A Line Of Cards Tells Millennials Living With Mom and Dad To GTFO
fastcocreate.com
fastcocreate.com
The idea that "everyone should buy their own house at 22 and sign on for a 30 year mortgage" is a horrific scheme concocted by federal and corporate bureaucrats hell bent on building a compliant worker class. And it has effectively fallen apart: if Bloomberg Businessweek readers (do they exist? I've never met someone who reads it) want millenials to start making substantial financial commitments, the best they could do would be to, yeah, create some actual jobs for people.
And, sure, there's the alternative of renting. Which is fine if someone wants to do it--in fact, I got out of my parents' house ASAP after spending a year of menial labor to save up enough to start on my own. But people living with their parents is hardly some absurdity or perversion. In fact, it's a pattern that's observed cross-culturally and has occurred throughout history. Probably most people throughout history have lived with parents, up to and including during marriage. Today people still do as well.
If anything, it's the idea that everybody needs to have their own house and their own car and their own backyard that's the perverse one.
Perhaps the two biggest lifecycle stages--having children and growing old--we deal with absolutely terribly. Young couples go through many sleepless nights taking care of kids, and struggle to find a way to care for them while still maintaining a connection with the outside world. Old people have a different problem: many face total social isolation, feel great sadness at not being connected with their children, and want some way to feel productive. (Indeed, one of the best predictors of year-on-year survival rates is number of friends an old person has.)
They're two problems that seem to me to almost solve one another: why not have older generations help more with the kids? Not like it's a unique solution either, because it's been done pretty much everywhere until recent times.
The quote "These free issues and e-cards are intended to help a generation that could sure use a hand, not to blame them." does not seem very genuine to me. It is very difficult for people in my generation to advance themselves in this climate. Youth unemployment has risen globally, and personally I'm horrified at how this government (in the UK) is sabotaging the future of so many children and young people. These kind of glib pot shots were funny 10 years ago, when social mobility was possible but they come across as arrogant and out of touch in today's world.