"Millennials and Zoomers Are Soft"

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I was born in 1985, so I qualify as an elder millennial.

I grew up in a military family, with public teachers, and the church. My family is all far-right wing, and I can understand that they have nostalgia. When my family left authourtaritan organizations like that they fell prey to scams like mlm schemes, online colleges, chinese bond investments. They lost a lot of what they had built. The irony is that they don’t understand that everything they did was paid for by someone else.

I paid my way through several schools, found mentors, did stages (internships), started businesses and now work for myself, so I’m ruined going back to any job, but I had some resources to start. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you dont have boots.

But back to the point, I dont think it’s because people are soft, but that publicly pay disparities are causing people to actually determine their worth and goals and hold fast to them. I think the WSJ published an article valuing the labor of a stay at home mom at 300k per year.

In America after WW2, everyone had been a soldier/rosie the riveter/grown a victory garden, so work culture reflected that. Plus the economies of most of the world were in turmoil, so America became great because it didn’t really have any competition.

So we created this wierd mythology and it’s finally getting flack for being bullshit. For instance, I could save a shIt-ton of money for my business if universal healthcare was a thing. People wold take the challenge of being an entrepreneur if all the benifits weren’t job dependant. But socialism! Oh no!

The point is that the world used to make you suffer to earn a reward, now it’s full of a generation of people who pulled up the ladder of success after they climbed it and now bitch that younger generations are getting creative and don’t like it.

Please stop fighting for a future I don’t want.

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Somewhat related: I think there’s a big difference between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. The latter has decreased in the US recently IMO due to things like rising housing costs, steeply inflated uni costs, reduction of decently paying jobs that don’t require a uni degree. It makes it harder for younger people to “pick themselves up with their bootstraps”

My parents came from third world level poverty, but were able to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” because high quality education was free and meritocratic for them in China (they actually got stipends and were able to send money back home) and they didn’t have to contend with exploding housing costs, more recently, stronger restrictions on immigration.

Even then, they had a pretty strong advantage because their parents were highly educated.
A kid today in, for example West Virginia, in a blue collar family with a net worth 10x what my parents grew up with is FAR less likely to be able to do what my parents did despite the financial "advantage’

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Great statement. It’s when people expect equality of outcome that I take issue.

I would say that opportunity has certainly decreased in recent years, but that’s the cyclic nature of the economy. Its decreased for all people of the same generation / economic status. Sure people that already bought a house or made their money don’t get hurt as much but thats always the way its been. I had to run my business through 2008-13 and it wasn’t fun after the housing crash. Some people made a fortune and others got burned. Again, just the cyclic nature of the economy. No outcome is going to be equal, but I believe opportunity still is. Ride the wave and it will come back.

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I don’t think this is the case. The US is falling far behind in primary education. Welfare in this country is a horrible catch-22 because the income point at which one no longer qualifies for things like food assistance is not equal to the point where one is able to become self-sustaining.

Universities have made it easier to get in while simultaneously making curricula easier. I looked up my undergraduate school recently and the entrance criteria is almost laughable now. It’s downward spiraling in most cases ( and I am talking about the STEM fields - a lot of the BS liberal arts degrees were doomed from the start). In my field, those coming out of college know less than ever before but have higher GPAs…

I agree with this, but we need to make the handicap more even to allow for closure of the outcome gap.

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This is in-line with what I’ve observed. I would imagine that somewhere along the line of acquiring an industrial engineering degree you would learn how to spell words like “alloy”, but I was proved wrong yesterday. Making colorful charts and measuring things that don’t need to be measured is great, but I’m not seeing any applied problem solving skills that are delivering better outcomes.

As I said in a related thread I started a few months ago, I think the best of the coming generations will be the best there’s ever been, but the average is backsliding in troubling ways.

I believe this is the result of decades of progressive thought incrementally shifting our education model, where the primary goal is now to preserve the emotional well-being of students and teachers. Imparting knowledge and critical thinking skills is a distant second.

We get college graduates who can’t spell or even write coherently, but know all about how racist the USA is and how to ask people what their pronouns are.

At least we’ve had good luck with our young mechanical engineer and electrical engineer. They are both good performers in their early 20’s.

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True, which is why those that realize this sacrificed to get kids best education we could swing. Private schools, at too much cost! But, kids got good educations and can compete. All about trade offs…

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I understand making trade offs but for many the choice between public/private school is not an option, regardless of how hard they work.

In the current market i cannot send my kids to private school and I make six figures, over 2.5x the national income average.

The current trade offs are more like have a house or good education….

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The way public schools are funded + restrictions on school choice also causes issues.

