Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:46am

Millennials: We Are So Doomed

Ah, generation chasms:

 

 

 

 

 

Of course I recall similar comments about my age cohort, the Baby Boomers.  Unfortunately, such criticisms fit for a fair amount of Baby Boomers.

 

 

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Art Deco
Monday, November 27, AD 2017 1:04pm

The problem with the post-1938 cohorts was social ecosystem flip which occurred between 1967 and 1979, when the attrition rate of extant marriages trebled while there was a 17 fold increase in the number of abortions. The obtrusive problems with the collegiate population were ancillary in the scheme of things. There has been a gradual decline in the propensity to resort to abortion and divorce since 1979. The catch has been that the share of live births out of wedlock increased inexorably until about 2010. This was a Boomer innovation among blacks, but among the rest of the population, most of the decay is attributable to post-1957 cohorts. The Millennial cohorts did their part and added a new twist manifest since 2000: a 25% decline in the propensity to marry. We’re heading into a world where 30% of the adult population go through their lives unwed.

Art Deco
Monday, November 27, AD 2017 1:11pm

I noticed that people were showing up for job interviews in my office in sport shirts, flannel shirts, jeans &c around about 2003. The people behaving this way were all from pre-Millennial cohorts and one IIRC was born prior to 1950. The one chap I can recall in a tie had recently been discharged from the Navy.

Dave Griffey
Dave Griffey
Monday, November 27, AD 2017 4:28pm

I don’t think it started with millennials. They’re just seizing what was given to them and moving it to the next level. When I was a dept manager some years ago, a fellow manger was standing by a window, looking down at the parking lot. I went up and asked him what he was looking at. He was watching one of his employees walk to the car. He said the employee just left. That is, the employee sent an email to the manager that read: ‘3 O’Clock, time to go.’ And so he went. He just felt like leaving, even though his shift was for another two hours. The thing was, the way the company worked, the manager wasn’t able to do more than give the fellow a warning.

Art Deco
Monday, November 27, AD 2017 4:46pm

I don’t think it started with millennials. They’re just seizing what was given to them and moving it to the next level.

I think the distinction between the young and the rest is overstated. There are some cultural differences. Fashions regarding homosexuality are local to these cohorts. The youths of my acquaintance 20-odd years ago had less of the saving anxiety and proper embarrassment on that subject than mine did, but homosexuality had no particular cachet among them. I think the psychological development was different in subtle ways among those who’d spent their formative years not staring at a computer. Also, their was a weird and quite rapid shift in political preferences between 2000 and 2008. The voting patterns of the 1975 cohort weren’t much different from the mean. People less than 10 years younger vote overwhelmingly Democratic. I can see that shift in my own family.

Art Deco
Monday, November 27, AD 2017 4:53pm

That is, the employee sent an email to the manager that read: ‘3 O’Clock, time to go.’ And so he went. He just felt like leaving, even though his shift was for another two hours.

The closest I’ve seen to that would be roughly ambulatory women permitted to leave early when under the weather.

bob kurland
Admin
Monday, November 27, AD 2017 7:49pm

The first video was great! The second should be tossed: to say that people have no responsibility for their behavior is wicked!
There will be a Darwinian mechanism operating among the Millennials: there will be a few who think for themselves and achieve. The others will sink or find a niche in academia.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Tuesday, November 28, AD 2017 3:50am

These are the baby boomers children. Surely, they will want to see that their parents receive good care in old age? Yes, and just as surely euthanasia will be an attractive solution.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Tuesday, November 28, AD 2017 6:40am

The second video is correct in its diagnosis that the disease is addiction to dopamine generation caused by the instant gratification of social media. But it is incorrect in its conclusion that the millennials are not responsible.

As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, I was the one who picked up the drink or drug. Now I am responsible to get and stay sober. And I reject the idea that corporations have to pick up the slack for failed parenting, and that corporations are inherently evil because they care about the bottom line. The video fails to recognize that corporations have a duty to the shareholders for a fair return on investment and to the public for a quality product at reasonable cost.

