The Most Selfish Generation

[Dinner]

I'm still shocked that the median American household net worth is only $68,000. I lost more than that just in my house. WTF is wrong with these people?

[Dinner]

My ****ing 401K is worth more then that. Why are these people so economically worthless? You just have to make money and save some of it. I've only been in the work force 12-13 years (since leaving college) so it isn't like I'm ancient. Just make money and save some. It's not hard.

[RGBVideo]

I offered a job to a young person looking for entry level into the IT industry. The position would have been piece work to start and would pay $25 to $30 per hour.

He said he didn't get out of bed for $25 an hour.

wait, what?

seriously?

entry level programming?

[Tupac Shakur]

Why are these people so economically worthless?

Despite what you and your Democratic base peers think, people do respond to incentives.

[Ming]

So your generation really dropped the ball on providing a better world for your children where they don't have to work harder to get a job than you did. Nice way to hang your hat up there Ming.

I guess it's only a selfish generation who thinks they should have it easier than everybody else... nice thing to hang your hat on there...

[Jon Miller]

Actually, if Ming and RAH started work in 1979 it was also a difficult time. I thought they started work before 1973. Oerdin, on the other hand, started work at a 'good' time.

It is known that starting work at a 'hard' time has a severe effect for years to come. For example, that the wage for people with 10 years of experience who started in a bad year will be lower than the wage of people with 5 years experience who started in a good year (at the same time).

http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/labor/lap03/mroz-030912.pdf

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp243/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124181970915002009.html

From the last:
"Economic research shows that the consequences of graduating in a downturn are long-lasting. They include lower earnings, a slower climb up the occupational ladder and a widening gap between the least- and most-successful grads."

BTW, I know physics majors and engineers who are having trouble in the current job market. It isn't just people who 'got the wrong degree'.

JM

[Jon Miller]

**** al this ridiculous whining about the world being worse. It's not. However, the boomers merrily saddled their children with public debts. That is what they should be apologizing for.

True.

It is however worse than in many other times, even than early 80s (although not much worse).

JM
(I can barely remember the early 80s, but I remember that we ate rice + beans because we couldn't afford anything else.)

[Jon Miller]

I offered a job to a young person looking for entry level into the IT industry. The position would have been piece work to start and would pay $25 to $30 per hour.

He said he didn't get out of bed for $25 an hour.

When I hear 25$ an hour, I think ~100k a year which would be a large pay increase for me.

But in physics we don't get payed by the hour.

JM

[rah]

I don't know about anything else but I did everything that I could to make it easier on my daughter. It's only natural for most parents to try. I tried to make sure that she didn't have to work as many jobs as I did going to college.

Individuals have limited impact on legislation to correct what the previous generation set up. During the time I've been voting, control of the presidency and congress has switched back and forth many times. Neither side made much progress in changing things. So who we voted for made little difference. Democracy doesn't work when people discover they can vote themselves whatever they want. We need politicians with more backbone regardless of party affiliation.

[Lorizael]

He planned to retire at 57? Jesus what a lazy ****. Well, you know what they say: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

Disparaging a poster's dead father? Classy.

[Pekka]

As code of conduct would suggest reading some posts first, I decided to just not be affected by them first:

I think that in many ways when we feel that someone is being selfish, is that if I'm being selfish as well, or is it in fact only me. I speak on my own behalf as someone who was born in the early 80s. I do not believe that selfishness is something that was invented or manifested first time with baby boomers. If baby boomers are bad and negligent, we should ask who raised them. The hard working, never complaining and wealth building generation who went to great wars of justice? So the only thing they didn't do right was raise their kids, our parents?

The ratio of selfish, self-centered egomaniacs in my opinion is about the same with our generation. I don't see a difference. The world around us changes every day and is affected by all of us, even though our generation has less of a say as of now, it would be strange to blame all most problems on baby boomers as the makers of the current situation. Let's look at all the benefits we have today from medical improvements to technology and so forth. That stuff is carried by many generations and we are going to continue it. Development isn't linear, so we are blind to the accomplishments of our predecessors and blinded by our "advancements", young innovative start ups etc.

My parents didn't have much anything growing up. We didn't have much. My mom told me few weeks ago how I usually never got what I was whining and wanted, because we didn't have the money for it. That means they didn't have money for stuff either. We collectively did not have money. My dad now has some, but he worked extremely hard for over 50 years. And he would support me if I made a call that I needed some money. He was born in the 40s. No education. All I see now is people getting their degrees, and this got my attention when I was working at University, how fresh out of school graduates think they will land high paying jobs, management jobs almost right away. Having taught many of them and supporting them and guiding their thesis works, I would have the audacity to say 95% of them didn't know crap about the real world. How value is created, or what value is, what is contributing. My generation thinks that they are entitled to school, which is like a prolonged teenage phase. After that, a smooth transition to high paying jobs. That's not how the world works. People think they have some value to the work place in their... being. At the same time many of these same people look down upon others who have no higher education. They consider them as "work force", manual labor. I get that warm feeling inside when they get the shock when realizing the "dumb manual labor" actually has worked for few years already, are making progress, have a steady job and make more money now and long into the future as well. And they are happy about themselves and have time for hobbies and whatnot.

I think my generation is full of these ****ing *******s who think they are entitled, don't know what people before them did, that they are standing on the shoulders of giants, and that if you do not pay attention to that, you're going to miss something very important. We look down upon our peers, parent and elderly. We are already angry about the financial situation the world is now, as it is passed down to us. Well, the reality is, we sit around the table and we get the cards we get and we will play with those cards, we need to collaborate. It's like we're making excuses for the future so we can say oh well, of course we failed because it was unfair from the start.

Bottom line: I think we are pretty much the same, we benefit from the contributions made earlier. Our progression is exponential, so every step accomplished by our predecessors is important even if it is not obvious right now (it will be obvious later). I do not believe that there something bad about baby boomers that would not be inherent in all of us. The environment is always different and we make our decision based on what we are presented with and as the time goes on, we get wiser because we have more support for the decision making. We get more mature at it. Mistakes made in the past were most likely not very obvious at the time, it became obvious later. The baby boomers get it now, what ever mistakes were made, and we probably are not realizing a bunch of horrible decisions we have made, that are going to be very obvious in 50 years or so. In this continuum I would support analysis and corrective measures, the system is what it is but we'll be all dead anwyay, plus the earth will die in the future as well. I mean... we're doomed anyway. In the meanwhile it's a continuum of failures and success, all up until deletion. So that's like cosmos and stuff. If we ever figure out a way to colonize other planets and rescue our race from Earth, I think we are not going to look back and point out how baby boomers were bad.

[Lorizael]

Pekka

[Jaguar]

Few places pay you by the hour and then want you (or ask you) to work 4000 hours a year, Jon.

[Cort Haus]

Pekka

[OneFootInTheGrave]

In the sea of spam, even here there is a post worth reading from time to time.

Pekka