An article I read yesterday stated 85% of generation Y, a generation that takes up almost a third of the work force alone, has been relegated to jobs earning them under 19k a year.
This didn’t help.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
Freedictionary.com defined Generation Y as, “members of the generation of people born since the early 1980s who are seen as being discerning consumers with a high disposable income.”
Where the fuck is all the money?
15% is all it takes for this generation to be considered “discerning consumers with a high disposable income?”
Maybe the free in freedictionary.com means it sucks.
I can never get cyber resources to agree anyway, sometimes it’s like the internet is counterintuitive on purpose.
I like to define a generation as anyone who could have fought and died together in war. I am 35 so the range of 17 to 53 years old works for me, because anyone born within those years could have shared a foxhole with me and if they have had to I am honored to include them.
But thinking about it a bit I realize I could have gone to war with my father from 1995 through 1997, before he retired as a Major. He was born in 1953, he is too old to be in Generation Josh, but the world needs officers and we were both serving in the Army during those two years.
So again I turned to the internet.
Doing a quick Google search, Dictionary.com was kind enough to relieve me of my misconception telling me “a generation is anyone living at the same time in history, i.e. the post war generation, or the Great Recession Generation.” To go deeper it states, “Any 30 year period between parent and offspring,” can also be considered a generation.
Wikipedia generously added to the definition of Generation Y, or the Millennials, or Generation We, or the Global Generation, or Generation Next, or my favorite, the Net Generation, as any one born in the late seventies all the way through the millennium. I am born in the tiny window that could place me in generation X also which, thanks again to Wikipedia, includes all births from the early 60’s through early 80’s. In terms of how I feel about my life and thanks to my military service I didn’t graduate college until 2005, so I will claim my membership in the slacker generation, the Generation of Misfits, the Generation of Lost Boys and Girls.
According to official tallies we have a 17% unemployment rate, which under a microscope would probably grow to 30% or more including all of those angry no pep gamers out there inhabiting basements refusing to even try anymore.
The failure to launch generation is an echo generation. Not really a generation at all really, but a repeat of Gen Xers, the second child, late to the dinner table and missing all the good stuff forced to eat soggy salad and stale bread.
Every country has a different term for us. In Tunisia we are the Hittistes, or those who lean against the wall, in Egypt we are the Shabab Atileen, meaning Unemployed youths. In Britain, we are NEET’s meaning Not in Education Employment or Training. Japanese Gen Y’ers call themselves Freeters, which is a combination of words, the first is the English word free and the last three letters come from the German word for worker, Der Arbeiter. China just refers to us as the Ant Tribe, because of our tendency to crowd into cheap apartments on the fringes of big cities.
An article hosted on a website, I happened upon, suggested that twenty something year olds are taking a longer time to grow up.
What the fuck!
What does that even mean?
I can only guess, because honestly I just read the title.
I imagine they don’t go into what growing up means.
Turning to Wikipedia yet again I am given two possibilities, one is either biologically an adult that is sexually mature and/or is a legal adult and can buy porn and beer.
The title of the article suggesting the Y’ers are taking a longer time to grow up is probably not suggesting that these people are maturing sexually less quickly. We aren’t looking at a bunch of prepubescent children walking around in their 20’s and early thirties. It also isn’t suggesting that legally they aren’t adults because no recession, or economic downturn, or whatever the smart people in control of the money call it, can replace the laws of the land, and if I remember correctly 18 year olds can still catch bullets and vote and 21 year olds can still buy liquor.
If being an adult can simply be defined as accumulated wealth, living on one’s own, under the care of oneself, than with 85% of us earning less than 20k a year we might us well live as free as we can.
Think of it as an excuse to stop trying to fit in with a society that wants us to sit on the sidelines and just watch, maybe we should start our own league, grow a beard, climb Everest, see the Taj Mahal, live in Brooklyn and write blogs, become a hipster, or stop being a hipster, please stop being a hipster, live dreams and think big. I assure you the walls won’t fall down if we stop leaning on them nor will the couch cushions run away if we got up and did something else.
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