5 Reasons Why The "Lazy Millennial" Stereotype Is Bullshit I thought about fisking this article, but there is little point. The author makes some points most of them nonsequiturs but some valid and a few even compelling. Millennials are a positive force in society while Boomers are not. So, why the author goes to such great lengths to prove the arguments of those she disagrees is mind numbing. More below. I will point out a few of the places she makes what I consider to be errors. In the end, I will provide a short analysis of other arguments Millennials can make against Boomers. And Millennials need to wake up and begin to make serious arguments against what the Boomers are doing, and the path they are taking the country, and the world.
"Lazy, entitled, freeloading, whiny, safe-space-inhabiting, impatient, thin-skinned, don’t-know-the-meaning-of-a-hard-day’s-work, precious snowflakes. Millennials. My generation. Or, if you’re Time Magazine, “The Me Me Me Generation.” This is but one example of the current favorite editorial of the lazy middle-aged journalist, in which they trash millennials for everything they’re anecdotally doing wrong with very little empirical evidence about what’s actually going on in their lives. Writing indignant think pieces about how awful the young people are these days has been in style since Socrates was pioneering toga-style in the amphitheaters of Athens. But this style of editorializing still pisses me off. I’m tired of it. For one thing, the entire concept of “generations” is bullshit (as perfectly explained by Adam Ruins Everything). For another, the Millennial stereotype is pure, unfiltered cockamamie. So setting aside for a moment the fact that generations are a nebulous concept devoid of meaning and that the popular stereotype of millennials is false, I’d like to take this moment to explain a thing at you. I’m proud to be a millennial. And here’s why." Wonderful, the author is too lazy to answer the question she poses, but she is willing to chick-splain "a thing at [me]." I can't wait. Why she is so mad so young is unclear. When I was young I was too busy working, dating, skiing, water skiing, wilderness kayaking, backpacking, etc. to worry about why the oldsters were worried. But Millennials today are all a twitter with worry about everyone else and what the other thinks of them. Jesus, get a life. Work, date, then spend the weekend kayaking or skiing water or snow your choice. Don't worry about the others. "1. The most educated generation" The author notes that more Millennials are going to college and getting degrees than prior generations (I know bogus, dude!); this is true, but the author does not determine whether the education today is the same or lower quality when compared to prior generations. The fact that about 80% of the Millennial generation attends some college and about 50% finish higher education means that the quality of college today must be significantly lower. It is not possible to expand the college experience to an addition +25% of the high school cohort and keep the quality of the total college pool the same. The result would necessarily be a dumbing down of the course work, grading and the quality of the graduates. Yes, it is likely the top tier schools has only changed a little but the average had to drop significantly, and the low-end college quality must be abysmal. University is too expensive: A few creative ways to cut the cost "Only 20% of jobs require a college degree, and about one-half of the 50% of high school students who go through higher education (that is the bottom half of the college cohort) show no cognitive, intellectual improvement. What a disaster. The problem is that only about 20% of the population has the intellectual capability to benefit from college. Another 5% or so are wealthy idiots for whom it does not matter if they can benefit, they are protected by family wealth. For the other half of the kids attending college, it is an expensive waste of time and money." All this means is that at least one-half of college Millennials today are credentialled not educated and at idiotically high cost. The average residential college will cost about $23,000 to $25,000 per year or $100,000 for the credential. Unless the student receives $100,000 in value, this is a bust. About one-half of the Millennial graduates are finding that their credential leads them to a job which never required a college degree, this is the classic definition of a bust. The author notes that these graduated have about $35,000 in student debt. These graduates lost four years of work opportunity and opportunity to be productive, which cost them, their families or others $100,000, and which saddled them with $35,000 in debt, for a degree which got them the same job they could have had four years before, $100,000 without the cost and debt. These jobs generally only pay between $20,000 and $35,000, if the worker can wheedle a 40 hour work week, which is difficult now that we have Obamacare. Good luck. Rule of thumb, never take more college debt than one-half of your likely first years pay. "2. The most socially progressive generation" Great! What does this have to do with the lazy Millennial stereotype? This answer proves