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Millenials aren't whiny, they are angry. They have been screwed and want revenge. They correctly asses that boomers climbed up the ladder then burned it to the
by wfo 9y ago
Millenials aren't whiny, they are angry. They have been screwed and want revenge. They correctly asses that boomers climbed up the ladder then burned it to the ground. They took cheap publicly subsidized education then massively defunded it. They benefited from regulated financial markets then gifted them to oligarchs. They took pensions then ensured no one would ever get one again. They destroyed unions and therefore the middle class. They destroyed the environment for their own personal profit. They took all the benefits of the new deal, and the moment it looked like those benefits would start helping the new generation they stripped them away. The boomers will go down as the most selfish and short sighted generation in US history.
And millenials are very tired of these people who have had it so easy and worked to make it so much worse for their children, talking about "personal responsibility" and "participation trophies".
- malvosenior 9y agoNo one had it easy. Millennials have a much better life all things considered. You can’t get drafted to go die in a war, you brush off 70s stagflation like it was a non-event. Rascism is much less prevalent. It’s precisely this ease of living that is part of the problem. Why not rack up tens of thousands of college debt to get a useless degree when you’re historically more privileged than 99% of people that have ever lived? Reality is harsh and that seems to have escaped many millennials.
- Apocryphon 9y ago> Reality is harsh and that seems to have escaped many millennials. I think part of the disillusionment was having grown up in the prosperous, peaceful '90s, that Boomers hyped up as the End of History. And then the western world became immersed in a seeming unending war, with the security state overreach accordingly, and then the bottom fell out of the economy after. Can you blame them for being pissed off that the promises of their childhood were a lie? At least previous generations that dealt with hardships were not lied to first.
- malvosenior 9y agoI agree with your analysis and think we're very close to talking about the same thing. The difference between gen-x and millennials is that boomers told both groups the same lies, it's just that gen-x didn't believe them. Gen-x cynicism is a real thing. We're back to my original point of millennials not being close enough to boomers to know that they were lying (or ill informed).
- Apocryphon 9y agoGen X grew up during the Cold War, Reaganism, Thatcherism, Wall Street malfeasance, AIDS, the crack epidemic. This is a little biased generalization of the '80s, but I think overall you could say the '90s were much more hopeful and sunnier in comparison. It was easier to believe in lies back then. Could you blame them for believing in their helicopter parents with their self-esteem culture and dot-com money?
- malvosenior 9y agoI blame them for not realizing their error and instead calling for state regulation and intervention. They'd probably get more support from gen x if they were listening to them instead of attacking their ideals (speaking in very broad generalities at this point).
- Apocryphon 9y agoAre Gen X's really a bunch of Yuppies who are against regulation? Even after everything that Reagan, Thatcher, and the Chicago Boys have done?