“Young people are so privileged” says member of generation
that bought up all the houses on the cheap and got free uni education
and loads of free shit and voted to remove young people’s rights
and opportunities and burnt up the planet so young people are screwed.
I disagree with this on so many levels. Buckle yourselves in - RANT AHOY!
Generations 101:
LOST GENERATION born 1883-1900 (currently dead)
GREATEST GENERATION born 1901-1927 (currently 93+)
SILENT GENERATION born 1928-1945 (currently 75-92)
BABY BOOMERS born 1946-1964 (currently 56-74)
GEN X born 1965-1980* (currently 40-55)
MILLENNIALS born 1981-1996* (currently 24-39)
GEN Z born 1997-2010* (currently 10-23)
ALPHA GENERATION born 2011 or after (currently 9 and under)
* dates disputed
For the record my parents are Silent Generation (1942 & 1944) I'm Gen X (1978) my eldest is a Millennial (1996) and my youngest is Gen Z (1999)
Disclaimer: this rant is from a British perspective - I am well aware that the generations in other nations struggle with entirely different issues.
1) Young people are so privileged
Well, lets see... today's young person usually comes from a smaller, wealthier family than their parents' generation, they have better education, better diets, better health, longer life expectancies... Today's young people have greater legal protections and better working conditions than ever before so, yeah. Privileged. More on this topic to follow.
The theme of younger people blaming the older generation for their woes, and conversely older people bitching about how easy the younger generation has it, are timeless - go look at Aristophanes' The Wasps (circa 446-386 BCE) for a generational conflict over two-thousand years old. There is eff-all unique about this.
It is basic, timeless human nature: parents always think their kids have it easy (and in many ways they do) and kids always think their parents fucked it all up (and in many ways they did) - each generation has different difficulties and challenges, that is the way of the world. One day you will be the older generation and to blame for every complaint the current youth have.
2) says member of generation
Right, can I just stop you right there. Being a member of a particular generation does not automatically follow that you have lived a life with any particular privileges.
My generation largely grew up in the thriving 90s - boom years for many but especially hard on those of us who were welfare dependent - no food banks in those days! (And let's just mention here that the supposedly blessed Silent / Boomer generations had to deal with dig for victory and rationing!)
From that perspective today's youth ARE privileged because so much is available, and not just in terms of food. In my youth if you wanted to know a thing it was hours of research at the library IF your parents let you go, now immense amounts of information are just a click away and accessible everywhere... so long as you have the tech, which not everyone can afford.
'Available' is a loaded word because whilst it might be present not everyone has it. Not every household in the '60s had indoor plumbing, not every household in the '80s had a phone, and here I am in 2020 still sans automobile. Don't assume the two are synonymous.
3) that bought up all the houses on the cheap
Yes, houses were cheaper in the past and even allowing for lower wages and so on have you SEEN what interest rates were like in the 80s and 90s?! Also, if they hadn't bought those houses what would you be living in? If your landlord hadn't bought that property for you to rent would you expect it to still be sitting there, in livable condition, at a 1970s price?! If people HADN'T invested in property there'd be a lot of people living in squats and a lot of those homes would be rotting shells.
Seriously though, if people hadn't bought property in the past where would the youth of today be? I have a roof over my head because my parents invested in property, my daughter works in property rentals, my youngest is renting in an investment property at uni.
And here comes another privileged generation comment: back when your parents or grandparents or landlords bought their house or investment properties (dependent on specific dates, obviously) here are some of the other things they may have been contending with:
- No minimum wage
- No statutory sick pay
- No maternity paid leave and for many older gen women they were actively excluded from the workplace after having a child
That oh so 'lucky' older generation usually had a sole (male) breadwinner paying 15% interest on a mortgage and heaven help him if he got sick or laid off. Women didn't have it any better being expected to stay at home... suffering from financial dependence, thwarted aspirations and worse if the marriage was unhappy. There weren't the refuges and help against domestic abuse like there are today and marital rape wasn't even outlawed until 1991! Now OBVIOUSLY not all domestic violence / rape victims are women but given that almost all the currently available support is geared to female victims the point is negligible. A woman had little choice but to stay because although divorce has been available (there's that word again!) for generations it is fairly meaningless if one party has no where to go and minimal means of supporting themselves.
The younger generation has minimum wage and sick pay and maternity pay and civil partnership and rights for co-habiting partners and work welfare and maximum working hours etc etc etc precisely because of the shit your grand/parents endured. Debt might be higher now but there's far better terms and conditions.
