Get over yourself. Seriously, the entire concept of a generation is false. Generations are a sliding window.

I don't think the things she's talking about are specific to her 'generation'. Environmental consciousness? The US EPA started operation in 1970. I was actively pushing in the UK for things like recycling in the 1980s. Corporate responsibility? How about student boycotts of companies involved in South Africa under apartheid? And the list goes on.

So you think your generation is special. My father's generation grew up with the challenge of rebuilding Europe after the Second World War and seeing Britain's world influence decline, his father's generation fought a war against their own neighbors, his father's generation did the same thing.

Oh, so you've got all this caring about others consciousness and are sad because corporate America can guarantee you a gold watch at 55? My heart bleeds for you.

"But, there’s one really great thing about coming of age in America in an era when things are generally thought to be pretty bad: It forces an early decision about what’s important in life"

Wow, you think you're the first generation to ask themselves what's important in life at a 'young' age. Excuse my while I go John McEnroe (you'll have to Google him youngster): "You cannot be serious"

The unemployment rate for under 25s is stageringly high compared to the general population. The cost of education has gone up 300% while inflation has gone up a mere 30% since 1990, most paid with borrowed monies. The whole economy tanked due to our debt fueled ways while they had no voice, choice, or ability to influence the outcome.

If they want to be all "whiny," let them. My prospects were great coming out of college in the 1990's. The future was paved with gold. I wouldn't say much is paved with anything these days, let alone the road in front the driveway. The worlds an unjust place and they're finding it out. We told them it wasn't.

Regarding "corporate America," there is quite a bit of generalization in the original post. My father recently retired from the company he started working for when he was in his 20s. He worked his way up the proverbial ladder and currently has an ownership stake. Most of his co-workers I remember meeting when I was kid still work there, or retired there. Yes, some companies are bad, but that is not the whole of it.

There is always some degree of navel gazing by "youngsters." My old journals are full of it. Again, the difference is that these days, the navel gazing is public. At least the author is doing some degree of reflection about the state of things.

Generalities hold truths, and while everyone is an outlier to a certain extent, a lot of the points in this essay are pretty valid, the loss of trust in corporate entities is something that will change the way in which companies are structured.

Generations _do_ exist, even if they are a fuzzy concept - without the idea of the baby boomers we'd have a hard time explaining a lot of socio-political movements and changes.

You can read this article as whining, and you obviously did, or you can look at it as a thoughtful reasoning of some of the emergent properties of an era's psyche, it isn't an attack on another generation.

Overall it was a good article. You can attack it for generalizing, but that is a low blow, you can attack any age-based observation piece for generalizing.

I think it is funny that this is an uplifting article about how tough young people have it (we got a bad hand but we'll get through it), and the top post is a cynical comment from (what I assume to be) an older guy.

It's entirely possible Tony Hayward was marching around his university campus about environmental issues in the 80s before turning into the frakking cunt he is considered today.

You unthinkingly jumped through all the meaningless hoops put in front of you and still can't find a job you like? You (and by "you", I mean "someone else the same age as you") joined the military and had a much lower chance of being injured or killed than the person of your parent's generation who was forced to join the military whether they wanted to or not? Your job got outsourced to some other twenty something, who doesn't have to live in poverty anymore?

(I know, a guy named Gupta or Tolentino doesn't deserve a job as much as a precious flower like yourself.)

Attention, "Mass Communication" students of my generation: STFU. The only people had it better than you are people who are a few years older/younger than you who got lucky and timed the recession better.

I have no idea what you're talking about here. 25-35 years ago there were virtually no wars, there was a near zero chance of getting killed in the military. Whereas now, there are very reasonable chances for soldiers to get shipped to fight "terror" and get injured.

While quite possibly the least cheerful film ever made - it was based on a UK military planning exercise (Square Leg) that was actually pretty optimistic. In the optimistic version - only 90% of the population of the UK is killed, in the realistic ones it is much worse.

Of course, the active military in the early 1980's had a ridiculously high accident rate. It would be a fairer comparison to look at the mid-to-late 90's. In the link below you can see that the death rate for active duty soldiers was about half of what it is today.

DOD numbers: (http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/death_Rates.p...)

