One thing that I, as an older person, don't understand is the pervasive negative world view that so many young people today seem to have. I grew up with the threat of nuclear annihilation, burning cities, race riots, out of control crime, etc, etc. All that has passed. Things are so much better but the younger generations seem to see things in a much more negative light than when I was young. Why is this?
I had 5 good friends when I was in high school. They were all extremely intelligent, and motivated people. Right now, 1 is a security guard at a fireworks factory, another works in a print shop loading stacks of paper, another just dropped out of college to join the army (due to financial reasons), the fourth works 4 part time jobs to live in a crappy apartment, and the 5th is unemployed.
Why do they have a negative outlook? Because none of them are doing what they went to school to do, or even want to do.
I feel lucky, i've been programming since I was 13 years old. I love my job, and i get paid extremely well to do it. Sometimes it can be hard to understand why all of my friends have so much trouble, its easy for me to think of all the things they could have done differently. But the point is, life for non techies is not really great right now, and if you're young with no experience its even worse.
All those things have gotten better, but for a lot of people economic security has gotten worse, and economic security tends to override a lot of other views when it comes to perceptions. Median incomes are roughly flat, and security of those incomes is on a significant downward trend. My dad, for example, graduated with an engineering degree in the '60s, and landed basically a "good job for life": good income, defined-benefits pension, full health coverage, informal understanding that as long as you didn't do anything absurdly bad, the company would find a continued place for you. Also, workweeks were 40 hours, vacation 6 weeks/yr, and there was only quite rare overtime or weekend work. That kind of secure employment is much less common today.
As far as war goes, I'm personally not hugely disconcerted by terrorism, but a lot of people seem to be. Osama bin Laden is certainly less of an existential threat than nuclear war was, but people are in a way almost more on edge about it: the possibility that the whole U.S. might get vaporized is one of those things almost too apocalyptic to worry about on a daily basis, while people do worry (often irrationally) that their subway train might get bombed.
You can still find it in university staff positions. They are notorious for never firing even the most incompetent, do-nothing workers. Salaries are not great, but benefits and vacation time tend to be extraordinary.
Hmm, as a researcher I've generally found university staff pretty helpful. I don't get the impression that it's a very secure job, either; every place I've been in the past few years has had significant staff layoffs. Now if you can get to be upper management, that's probably a nice gig with no consequences for poor performance.
But in any case, my main point isn't that no secure jobs exist, just that they're less common and there's no real clear path to them, whereas there used to be multiple clear paths to one, in both blue-collar and white-collar directions.
We (in the US) have a political system where the other side isn't just portrayed as being wrong.. but being immoral monsters looking to destroy: people, businesses, society, women, families, gays, religion, etc, etc.
When everyone claims those are the stakes, everything looks like it's life or death.. and every little loss is monumental.
Did both of your parents have to work to support the family? Then if one of them lost their job did you have to wonder if you were going to lose the house? Or if someone in your family got sick would you have to worry about losing your house or going bankrupt?
Did you have to take out large amount of debt as soon as you reached adult age to go to college in hopes that you chose the right major so that you could have some hope of paying that back before the interest started compounding against you?
Did you ever witness an attack on your country's largest city on live TV while sitting in a classroom with no idea why someone would do this? Then in response have your government send people you know to fight in a war to destroy wmd's that didnt exist and had nothing to do with the attack?
>Or if someone in your family got sick would you have to worry about losing your house or going bankrupt?
When in history has this not been a problem for Americans?
>Did you ever witness an attack on your country's largest city on live TV while sitting in a classroom with no idea why someone would do this?
Fortunately, no -- but, the current US military is all volunteer. Previously, in Vietnam, we had a draft. None of your friends were sent against their will. They all volunteered.
>Did you have to take out large amount of debt as soon as you reached adult age to go to college in hopes that you chose the right major so that you could have some hope of paying that back before the interest started compounding against you?