the point that Millennials, at least this author, is too lazy to answer the question she posed, and instead responded to a fun and easy question not asked. I am not arguing that Millennials are lazy, but that position is winning because the author is proving the counter argument. "3. The most productive generation Millennials currently make up the majority of the tax-paying workforce in America." So what? It is not how many of you pay a few nickels in tax every year; it is who pays the vast bulk of the income taxes. Spoiler alert, the Millennials are not paying the majority of the taxes. Then again no one expected they would be. But what does productivity have to do with taxes paid? The author seems to be more butthurt by others pointing out her/Millennials occasional flaws than she is in answering the question she initially asked. The next article the author cites to may offer a clue. Why the author proudly sites to an article by the Harvard Business Review is mystifying. Another spoiler alert it doesn't quite say that Millennials are workaholics it says Millennials narcissistically see themselves as work martyrs. Millennials Are Actually Workaholics, According to Research "This all raises the fundamental question: why? Why are Millennials more likely to identify as work martyrs, and think of such martyrdom as normal, even admirable? I have a theory. One of the few major differences that has been found in longitudinal studies between today’s young people and yesterday’s young people is how they agree with the statement “I am an important person.” As Chamorro-Premuzic wrote in the Guardian, “in the 1950s, 12% of high-school students perceived themselves as ‘an important person’ – by the 1990s, 80% did.” Narcissism is, thus, one of the few true differences that we’ve seen between the generations over time. I asked him if this could be behind the rise in work martyrism, including the claim that “No one else at my company can do my job while I’m away.” “It is absolutely feasible that those differences are attributed to differences in narcissism,” Chamorro-Premuzic told me. “Feeling that you are the centre of the world, irreplaceable, and that nobody can do your job, is at odds with reality and does signal a deluded sense of grandiosity. Furthermore, if anything, one would expect younger people to be LESS indispensable (at least in the eyes of their bosses).” I am not arguing that Millennials are not hard workers, often they are, but this points out a serious difference between people my age and the Millennials who are more self-absorbed, and narcissistic. Whether I was a journeyman litigation attorney trying medical cases 75+ hours per week or an industrial demolition crew chief working 13 hours per day, seven days per week for 17 months at a time (no, really), I never thought the "Millennial way." It simply never entered my mind to worry about my victim status, irreplaceability, or indispensability. I simply worked hard as I could all week, played as hard as I could in my spare time, focused on my girlfriend, later wife, and later yet family: Work hard, live big, ignore the whinging multitude, and get on with it. Suspicions Confirmed: You Are Younger, Smarter, and Underpaid "Yet, despite the sheer volume, skills and talent of the millennials, they are still lacking in one big way when compared to their predecessors: earnings. In fact, millennials are the best-educated segment of the U.S. demographic and also the worst-paid. This revelation — which may not come as much of a surprise to millennials themselves — was made quite clear in a recent New York Times op-ed, titled ‘We’re Making Life Too Hard For Millennials‘. With a title like that, you can be darn sure that there was a significant knee-jerk reaction from members of other generations, but the case that the author, Steven Rattner, lays out, is fairly straightforward. Millennials, despite having skills, smarts, and college degrees in record numbers, aren’t seeing a return on their investment on their paychecks." I will let you in on a secret here. The US and the world are going through a massive socioeconomic shift from the Industrial Revolution to whatever is next. No one understands what that is or how it will work. But the people who understand it the least are the Boomers and GenX. They grew up under the Industrial Revolution model which functioned well and had a familiar path. If they followed the path, and they would succeed which meant either get a good blue collar mill job or college and a post college job. The degree did not matter much. That is busted today, it does not work, but parents, teachers, advisors, professors, and all the other oldsters will sell this model to you because it used to work for them. It's gone. It will never work well again. The painful truth is you will need to find your way, trust your intuition, and hopefully moral and ethical bearings. Most of your college education will prove to be worthless unless you have a STEM or Econ or similar degree. Good luck. "Millennials work hard! I know I do, says the girl writing this blog post on a Sunday after spending most of my afternoon freelance editing for a Gen X client before I head to my day job working for a Baby Boomer tomorrow. I