I love a good rant.
“We’ve spent so much time judging what other people created that we’ve created very, very little of our own.” – Chuck Palahniuk
Every generation believes the next generation is less. We spent a few hundred thousand years on the improvement, only for older people to criticize young people. It holds some weight in the past. Boomers never went to war, maybe in Vietnam. I guess there was generational trauma. They received free University, literally free. You might argue that the Silent Generation did it tougher, during World War II and the great depression. They can judge. Maybe.
I have no idea how Boomers get away with judging kids these days. No generation had it as easy as the Boomers. Affordable houses, low unemployment, and free Uni. I am not saying they didn’t work hard; they did. But their work yielded results. Financially speaking, the kids these days will never get near the Boomers’ wealth these days.
The average house price in 1980 was around 75 000. The average wage was about 20 000. These days the average house will cost you about 550 000. The average salary today 62 000. You don’t need to be a mathematician to see the problem here. The cost of living, where do you start? Rent is even worse.
Free University is a bitter pill to swallow. The ultimate Boomer freebie. In 1974 Whitlam made it policy. Just in time for the Boomers to take advantage. Gone today. The lazy kids these days are not afforded any such luxuries. By the mid 1908s, the very Boomers who benefited from free Uni decided it was a bad idea. Ever since kids these days will pay for it.
Kids these days are up against it. The list goes on: unaffordable housing, out-of-control cost of living, high rent, and high inflation. All the while, the Boomers call them out. Lazy. Entitled.
“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
What if the Boomers are right?
Even if they are, Boomers should be reluctant to make a noise. Not because they grew up in an era when the hard work was done.
Maybe Boomers should stop criticizing kids these days because every attack on a young person is an admission of their failure. Failure as parents. A failure to raise a generation better than themselves. If Boomers are Grandparents, they raised terrible parents.
The constant attack on the laziness of the current generation is simply an admission of poor parenting. Kids don’t raise themselves. Point the finger and make a claim. You are shouting about your failure to the world. Why would you do that?
You can hear the excuses. My kids are not lazy. Are your grandkids? Well, you raised terrible parents.
There are exceptions to every rule.
Next time a Boomer points the finger, they should point at their generation for failing kids these days.
“When you’re young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You’re your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don’t yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.
Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.” ― Margaret Atwood