Why is this an issue? I'm in the GenX generation, and I know a lot of people that got help from their parents with college, cars, and even first homes.
Causes resentment and division, basically.
I disagree that this is essentially an emotional problem. This is essentially an inequality problem; the inequality (unsurprisingly) breeds resentment, and trying to fix the resentment without fixing the inequality is just slapping a bandage over a sucking chest wound.
[1]: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/world-bank-poverty-statistics-lac... [2]: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm
But more importantly, I don't really care if a few people are slightly less motivated if it means that we can unlock the massive amount of latent human potential currently wasted in poverty, hunger, and desperation. The number of people like that would be massively outweighed by the people who aren't scrabbling just to survive, and whose intelligence and work ethic could instead be turned to learning and building the future.
If it helps you feel a little more optimistic, many grew up in the recession around the 1980s which was far worse than 2008.
Like PG writes, you can make your life about finding a way to work really hard for a few years so we don't have to one day.
It will almost certainly be more work than others but you will improve more than others from that effort you put in.
Everyone's equal in their potential to have work ethic, developing has to be applied each according to the formulas of the circumstances of our life.
Surrounding yourself with hard workers (regardless of background) is the key I look for.
If there's no work ethic and effort, talent or privilege doesn't really get as far.
The key phrase of the article being "secret" - it took me until junior year of college to realize that the reason a lot of my classmates could eat out wherever they wanted and buy whatever clothes they wanted was due to their parents funding their lifestyle. In comparison, I struggled a lot in college financially (even on a full ride scholarship), as well as fitting in with my peers both academically and culturally.
When I had asked my friends how they were able to afford everything, they always told me that they had "money saved up", which I legitimately believed and never really questioned.
It really wasn't until I started working and my friends would reminisce about college that I realized that the "money saved up" was really their parents money. Then some of my friends started buying homes: they had "money saved up" and "invested wisely", they claimed, but this time I was wiser because we were working the same job at the same company, and I knew that they spent more money than me.
When I started my own company, some of my friends in the tech community said something along the lines of, "how much money are your parents gonna invest?" - which is the same kind of assumed privilege that left me feeling so bitter before. I've definitely grown out it since then and have taken steps to stop comparing myself to others as much, but it's human nature to do so and I think my story will ring true with a lot of people with similar backgrounds.
Ultimately, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this, but I did spend a lot of time saying no to a lot of things (as a result of not having time and/or money) and feeling inadequate as a result. And before anyone says I should "make better friends" - I think our own personal narratives are always biased to sound more self-sufficient than we actually are, so no, I don't blame anyone either.
I moved cities for an awesome job and moved in with my best friend from high school. He was on his second year in an engineering program at a major university. I was working full time and going to community college classes at night, while he worked part time and was living on financial aid and loans. I was incredibly jealous. He would go out drinking every night, always had cash to do whatever he wanted, had a nice car, took amazing vacations and I can't tell you how many times I would wake up and see a different girl who spent the night.
Later on, when I looked at my peers who were buying houses and nice cars, I had assumed they were doing better than me, had better jobs, or had help. Nope. They were up to their eyeballs in debt. Some lost jobs and lost everything. My best friend ended up moving away after a suicide attempt and never heard what happened to him.
Lastly, I decided to go back to school for a second degree in electrical engineering. Not because I needed, but because I wanted the challenge. I had to retake some lower level courses that didn't transfer. Overhearing young adults complain about not having time to do anything, school is so hard, and then talking about the party where they smoked pot all night is just cringe-worthy.
You shouldn't feel inadequate at all. I certainly don't.
The question becomes - how much of a factor does it play? I would think less than the intangible but non material benefits of having higher income parents (your upbringing, the lessons learned from your parents, their professional connections, a safety net that lets you take risk) but more than I would like to have admitted to myself a decade ago.
There has been a lot of criticism of unpaid internships for the same thing, notably in journalism in the UK. This is an industry entirely driven by unpaid internships, or jobs that pay well below what it costs to attend them in central London. As a result, journalism in the UK is a pretty middle-class dominated industry, which itself helps to perpetuate the cycle of low social mobility.
Yep - and I wish this was more of the conversation ... I'm really playing a completely different game than my late father.
The ONLY reason I realize it vs my peers is because both of my parents died by/in my mid-20s and left me nothing going into adulthood. In contrast, I would anecdotally say >60% of my peers are still receiving parental help with everything from childcare, to down payments on houses, etc - even well into their 30's... regardless of income.
Nothing is free. Unless you're a low life, you will always feel indebted to them and make up for it through other means.
Starting grade 10 I started working, I paid my phone bill, transportation and most other expenses (except of course food and room)
I have worked my way through university, bought a car, and will graduate with $20k in student loans that will vanish once I get my sign-on bonus in two months while making more that 2x of my whole household combined. It's very much possible to move up the social ladder in my eyes.
Am I a low life? What should I feel indebted about.
I'm grateful for their support of my life path, but most people don't have the privilege of living cozy lives.
If there is more systemic downward pressure then average people wonder how are all these people surviving if they’re claiming to be self-sufficient, and this article aims to reveal that lie.