Young people nowadays, more than ever before, have an excessive evaluation of their own worth, coupled with insufficient level of respect for their elders, and a much reduced work ethic,
I think.
Chickens coming home to roost, is what it is.
Not all, my family have always had a strong work ethic and despite having no degrees all of the young working age (under 30) people in my family have good jobs, earn good money and are on the housing ladder, even my niece due to leave college in the summer has had 2 job offers.
That is because like me they were taught that no-one gives you a free ride, you go out and earn to pay for what you want.
This is why I really do not understand the attitude of some of the younger posters on here who whine about how privileged baby boomers are, how their futures have been stolen from them, how the older generation will be given anything they want because they vote, because that's not the way my family thinks
When my husband reached 65 in April they all my nieces and nephews were pleased for him, there was none of this rubbish about how his pension (sorry benefit payments)
was coming out of their NI contributions and how he will be taking out more then he ever paid in, or how despite having worked for 45 years he shouldn't even have a pension as they themselves may not get one.
Walter Neff goes on about this fantastic life he has had but ends up on DS most of the time slagging users opinions off.
Old but not wise.
WRONG! only you, showing you up for the whining brat that you are, and everyone seems to agree with me. I haven't seen anyone rushing to your defence.
Oh, I see that after just 41 posts you are already an inactive member, well as the old saying goes, "If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen" ;-)
Thats not the baby boomers. The baby boomers were born after the war had ended. They are the blessed generation who got cheap housing, plentiful jobs, free education and are now starting to enjoy a lavish retirement funded by stealing from their own children.
The generation before them though, i agree i have a lot more respect for. I like to think my generation will be more like then (our grandparents) than the baby boomers (our parents)
They probably did have a bit of luck and a head start when it came to jobs and property, but I disagree with your "lavish retirement funded by stealing from their own children". That's emotive claptrap. State pension is, and and always has been, funded by National Insurance payments, paid by all who work over many decades. In my book that's an honest gain, and not stealing from anybody.
Society has changed partly due to demographics and partly due to population increase. We don't have the "jobs for life" with a final salary pension scheme at the end of it culture, the way we used to. That's not the fault of any individual, it's just the way it is. It's certainly not "stealing" from anybody.
Incidentally, you also have to be careful who you ascribe the "baby boomers" tag to. Actually the true post war baby boomers were born in literally the first two or three years after the war - steep spike on the graph. In the early to mid 1950's the birth rate fell to much nearer normal levels. There is a second and much more long lasting baby boom which started in the early 1960's and peaked in 1965. That is why the retirement age increases over the long term.
I totally disagree with the OP.
The older generation went through world wars, rationing of food and material for clothes, poor housing, poor pay, and in some cases, no NHS.
If you had no money, you had to get out and work for some doing anything you could find. There was no social security to fall back on then. If you didn't have it, you had to do without so you had to work to pay your way. The housing consisted mostly of two up, two down no matter how many kids you had.
Then there was conscription to the forces. You had no option. You went and did your time. That taught you respect and how to care for your self and mostly taught you a trade. Maybe that's what's missing now.
There was no restriction on the hours of work you did work and you got the minimum of holidays as a reward.
If you were a girl and had a child out of marriage, your parents had to keep you and the child, no such thing as benefits for that and that's not counting the stigma that went with it.
So I don't think anyone should tell a relative of mine who went through all of that, they have got it easy, I say if they did that, they deserve every luxury they can get and they have my utmost respect.
Thats one of the most ridiculous posts Ive read on this forum...chickens dont come home to roost for young people!! LOL its the so called adults who fk everything up each and every time, no use blaming kids, what a disgusting cop out
Oh and "respect for elders" has to be earned, it just cant be a given,
but arent you taking a few examples of a few fkwits somewhere doing something and extrapolating it to all kids??
Poor show there
As for a work ethic...well, long as its not slavery you MAY have a small point, just....people shouldnt live to work, upside downsy philosophy for you chum
As for the economy and the mess its been in, yes its ADULTS that created it, not our kids, and yes like others may have to pay for it more than the bastards who screwed it up, get a fkn grip when you start blaming our kids.....delusional and extremely offensive
... and who did they learn or indeed not learn those values from?