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, November 28, AD 2017 8:38am

Um…. I should HOPE that Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers, since the Boomers are dying. My generation stopped being born between the mid and late 90s. While I’m scared of losing my parents, they are getting old.
That seems to be the real “problem” with Millennials– less what the bulk of us actually do, than that the folks reporting on it are feeling old, and they latch on to stuff that fits what they want to see. Their kids/grandkids are screwed up? They’ll find someone even more screwed up to show it’s “normal.”
This is supported by both how the “youth vote” keeps getting redefined– for about a decade it chased me, so I was always stuck with the 18 year olds, even though the election before’s definition I wouldn’t be “youth” anymore– and by how Millennial gets used a lot to mean either under 25 or under 30.
Millennials, previously called Generation Y, are the thirty-five to about twenty folks, depending on which generational divide you’re using. (I prefer either the 15 one, or the “by birth decade” one, since it’s just silly to claim a guy in college and a new born baby have the same formation experiences, and if they’re drinking in college or even graduated it’s even sillier.)

Art Deco
Tuesday, November 28, AD 2017 11:04am

There will be a Darwinian mechanism operating among the Millennials: there will be a few who think for themselves and achieve. The others will sink or find a niche in academia.

Very few people achieve much other than earning a living, paying down their debts, and keeping their children out of jail and off the pole.

Only a small minority of the young will work in higher education, and most of those will have staff and administrative jobs. People with any kind of teaching position in academe make up 1% of the workforce. Of these, half are p/t and occasional faculty (who commonly have other work). Of the remainder, about 1/4 work for community colleges and trade schools. Of those employed in baccalaureate granting institutions. I believe north of 40% work in the less troubled vocational faculties (law, teacher-training, social work, counseling and clinical psych, library administration, journalism and public health are the more troubled faculties). Among the residue, about a quarter work in the less injured disciplines (natural sciences, mathematics and statistics, economics, and foreign languages). The big problem in the professoriate is that most of the faculty are delinquent and let the vermin have the run of the place. Taking a stand against institutional degradation is status-lowering among professors. The trustees are otiose about anything other than the athletic program.

Employment to population ratios are currently 0.60, precisely the mean of the last generation. I can check again, but I don’t think there’s been a surge in labor force participation among those over 35, so I tend to doubt the share of the young who are now employed is abnormally depressed.

Art Deco
Tuesday, November 28, AD 2017 11:08am

These are the baby boomers children.

The older Boomers (1939-50) were pretty much done with child-bearing ‘ere the Millennials came along and a great many Millennials are the issue of the Gen X cohorts.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Tuesday, November 28, AD 2017 6:57pm

Interesting.
In my current position, most of my coworkers are in their 40s or 50s. Nobody needs to breathe down their necks to get the work done. The few who come in who are in their 20s want to do “fun stuff”, are typically lazy and don’t last.

A work ethic must be taught and it has to start at home. Parents MUST assign household chores to their children and withhold favored things if they are not completed. Yes, this is hard. My almost-ten year old fights over homework and putting his clothes away and helping bring in groceries, etc. Doesn’t matter. Kids will wear you down and opt for the lazy way if you let them.

My township has a LOT of people who make better money than I do and live in fancier homes than I do and go to Disney World every year, etc. I bet they don’t make their kids do work. Laziness begets laziness. The kids all seem to have “smart” phones – which make them dumb in the long run if not severely restricted.

Corporations are not responsible for “helping” the Millenials. They do NOT have it tougher than the Depression era or WWII era people. They need a kick in the *** and told to toughen up.
As for corporations, they are so focused on short term gain that little else matters. People like myself – I was born in 1963 and will have to work another 12 1/2 years – have lost vacation days, holidays, had their pension plans and post-retirement plans terminated and seen their health insurance cover less and cost more. Many of them would rather have a wedded to the phone millenial because they cost less – no family health benefits, lower starting wage, no pension/401K/post-retirement funding expenses, etc.

The MIllenials better figure out and figure out fast that they will receive NO pension, NO postretirement benefits (health or life insurance), maybe NO Social Security (but they will have to pay into it) and, being saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of college loan debt, will find it extremely hard to start saving for their 401Ks with that debt.

Voting for Democrats won’t help them. It will make things worse.

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