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I see so many threads about millennials but there's never any intelligent discussions.
There's always a rush to defend oneself and point out examples and exceptions you know. But I don't talk exceptions, examples. I care only about numbers, statistics and facts.
The facts comparing the current society to the earlier decades post WWII are
1) the economy grew at a slower pace
2) social inequality is greater
3) population grew at a slower pace
4) Avg wage against purchasing power lower
5) cost of living against inflation higher
6) student loan is way way higher plus college diploma now = high school diploma (4 wasted money making years)
If economy is not growing, wage is not growing but capital is still making the steady, juicy return. Rich getting richer, having less babies = more inheritance per lucky kid. A millennial average joe has less social mobility because his/her income won't grow as much over time, higher COL / student loan, more years in school = dramatically less wealth accumulated throughout life.
So the question is what comes first chicken or the egg?
Are millenials inheritantly more lazy / raised lazy (subject to opinions) or family wealth matter more now than before? I think more the latter but I also think because millennials need to rely more on parents they develop more dependent attitude through a vicious cycle. Either way, there's always exceptions but stats don't lie. However, I do feel worse for millenialls' kids
I don't think I can really answer statistic-wise, but I can based on personal perspective.
I graduated high school right at the start of the great recession, and quit my first job to focus on full time college (terrible decision!). It took me 5 years of internships and volunteer work for me to get a minimum wage housekeeping job. Now since I moved, I'm starting the process all over again.
Reading all that I have on C-D, it sounds like most millennials are doing absolutely great (due to the whole "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" thing), I'm still trying to figure out how they did it lol. I feel really bad because I'm even willing to work for peanuts to have a paying job. I think for me it's a lack of experience and terrible interviewing skills.
That's just me, I don't know how other millennials are doing. I really hope things are getting better and that machines won't be taking too many more jobs. People need to eat, so if things get much worse I think we can expect riots and whatnot...
Talking about those born after 1987, who I have some experience with, I think they are both (but I wouldn't say "lazy," I'd say "unmotivated").
From watching this kids being brought up in my extended family, they were definitely spoiled rotten (to the point that they got everything they wanted, before they even knew they wanted it), brought up with no discipline whatsoever (capital or otherwise), exempted from all responsibility (no chores, no summer job expectations), and given inflated egos from endless worship of their mere existence.
But how can we blame them for eventually growing up and not having any desire to go out and sacrifice their leisure to work a crappy job--particularly when they know that the rewards of working have been all but wiped out for the working class, particularly those just entering the job market? They have no concept of needing money, or having to work for it, since it has always been readily and freely available--which is one critical difference between this generation and mine. In my day, if I wanted something, I had to find a way to earn money to buy it for myself--my parents couldn't comprehend "wasting" money buying things for children that weren't really necessary unless we were talking Christmas and my birthday (and those frivolous purchases had to be affordable and available on the day set aside to buy such things). I now realize this was an EXCELLENT philosophy to raise kids with.
I see some as beyond what I and many boomers success wise could have hoped for. I also see many like many in my generation just didn't prepare for future. We see that now in some boomers retiring. I think perhaps the worse part is they like most Americans thru generations think they have some right over rest of world to certain standard of living. Hopeful they turn around as my generation did after the 60's .Because if they do not then its they that suffer the consequences. I especially fear that the education standing getting worse may foresee the future.
For the most part, I view them as unlucky, rather than lazy. The end of the post-World War II era of American economic dominance was inevitable.
But I am tempted to view them as "not sufficiently motivated" or not skeptical enough toward Big Brother and centralized power; in this respect, they failed to follow the lead of many Gen-Xers and Baby-Boomers who broke with the "pop wisdom" pedaled by the heirs of the New Deal and elected Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, too many of the Millennials swilled the Kool-Aid pedaled by Obama and Co, and that can be traced in part to the influence of growing up in economically-handicapped single-parent households.
Talking about those born after 1987, who I have some experience with, I think they are both (but I wouldn't say "lazy," I'd say "unmotivated").
From watching this kids being brought up in my extended family, they were definitely spoiled rotten (to the point that they got everything they wanted, before they even knew they wanted it), brought up with no discipline whatsoever (capital or otherwise), exempted from all responsibility (no chores, no summer job expectations), and given inflated egos from endless worship of their mere existence.
