The Californian Ideology (1995)

How would the world look if those resources had been spent solving poverty?

Regardless, the US could probably spend a little less, without destabilizing anything.

And what's sad is that, for many millennials, they're stuck in a financial tar pit in large part by following the advice of their elders.

As an older millennial, my generation had two pieces of advice drilled into our skulls by boomers:

* What degree you get in college isn't that important, a B.A. will let an employer know your teachable

* Student loan debt is the best debt you can have: better than mortgage debt even

* (post dot-com crash) Don't bother trying to come a professional software developer -- it's the new textile industry: it's going overseas.

This created a generation that didn't factor in their professional or economic trajectory when choosing schools, deciding loans, etc. I had peers that walked away from free rides to college to go to their school of choice because student loans were "no big deal" -- and their parents encouraged this!

Boomers should have looked at their own jobs and paid attention how their own companies were hiring in the new economy: that new junior analyst? Makes less than the median income, despite an econ degree from top-tier school. Why did they think their kids, with a middling academics, could land the same job with a degree in english lit? The writing was on the wall even in the 90s that this wasn't a good idea: The world was more globalized and competitive. Labor's power was greatly diminished.

This contradicts my observation, which is that "concern over privacy" correlates with age. I see older folks ragequitting social media; the kids are sexting and snapchatting.

Going back to my comment about baby boomers, it seems to me that the 20th century idealized lifestyle was very much backed by the technology available at the time. Mainly mass media. Bandwidth was great enough to broadcast media to a massive amount of people, but not so great as to individualize content delivery. This limited "shelf space" for content lead to a market for high end content creators.

The internet exponentially increased bandwidth and democratized (and devalued) content creation. It also created channels for publishing new types of content that require tech skills (apps, web...).

You would think that millennials would embrace the 21st century technology driven reality, but instead it seems way too many people ended up chasing high value content roles via expensive liberal arts degrees. Or at least that anti-technology combative mindset that was foreshadowed in this piece.

But this didn’t drive me to be anti-free market. Far from it. The financial collapse was due to the power of the banks which existed as a government authorized oligarchy. Allowing banks monopoly over the mechanisms of monetary policy is the source of the problem. 2007 was NOT an unregulated market by any reasonable measure.

Don’t let your partisanship blind you to be grievances of those who align with neither yours nor the opposing party platforms.

I don't agree at all.

Millennial have more opportunity than any generation in history, by far.

They can chose what they want to do.

They can stay single, get married, be gay, be bi, whatever.

They are the first generation for whom international travel is accssible.

They are the first gen. where females can generally choose whatever career and it's not a big deal.

They are the first gen. to grow up with all the world's information at their fingertips.

They are the first gen. to not know full-scale war, mass poverty.

The 'financial system' was not 'destroyed' by anything - this is laughable. It was an accounting correction. The 1930's - this was an economic catastrophe. People were literally dying. The 2008 meltdown ... millenials were too young to be participants, it may have only affected a few jobs - and and it kept their housing costs down.

Aside from University costs (should we all be going to college?), and possibly housing bubble, they have it better materially than any generation - ever - and there's nothing to compain about.

"I find it kind of amazing that the myth of personal responsibility"

There is no 'myth' to personal responsibility, it's a core tenet of civilization.

If you finish school, learn a trade or get a relevant education, you'll get a job and live an ok life.

You are not entitled to a massive house, vacays all over the world and full on job security.

Growing up I remember finding it weird that every kid won a trophy --- just for showing up to the swim meet. I also remember how it seemed to wash the meaning of my second place trophy away.

I was lucky enough to experience failure often at a young age but I had many and by many I mean almost all of my friends never seamed to have hardships or experience failure. And I remember very very vividly when my best friend at the time was rejected and failed for the first time in his life by getting denied to the school of his choice. He was devastated. And not in a normal way. But that only lasted shortly as his mother was able to pull some strings and some connections and got him in the backdoor -- failure adverted. Had many friend like that, and the majority of the kids who biggest disappointments as a child were stupid things like their favorite pizza store closed down, or it rained on their birthday.

In any case I think and malvosenior can correct me if I am wrong. That the point is that we have a generation of kids now adults that have not been giving the tools to properly deal with failure -- and this affects there life in a very adverse way.

That all being said please read the above with the notion that I don't really like to judge groups of people, and that individuals should be looked at as just that -- an in individual. But what I am saying is that if I were to make a classification that did fit this "never learned how to fail" notion I am sure I could find more than a hand full of people who I would classify with said trait.

Now clearly aallevich is talking of his/her experiences and they are most certainly valid. But what I think would be more healthy is to unyoke your life experiences from that of a "Millennial" and own it for who you are and how you became to be. From there you can then actually start to address the issues that you feel are holding you back and likely come out on top. As long as you look at it as a "us" problem it will always be too big of an issue for you to overcome by your self. Don't let a calcification dictate who you are.