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and racking up student loan debt that no one would have ever considered 20 years ago

The price of college tuition, fees, and books has doubled in the past decade.

Thanks, Fedzilla.

Kids who want to live in a house NOW

I'd like to live in a house that I own some day, but real estate here in Northern Virginia is in the $500K+ range (and that's in the outer suburbs).

Of course, after living all twenty-six years of my life in the Federal deathtrap, I think in a few years I will be done with this place.

want a nice car NOW

I bought a used 2010 vehicle with 30K miles this year. Want to blame me? I was driving a 2001 vehicle with 240K miles previously, and although it still runs, it had become somewhat unreliable - and I really don't want to be stuck in a dead vehicle on the way to my full-time job or my part-time graduate classes in engineering.

Or because they are King of the World in War Something 12, and don’t want to stoop to daily work?

I haven't played video games or computer games in forever. Quite a few of my fellow Gen Y colleagues do; while they're gaming, I'm usually getting eaten alive by the Angry Birds of stochastic processes and queueing theory.

Anyone else want to attack the productive young'uns who are getting raped to pay for Socialist Insecurity and Medicare (Socialist healthcare for old people)?

“I bought a used 2010 vehicle with 30K miles this year. Want to blame me?”

Why not? At 26 - your age - I drove a 12 year old car.

Now, are there youths who are working and trying to get ahead? Yes.

Are there a great many who rack up huge college loans they have no plausible chance of paying off? Yes. Do those outstanding loans affect their net worth? Yes. Multiply it by 1,000,000, and can you create a debt that makes it look like youths are oppressed? Yes.

That doesn’t make me a huge fan of spending money on the old. I expect SS to be means-tested by the time I can apply (15 years), and I won’t make the cut. I actually approve of means-testing SS, since it was ALWAYS welfare for the old & stupid.

I despise Medicaid and Medicare, and was furious when GWB pushed free prescription drugs. I think many old people demand a level of health care that no one can pay for, and I think they need to accept the fact that sometimes you get sick and die. My Mom accepted the idea in her 80s, and I will at some point. I have pain in my back nearly 4 years after a tumble off a horse, and expect to deal with it for the rest of my life. I do NOT plan on back surgery, etc.

But I’ve also got a son who flunked his college classes because playing video games was too much fun, and doing that until 3AM meant he couldn’t pass his classes. That was HIS fault, and sure wasn’t anything I taught him. I’ve got a daughter who complained about needing to live in an apartment at 22 - and her apartment was 4 times larger than what I lived in at that age (I shared a 200 sq ft apartment).

It is highly simplistic to write that the old have proportionately more wealth than the young, and assume it is all due to greed on the part of the old.

At 18, if I had needed to borrow 50,0000 for college, I would not have gone to college. Not on the loan. I have money now because my wife and I worked hard and didn’t spend, and now those who cannot control their spending - on both sides of me age-wise - want my money to cover their waste. And yes, it pisses me off.