It isn't true that this generation of twenty-somethings has it better than most. In the US specifically real wages have been declining since the early 80's, even as productivity has boomed. The economic benefits of automation and computerization have gone disproportionately to the top of the income ladder. The recession has little to do with the sentiments the OP expressed. In fact, the decline in housing prices, as crass as that may sound, is a form of wealth transfer to the current generation of twenty-somethings as they will be able to get a house cheaper than what their parents would have paid for it a decade ago. I think the point the OP was getting at was that this is a generation more aware of an economic reality that is worse than it was twenty years ago. This perception is correct, however misguided some of the other points may be.

People of my generation, in terms of goods and services, are considerably richer than in my parent's generation. This is true for both the rich and poor - the poor today tend to have more material goods and services than the middle class of the 70's. If real wages (i.e., wages measured in terms of the stuff they could purchase) were going down, that would be impossible.

Can you name a single good or service [1] which fewer people today have than in my parent's generation?

[1] Note: I'm asking about specific goods or services, not categories of goods or services, since the composition of a category may change over time. E.g., compare land line 1970/1980 to land line 2010, not "telecom 1970" to "telecom 2010", since "telecom 2010" is much broader than "telecom 1970".

...from 1973 to 2005... real hourly wages of those in the 90th percentile—where most people have college or advanced degrees—rose by 30 percent or more... among this top 10 percent, the growth was heavily concentrated at the very tip of the top, that is, the top 1 percent. This includes the people who earn the very highest salaries in the U.S. economy, like sports and entertainment stars, investment bankers and venture capitalists, corporate attorneys, and CEOs. In contrast, at the 50th percentile and below—where many people have at most a high school diploma—real wages rose by only 5 to 10 percent

Janet L. Yellen, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, November 6, 2006

As for CPI-adjusted wages - even though CPI isn't perfect, it's still useful. Certainly better than the anecdotal evidence you're asking for. Also, if anything CPI is under-reported, so CPI-adjusted wages should be considered a conservative estimate, which is all we're after here.

Fresh food. Fresh hamburger was less than $1 per pound when I was a kid in the late 70's/early 80's. It's $5 per pound now. A five pound bag of onions used to be $1, now it's $6.

Home ownership is also increasingly out of reach for younger people. In my suburb, the number of homes affordable on 80% of the median income fell from 70% to 40% in the last ten years. In some neighboring suburbs, it's below 25%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_Sta...

The average home is also 60% bigger.

http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2007032701?Ope...

Obviously, these statistics are averaged over the entire country. Some specific regions will behave differently, of course (like your suburb and my hometown).

As for the cost of hamburger, your dollar figure comparisons are irrelevant. I never disputed that green pieces of paper are worth less now than in 1970. However, on average wages in 1975, people spent 13.8% of their income on food. Today they only spend 9.6% and they eat out more.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data...

People's diets and 'food' in general are different now too though: see high fructose corn syrup and a huge increase in dietary related disease such as obesity and diabetes for example. You aren't comparing apples to apples.

I don't know where to find really good data on this, unfortunately...

There are a lot of reasons that the current generation has to be angry with their parents. They've destroyed the economy, the jobs market, and are well on their way to destroying the planet. They'll retire in the next decade supported by a ponzi scheme (social security) on the backs of their children. The world is less safe, less secure, and more violent because of them.

I can't help but look at Japan in the 90s and think that we are in for a repeat of that. An aging workforce, being constantly downsized and outsourced. No new jobs for college graduates, so they must live with their parents until their 30s or 40s. Property deflation over decades because their parents refused to acknowledge the losses on their overpriced houses. The parallels between Japan in the 90s and US in the 2010s are eerily similar. Study their culture to see what is next.

I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you that if the younger generations don't get involved in politics, the world will be destroyed by the older generations before we get a chance to truly participate.

And built the internet. And kept social security afloat for years after it was supposed to become bankrupt (most of those people now using it also paid into it, remember). And did a thousand other things. What makes you think this generation will be any more responsible? Greed and ignorance are basic human conditions and are in no short supply in any generation.

Thanks to boomers in USA. They enable all my fellow people in East Asia lives a better live than my grandparents due to free trade.

Thanks to boomers in USA, now Rock, Punk, Alternatives, Hiphop music styles influence the music styles around the world. I hope you have patience to sit through traditional Japanese style music performance.

Thanks to boomers in USA, now we can have all cool movies from 70s and 80s to watch. All the exploitation movies in 70s are awesome.

Thanks to boomers in USA, now a homosexual/bisexual person can live life with less stigma, I think that's pretty fair to 10% of the population.

