16 ms·

Does anyone know / remember if there were similar pieces written in the late 90s about people in their 20s and 30s then? Ie is this a trend that has always happ

Does anyone know / remember if there were similar pieces written in the late 90s about people in their 20s and 30s then? Ie is this a trend that has always happened or something new?

platz 8y ago
it's actually a cover to for an endorsement of Buttigieg's run for president.
- aedron 8y ago
  Yeah, that was a pretty transparent plug. And to answer the OP's question, yes, in the nineties the "generational robbery" was a topic: Real estate was booming, making existing (old) homeowners rich and pricing out first-time buyers.
newsgremlin 8y ago
Probably not as glaring since interest rates are much much lower now than they were then, and the crash of 07/08 hadn't happened yet
acdha 8y ago
It’s been going on for awhile but there are a number of factors which have become worse since the 90s: health insurance, tuition, housing, etc. all cost significantly more and we’re a generation further on the hollowing out of middle class jobs due to automation, offshoring, replacing employees with contractors, etc. I think the net effect is that it’s well over a key threshold for many people where a generation earlier someone might have complained about one of those costs but still been able to make it work whereas now it’s just not possible fora growing number of people. As an example, I know someone with type 1 diabetes. The inflation-adjusted cost of insulin has gone up something like 700% over the last 20 years and the number of jobs offering health insurance has declined while the employee’s cost percentage has risen, so the percentage of people who can just absorb it is shrinking.
hoaw 8y ago
I don't generally think so. I'd be interested in an opposite opinion though. The end of the 90s was all about being twenty/thirty-something. Just look at popular shows like Friends, Seinfeld and Sex and the City. They are essentially shows about staying young, or at least not growing up. And also the change of things like MTV. Most of these shows more or less ended with the characters getting married, having kids or otherwise ending that period in their lives. In Sex and the City, Miranda moving to Brooklyn because Manhattan is too expensive is a major event in the last season.
gaius 8y ago
Read Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, the original book that coined the term. It’s all about 20-somethings in the ‘90’s dropping out because the rewards seem so impossibly far out of reach that it’s not even worth trying. Also held the Boomers to blame.
- Joeboy 8y ago
  From the back of my copy: """Andy, Dag and Claire have been handed a society priced beyone their means. twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80s fall-out of yuppies, recession, crack and Ronald Reagan, they represent the new generation - Generation X. Fiercely suspicious of being lumped together as an advertiser's target market, they have quit dreary careers and cut themselves adrift in the California desert. Unsure of their futures, they immerse themselves in a regime of heavy drinking and working at no-future McJobs in the service industry."""
- howard941 8y ago
  That was a good read. Before Gen X we were called the 13th gen but that didn't get traction. Someone else wrote a book on it, reviewed here: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/OBJECTS/III/reviews/13thgen.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/OBJECTS/III/reviews/13thge...
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
They were a lost generation for different reasons. A little earlier than late 90s: The Thatcher/Reagan de-industrialisation through the 80s meant a huge number of children deprived of opportunity as whole regions and cities lost their major employers. In the UK it was effectively the start of our drug problem. Criminalisation had only arrived in the late 60s. Then we got the big recession of the early 90s. Most of those de-industrialised areas had huge crime and drug problems, lost opportunities and parents who were broke, jobless and without hope. London and the South East was turbo-charging banking so we got Harry Enfield's comedy "Loadsa Money" character on tv, and plenty of market traders becoming stock traders. If you were early into IT you avoided it too. So London and the South East was mostly OK, the rest, not so much. For those coming onto the job market it was a time of very high youth unemployment and limited chances. By the late 90s it had settled and most were busy spending it. Some of those hardest hit areas are still not fully recovered. The cities have, mostly. My father's generation were lost in the Great Depression, then got to go to WW2. His father's in WW1. We can learn from history that we don't treat the unlucky at all well, or try and prevent damage to the next generation. Oh, and that we mostly don't learn from history.
- gadders 8y ago
  >> Most of those de-industrialised areas had huge crime and drug problems, lost opportunities and parents who were broke, jobless and without hope. London and the South East was turbo-charging banking so we got Harry Enfield's comedy "Loadsa Money" character on tv, and plenty of market traders becoming stock traders. If you were early into IT you avoided it too. The Loadsamoney character was a plasterer. Even manual trades were doing well in the South East.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Of course he was. I can't believe I forgot that! :)
- hoaw 8y ago
  I am not sure it is the same thing, but maybe in the UK it was. As you say there have always been turmoil. But most of the time the young were seen as getting a better deal. Factories closed and older generations suffered, but the young got other jobs and at least to some extent benefited from the transition. Today we are talking about how young people get it almost universally worse from an economic standpoint and it is people in their ~forties that are winning in e.g. the housing market.
Chazprime 8y ago
It’s nothing new. I remember (barely) talk of baby boomers worried about retirement after Black Monday. Guess they recovered nicely.

