It's more likely than not that we were the exception to the rule, I'll accept that. But I believe that my generation overall was most certainly more humble than the current one.

You're not the only generation Xer I've conversed with. I'm right on the cusp between that generation and the next, so I know a number of people from both; it's an interesting place to be for perspective.

And yes, the other generation Xers say these same thing. They were more humble; they were less entitled; they dealt with pain we never had to, and it made them better. I don't think I can say what I want less strongly, so forgive the profanity when I do say it: fuck that noise. With this sort of line of arguing, there is nowhere we can go, because the whole thing has decayed into a battle of generation identity. Reason has exited the building, because you have a vested interest in preserving your sense of superiority in your own identity. At what point could any of us convince you to rethink that? If you say never, then you have a sense of entitlement brought about by your generational brand. You don't get a pass for that any more than the author here gets for his sense of entitlement to some form of employment.

It's ridiculous: I'm supposed to pay more attention to your thoughts, simply because you felt forced into certain sacrifices. How about I pay more attention to your thoughts because they seem more right, and we yank generation identity out of this?

There are a few tidbits I pulled out of the conversation that I think would be interesting to discuss apart from the context of self-entitlement, but I worry they're going to get drowned out in the noise. We're too busy beating down someone else, ostensibly because we think they need to be brought down a peg, but then we say shit like this that is so logically fallacious that it makes this whole thread seem not for the purest of ends. I was with you when you made your first reply above; now I'm not so sure.

Gen X'ers will see the world the way we see it. It may be ridiculous, but keep in mind that we've lived through both yours and our own experiences, when you have not. That doesn't mean we're right, but it does mean we have a lot more data to work with.

Of course, there is a tendency to imply "walk 6 miles to school uphill in snowstorms" with our memories, which I acknowledge.

The particular challenges of Generation X are well documented. The fact that these aren't also attributed to Millennials tells you pretty much all you need to know: The environment has changed.

It's not a good/bad thing, it's just a thing.

Finally, I put this forward: We wouldn't have had this discussion had this been written in 1990. He would have been dismissed as delusional.

Right, and why would that be? Perhaps because the 1990s were golden economic years?

All the gold was going to your parents. :-)

"We all knew that we were the first generation to be worse off than our parents" I may be young and naive, but from what I hear about the current state of economics (I even heard we went into a recession), things suck pretty bad for the people, like me, just starting to jump into the work force. But honestly I'd say each generation was better off than its previous one. So I have a cell phone. My cell phone probably has more computing power than the universities whole computer lab that my dad attended? And that my grandfather while my age didn't use a computer. I'd say being able to access all the worlds information among thousands of other things that have been made better makes mine and your generation better off. Gratitude is important too.

In Canada, things actually happened to be quite a bit nastier then than they are now:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Unemployment-Rate....

Now look at the current era. I graduated college in late 2007, at almost the exact moment hiring froze in almost every industry. By 2008, you'd be lucky to get a job if you had 5 years experience, nevermind zero. By 2009, the unemployment rate had jumped up to 10%, a level the US had not seen since the early college graduation days of "generation X". In 2010 we've seen moderate levels of hiring, but no sustained push. Now those of us who graduated in 2007 are looking at possibly a 4th year of sluggish hiring.

So again...I maintain that young humans, in general, have less humility than they should (primarily because they don't know the difference between "good" and "bad"), but this level of humility in the application process (however you can even measure that) probably varies heavily on market conditions. If you graduated college in 1981...my condolences to you. You had it rough there for a few years. But try to keep in mind that there are lots of people out there right now who are in the exact same boat.

And with regard to "being worse off than your parents", I don't think there's a young person alive in the US who isn't at least partially bitter about the massive debts your generation and the ones that came before it have left us with, all while being bragged at by older people about how amazingly humble they are. And let's also not forget that your generation isn't "worse off" than your parents if you're counting by measure of inflation-adjusted income.

Also important to note: this kid wasn't getting responses from employers after going the humble applicant route. I had the exact same problem: people just wouldn't return my calls. So if he does have a lack of humility, it's a direct result of not having a job in a poor economy.

There is literally tons of data that has been written about gen x. Your comment most certainly proves that you're probably not as familiar with the time period as those who lived it. That's not an insult, just a truth.

Your generation has the unfortunate distinction of being shocked by the current economic situation. It is so far from what you grew up with: a relatively stable period of the post cold war world. Don't worry, I don't envy you. You'll be humbled enough (as we all will be, I fear) over the next little bit.

That's much different though than the world I grew up in, which was transitional to the core. I'm late x, coming of age in the 90s. That means I remember when most of the neighborhood kids had parents that worked in factories and the world was certainly going to end in a nuclear calamity one day. When that world changed in the late 80's, everything was in surplus. It was an attitude very similar to finishing a large project, best described as: Okay, what the heck do we do now?

I maintain that young humans, in general, have less humility than they should

That of course is most certainly true. However I maintain that X, as a generation in time, had much less of an expectation, was much more pessimistic and therefore more gracious and humble than any other generation before it and since. Nothing I've learned collectively seems to suggest otherwise.

Although it was true that we grew up with reagan and bush 1, and associated global-political fears and sluggish economies, we also mostly graduated from high school and universities during the clinton era when the economy was booming and anyone with a pulse could get a job. I mean, drop outs from "media criticism" programs were getting 80k offers to become "web producers." There was a ton of work, a ton of money flowing around, and not very many young people coming out of school (relatively).

My brother on the other hand has a dual degree in tough sciences and has been un or underemployed since 2008. There is a glut of graduates and the only places hiring are silicon valley and silicon alley. Even if you have a degree in physics, if you don't know PHP you are not getting an interview, anywhere. God forbid you are interested in something like Law, where nobody is getting hired.

It IS when you graduate. If there are no jobs, there are no jobs, regardless of how serene and abundant or oppresive and anxiety inducing your childhood was.

But I'm not arguing about who actually has it worse. Hell, I think anyone graduating this year wins that hands down.

Humility is an action based on perception, not reality. If you forever had it easy, yet land in a world of shit come graduation day, you become flummoxed and dismayed. That's when you figure all hope is lost and you may as well throw caution to the wind. You're owed more dammit! Why can't others see that?

On the contrary, those that have never had anything are grateful for the little they receive. In fact, some in this boat could use a shot of arrogance.

These are extremes of course, and certainly gross generalizations, but hopefully I make the point. It's not that one generation is better than the other. It's that one started low, and got low - exactly what they expected. The other started high, but is getting low, and that's not what is expected.

When you don't get what you expect, the best place to look for answers is in the mirror. In this case - the solution is to decrease expectations. In other words be more humble.

You're lumping the entirety of "generation X" into a shared-cultural-experience group, when someone who was born in 1975 probably had quite a lot more opportunities entering the job market than someone born in 1965 or 1985.

I mean what are we even saying here? In general people had better childhoods in the 90s than they did in the 70s and early 80s? Ok, but we're talking about variations on the edges of various largely immobile population blocks. Your personal experience might have been difficult, but how do you know that mine wasn't just as difficult or worse? How are you so sure that I'm not already as humble as you are? This whole generation generalization strikes me as something like "Ohio State can't win the national championship because the SEC is faster".