I'm Gen Y, and I Don't Feel Special or Entitled, Just Poor

Live life as you're doing, and consider supporting sens.org. Aging is terrible for many reasons, but we might actually be able to do something about it in the not too distant future.

Stop driving northeast -- Gone south to the Grand Canyon? Don't get back on track to NY, head to Philly or DC or NC or Florida instead. Better yet, make a J and head to Seattle.

Today I saw a kid walking down the street with an ice cream cone in his hand. His girlfriend was with him, he was in his 30s. But his inner child held the cone. Just because you age doesn't mean you can't still be a child.

Edit: from my profile -- Therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you dont. No one does. You shouldnt be trying to check off the boxes of life; they arent real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path Im following, and Im not walking in anyone elses footsteps. Im making it up as I go. - Charlie Hoehn

To make it slightly worse, the second 35 years will feel like they pass faster than the first 35 years.

Self-reported well-being follows a U curve. "Happiness" declines starting at age 18 and keeps going down until it bottoms out in middle-age. But then, interestingly, it rises, and keeps rising, all the way to end of life. This has been observed all over the world.

What's the global average least-happy age? 46.

He said 2 things:

1. These are weirdly contrived generational categories...

2. You have no idea about student debt, underemployment, life-long renting. “Stop feeling special” is some shitty advice. I don’t feel special or entitled, just poor...

So basically, the post is about the Huff Post author being detached from reality. "You just want to feel special- get over it" is really shitty advice, he's right. They teach you not to say things like that at work. At least I hope they do.

I'm a bit above 35 (past the next "old" barrier that starts with 4), and although I fall more into the Huff Post author's vision of the sad yuppie close to the start of gen Y, it pisses me off that on Marketplace (PRI radio broadcast on NPR stations) today they were basically trying to convince everyone that no one knows what the middle class is and that we should just get used to the new normal and should even consider wealth redistribution as a way to deal with it (I'm not joking- this was really said and the Marketplace idiot went along with it- seriously L.A.- are these the people you want representing you?).

So, I'm with Adam Weinstein on this one saying, "Fk you".

I didn't sign up for the economic situation we're in, and I feel that our fiscally irresponsible government is to blame. Wealth redistribution? No, I don't think socialism or communism is a good idea. The only countries in which either are working having been abandoning them for capitalism, from what I see (specifically, India and China).

Can we stop threatening to bomb people, open borders again fully to allow all kinds of immigrants, hire ex-Israeli soldier elites to profile passengers and replace the TSA and no-fly lists in our airports/etc. (like Israel does), and have less government. Our government has better things to do than to try to tell us how to live and how we should manage our money. Did you notice how the Democrats were giving Yellen a hard time because she was female? Almost completely washed over in the liberal media. Shame! So much bullshit. I cannot wait to cast my vote next time to oust every single one of the losers currently in office.

Personally, I've been working since I was 14 and I actually enjoy it -- a mix of pays the bills jobs, projects, and hobbies. My work ethic is best described as puritanical with a dose of optimizing for work life balance (at home preferred over sitting in a car for 45-60min). I probably work more than my parents did, but I don't have kids.

Any success I have is hard one over time, hard work, and being smart about decisions. I've never had a sense of "I deserve X". I don't agree with the article in a number of things, but when I've lead/managed members of Gen Y, there is a general feeling that they desire to advance/have more responsibility than their experience dictates. This is a generalization -- greater than 50% were of that mindset, but there were those in the remainder that were more balanced in their expectaions.

Sure, it is great to be goal oriented and have optimism, but for some of us a track record is more important than professed potential.

Example: "Last weekend my baby had a fever, and we contemplated taking him to the ER, and my first thought was - had to be - “Oh God, that could wipe out our bank account! Maybe he can just ride it out?”"

As opposed to previous generations who had much less access to healthcare in the first place?

The boomers are such a target for Gen Y wrath, yet there's little reflection on how growing up was different for the two. Boomers and before just buckled down and got on with it, because life is tough.

I was once having this discussion online with a Gen Yer, and I pointed out the medical advances, civil rights advances, relative lack of scarcity, so on and so forth. Not to mention growing up under the constant threat of the Cold War, which makes the War on Terrorism look like child's play. Despite all this, the entirety of her counterargument was 'some schools now require metal detectors'. She just couldn't grasp what it was like to grow up in previous generations - where instead of getting a false promise of a better life, you got no promise at all, and fewer entertainment options for distracting yourself. And as a woman, life would have been worse, with spousal and sexual abuse swept under the carpet as a matter of routine, and entirely legal reduced wages for the same work.

Are Gen Y better or worse off than previous generations? I certainly don't think they're worse off, it's just not 'perfect'. This article shows a lack of perception of the hardships boomers had and overcame, plus it quietly sifts in some whinging because his choice of career is dying... which is his choice of career, unrelated to Gen Y, and I noted that there was no acknowledgement of people in previous decades whose careers fell by the wayside (farriers? manufacturers? miners?). He certainly didn't mention that there are entire careers that now exist that didn't 20 years ago (pretty much all of the internet-related environment, for example).

The simple test is: would you rather live as an average person now or in 1960? If you're a young man in the US, remember that conscription is about to hit you, big time. (edit: and common jobs are mostly manual labour - there's very little in the way of 'designer' and the like)

entitlement is contraindicated a wrtitten contract

But the larger issue is this: ballooning debt and harsher bankruptcy laws. The simple fact is that if you want to be an entrepreneur, it is hard these days to justify a college education if coming out of it means five figures of debt that you have to pay back. This debt hangs like a stone around the necks of the younger generations who are struggling to swim in turbulent economic waters.

