's about. I'm a Millennial and whilst I would never word it like the author did, I understand where they're coming from. The issue is with one of courage vs. conformity. The author fears those things because they see the paths that are expected of them, and doesn't like where they lead. If they were happy to live a simple life (and there's nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want) then they wouldn't have those concerns. Speaking as a Millennial in my 30s I've realised I'm prepared to give up on quite a lot in order to keep my own dreams alive. I'm not ready to 'settle down' into a life I do not want. My opinion may change as I get older, but for now I would rather avoid the trap of a huge mortgage and the lifestyle that must be maintained to support it (i.e. reduced career options, reduced travel options, etc...). It's not about entitlement, it's about recognising I have options.

CuriouslyC 11y ago

I can empathize with that person's fear. I wouldn't say that is my "greatest" fear (being horribly crippled and disfigured by some kind of nasty accident, and living in pain and dependence takes that spot) but it is definitely something that I think about. At least in my case, it isn't so much that an average life is "bad"; I am obsessive about personal development, and I push myself extremely hard. Ending up "normal" would basically mean my work had been futile, which would be pretty depressing.

unprepare 11y ago

To get there you had to scroll past: >I worry I’ll never afford my own home, or always have to flatshare >Salaries don’t, and never will, reflect the rising cost of living >My degree was a waste of time But i guess wanting to be a grown adult without having to have rommates is entitlement. Retirees capturing more wealth than an entire generation of working college graduates? Dont be ridiculous, thats not entitlement.