Quote:"This generation is lazy!" I hear people say.  Their generation was clearly the best.  (nevermind that they had things easier, not to mention some of the other things they did).  "Teens don't want to work fast food!"  Just look at how people treat TMD around here, to see why people don't want to work fast food.  They call him "Fry cook" and use it as an insult as if working fast food is somehow demeaning.  The last generation decided to demean such positions, rather than consider them respectable for actually doing some work (not to mention going to school at the same time)  Also keep in mind that high school drop out rates are at a low.  Meaning more and more kids are finishing school.  They're trying to better themselves, which I'd find hard to call 'lazy'.  But that's just me.

TJBender says he resents the statement about this generation being lazy, well I absolutely bloody abhor, detest and hate it. I actually have to think carefully about what write here because I might well swear and the word filter isn't active on my posts.

 

But you hit upon a good point; my generation has been told all their life that ending up in fast food or some other minimum wage job is an unspeakably bad thing. "Better stay in school, don't want to end up flipping burgers." "You should go to college, or else you'll wind up in Burger King", "Don't drop out because if you do, you'll be wearing a paper hat." We've been taught that minimum wage is a failure state and when we turn around and say we don't want to go into that failure state we get called lazy.

 

And that's assuming there are realistic alternatives. After high school you can either enter the workforce or enter college. But college means assuming a massive amount of debt, effectively crippling any hope of financial independence after graduation. Meanwhile, virtually every decent career path requires a college degree so not going to college means entering the aforementioned failure state. Despite all this more people are graduating college and high school, but that doesn't matter to the observer because they will just claim the tests are getting easier. 

 

But worst of all are the people who are calling the current generation lazy. The generation previous to them fought depression in the 30's, fought WW2 and then rebuilt the US and Europe afterwards while instituting programs like welfare, unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid and countless other programs the baby boomers were more than willing to take advantage of. Meanwhile living expenses were low compared to today and upward mobility was high due to still reasonable costs associated with higher education. Flash forward to today, that generation is done getting their fill and it's time for the next generation to take over and not only is the new generation being called lazy and entitled for daring to ask for the same benefits their parents got, they are actively being taken away from them by the people that benefited most from those benefits. The hypocrisy is off the scale on this.

 

Meanwhile, the current generation is more tolerant, more productive, better educated than ever and getting nothing but grief from the people that rely on them the most. 

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