DARE YOU TO CALL ME LAZY." Oh, Jesus, relax. But also understand one fixed truth, no generation works as hard as their parents; this is not a value judgment it is a simple fact that the older generations work hard to progress forward so their children can live better lives, and have better less harsh work environments. You will do for your children as we did for ours. Relax! "4. The generation that is fighting your goddamn wars" The young fight wars, it has always been so and will be so for your children as well. You can believe you will be perfect world citizens, parents, and people, but you won't even be close. Just be better than the last, that's all I ask. Steven Pinker has some books which are revelatory, including The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The essential premise is that over time humans are becoming less violent. I would take it a step further; we are becoming better people from increasing empathy to better child rearing to fewer and less deadly conflicts. Don't think all the improvement is yours alone, it was a long term group effort, but definitely, take the accolades you deserve. Sorry, you don't deserve many yet. The wars today are amazingly safe when compared to wars of the past like the US Civil War, WWI or WWII, regardless war is hell, and less is better, and none is best. Try to make it so, but be satisfied if you only make it better. However, unless you fought, or served as my son is doing now as a US Marine, don't take credit for service not earned. That is not just ugly, but evil as well. "5. And we’re doing all this under overwhelming circumstances" Welcome to adulthood. Yes, growing up is a bitch, but a rewarding one if you accept it and engage, less so if you decamp to the basement and the video games. I know, stereotype warning needed. Free market economies do have cycles, and those who enter the workforce during a downturn are likely scarred somewhat by the experience, but this is not unique to Millennials. Stop tongue bathing yourself, and get at it. Life is not going to wait because your career has a boo boo. And worse yet the socioeconomic model doesn't work well and will work less well with time. That said, those who pioneer the new socioeconomic model will have the opportunity to do much better than their parents if they get out of the basement and stop whinging long enough to find a way forward. "Then there’s the student loan debt crisis, a $1.3 trillion burden on our generation that nobody in government seems particularly motivated to alleviate. Our youngest working generation is starting their professional lives deeply in debt, with a staggering negative net worth. Combine that with the whole underpaid issue, and it’s no wonder that millennials are delaying typical adulthood milestones like getting married, buying houses, and having babies. And yet even in the face of these depressing odds, millennials are doing all of the above. Statistically speaking, we’re kicking ass and taking names and being thoughtful and compassionate while we’re at it. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s something to be damn proud of." And here appears one of the authors quality arguments and well made. The student debt crisis was a foolish error by Boomers who failed to understand that offering easy credit to naifs who did not have any reasonable sense of debt was a bad idea. Universities today are a business seeking to please and attract the students. Easy, no payment while in school, credit has allowed students to live better in college than their parents, and take drunken Spring Break weeks, among other vacations. All at the cost of later debt slavery and without the benefit of bankruptcy protection. These loans have played a part in driving up college costs, as have lowering college education quality to double college enrollment. Blame the Boomers this is their fault. Boomers failed to teach their children the dangers of debt, failed to pressure their kids to avoid dead end degrees, failed to control excessive debt fueled spending, and so much more. Most frightening, the student debt failure is the least of the Boomer sins. So, what do I think the author should have written? If you care, read on, if not, good night. The pension, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid implosion: Social Security is still just a bankrupt as it was last year, politicians still ignore the facts It's time for a pension update from the pension apocalypse center here in Maddogslair at Stately Maddog Manor . . . The Boomers only pay 75% of their tax bill: Millennials should be rioting in the streets about this issue. Boomers only pay taxes of about $3 trillion of the $4 trillion federal budget; they borrow the rest leaving it for the Millennials and future generations to pay. The same groups which the author so carefully shows are having a tough time of it economically; this will only stop when the Millennials force the Boomers to pay what they owe. Does anyone believe the Millennials will be able to pay back these debts or pay off these liabilities? Workplace/jobs licensing: A license to braid? Occupational licensing There are more, but half the fun is finding them.
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