Posted by Sir Four at 11:48am May 30 '12Youth in the US, Canada, Europe, and perhaps elsewhere are increasingly feeling resentful over high debt, low job security, and difficulties attaining the same standard of living their parents enjoyed. Here's an article typifying the point of view:
Our parents' generation didn't need a college degree for most jobs, and yet were generally paid well enough to afford homes, cars, and other trappings of modern life. In addition to the promised government retirement programs, many also have employer-provided pensions (mostly a thing of the past now). Even the housing bubble can be seen as an example of boomers trying to have it all: houses bought cheaply decades ago appreciating in value at an unsustainable rate, allowing boomers to upgrade their lifestyles (while making housing unaffordable to most of the young).
Boomers raised their kids to believe that a college degree would be the key to success, so kids went to college in droves to avoid a fate of low-skill, low-pay jobs. Now there is a generation of people graduating with debt loads the size of mortgages, and weak job prospects to boot. I've heard this described as a "long con" on America's youth, who are now mocked by the boomer generation as being too lazy for low-skill, low-pay jobs that their degrees overqualify them for.
So will this be the first generation that does worse than their parents? As governments continue to work to ensure older Americans are shielded from sacrifice while the young keep getting stiffed (see, for, example, the Paul Ryan plan which guarantees Medicare for 55 and older Americans but ditches it for anyone younger), will generational unrest grow stronger?
Who really is entitled here?
Canadians now aged 55 years and older will collect Old Age Security when they hit 65. The rest of us will have to work two more years. Those who came of age in the 1960s enjoyed Employment Insurance and Medicare when they were still unfunded liabilities. They cash a Canada Pension cheque that depends upon today's working men and women. The plan probably won't exist by the time the rest of us reach whatever age of retirement the government decrees by the time we are old.
In the 1970s, parents pulled on the (now discontinued) Family Allowance program. The employed could count on a level of job security that allowed them to take on debt to own houses, cottages and cars. They paid them off and retired to indexed pensions.
It's almost like Canadians had a "sense of entitlement," or something.
In the '90s, this same well-entitled generation began the drumbeat for lower taxes, never once offering up a government program they were willing to sacrifice. When the economy tanked, it fell to money-starved governments to bail everyone out. Today's youth had nothing to do with that profligacy, but are being called upon to "grow up" and shoulder the adult responsibility of paying the debt off.
Our parents' generation didn't need a college degree for most jobs, and yet were generally paid well enough to afford homes, cars, and other trappings of modern life. In addition to the promised government retirement programs, many also have employer-provided pensions (mostly a thing of the past now). Even the housing bubble can be seen as an example of boomers trying to have it all: houses bought cheaply decades ago appreciating in value at an unsustainable rate, allowing boomers to upgrade their lifestyles (while making housing unaffordable to most of the young).
Boomers raised their kids to believe that a college degree would be the key to success, so kids went to college in droves to avoid a fate of low-skill, low-pay jobs. Now there is a generation of people graduating with debt loads the size of mortgages, and weak job prospects to boot. I've heard this described as a "long con" on America's youth, who are now mocked by the boomer generation as being too lazy for low-skill, low-pay jobs that their degrees overqualify them for.
So will this be the first generation that does worse than their parents? As governments continue to work to ensure older Americans are shielded from sacrifice while the young keep getting stiffed (see, for, example, the Paul Ryan plan which guarantees Medicare for 55 and older Americans but ditches it for anyone younger), will generational unrest grow stronger?