It could be virtually impossible for some kids to access decent education.
Sure, you could also argue that the kids who “really want it” could find a way out, but on average, peer and family influences are extremely important, especially in years formative for development (aka school years). This is not including other traumas (e.g., domestic violence or abuse, family drug use) that disproportionately affect low income kids. Even without literal trauma, low income kids are at a disadvantage because their parents usually don’t know to or don’t have the time to invest in early childhood education (reading, talking to them, well designed preschool ), which has been shown in many studies to have a massive impact in future academic outcomes

Ironically, ivy leagues and other very high ranking institutions have a relatively even playing field bc they have the will and ability to provide things like full ride scholarships + access to networks. However, the issue is that most ppl who need the benefit’s aren’t able to get close bc of roadblocks earlier in life

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Oh, it wasn’t much different. Still paying off Catholic HS and he graduated college last year. But, in public school he was nothing more than a well trained idiot that couldn’t hold a conversation only do ScanTron tests. Needed to do something…

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Just wanted to quote for emphasis. Most people I know who are on any form of assistance are on it because it’s their only option. A lot of guys I know in the trades aren’t offered health insurance through their jobs, and if their wives stay at home with the kids, they can’t afford it. So they get on Medicaid so that their kids can have some limited health insurance, and now they’re stuck. The wife can’t get a part time job to help out, because then they’ll lose the Medicaid and the extra income won’t be anywhere near as much as is needed to replace that. Often, their kids can’t even get jobs because their income (the 14 year old’s income!) is counted and it would make the family lose all assistance.

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There’s something I’ve noticed, but maybe I’m just making it up in my head: The millennials and zoomers who seem the softest and most entitled also happened to have parents who tried to be their best buddies.

A lot of boomer parents had good intentions, but instead of setting boundaries and saying no, they tried to love their kids by being their friends and by being permissive. Is it possible that this is what lead to a generation of adult-babies?

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My dad is a late Boomer/early Gen X and he didn’t try to be a father - he tried to be my friend. It caused a lot of issues when it came time for me to go from a boy to a man too.

To be fair, his dad was an alcoholic wife beater/gambler who was hardly ever around, so he did better than what he was given.

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Most people I believe want to be productive in some way (exceptions exist). For those that realize they have enough money to last them until death, many choose to still work. I think work of some kind is important for people. A sense of purpose.

I save / invest far more than I need to for a traditional retirement age. I’ll likely be in shape to retire at 50 at my current rate (maybe earlier). If I am still loving my job, I’ll probably keep doing it (that is a lot to assume 15 years out). If not, I’ll do something I really like to do. I won’t just sit on my ass all day.

I have a ME degree and I am terrible at spelling. I am thankful for spell checking software and google.

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My parents did a really good job of saying no. They made the right decision.
The challenge now is that when we are adults, they want us to be their friends and it isn’t working :sweat_smile:

I also have a probably unhealthily deferential attitude towards my advisors, but that’s not my parents’ fault

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Sounds like he was doing the best he could. And to be fair to him, you turned out great! Maybe those issues you overcame worked out in your favor.

One of my parents was more of an authority figure and the other was more of a buddy. I have great memories with both, but there were times that I was wanting more boundaries. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I craved more strictness.

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Yeah, this is what the dynamic was between my dad and mum.

One of the most annoying things was when punishments weren’t enforced or when they’d just forget about something literally the day after yelling about it

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I don’t agree with any handicaps. Its supposed to be a free country with equal opportunity.

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I mean, I can’t let him off that easy, but yes - he did significantly better than his father did.

I do think that what I’ve done with my life is in part - thanks to him, but also partially in spite of him. Both of my parents are fat, and though they’ve been married like 30 years, they’re only together now because it would cost too much to separate. I refuse to be like that.

I empathize with this. Of course I didn’t feel that way when I needed it to be that way, but in hindsight - I needed more strictness and boundaries when I was a teen. A beating or two might have actually helped out (I don’t advocate physical discipline for girls period. But boys sometimes need a firm hand… literally).

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I don’t normally nitpick things like spelling or grammar, but holy crap, hers is bad. This gets exposed when taking notes on a whiteboard without any sort of electronic spelling or grammar aides.

I think we can also add predictive text generation on devices as a contributing cause. You won’t learn how to do anything if something else can do it for you.

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I findamentally, and vehemently, disagree with this statement. Government is absolute dogshit at everything they do.

No Child Left Behind hurt the opportunities for the smart kids. Schools now taught to the lowest common denominator of intellect (put the slowest runner up front)

Now California is having a crisis of black kids (all demographics really, but race matters in this one instance) not graduating with proficiency in basic skills. So what did they do/are trying to do, to “handicap”? Lower the passing grade of the schools.

The idea of government ‘helping’ is always nice, but the intent of government ‘help’ is never actually to help.