So entrepreneurship becomes a privilege of the wealthy, and yet another way to suck money from everyone else. We don't need a government safety net. We need an organic one.

One option as you say would be something like an entrepreneur's guild. This could be a good idea--- it could function as a sort of labor union among startups, and also a safety net for founders. It could also help ensure that people who enter as early employees make the kinds of contacts that could let them go into business for themselves. And despite functioning as a labor union it would not be one, because the stated business would be to help new entrepreneurs succeed (i.e. it would not be adversarial against management). To work it would have to count as members investors, founders, and workers.

In a lot of ways, isn't this what YC et al. are for? Essentially an interview for funding so that you can get a company started. If it works out, YC makes some money for the next group of people. If it doesn't, you got an investment. It's up to the panel of investors to decide whether they want to make that investment (i.e. if they think your idea is worthy of investing).

You're welcome to start your own coalition of investors, and lower the barrier of entry/investment. Guarantee entrepreneurs a certain salary for a certain amount of time. It could be interesting. I wouldn't invest in such a fund, personally, but it's an interesting idea.

Unless I missed your point and you simply meant that entrepreneurs should politically support such an idea. That's a different point all together!

The payoff is greater in another way too: Because our culture is generally less shameless about its love of materialistic success, the social reward is higher.

Said another way, we Americans love us a good lottery ticket, risks be damned!

Doesn’t that kind of sound like “privatize the gains, socialize the losses”? I don‘t really see how entrepreneurs would benefit overall from a basic income; successful individuals would have to pay for this through higher taxes, which would probably disincentivize risk-taking overall. Intuitively, it seems to me that any sort of scheme that tries to cheat the free market by subsidizing people who take risks and fail at the expense of those who either succeed or avoid risks probably overincentivizes risk-taking. Why should someone who doesn’t think their idea is good enough to put their own money at risk and can’t find anyone else who wants to invest and put their money at risk either get a taxpayer subsidy?

This makes especially little sense in Silicon Valley: “OK, I quit my well-paying tech job with health insurance and free food because I thought I could successfully bootstrap the next big social media blogging platform with my entire life savings, and now I’m somehow unemployable, bankrupt, and homeless, I deserve a bailout!”

Obviously, there needs to be some amount of risk-taking, but I’m extremely doubtful that it makes sense in general for the government to subsidize starting tech companies, especially when there are so many willing private investors. I agree that having health insurance be largely the employer’s responsibility does complicate switching jobs and starting companies.

Removing the strings would be extremely costly, since there are a lot of non-entrepreneurs who would rather live off basic income and do nothing.

[1] http://deewr.gov.au/new-enterprise-incentive-scheme-neis

Now a different perspective. I have spent around four months in Ecuador living with middle to upper class families there, and around three years total living in Indonesia. What I can tell you is that poverty in these countries is qualitatively different than poverty in the US, so much so that it is really hard to say one is worse than the other for most of the bottom 20%. For the bottom few percent though there is no question. The availability of affordable, nutritious food and basic shelter is much better here in Indonesia (and in Ecuador) for the poorest of the poor than it is in the US. Water is somewhat different but availability of water that won't kill you in the short term isn't a problem (drinking boiled polluted water is however).

Economically the poor have more stuff in the US, but they also carry a lot more debt, have more restrictions on what they can do, and they have weaker family ties, which means they have access, paradoxically, to less capital.

So I am not sure. I think that the bottom 50% may not be that much worse off in most other countries and I think there is a certain American arrogance which looks at the way we destroy the families, neighborhoods, and communities of the less well off as "progress." But if you never live elsewhere for long enough to really get the sense of how other people live, you don't see it.

Total employee compensation does (i.e. you have to include taxes, benefits, etc.). It's easy to see why - if someone produces way more than they cost, then employers will be lining up to hire them.

It's like as if you could buy widgets for $.10 and sell them for $1.00. You'd buy as many as possible!

we need some form of collective voice to return

And if your other option was McBurger flipping after taking a journalism degree... you'd readily take it?

The problem with unpaid internships is that they are closely supervised and hence end up with something like an unpaid employee. But what if the relationship is more loosely coupled? What if "just because we won't pay you for this doesn't mean someone else won't" is a part of the message?

Edit: citation

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/education/in-a-recovering-...

I saw the college bubble popping. It's why I went to night school and graduated debt free from a state in-state urban public university with a solid, practical program and a degree in business. It was a tough few years, but it also set the expectation that life would suck for a few years and then would get better, and I would find a way to do what I wanted after I met the goal.

Too many people, the author of the linked rant (I won't dignify it by calling it an article) seem to have been sold a promise of a fulfilling fun college experience and fulfilling fun career if only they mortgaged themselves. Mortgaging yourself never is a good idea. That is a horrible approach. I hope that the generation now in high school learns from their errors.

People have the audacity to say that we should accept stagnation without trying? That line of thinking is what is wrong with the world today.

It's not "jealousy" when I'm asking to be able to support myself. Is it unfair to expect not to start out in life heavily burdened by student loans, unable to get a job that provides any sort of benefits, or to be able to pay bills? I'm not asking for the shiniest and newest, I'm asking for a basic living. It's not status; it's not being stuck living at home.

It's a pretty bad logical error on his part.

My Depression-era great grandparents had to make that choice (and worse), but implying we should be so lucky that we as a society are regressing 80 years is not such a good thing.

that's not a first world problem.