Neither did you. As many HNers know, you could simply learn programming and get a job without spending a dime on college. You could also have attended a vocational school, and become a plumber, electrician, carpenter, HVAC technician, medical/dental assistant, administrative assistant, computer/network technician, hospitality manager.... Most school districts in the US have taxpayer funded vocational schools. You wouldn't even have had to call a 1-800 number. The government already sorted this out for you. And, if you were an at-risk youth, we even have a program called Job Corps that takes you until the age of 25, and gives you a place to sleep, small stipend, feeds you, and gives you job training.
But no. People want the glamorous jobs. No one wants to just do the necessary labor to support society.
It's too bad if you wanted to be a poet and had your dreams crushed, you probably didn't foot the bill for it in the first place. Federal/state pell grants, and subsidized loans, paid for by working Americans probably paid for it. And if it didn't, it's likely that you came from a rich enough family that they should have paid. It is not society's responsibility to ensure that you have an equal opportunity to become the next Shakespeare.
> When in history has this not been a problem for Americans?
When unions gave you good health insurance and a trip to the ER didn't cost a years salary.
>You could also have attended a vocational school, and become a plumber, electrician, carpenter, HVAC technician, medical/dental assistant, administrative assistant, hospitality manager...
Housing bubble burst all those jobs are worthless these days. Medical field is also swamped with entry level workers. I know this because I have friends that have done all of these things and yes all of them require school unless your dad owns the company.
> Most school districts in the US have taxpayer funded vocational schools. You wouldn't even have had to call a 1-800 number.
Community college used to be free and UC schools were $100 a year. Now UC schools are 30k a year and CC is definitely not free.
> It is not society's responsibility to ensure that you have an equal opportunity to become the next Shakespeare.
Who the hell is talking about being the next Shakespeare? Unless you are comfortable staring at a computer all day, which even though we do should not be that shocking that most humans aren't, it really is very very difficult to find a good paying job right now even with college or even in the medical industry. Maybe not in Silicon Valley but in most of the country it is tough times.
Did both of your parents have to work to support the family? Then if one of them lost their job did you have to wonder if you were going to lose the house? Or if someone in your family got sick would you have to worry about losing your house or going bankrupt?
I was just talking to my grandparents about that the other day, and they had the exact same concerns in their time. They said it wouldn't have taken much of a hiccup for them to lose the house. I'm not sure this is a new problem at all.
People have really bad infodiet. They eat junk information rather than analyzing if their information is wholesome. On local news, you hear about the latest shooting or the latest robbery or the latest bad thing that happen, all of which doesn't mean anything until you aggregate them into statistics and analyze them.
+1 I am in my early 60s. I think that the world was a much more dangerous place during the 'cold war' but few people seem to realize that. Part of this is marketing by special interests ("Orange terror alert today!") motivated by profit.
There were no attacks on American soil during the cold war, its easily as arguable that the "special interests" during the cold war were motivated by profit just as much as during the war on terrorism and during both times the American public was lied to by so called "marketers". Being a young person I don't see the difference except perhaps your generation was more gullible.
What has changed? The situation today is much worse than it was in the 60's. We're still relatively antagonistic to several nuclear countries. Severely unstable countries (including former Soviet States) have nuclear stockpiles. Pakistan is nuclear with tremendous political corruption.
The chances of a conflict resulting in billions of deaths seems much higher today than it ever did.
Good points, but I personally feel safer in the present time, and even with global economic challenges, I feel generally optimistic about the current world situation. A economically and socially more tightly connected world seems more likely to be safe.
Chaos theory informs us that the future is impossible to predict for non trivial systems. I admit that I am partially relying on a gut feeling about this.
Younger generations didn't grow up through "real" crises. Their frame of reference is different, and through that lens, mountains are made out of molehills.
Come on. We're fighting proxy wars, losing friends, and recession is biting us in the ass. Please don't try and lecture us on what a real crisis is. We might not be in a world war right now, but war is war.
Nuclear war didn't happenand really after Cuba it should have been clear that it wouldn't happen.