Last I checked, kids weren't supposed to raise themselves or each other. If people are treated like mummy's little precious, never have to do chores because the house has all mod cons etc perhaps the reason they lack respect is they have been given no reason to respect their elders because they haven't been taught any values by them?
Respect is earned, not just given. A parent needs to be respectable first, just having a kid they choose to neglect doesn't make them respectable by default the second they conceive.
In general, the elderly deserve respect by virtue of being old, and for what they have contributed during their lives. They do not have to earn it, time and time again. Kids should be taught to respect elderly people.
Just as an example, you rarely see kids giving up seats for the elderly on buses, and you rarely see parents telling them to give up their seats.
I think society is quite coarse nowadaus. Just a personal opinion.
In general, the elderly deserve respect by virtue of being old, and for what they have contributed during their lives. They do not have to earn it, time and time again. Kids should be taught to respect elderly people.
Just as an example, you rarely see kids giving up seats for the elderly on buses, and you rarely see parents telling them to give up their seats.
I think society is quite coarse nowadaus. Just a personal opinion.
I think society lacks respect for everyone not just elders. Too many want something for nothing and don't want to work.
It sickens me when you see gangs of kids destroying people's property just for the fun of it. If they had to work and scrimp and save, I think they would think again.
My OH was rude to a neighbour once, nothing too bad I assure you but once the neighbour said he would tell his dad, My OH wouldn't go home fear of what his parents would do. These days, the parents want to have a go at you if you told their kids off.
I do respect elders, they deserve it.
Older people had the time of their life's splashing money and lending it like no tomorrow, now the younger people of today are suffering for it... very fair. The Banks are just as bad to.
I don't know how old you are, but from your posts I hope it is not older than 12...
Thats not the baby boomers. The baby boomers were born after the war had ended. They are the blessed generation who got cheap housing, plentiful jobs, free education and are now starting to enjoy a lavish retirement funded by stealing from their own children.
What a very odd picture you have of life in the 1970's and 1980's.
Housing was cheaper, on the whole. As a Londoner and parent of adult children, I am not minimising the effect of that; I have a daughter of 27 who has no prospect of being able to buy even a flat. (In some parts of the country of course that is not the case; there are still plenty of flats for under £50,000 in some areas). But mortgages were hard to get in the old days; you had to save long and hard to show that you were worthy of one. Divorced and single women, for many years, could not get one at all. Far, far fewer baby boomers inherited property than has been and will be the case for later generations.
'Education was free' in the sense that a small minority of people got grants for approved university subjects. If you wanted to study a subject that did not carry a grant, there were no loans available; you either got the money from relatives or you couldn't study it, end of. Some professions were pretty well closed to those without a substantial private income as there was no way anyone else could fund themselves for the required period of time.
Unemployment has gone up and down, but during the 1970's was far higher than today; hundreds of thousands of traditional working class jobs vanished forever, and a lot of the miners, steel-workers, ship-builders etc never worked again; they were just abandoned by society.
Baby boomers had far less STUFF than later generations. When I was a student, in a house of 12 people, only 2 had any means (a record player) of playing music. No one had a tv. Apart from housing, it is probably true to say that everything was much more expensive, relative to earnings, than it is today. Parents would have to save for ages to buy a bicycle. Clothes were so expensive that children were regularly denied a grammar school place because their parents could not afford the (more expensive) uniform. Clothes were mended and patched when they got worn because they were far more expensive to replace. I am bemused by my young relations' assumption that when they get their first home - albeit rented - it will have every single thing in it from day one: sofas, big tv's, granite kitchen worksurfaces, luxury garden furniture, the kind of stuff that it took my husband and I 20 years to collect.