Does anyone know / remember if there were similar pieces written in the late 90s about people in their 20s and 30s then? Ie is this a trend that has always happened or something new?

platz 8y ago

it's actually a cover to for an endorsement of Buttigieg's run for president.

aedron 8y ago
Yeah, that was a pretty transparent plug. And to answer the OP's question, yes, in the nineties the "generational robbery" was a topic: Real estate was booming, making existing (old) homeowners rich and pricing out first-time buyers.

newsgremlin 8y ago

Probably not as glaring since interest rates are much much lower now than they were then, and the crash of 07/08 hadn't happened yet

acdha 8y ago

It’s been going on for awhile but there are a number of factors which have become worse since the 90s: health insurance, tuition, housing, etc. all cost significantly more and we’re a generation further on the hollowing out of middle class jobs due to automation, offshoring, replacing employees with contractors, etc. I think the net effect is that it’s well over a key threshold for many people where a generation earlier someone might have complained about one of those costs but still been able to make it work whereas now it’s just not possible fora growing number of people. As an example, I know someone with type 1 diabetes. The inflation-adjusted cost of insulin has gone up something like 700% over the last 20 years and the number of jobs offering health insurance has declined while the employee’s cost percentage has risen, so the percentage of people who can just absorb it is shrinking.

hoaw 8y ago

I don't generally think so. I'd be interested in an opposite opinion though. The end of the 90s was all about being twenty/thirty-something. Just look at popular shows like Friends, Seinfeld and Sex and the City. They are essentially shows about staying young, or at least not growing up. And also the change of things like MTV. Most of these shows more or less ended with the characters getting married, having kids or otherwise ending that period in their lives. In Sex and the City, Miranda moving to Brooklyn because Manhattan is too expensive is a major event in the last season.

gaius 8y ago

Read Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, the original book that coined the term. It’s all about 20-somethings in the ‘90’s dropping out because the rewards seem so impossibly far out of reach that it’s not even worth trying. Also held the Boomers to blame.

Joeboy 8y ago
From the back of my copy: """Andy, Dag and Claire have been handed a society priced beyone their means. twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80s fall-out of yuppies, recession, crack and Ronald Reagan, they represent the new generation - Generation X. Fiercely suspicious of being lumped together as an advertiser's target market, they have quit dreary careers and cut themselves adrift in the California desert. Unsure of their futures, they immerse themselves in a regime of heavy drinking and working at no-future McJobs in the service industry."""
howard941 8y ago
That was a good read. Before Gen X we were called the 13th gen but that didn't get traction. Someone else wrote a book on it, reviewed here: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/OBJECTS/III/reviews/13thgen.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/OBJECTS/III/reviews/13thge...

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

They were a lost generation for different reasons. A little earlier than late 90s: The Thatcher/Reagan de-industrialisation through the 80s meant a huge number of children deprived of opportunity as whole regions and cities lost their major employers. In the UK it was effectively the start of our drug problem. Criminalisation had only arrived in the late 60s. Then we got the big recession of the early 90s. Most of those de-industrialised areas had huge crime and drug problems, lost opportunities and parents who were broke, jobless and without hope. London and the South East was turbo-charging banking so we got Harry Enfield's comedy "Loadsa Money" character on tv, and plenty of market traders becoming stock traders. If you were early into IT you avoided it too. So London and the South East was mostly OK, the rest, not so much. For those coming onto the job market it was a time of very high youth unemployment and limited chances. By the late 90s it had settled and most were busy spending it. Some of those hardest hit areas are still not fully recovered. The cities have, mostly. My father's generation were lost in the Great Depression, then got to go to WW2. His father's in WW1. We can learn from history that we don't treat the unlucky at all well, or try and prevent damage to the next generation. Oh, and that we mostly don't learn from history.

gadders 8y ago
>> Most of those de-industrialised areas had huge crime and drug problems, lost opportunities and parents who were broke, jobless and without hope. London and the South East was turbo-charging banking so we got Harry Enfield's comedy "Loadsa Money" character on tv, and plenty of market traders becoming stock traders. If you were early into IT you avoided it too. The Loadsamoney character was a plasterer. Even manual trades were doing well in the South East.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Of course he was. I can't believe I forgot that! :)
hoaw 8y ago
I am not sure it is the same thing, but maybe in the UK it was. As you say there have always been turmoil. But most of the time the young were seen as getting a better deal. Factories closed and older generations suffered, but the young got other jobs and at least to some extent benefited from the transition. Today we are talking about how young people get it almost universally worse from an economic standpoint and it is people in their ~forties that are winning in e.g. the housing market.

Chazprime 8y ago

It’s nothing new. I remember (barely) talk of baby boomers worried about retirement after Black Monday. Guess they recovered nicely.