As for crime being higher -- what matter is the _perception_ and in that regard, crime has gotten a lot worse, because there are now so many news papers competing to tell how bad the world is.
As for race riots -- well they happened (in places like LA) and that must have been bad, but really are they worse than the riots in Canada or London?
And you are entirely forgetting terrorism, unemployment and the fear of the government. You didn't have the TSA and the NSA wiretapping everything (granted, properly only because they couldn't do it, technically).
> Nuclear war didn't happenand really after Cuba it should have been clear that it wouldn't happen.
This statement makes no sense to me. As long as the cold war was cold, there was no real end in sight, there was constant tension, and the threat was _real_. I grew up in the late 70, early 80s. That the world would take the turn it did (that the Soviet Union fell) came completely by surprise.
I'm a fervent believer in the notion that despite short-term setbacks, humanity as a whole is improving on all fronts - social, political, technological, and economical. However, there is tremendous inequality in where the real improvements are occurring, especially when compared to segments that experience turmoils.
While your generation faced a real, visible threat of political violence, the next few generations face gradual, hidden threats that the current generation has no solution to:
1. Low-skill jobs are going away - be it outsourcing, migrant workers, logistical improvements, advanced software or robots. Imagine the spike in unemployment when Big Box stores automate shelf stocking and implements RFID checkouts. Sure, you will need humans to make, sell, and maintain the robots and new tech. but they will be skilled jobs and most likely fewer in number. You will still have servers and cooks at restaurants but when 50 year olds get laid off from Walmart and Target, they will vie for the same jobs that teenagers trying to support themselves through school do.
2. American Dream is getting harder to achieve - because of global competition, decreasing assistance (from family, society, government), and requirement for higher skill sets. 30 years ago a person could get a college degree with good high school grades and government grants, buy a house with down-payment assistance from family, and have a steady job for decades with a promise of social security and pension. That is rare today, though not impossible. There may be more college graduates today but they are no longer valued as they were a few decades ago. So while blacksmiths and farmers could buy a five acre plot of land and build a house with a barn in 1970s without taking out huge loans, their kids cannot do the same today. If you're 30 and don't make enough to rent a place on your own because of student loans and car payments, things will start to look gloomy. Of course there is a choice of going to cheaper college and buying an $800 car but 30 years ago college graduates had a better standard of living.
3. New problems that the current generation cares about that past didn't as much - Climate change and global equality. I know environmentalism started decades ago and anti-war protests are nothing new. But today's generation no longer considers dictatorship and oppression in distant lands as something you can ignore. I'm not saying every kid with an iPhone in US is actively fighting Kony or Morsi but today they are more aware than ever of injustices happening around the world. Knowing that a thousand people were just killed or imprisoned in a country you want to visit next year makes things look pretty gloomy. Similarly realizing that climate change is happening and is not being addressed by those in power is enough to scare those who hope to be alive in 2050.
I'm not saying world is getting worse. I am saying there are things happening that aren't outright frightening and abrupt like global wars but are still severe enough to worry those who expect to inherit them.
So while blacksmiths and farmers could buy a five acre plot of land and build a house with a barn in 1970s without taking out huge loans
There was really only a short period in the 1970s where food prices skyrocketed and the price of land didn't keep pace. Outside of that small window, I don't think farming was any more difficult to enter then than it is today. The land is more expensive now, sure, but the profits are much greater so it all equals out. Owning a barn on a small acreage in the 1970s that loses you money each year isn't exactly what I would call a win, and I think you could still find some unproductive land that is affordable to the average person if you really still want that today.
I'm sure your parents' generation would ask why you were so negative. They vanquished Hitler and saved the world. So what's there to complain about?
It's that these damn kids just don't understand everything I had to struggle for. Or maybe, just maybe the older generations have forgotten what it's like being handed a world with unsolved problems.
We are trying to fix things that your generation gave us. Things like an increasingly warming planet, awful race relations, a failed and unjust war on drugs, lack of LGBT rights, and a huge aging entitled population who feel it's my responsibility to pay for their medical expenses. I'm sure my children's generation is going to deal with the issues we haven't solved and will (rightfully) be pissed at us about it.