Conditions of work were often much harsher; I was part of the trade union (Usdaw) campaign to allow retail workers to sit down if it did not impede their work, eg between customers or on check-outs; before that, there was nothing to stop employers requiring all staff to stand up for 10 or even 12 hours a day for no other reason than that they didn't like the sight of them sitting down. Industrial accidents were many times more common; building sites, in particular, were often death traps, with a horrific rate of injury. Holidays were far more modest - I wonder if the whiny OP has ever been further than, say, Spain? Hardly anyone did when the baby boomers were young; most holidays were the British seaside.
In some ways, the years when baby boomers grew up were harsh times. Unemployment was high, benefits were poor, and you saw what you rarely do now: children who were visibly thin and unwell, roaming the streets in ragged clothes. Possessions were far fewer and treats far more modest. The OP seems to be suffering from a grotesquely inflated sense of entitlement more than anything else.
I think the misinterpretation here is that baby boomers at least they knew they had something to work -for- and -towards-.
The mortgage would eventually be cleared after years of scrimping, the pension would kick in after years of saving, you could work hard in work to move up the ladder etc and it was all doable and achievable.
Now, with employers sending jobs abroad and the cost of living being so high, so many people can only dream of a mortgage, saving for a pension or getting a decent wage - for too many people, despite them working hard and saving, those things are just not there.
I don't think people are jealous of what baby boomers have, but jealous that the same opportunities don't exist anymore.
I think the misinterpretation here is that baby boomers at least they knew they had something to work -for- and -towards-.
The mortgage would eventually be cleared after years of scrimping, the pension would kick in after years of saving, you could work hard in work to move up the ladder etc and it was all doable and achievable.
Now, with employers sending jobs abroad and the cost of living being so high, so many people can only dream of a mortgage, saving for a pension or getting a decent wage - for too many people, despite them working hard and saving, those things are just not there.
I don't think people are jealous of what baby boomers have, but jealous that the same opportunities don't exist anymore.
You can save for a pension, of course you can. Interest rates are low at the moment, so pension schemes are not doing very well, but that is always a risk with anything involving saving. I promise that living at a time of double-figures inflation had its disadvantages as well. I got a mortgage (with difficulty; as I said, they were hard to get) only to see the mortgage rate rising to 12, 13 even 14%.
And 'the cost of living' is not 'so high' at all; as I said, housing is relatively more expensive for most people, but virtually everything else is considerably cheaper. Food, clothes, holidays, electronic goods (especially) are MUCH cheaper relative to earnings than they used to be. I was nearly 30 before I stayed in a hotel, 19 before I got into my first taxi and probably ate in 5 restaurants in my first 18 years, and I came from a middle class home.
You can save for a pension, of course you can. Interest rates are low at the moment, so pension schemes are not doing very well, but that is always a risk with anything involving saving. I promise that living at a time of double-figures inflation had its disadvantages as well. I got a mortgage (with difficulty; as I said, they were hard to get) only to see the mortgage rate rising to 12, 13 even 14%.
And 'the cost of living' is not 'so high' at all; as I said, housing is relatively more expensive for most people, but virtually everything else is considerably cheaper. Food, clothes, holidays, electronic goods (especially) are MUCH cheaper relative to earnings than they used to be. I was nearly 30 before I stayed in a hotel, 19 before I got into my first taxi and probably ate in 5 restaurants in my first 18 years, and I came from a middle class home.
The cost of living is pretty high for people who are stuck on low wages having to cover rent and bills that are rising ahead of wage inflation.
Unfortunately what doesn't help in this country is the culture of 'kicking out at 18'. I do feel that if we adopted a more Continental approach of kids staying at home until their late 20s it would give them a chance to get a much more secure financial footing as they'd pay minimal keep and be able to save more.
edit - I have to say that this shouldn't be an 'us and them' argument. It's more about looking about how socioeconomic changes are affecting younger people and their opportunities in life and how people can work to together to ease what's happening.
The cost of living is pretty high for people who are stuck on low wages having to cover rent and bills that are rising ahead of wage inflation.
Unfortunately what doesn't help in this country is the culture of 'kicking out at 18'. I do feel that if we adopted a more Continental approach of kids staying at home until their late 20s it would give them a chance to get a much more secure financial footing as they'd pay minimal keep and be able to save more.
edit - I have to say that this shouldn't be an 'us and them' argument. It's more about looking about how socioeconomic changes are affecting younger people and their opportunities in life and how people can work to together to ease what's happening.
