Perhaps if their "boomer" parents had not spent so much on them giving them everything they wanted, including paying for them to go to college, then those "boomers" would have had enough money to retire long ago.
Perhaps if the "boomers" had not bought into the psychobabble school of raising children where "everyone is a winner" and all the other overprotective crap then perhaps these "Gen X & Y'er's" would know the universal truth that life is hard-there is no such thing as a free lunch and no one gives a damn about your "self esteem".
I have to laugh at these "Gen X & Y'er's" who apply for employment where I work and expect 100k to start, to write their own hours, have weekends and every holiday off and get a company car. Needless to say their resume's hit the trash after their interviews.
I have to laugh at my nephew's girlfriend who racked up 179k in student loans to go through law school and party and when she graduated decided she wanted to be a massage therapist. She fully expects her parents to sell their house to pay off her loans and buy her a car. They finally wised up and told her the harsh truth that she is an adult now. She is the one who got the loans, she is the one who signed the papers and she is responsible for paying them back. Taking responsibility for her own actions is something she does not want to do.
So "Gen X & Y'er's"...
You are adults now-get out of your parents basements and wean yourself off your parents wallets. You are responsible for yourselves and your actions. Only children blame everyone but themselves for their own problems.
Probably half of my generation had Silents for parents, not Boomers. They were kids during the Great Depression and learned to be frugal and work hard and passed that on to their children.
I look around and see the half raised by Boomers (of my own friends or childhood friends) all voted for Obama. The half raised by Silents held their nose and voted for McCain. None of them live in their parent’s basement.
Your post refers mostly to Gen Y - don’t lump us Gen Xers in with them. Most Gen Xers don’t have boomer parents. Our parents were depression and WWII babies. That was a particularly small generation, which is why Gen X is also a small generation. They also taught us, by and large, to be more self-reliant than the boomers taught their children to be, since the idea of wealth redistribution as a good thing really caught on with the boomers.
The good-for-nothing boomers spawned the smug little jerks known as Gen Y who don’t read, won’t write, still have Mommy doing their homework for them while in college, bring a parent to job interviews with them, and expect to earn $100K fresh out of school.
I say this last part with some authority as I’m tenure-track college professor currently teaching Gen Y/Millenials and I’ve seen these things first-hand. Oh, and before you call me a lazy Gen X college professor who likes to have her summers off, it’s one of the four paying jobs I work in order to pay off my student loans and get ahead while the governement takes more and more of the profits from my work.