But on the flip side of that coin, my life is easier than almost any other human's in the history of this planet. I live the life of a king from 80 years ago. I have the sum of human knowledge in my pocket. I can communicate with people across the globe for like no money. I have access to art and information and entertainment that my parents could only dream of. It's important to keep perspective on what's really going on.
Um, no. That was never really a complaint of our parents to my generation. Note, I wasn't talking about a recognition of struggle. I never said we had to struggle and, IMO, we didn't really.
What I meant was things like your statement "awful race relations". In the USA at least, race relations are HUGELY better today than when I was a kid. The improvement is astounding really given that most people from back then are still alive today. Also, LGBT rights are stronger and better recognized today than in the past.
Finally, I'm not pissed about anything related to what I wrote. More simply mystified.
It's all in the economics. Medicine has gotten better, equality has gotten better, technology has gotten way better.
But the core of the average American's existence has gotten worse. The core is economic - affordability of housing, affordability of raising children, affordability of health care and education - all of which are considerably worse today than they were decades ago.
The young of today are pissed because the odds are ludicrously stacked against them when it comes to the basics.
Sure, smartphones are $100 in a prepaid box and can get you any fact in the world at the touch of your fingertips. That's a pretty shitty replacement for, say, owning your own home, or being able to afford to send your kids to college. Hell, many of the young today can't even find stable employment, much less good enough employment to allow them to pursue future goals. Entire classes of labor are disappearing with nothing to take their place.
So yeah, we've landed robots are Mars, we know a lot more about most diseases, and we have technology that would seem like utter magic to people in the 50s. But all of that is very cold comfort to today's youth, who would give up all of that if it meant a decent income and a real shot at owning their own future.
> "If it's harder to attain these things, how are more people doing it?"
By going further and further into debt.
How quickly do we forget? The crisis of 2008 wiped out millions of people who were mortgaged up to their eyeballs just so they can own a home. Real wages have been stagnant for years (and regressing in many parts of the country) while home prices continue rising. People are leveraging themselves to extreme (and unwise) levels just to afford the same house their parents comfortably bought with a single middle-class income.
The average student's debt load at graduation has also increased precipitously over the last few decades[1].
Economics and debt is at the root of these frustrations. The affordability of people's futures has decreased dramatically, a trend that was masked and softened by irresponsible borrowing and lending. But now that ride has come to a stop and we're faced with the reality that, for the majority of America, even people with upper-middle class incomes, the lifestyle of their middle-class parents seem downright unattainable..
> "People are leveraging themselves to extreme (and unwise) levels just to afford the same house their parents comfortably bought with a single middle-class income."
The "same" house? Hardly. People are leveraging themselves to afford bigger houses than their parents had. According to the National Association of Home Builders [0], average new house size was 1400 sq ft in 1970 and 2700 sq ft in 2009. You can find similar data from the census bureau's American Housing Survey [1]. For example, only 16% of total residences in 1970 had 2 or more bathrooms; in 2011 about 50% of residences had 2+ bathrooms.
I actually bought the same house as my parents [2]. Adjusting for inflation, it was essentially the same price in 2012 as it was in 1975 (within 2%, both as compared with CPI and comparing my dad's programmer salary at BigCo1 in 1975 to my wife's programmer salary at BigCo2 in 2009.)
[2] We recently found a fully wheelchair-accessible condo for my parents. We bought their house for market value; they used the proceeds to buy the condo. While the house has aged 4 decades since they bought it, it's got a brand new kitchen and a bunch of other recent upgrades, so on the whole it's pretty comparable.
What I suspect is true is that each generation thinks the next is woefully lacking in perspective and is guilty of near complete ignorance about the decades that immediately preceded them. Or maybe that's just what I think while reading this thread.
Each generation is convinced they discovered the world and its problems. Same as it ever was. They'll grow out of it, like we all did before them.
