Interesting article floating around the web:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html

and quite a good rebuttal:

http://aweinstein.kinja.com/****-you-im-gen-y-and-i-dont-feel-special-or-entitl-1333588443

Whole thing seems to have passed me by as I’m 10 years too old to be Generation Y…..

^ You need to change the **** to f u etc as the swear filter has corrupted it…

Not here I didn’t.

Maybe it just changes the displayed name, not the URL…

edit – yep it does.

I possibly just scrape in as an old Gen-Y – but I don’t feel special.

What’s the point of this – that young people feel they’re special and completely different to their parents? Well, duh. That’s always been the case.

The fundamental, basic fact missed out from all that analysis is this:

The Baby Boomers stole all the money.

What’s gen y? Is that older than gen x, but not quite youngster?

If so, I’m probably round about that. If I am, I’m not sure I feel special or entitled. Working too hard and taxed too much every possible way for sure, but not entitled or special.

But do you look like a stick man?

Happily I’m gen X with no aspirations beyond getting trollied at the weekend with a hot chiquita and laughing until our ribs hurt.. Followed by a bit of hanky panky and a few giggly pints on Sunday evening

Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

I’m with Tyler on this.

Saw that on fb – makes some interesting points but basically this:

The fundamental, basic fact missed out from all that analysis is this:

The Baby Boomers stole all the money.

Well, they didn’t really steal it, did they? they were basically given it by the previous generation who set the wheels in motion for welfare state and decent pensions.

Well, they didn’t really steal it, did they? they were basically given it by the previous generation who set the wheels in motion for welfare state and decent pensions.

They’ve pulled the ladder up behind them pretty sharpish…

They’ve pulled the ladder up behind them pretty sharpish…

Unintentionally yes. I don’t think there was any grand plan to screw over their children….

Basically, they benefited from an economic system that only worked for one generation, by borrowing money from the future.

I don’t think there was any big plan, and without help from my baby boomer parents life would be a lot harder for us personally, but really the current economic system is broken.

yunki – Member

Happily I’m gen X with no aspirations beyond getting trollied at the weekend with a hot chiquita and laughing until our ribs hurt.. Followed by a bit of hanky panky and a few giggly pints on Sunday evening

Amen, brother. Amen.

Basically, they benefited from an economic system that only worked for one generation, by borrowing money from the future.

I’m sure there was a sci-fi book where they found a way to harness the power of the sun exploding in the future and use it to power the planet in the present. Seemed like a great idea….although it did involve time travel…..

I prefer the one about the man who goes back in time, puts 1p in a bank account, and when he goes back to the future he has accumulated enough compound interest to buy the country 😉

I prefer the one about the man who goes back in time, puts 1p in a bank account, and when he goes back to the future he has accumulated enough compound interest to buy the country

As long as he didn’t pick Lehman Brothers…..

It’s all marketing bs – if Gen X are ‘baby boomers’ then they would be born between 1946 and 1964, but then I’ve seen Gen X defineds anyone born between 1961 and 1981,
whilst Gen Y is late 80’s to the late 90’s.
So they can’t be clear on what Gen X is.
Certainly the ‘baby boomers’ seem to have been born in a golden age for jobs, pensions and life expectancy. That’s my elder sisters lifestyle.

I don’t think you can group someone born whilst JFK was alive and who saw the moon landing and remembers Thatcher with someone born who doesn’t.

They’ve pulled the ladder up behind them pretty sharpish…

No, they just failed to die in a timely fashion.

Think its fair to say the accepted definition of generation X is post-baby-boom these days.

No, they just failed to die in a timely fashion.

To give then their dues, the Tories have been doing everything they can to help kill off the elderly and vulnerable……

They’re doing a crap job. Life expectancies keep going up.

im generation y by that definition.

i reckon my peers are unhappy because they are debted to the eyeballs to have the latest cars/phone/telly/computer/consumer goods etc etc because in their mind they deserve it infact to quote someone i know.

“X and Y can have nice cars why cant i” trying to justify his new very fast very nice car purchase.

Because X and Y earn double what you do which is more than enough to have nice cars, you do not you were already strugling before the car.

The Baby Boomers stole all the money.

Or maybe while in their 20’s & 30’s they didn’t spunk it all away on iphones, ipads, Macs, Playstations, XBoxes, gap years to Thailand and Australia etc.?

Or maybe while in their 20’s & 30’s they didn’t spunk it all away on iphones, ipads, Macs, Playstations, XBoxes, gap years to Thailand and Australia etc.?

But I’m special, I deserve all that and more!

I’m 26 years old – what does that make me!?

I’m Generation A – A for Awesome!

I do feel they should have started the whole Generation thing a bit earlier in the alphabet than X.

iphones, ipads, Macs, Playstations, XBoxes

No, but colour TVs sold well through the late 60s and early 70s and would have cost more than £3k adjusted to today’s prices. We have access to much better technology (including that which some find frivolous) but it’s really, really cheap compared to previous generations.

The price of buying a new iPhone every couple of years is tiny compared to the vastly increased cost of housing, either rented or servicing a mortgage.

I do feel they should have started the whole Generation thing a bit earlier in the alphabet than X.

Clearly the baby boomers fault (asusming an academic baby boomer was the one dishing out lables)

Perhaps its got something to do with the difference in mindsets?

The baby boomers were prepared to graft & save for their future whereas subsequent gens were more into instant gratification?

The baby boomers were prepared to graft & save for their future whereas subsequent gens were more into instant gratification?

The baby boomers have benefited massively from inflation, wiping out their debts. Now they are relatively debt-free they’re using their political weight to keep inflation low, and maintain their spending power.

dunno simon – my parents were the first in my family to own a colour TV which they worked hard to get ….. radio rentals used to rent my grandparents theirs till the mid 1990s.

The baby boomers have benefited massively from inflation, wiping out their debts. Now they are relatively debt-free they’re using their political weight to keep inflation low, and maintain their spending power.

😯

Seriously??

Read both articles with interest. I was born in 78 and will certainly not do as well as my parents financially. That said, I have had a career thus far which has gone very well and am certainly better off than all but one of my peer group from school/Uni.

However behind all the rhetoric and ranting in these articles, the dynamic shift in the global economy has been missed. There is finite resource globally, an ever increasing populous and the large populations of India and China have gotten a LOT richer in the last 10-15 years. There is and will be a rebalancing of living standards from east to west. The baby boomer generation in the west saw what the middle classes of china and India are seeing now. There were also losers in these societies; witness the workhouses of the 40s and 50s.

This growth is levelling the living standards vs the west. Within that levelling, the west may well decline slightly and we are seeing that in the wealth gap between generations.

Hats off to the Sacndinavians though – they appear to have played the economic game better than most…

To give then their dues, the Tories have been doing everything they can to help kill off the elderly and vulnerable……

The baby boomers were prepared to graft & save for their future whereas subsequent gens were more into instant gratification?

I blame the parents

Chap on a Facebook group I use has just posted that he had a company car worth more than his flat in 1996.

It was a Rover 800.

Flat was £25k.

So are cars fuhooking cheap now or is property mental expensive?

Property is mental expensive

It was a Rover 800.

A Rover worth more than £75? He’s pulling your leg…..