Young people 'feel they have nothing to live for'

When my friend mentioned that I was just in town from SF for the weekend, she asked what I did and after telling her, her reaction was something along the lines of 'oh you're like a real grown up!' Her tone was one of embarrassment and a begrudging acceptance of where she was, and it's one I've seen a fair bit despite going to a pretty solid school. Not Ivy League, mind you, but a reasonably high-ranked state school.

I really have no idea what the solution is, but I've thought a fair bit about the as of yet unrealized ripple effects: Many of these people are in debt up to their eyeballs. Given that, they're going to be much less likely to (or at least will significantly delay) purchases of cars and real estate. Dating is a lot harder when you're living at your parents', and I'm sure we'll see an impact in the ratio of singles/families among my generation as a result. Then there's the whole psychological impact of feeling they have nothing going for them that the article focuses on. Pretty dismal scene.

[1] Honestly, I hate this term. It shouldn't be any surprise to us that when we promote an 'everyone goes to college!' culture a la 'everyone's a home owner!', coupled with an insidious lowering of standards in our education system starting in the lower rungs of K-12, we'll have a mass of college-educated individuals who can't find gainful employment.

That was hard to read and it is very serious stuff. Some might take a derisive, cynical approach that "Well in so many countries people have to much worse and how do these people from a first world country think that way". But it is important to note that human experience is unique the pain one experiences is often relative to their environment and their expectations.

Someone I knew was very successful and made millions of dollars (tens or so). And then his accountant stole probably half of it and disappeared. Well this acquaintance had contemplated suicide. And when word got out, many friends and acquaintances were laughing at him. "He still had all this great wealth and there he was ready to take his own life." But, the pain he was experiencing, was real to him. And he was ready to take that step. The wisdom to understand (maybe not agree with it, but at least to understand) comes a bit later in life.

http://pastie.org/pastes/9180833/text?key=uuqxmp5nxexuszswum...

If you don't have a phone (or even if you do), feel free to message me if you'd like to talk to someone in the startup/tech community who's also worked as a crisis counselor. Contact info's in my HN profile.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can reconcile my software skills with lofty goals of a more just society, but it's pretty tough. I think it was the piratebay founder that said it was impossible.

In any case, yesteryear dreams like "starting a prosperous household" seem not only unattainable, but hollow as well, in 2014. It's definitely weird being a young adult these days.

ps. lmao @ "we don't have real problems". I guess massive underemployment, environmental wreckage, domestic espionage, corporate wage fixing, increasingly sophisticated advertising, etc. are all just a blip on the radar compared to the fights of old boys. It's just not as romantic as it used to be, it's the inter-generational equivalent to "poor people have refrigerators".

IMO You really can't underestimate the importance of that last one, the property bubble.

In the past young people could strive towards buying their own place, starting a family, climbing the ladder, but that's so far out of reach nowadays that many people can't even hope to play that game. One of the big drivers in many people's lives has been pulled out of reach.

It can all feel like a treadmill even if you're in a good job so I can see how young people who aren't working in a hot industry such as tech in a major city to feel this way.

I feel like the answer to this conundrum -- and in general the long term trend of job obviation -- is to decouple an individual's worth from their economic value.

But what would a world without work look like? I can imagine it being heaven or hell.

I'm pushing 40 and have older siblings in their 50s. Only one of them went to college right out of high school (more went later on when they could afford to pay for it) and the others joined the military to get a start in the world. All of my siblings -- minus the one under lifetime treatment for depression -- are successful today. They all have fulfilling careers and healthy families. None of them had it easy.

My parents (begrudgingly) paid for (most of) my college. There was quite of bit of resentment in my family as I had grown up assuming that I would go to college and someone would pay for it, a fairly common belief at the time, at least among my peers. After changing majors a couple of times my parents told me I was on my own. I was angry at first and then I started a small business with some friends, worked hard and finished.

After college I moved to another country and worked hard to get a career-path job. After that I worked hard starting my own company in that field. Apart from the degree my parents helped pay for I did it all on my own steam. Those decisions I made -- finishing school, moving to another country, quitting a job to start a company -- those were the ones that defined my life and paved the way for the things that I enjoy today. (I'm not suggesting I've arrived anywhere, just that I've acquired the tools to live a fulfilling life.)

Whenever I meet young people (and by young I mean just out of college) I'm sometimes very impressed though I'm often shocked at how much they expect from the world. The impressive ones seem to get it and are working hard either on their own businesses or taking the most aggressive route through graduate school somewhere interesting -- doing what it takes to carve out a niche. The ones that don't impress me think that getting a degree (or even not getting one) means they're going to have a comfortable life, free of hardship.

It's not just young people though. I see a lot of people my age who cynically pick up a paycheck every month in a field they're not passionate about, that they're not truly invested in. Then they completely fall apart because they "got downsized" and they go frantic on FB looking for a lifeline. These are the same people at different stages in life. If you're willing to dig in and make your own way then you might get what you want out of life. If not then don't be surprised when life goes sideways.

1) Education has become much more expensive than just 10 years ago - you typically leave college with anywhere upto ~50K in debt

2) The Economy has changed - companies are making do with fewer people despite huge demand - (basically a jobless recovery)

3) Asinine trend of "you need to have a job to get a job" - basically some one already employed has 2-3 job offers but some one starting out has no one willing to take a risk on them

4) Some narrow sectors are indeed booming but most are locked out of them

I've seen this in action. The jobs these kids got were from people who got fired in order to make room for them. As a company getting paid to have someone perform work for you is real nice. But it does not CREATE jobs.

