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Rain

 
Made my day...

slartabartfast
Jeeze, Rain, aren't you waaaay to young to be a curmudgeon? I am rapidly approaching mandatory withdrawals from my IRA's, and I am still not ready to see the "younger generation" in this light. Maybe my tolerance comes from the education I received through my early experiences as a hippy, and all of the received elder-scorn that entailed. Every generation seems to look feckless from the perspective of the previous generations that have already bought into their role in a productive society, or sold out as we used to say in my youth. Millennials are apparently taking their place as the blonde joke of this century. Excuse me for not piling on. 
 
 

craigb
There's NO WAY anyone can claim that Millennials are no different than previous generations.  We were taught to work from a young age, to respect others (and the elderly) and that it's better to earn things.  I haven't seen ANY of these traits in the latest generation (with a few very notable exceptions).

jamesg1213
Glad to say my daughter (24 years old) and her boyfriend (27) are exceptions then. Two harder working young people you could not hope to meet.

TerraSin
What I find amusing is that had the internet been what it is today 20 years ago, we'd be seeing this stuff about Gen-Xers. :P
 
Remember, Gen-X were a bunch of lazy hippies and rebelling kids.

BobF

jamesg1213
Glad to say my daughter (24 years old) and her boyfriend (27) are exceptions then. Two harder working young people you could not hope to meet.

You must've let them experience genuine accomplishment.  Good for you - bravo!!
 

slartabartfast
Does attributing bad outcomes to the sins of the parents visited upon their young really address the problem of consigning a whole generation to an underclass. If anyone were to say that negroes as a race were lazy or poorly educated or felt entitled to special treatment or that blondes as a class were stupid, or even to recite the Polack jokes that were current when I was young, I expect he would be hounded out of this forum.
 
My parents were members of the "Greatest Generation," and their hippy children were explained as the pernicious result of Benjamin Spock, MD writing a series of books advising parents to use less corporal punishment. By the way, the Nazis were of the same generation as my parents and the result of a more authoritarian child rearing culture, and few people call them the "Greatest" now. Shared social and parenting influences can shape the lives of the young, as can economic and technological factors, but within a given generation there are millions of individuals who do not fit into anything approaching a neat stereotype. Remember that the labeling of age cohorts with catchy names like GenX, Millennial etc. is largely due to the utility it provides to people selling advertising and the social "scientists" who serve them. What possible good does it do you as an individual to see people of a certain age as members of a "generation" subject to ridicule? 

ampfixerI think the biggest issue with the millennials is that their are very few options for them. The route that is encouraged is to get a college degree and a white collar job. If that fails, they can join the military or flip burgers. The huge industrial option that many of us enjoyed has been almost eliminated in North America. Even with a degree, kids are being asked to intern for free before they get a job offer. The other big change is that cradle to grave employment doesn't exist anymore. I worked at one company for 25 years and had some security. This allowed me to think long term, get a home, mortgage, car, children. I don't know how kids have the courage to take on any responsibility when jobs last 3-5 years on average.

TerraSin

ampfixerI think the biggest issue with the millennials is that their are very few options for them. The route that is encouraged is to get a college degree and a white collar job. If that fails, they can join the military or flip burgers. The huge industrial option that many of us enjoyed has been almost eliminated in North America. Even with a degree, kids are being asked to intern for free before they get a job offer. The other big change is that cradle to grave employment doesn't exist anymore. I worked at one company for 25 years and had some security. This allowed me to think long term, get a home, mortgage, car, children. I don't know how kids have the courage to take on any responsibility when jobs last 3-5 years on average.

Another thing to consider is that the retirement age is going up AND many people are getting jobs after retirement because the money they were supposed to be living on isn't enough and so they end up taking jobs that were typically employed by teenagers 20 years ago.
 
The workforce is also getting smaller. It's not uncommon for a company to downsize and then give the extra workload that was once done by multiple people to a single person. That person usually does it because they are just happy to still have a job. I've especially seen this a lot in the tech field which is why I made my exit from it a long time ago because, to quote Ace of Base, "I saw the sign".