THE MYTH OF MILLENNIAL ENTITLEMENT WAS CREATED TO HIDE THEIR PARENTS’ MISTAKES

This is an excellent piece from Sarah Kendzior at qz.com. I urge you to read it.

(and so should Hillary and the Donald and the entire US Congress)

Among its very perceptive conclusions are:

Critics often end up repackaging millennials’ economic desperation as lifestyle choices.

Many millennials do not have a lot of choice. They are merely reacting to lost opportunity.

For most Americans under 40, life since 2008 has been a struggle to survive. But it is worth noting that plenty of older Americans share the same struggles as their younger peers. Many older people laid off in the recession were unable to regain good jobs. There are plenty of older people with few retirement savings, with their finances drained from paying for both elderly parents and jobless children. We need to acknowledge the way our struggles are intertwined, instead of allowing the media to stoke manufactured class and generational resentment.

“Millennials” have become both a media scapegoat for, and a distraction from, widespread economic suffering. Having experienced no economy other than the recession’s false recovery, young Americans have arguably suffered the most. The remedy lies not in judging their lifestyle choices—or worse yet, perpetuating the illusion that they have money to burn—but by acknowledging the new economy for what it is: a structural crisis, one that future generations will share. Millennials keep getting older, but their problems stay the same age.

http://http://qz.com/720456/the-myth-of-millennial-entitlement-was-created-to-hide-their-parents-mistakes/