Gen X Hits Another Bump in the Road
blogs.hbr.org
blogs.hbr.org
Now, I understand that a neighborhood can become more desirable, or the land where the house is becomes more constrained, but that doesn't apply to every house. I feel like most of America (outside the cities) has plenty of room.
I guess that's partly why the housing bubble collapsed? It was based on feelings or something?
Now we're stagnant, and people are talking about the disappearing middle class, and housing prices are flat.
The growing income inequality is an issue, i give you that, and the rise of new economies has brought the West to an uncomfortable position, but hey, here's something to work toward fixing.
And i know that it's silly, but whenever i hear whiners like that, i can't help but think "grow a pair".
EDIT: I reread the article replacing "Gen-X" with "youngin's", and it makes a lot more sense. Also, we were the last generation that could reasonably work their way through college without loans.
Kurt Cobain was in Generation X, right? I was 11 when he died. Where does that put me? What about my 5 year old?
The whole idea of distinct "generations" seems wacky to me, but it sure does appeal to journalists.
According to Wikipedia, Gen-X ended around 1981. In my lifetime (we're probably around the same age) I have seen Gen-X referred to ending anywhere between 1976-1980.
People like to be part of a group. It's warm and comfortable. To not be part of a greater collective, part of something more powerful than their own individual beings, can be terrifying and lonely.
Journalists surely understand this; they tap into this inner fear, this inner desire of ours, when they generalize and talk in terms of distinct groups rather than in terms of individuals, even though surely none of us are so uniform that we truly belong to any such group as defined by any journalist anywhere.
The context of your youth tends to have a guiding hand in who you become as a person. Grouping people into distinct "generations" that span a decade or two is very imprecise, to be sure, but it does manage to roughly identify facets of the kind of environment you grew up in.
I find it interesting that the 00's have been less subject to such generalization and nostalgia, and I think it's for no other reason than it's harder to say, with no one clear winning decade moniker, compared to the Nineties, Eighties, Seventies, Sixties, etc.
(The Teens may be a little easier to refer to in casual overgeneralizations, and then the Twenties will come a roarin' back with decade-o-centric thinking.)