I agree. I remember those days. At 50, I've been in IT now for 3 decades. The pay in IT has decreased as well. My dad pulled a family of four along on his salary and we were comfortable, but not rich. I lacked nothing. However... when I turned 10, I came home one day from school and there was a brand new mower sitting in the driveway with a gas can and a rope. My dad said, "Son, canvas the neighborhood and charge $5-10 (size) a lawn. That money is yours. Save a dollar for every 10 for gasoline." I was making about $250 a month.
This taught me to get off my own butt and make it on my own, which I have. I paid my own way through college (impossible now), bought my own car, married a woman who did the same. We are largely debt free (mortgage), but will be free soon. Except for property tax, we owe no man anything, and this is the way it should be. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Big daddy government is not the answer and technically owes you nothing. As Gerald Ford once said, "A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take it all away."
Sadly, this young generation has embraced the notion of entitlement. No one is owed anything except human dignity. Americans have lost the sense of doing it on their own. Te military is a great choice for kids who cannot afford college. I'm not babying my kids. They will need to make it on their own. My dad did it, I did it, my wife did. None of us were rich, and by today's standards, we would have been considered poor.
Entitlement is receiving a brand new mower + fuel, in an area in need of its services and with residents having funds available to pay for its services, and thinking that your "hard work" is the only thing required to have realized its profits.
I'm fairly certain that young persons don't feel that anyone "owes them anything" - they only want the same opportunities that those before us had. The facts that those easy gains aren't possible anymore isn't a fault of those with the misfortune of being born 30 years later. Even in your own post, you admit that your platform of success isn't possible for current youth (can't afford college, can't afford a new vehicle, can't afford housing, etc), but yet, you still find a way to blame it on their "entitlement".
How's a kid supposed to make money mowing lawns if their parents cannot afford a mower? How are they supposed to do that if they live in the inner city & there are no lawns? What if their neighbors can't afford the service?
I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here. A safety net is entitlement? How so? What's the correct cutoff here, should we end social security and medicare as they exist today? Are you prepared to retire without either right now (kudos if you are)?
Should the US summarily shrug at people with disabilities that can't reasonably work? What will become of them? Homeless? Death? Should their families take care of them? What if they can't afford to? What should people do if they can't join the military?
You correctly point out that expenses are _much_ higher now. Is my generation entitled because we generally want a fair wage to pay for those expenses? Are we entitled for desiring the return of unions -- unions that did much to create those high wages out of the exploitation of the 1800's & early 1900's. Have you really thought any of this through?
Look, I'm part of this generation you're disparaging. I could wax poetic about how I "pulled myself up by my bootstraps" because I'm doing quite well. But I know it is bullshit, because I've also been fortunate enough to choose the right career, at the right time, and had remarkably few setbacks in life. Also I'm a white male in the US. I'm playing life on easy mode and to say otherwise is a lie.
That isn't true for everyone, and standing on your soapbox calling on everyone to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" is both ignorant and dishonest. You've done well in life, but it appears to have bred a stunning lack of empathy.
The median student loan debt is inching towards the median starting income for college graduates, something that massively sets people back in their ability to move forward in their life and do things such as purchase a home. Add on to the fact that job growth has concentrated into a few cities that are rapidly becoming more expensive and you have what we have today.
If wage growth matched productivity gains, a lot of these problems would be non issues. Nothing in here has anything to do with entitlement.
You acknowledge this indirectly, but the cost of education is not insignificant for young people today. Like you, both of my parents were able to graduate college without debt. Both had part time jobs, but my mom went to school on the GI Bill and my father received a state funded “hardship grant” because he was a talented/impoverished kid. In short, our society gave my parents boots so they could have the opportunity to build solid careers and raise their children in better circumstances than they received. Yes, the military is a fine option for some - but for most young people they have to take on ~30k in debt just for the opportunity to apply for a proper job. That's a very real anchor on success, and it's not the only one.
This taught me to get off my own butt and make it on my own, which I have. I paid my own way through college (impossible now), bought my own car, married a woman who did the same. We are largely debt free (mortgage), but will be free soon. Except for property tax, we owe no man anything, and this is the way it should be. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Big daddy government is not the answer and technically owes you nothing. As Gerald Ford once said, "A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take it all away."
Sadly, this young generation has embraced the notion of entitlement. No one is owed anything except human dignity. Americans have lost the sense of doing it on their own. Te military is a great choice for kids who cannot afford college. I'm not babying my kids. They will need to make it on their own. My dad did it, I did it, my wife did. None of us were rich, and by today's standards, we would have been considered poor.