In order to pay for all these things our sales-tax rate was pumped up to an all new high 21%...

Step two: Discover you actually hate all professions associated with your qualifications, or that your qualifications are useless in the job market and your career goals were utterly unrealistic

Step three: Mooch at home unwilling to retrain or do something menial, or with no relevance to your skill set to tide you over whilst you find something better

Step four, establish your new NEET identity and blame society, everyone and everything but yourself for your circumstance and the lack of a suitable high paying job served on a platter

I say this as someone that hasn't completed any education beyond GCSE level (I guess that's college in the US), and has never had any trouble finding paid work several within 10 days and something that I want to do within 60 days of that. I've worked throughout Europe, the UK and Southern Africa.

Apologies for the lack of empathy here, but it really isn't that hard. Just be prepared to go anywhere and do anything

I don't have a solution but then again most of these young people are far better off than the generation before them so maybe they should stop being so gloomy. Most of them have pretty much free access to all of life's necessities and they are going to live longer than any generation before them.

Sure, you can throw lots of police at demonstrators, but for one there will be more and more people who no longer can afford to buy your iPhones, and secondly, at some point it might get really ugly.

I am blessed to live in a safe place and earn a lot of money. But I do feel we need to put a part of it aside for direct help of the unemployed folks, especially the young, and for programs to tackle these problems.

And if we don't it will could turn out to be a bad century. For all of us.

[1] I speculate they are exploiting the egoism that's in all of us for their campaigns.

[2] If you don't think there are any, think about how much about your own life is the result of chance, and how it easily might be the other way round. For example you being a poor immigrant in a foreign country.

...This, this was important, a moment where the life we once knew stopped existing, and a group of students, in a class room that looked like and abandoned building, realized it, all 60 of us at the same time.

We understood it the same way a kid understands photosynthesis: Because a teacher coldly explained it to us, even used graphics… It happened 4 years ago, almost a year after the December 2001 crisis. It was a social studies class and this teacher, don’t remember if it was a he or a she, was explaining the different kinds of social pyramids. We even had a text book with those darn, cruel pyramids! The first pyramid explained the basic society. A pyramid with two horizontal lines, dividing those on top (high social class) those in the middle (middle class) and the bottom of the pyramid (the poor, proletarian). The teacher explained that the middle of the pyramid, the middle class, acted as a cushion between the rich and the poor, taking care of the social stress.

The second pyramid had a big middle section, this was the pyramid that represents 1st world countries. One where the bottom is very thin and arrows show that there is a possibility to go from low to middle class, and from middle to the top of the social pyramid. Our teacher explained that this was the classic, democratic capitalist society, and that on countries such as Europeans one, socialists, the pyramid was very similar but a little more flat, meaning that here is a big middle section, middle class, and small high and low class. There is little difference between the three of them. The third pyramid showed the communist society. Where arrows from the low and middle class tried to reach the top but they bounced off the line. A small high society and one big low society, cushioned by a minimal middle class section of pyramid. Then we turned the page and saw the darned fourth pyramid. This one had arrows from the middle class dropping to the low, poor class. “What is this?” Some of us asked.

The teacher looked at us. “This is us” “It’s the collapsed country, a country that turns into 3rd world country like in pyramid five where there is almost no middle class to speak, one huge low, poor class , and a very small, very rich, top class.” “What are those arrows that go from the middle to the bottom of the pyramid?” Someone asked. You could hear a pin drop. “That is middle class turning into poor”.

I won’t lie, no one cried, though people rubbed their faces, held their heads and their breath. No one cried, but we all knew at that very moment that all we thought, all we took for granted, simply was not going to happen. “You see, the income from the middle class is not enough to function as middle class any more. Some from the top class fall to middle class, but the vast majority of the middle class turns into poor” Said the teacher.

I don’t know how many people in that room suddenly understood that he/she was poor. The teacher continued “You see, we have a middle class that suddenly turns to poor, creating a society of basically poor people, there is no more middle class to cushion tensions any more. Middle class suddenly discovers that they are overqualified for the jobs they can find and have to settle for anything they can obtain, therefore unemployment sky rockets: too much to offer, too little demand. You see they prepare, study for a job they are not going to get. You kids, you are studying Architecture because you simply wish to do so. Only 3 or 4 percent of you will actually find a job related to architecture.”

We all sat there, letting it all sink in. After a few months, it all proved to be true. Even the amount of students that dropped out of college increased to at least 50%. They either so no point in studying something that would not make much of a difference in their future salaries, had no money to keep themselves in college, or simply had to drop college to work and support their families.

(Edit: spelling)

Maybe this realization is just quicker? Maybe this also means a higher ratio of people are happy because they embraced emptyness?

Of course the people hardest hit are those at the bottom of the income chart - the young. At the same time, the cost of living has rocketed as a result of the mishandling of the banking sector, resulting in a housing boom (that from a political perspective cannot be permitted now to be undone and has been subsequently propped up by a heavily indebted the government). Again the worst off have been non-homeowners (i.e. the young).

It's impossible to blame the current administration for all of it, you have to blame the entire political establishment (all 3 main parties have been in power within the last 15 years). Their worldview has to be questioned. Significant errors of judgement have been made repeatedly over the last 15 years - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria (no action taken by a hairs breadth even after everything that had come before), the banking crisis, handling of the educational system (including higher education), rapidly opening borders to former eastern-bloc countries, limitless spying on UK citizens, no reform of an undemocratic (not elected, but "appointed") European Commission, and migration of law making powers to the EU without consultation and assent by the public (through referendum).