Thanks to boomers in USA, they dream about cheap personal computer that we can type rubbish into. Now we can generate so many bits that we never thought that we can capture them before.

The worst villains are mostly Baby Boomers, but just because that's the generation who is in power, and most people of any generation are out of power.

I don't like ripping on "the Baby Boomers" because it's similar to the "politicians are awful, but my Congressman is great" mentality that keeps incumbents in office despite dysfunction. People who rip on the Baby Boomers will except their parents, and this makes sense, because the villainy isn't generational but class-based. So let's frame this issue in proper terms. There's been a whole lot of chicanery going on, but it's not something that can be placed on one generation.

Since then, their children have squandered national treasure and influence and their greed is dragging the entire economy down.

Also, the dismantling began in the 1980s when people who are generally considered pre-Boomer were in power. CEOs in that time generally had birthdates in the 1920s and '30s, not '40s and '50s. Reagan was one of the so-called "Greatest Generation".

This is largely a class issue. Baby Boomers did most of the villainy because most of the egregious opportunities presented themselves while they were in power. That's all. They're not any better or worse than the rest of us. (Born in 1983, I have no specific need to defend the Boomers, other than intellectual honesty.)

On the other hand, all generations of the American upper class and right wing have been fucking over all generations of the rest of us for about 30 years.

Of course you do--just like almost everyone I meet here in SF is a well-paid designer, manager/CEO, or engineer.

It's like a job, but with fewer false promises and expectations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Life is a bit different than ideals, and this may not come to pass, but it's a goal.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Twentieth_Century_Motor_Company

Whatever you might think of Conservapedia (I have no opinion; I'm not Conservative, and don't frequent the site), their content for this article was a better description than I found in the rest of Google's first page of results.

there are also a lot of successful, democratically run business places

I'm not aware of any. Can you cite examples?

Obviously, this is not comprehensive.

Here's my generalization:

From everything I see Generation-Y has been protected from having to make any such decisions. It's been the only generation where it's been OK to live at home with your parents until 30. So how are you making any tough decisions doing that?

When we graduated in the 90's droves of workers were being let go during the recession, only back then we were expected to deal with it an survive without. And we didn't live at home.

When we looked for work, we'd spend everyday going door to door with resumes, or phoning every business in our phone books, but generation-Y signs-up to a bunch of job feeds and rarely do they bother spending an entire day trying.

It maybe that I am in the wrong circles, but every generation-Y I've met, can stay home and video-game in the event things go wrong.

That said, I learned a valuable lesson about 10 years back, and that is no matter how much one likes to think they're not self-centered they are - it's human nature. No matter the generation. And the statements made through-out this article, my own posting, and others, have re-enforced this for me.

What I see is the disparity between my grandparents' generation and my own, that the author alludes to: people used to actually work for companies for 30+ years. Their loyalty was actually repaid. My grandfather worked at a steel mill his entire adult life, never changed jobs, and was paid reasonably and offered a decent pension. Now, we know that model doesn't work anymore, but when employers treat employees as 'resources'... you can't be confused by some push back. This is the entire reason I'm an entrepreneur; I know for a fact that large corporations try to create the same feelings of loyalty in me that my grandfather had, because it's useful to them. But on the other side of the deal, I'll just be tossed aside when it looks like we might not hit quarterly projections.

Fuck that. I'm not going to be loyal to someone who doesn't also respect me; that's an abusive relationship.

I don't have any illusions that my generation will change the world; every generation has thought that, and they all end up selling out. But I do feel that we're defining success differently, our priorities have changed from our parents', and things will be slightly different, even if they're not better.

If you were late Silent or early Boomer (b. 1930 to 1950) you faced an extraordinarily easy career game. Even in advertising, the era's analogue of banking, people left work at 6:00. Unlike those who are young now, you didn't have to bust your ass through college and internships. People dropping acid at Woodstock in '69 could walk into executive-track corporate jobs in '70 and be VPs by '72. They had it really fucking easy. Today you can't get a decent entry-level job with a 3.4 GPA and no internship.

The sunny era, however, didn't end in 2008 or 2001, but much earlier. If you were leaving college in the mid-1970s stagflation era, you'd missed it. There were small, blippy, "booms" localized to a few industries (banking, then oil/gas, then dot-coms, then oil/gas, then real estate, then banking) in the next three decades, but the general prosperity never came back.