4) and got free uni education
FFS GO LOOK UP UNIVERSITY TAKE UP RATES. Just 4% in the early 60s (when my parents were 18-ish and working rather than studying) according to this source:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jun/24/has-university-life-changed-student-experience-past-present-parents-vox-pops
It might have been 'free' but very few got the chance. And then Labour fought against the state footing the bill because university was seen as privileged, elitist, intensely Tory...
My kids have spiralling uni debt but they wanted degrees and understood the concept that if you want it you have to pay for it.
5) and loads of free shit
What on earth are you talking about now?! My parents never got anything handed to them. Neither did I.
My dad left school at 15 with no qualifications, worked his arse off in the building trade, got zero support when he got sick in his 50s and lost his job. He paid that 15% interest rate and went without for every damn thing he has.
My mum's parents forced to quit her education after her O-levels because education wasn't valued. She was forced out of work when she was expecting me in the late 70s, she cared for her parents at home until they died in 2000. Tell me, what did she get free? Or that she doesn't deserve what little she has.
I was a teen mum, forced to subsist on welfare because subsidised childcare didn't exist. my youngest attempted suicide after I was forced back to work and she was left home alone. I put myself through 5 1/2 years of uni only to end up living off my mum's pension caring for her full time as a stroke survivor. I am nearly 42 and I haven't even started supporting myself yet. Nor am I ever likely to be able to.
But yeah, sure, all us oldies got handed everything on a plate. Whatever.
6) and voted to remove young people's rights and opportunities
Is this a Brexit comment? I suppose it must be cos it doesn't make any kind of sense.
First up, we never voted into the EU. I thought we voted into the EEC (which was a good idea) but it turns out we joined in 1973, BEFORE the 1975 & 78 referendums (and the youngest person to vote for the EEC would now be 60!).
The EU came into being in 1993 (although the fate was sealed with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992). This was never a democratic process. And that, for me, is a huge problem. We never voted to give anyone EU "rights and opportunities" so why should we be vilified for voting to leave a situation we the electorate never chose to be a part of? A few alleged perks don't negate the restrictions our nation has suffered.
Freedom of movement has, to a large extent, meant that work hungry migrants (who, I want to make perfectly clear, I have no problem with whatsoever) have been willing to take the jobs so many of our native young people turn their noses up at. I've encountered a fair few barely literate young adults who think that their GCSE grade D in PE entitles them to better than scrubbing toilets for minimum wage. What is it about our society that results in such a shoddy work ethic?!
As most young British people are working in the UK I'm not clear what Brexit is supposedly doing to harm them. People travelled / worked / studied abroad before this, they still do and always will. Not to mention, a lot of people travel / work / study OUTSIDE the EU.
Young people HAVE rights, and opportunities - loads of which are unconnected to the EU. Given the fact that Brexit is the ONLY example of direct democracy in recent British history you could only ever blame GOVERNMENTS, not an electorate, for any other perceived slights to the youth of today... and neither the gov't nor the electorate is all Boomers anyway so you still can't blame a specific demographic!
7) and burnt up the planet so young people today are screwed
The industrial revolution is where today's environmental woes began and given that dates back to 1820-1840 no fucking way are you blaming that on people born over a century later.
It was far older generations than mine who were responsible for Bhopal and Chernobyl, my generation has suffered for the actions of previous generations; the kids who died at Aberfan from the coal board's greed would have been Boomers; the smogs of my parents' youth were the fall-out from their great-grandparents. The young people of the past were screwed over too.
But contrary to popular bullshittery we didn't just sit there and take it - the activism of previous generations is WHY there's a growing vegan movement, why there are renewable energies to invest in and electric cars to buy... It was Boomers who were protesting at Greenham Common, Silent Gen behind CND, both for Greenpeace... The oldies were trying to save the bloody planet before the disillusioned youth were conceived!
Environmental activism isn't a 21st century phenomenon and nor is it mid 20th century people's fault it's not fixed.
But here's what for me at least is the kicker:
The man who tweeted this is actor / comedian / director David Schneider who, according to Wikipedia, was born May 22nd, 1963. Making him a Boomer like the people he's so harshly criticising. He doesn't even seem to have any kids whose futures he is worried for.
He apparently went to an independent boys school and then uni all the way up to doctorate studies. He is exactly the privileged generation he bitches about on social media. Maybe this is his definition of comedy?! I for one am intensely annoyed by incredibly privileged people like this guy spouting outrage about the conditions of a working class they have never been part of.