But how can we blame them for eventually growing up and not having any desire to go out and sacrifice their leisure to work a crappy job--particularly when they know that the rewards of working have been all but wiped out for the working class, particularly those just entering the job market? They have no concept of needing money, or having to work for it, since it has always been readily and freely available--which is one critical difference between this generation and mine. In my day, if I wanted something, I had to find a way to earn money to buy it for myself--my parents couldn't comprehend "wasting" money buying things for children that weren't really necessary unless we were talking Christmas and my birthday (and those frivolous purchases had to be affordable and available on the day set aside to buy such things). I now realize this was an EXCELLENT philosophy to raise kids with.
I thought this was an excellent observation from that article:
" ...... Professor Furedi, who is in his 60s, says we cannot blame the economy — or property prices — for what he calls the ‘infantalisation’ of today’s adults.
‘If you read the newspapers, all you hear is that young people’s lives have never been as horrible as today — which basically requires historical amnesia, because that is not the case. Recession and economic depressions have happened across the past century but, in my generation, the important thing was that you struck out on your own — even if you faced serious economic hardships and you were broke all the time. Now people make excuses,’ he says.
He believes there are much bigger psychological factors at play — and that the root of our refusal to grow up is fear.
‘People are scared of thinking of themselves as adults. They cannot see anything good that comes with being an adult; all our cultural values are with youth and the further we move away from that, the more anxious we become,’ he says."
Everything seems like it's marketed to "youth" or "retired" with no inbetween of "adults."
its cyclic to me... great depression era people had a hard time, their kids wanted to live it up, lead to a bubble then bust, where their kids had a bad era of economic growth and their kids then want to live it up for being poor and so it repeats... Forget Millennials. Is Your Workplace Ready for Generation Z? | Inc.com http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/jo...eration-z.html
at least during the depression, they sucked it up and didnt feel sorry for themselves, just did what they could to get by, none of this mopping around parents house
so i dont blame us for the economy, but i blame the poor attitude some have on themselves and why they wont ever get a stable job
Bad economy, specifically job market for people with no experience, and rising cost of tuition is unlucky. What you do within that, however, is up to you. Many end up doing fine like I did, although I had a rocky few years right out of college. I had two companies I found jobs with get bought out and a third went bankrupt. Jobs weren't really that easy to find. I remember doing group interviews with people with master's degrees and two to five years' experience competing for the same entry-level jobs I was applying for. You can guess how many of those jobs I got.
Instead what I started off doing as assistant underwriter, which was basically a glorified semi-skilled secretarial position. They were going out of business so I got another job doing bookkeeping. That company was also going under and I was promoted into an entry-level accounting position because they'd been using temp staffing agencies while they tried to sell the business and I was cheaper than that. From there I had some experience so when they sold the company I found another job doing cost accounting. Then that company did layoffs six months later. So basically at three years, I had a little over a year of real work experience, no job held over a year, degree going stale. At that point it still wasn't easy to get a job out of college and I really wasn't much more attractive than a new graduate with no experience. Mixed things up, taught abroad for a year and a half, changed fields. In a better economy, who knows. The standard path would be work for 2-3 years, employer sends you get your master's (and that was going away even before the recession), take a staff accounting position and work for 40 years. That's basically what I'd planned on doing and likely would have done in a better economy. On the other hand I still make decent money, although maybe 80% as much as I thought I would be making and enjoy what I do better. I hustled more to do it than I thought and there was WAY more uncertainty... but the world didn't end and I'm not living in my parent's basement delivering pizzas or working at Starbucks in my 30s.
I hear lots of doom and gloom about the poor millennials. Certainly some of it is true. I know a lot of young people who graduated around 2009-2010 and could not find jobs. Many had college loans and had to move back home. Those days are past by several years. Now unemployment is very low....less than 3% for college grads. Sure finding the right job and getting started on a career is still difficult. It always was.
Now how about the good old days for the boomers? Sorry they were none too rosy. Sure the economy did well after WWII. Unfortunately when I graduated, the draft letter came 2 weeks later as expected. I spent 2 years in the Army including a year in Vietnam with lots of bullets overhead and frequent mortar attacks. I would have gladly changed that for living back home and trying to find work. After my southeast Asia tour, I lived in my wife's hometown, Cleveland. We tried to get by and find jobs when the official unemployment rate was over 25%. If you are a millennial complaining about your circumstances, I say suck it up and be glad of your opportunities.
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