It’s funny: Here on Piggs, there have been, of late, a number of links to articles about the lack of jobs for new college graduates. Time-permitting, I try to make a point of reading through the readers’ comments at the article’s close. I am shocked by the intensity of the accusations made by 22, 24, and 28 year-old recent grads, but not by the accusations themselves. Virtually every one states that, as far as they are concerned, they can’t get jobs because of the economy that the baby boomers messed up. There are obvious flaws in that line of reasoning, but not to people who were raised to believe that they were “special” without having to provide evidence, who were provided with everything they wanted, or who learned to manipulate when they did not, whose parents encouraged them to cheat under the guise of attaining academic excellence, and who forced school administrations to “adjust” their subpar grades, and who attended law school because they were guaranteed to get a $160K/yr job when they graduated. These people are totally self-focused and concerned solely with their own wants and needs. That, in itself, does not bode well for those of us over the age of 50, who screwed up the economy for them. Our goose is cooked.
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Well, a few things.
1) the economy is screwed, though, some things were done to exacerbate this while the baby boomers will reaping the benefits of it’s “Shorttermism” – though it looks to me more a system at the end of it’s socio-evolutionary sequence. Which is an entirely different and very long subject. Long term thinking is not in Capitalism’s DNA and really a evolutionary developed part of the human brain. Something going forward we are going to HAVE to think about to maintain social sanity.
2) I agree with you assessment of the younger generation. They should not be complaining they should be finding ways to understand the world they live in and coming up with solutions instead of demanding lots of money for themselves. They are caught up in their “Americaness”, which is a a self-centered entitlement mentality. Now, entitlement mentalities have both a good and bad side, we are witnessing the bad side( I think it is good to think I deserve to live in a healthy society – I’m just weird that way) – and I know my culture bashing rubs people the wrong way. But, for Americans, self-examination is not just rare, it is nonexistent, which one source of our condition. Missing from our national character is love of the common good, and our collective civic responsibility toward one another. But if we acknowledged collective responsibilities to the individual members of our society, then we would have to deal with the issue of class in this country. Better to medicate an entire nation, I guess. In america you are not to think for yourself, but OF yourself.
I agree, the younger generation has to snap out of their cultivated self-centeredness and broaden their view. This next phase of our development is how to make society better – which won’t be linked to, how to make as much money as possible. Which is going to be a very uncomfortable transition, which we will fight tooth and nail.
Interestingly, the US and UK mirror each other is social health decline. They are a much more exaggerated version of similar trends in the rest of mature industrial democracies.
So, what’s going on – is widespread, it’s not exclusive to America.