Is that right. Do many parents kick their kids out at any age?
I am on old baby boomer and I would happily start all over again, life was good but not easy no TV or a car no jobs no benefits all the youngsters complaining they have a shit deal will be also be old one day
Older people had the time of their life's splashing money and lending it like no tomorrow, now the younger people of today are suffering for it... very fair. The Banks are just as bad to.
How typical of the current generation to blame others for their own shortcomings and failures.
People today are greedier and more materialistic than ever before.
Young people nowadays, more than ever before, have an excessive evaluation of their own worth, coupled with insufficient level of respect for their elders, and a much reduced work ethic,
The older generation to me are the baby boomers who lived through the second world war... they didn't have it easy but they knew how to hold a community together, they knew how and when to fight, they knew how to feed a family of four on rations. I had a conversation once with my father about recycling in his day and he said.. simple we didn't waste anything. We owe them a lot and we will lose a lot of experience in these things
No you are wrong , the term baby boomers refers to babies born post war to about the 60's.
I don't think young people have been shafted as such (and I speak as one of them), I think we just have very different opportunities. very different visions of our future, and very different problems to overcome.
Young people today have access to much more education than ever before. International travel is dirt cheap in comparison to 30/40/50 years ago. The internet and technology in general is much more affordable and wide reaching than ever. General living standards have risen dramatically in the last 50 years.
However, this has all come at a cost - stability. People who were late teens and early twenties in the 60s/70s had a future of relative stability. They left school - a few went on to higher education (paid for by the state), many walked into jobs or apprenticeships and learned a trade. They could reasonable expect that trade to be a job for life, that it would pay the bills be enough to support a family, enough to eventually purchase a house and pay a mortgage. Enough to pay into a pension. They worked hard and they made it happen.
Young people today have no such stability. Zero hours contracts. Minimum wage jobs which have no progression, no prospects of learning a trade and rising through the ranks. Many young people are flat-out told that if they want a decent job, they have to spend thousands to go to university. Even then, the jobs that are available are transitory in nature. Job for life is gone. BTL investors purchasing typical first-time-buyer houses means that the supply of such houses goes down and prices increase. Young people then have to rent such properties rather than purchase them (especially if they have to move away from home to find work). Insecure housing, insecure jobs, leaving the education phase of life with large debts.
There have never been certainties in life, especially for those starting out in life. But I think older generations had a much better chance at security and stability than young people do today, and I think that is what can be so very demoralising for youngsters. I am resigned to the fact I will likely not own property until (if) I inherit from my parents, which means I face a life time of insecure housing through private renting. At 26 I have had 7 jobs, 3 of those "proper" full-time jobs, one of which made me redundant at 23. I have seen peers lose their skilled jobs to workers in India. I have friends who have been evicted from their rented homes with 4 weeks notice, because the owners simply decided to sell up.
Have young people been shafted by those who have gone before them? No, at least no more so than any other generation. It's always been difficult to make a decent start in life, whenever you were young. That doesn't mean older generations are to blame for the problems young people face today. It doesn't mean young people today are entitled or lazy or disrespectful because their problems aren't the same as they would have been 50 years ago. It just means that society has changed dramatically in the last 50 years or so, and so have the problems that young people face, and all generations would do well to remember that.
Did 'older' people have an easier life? Buying a first home has never been easy, people always had to save for a deposit, todays 'older' people didn't have the benefits today's young have, no tax credits, no help to pay for childcare, no parking next to the supermarket doors, no free school meals. People had to work and support their own families. Was it 'older' people who were borrowing money that they could not afford to repay?
The nanny state seems to have created a situation where people have a sence of entitlement and it is up to governments and taxpayers to give them what they want, this was not the case for 'older' people. You can't blame former generations.
Comments
Opinions vary.
Not all, my family have always had a strong work ethic and despite having no degrees all of the young working age (under 30) people in my family have good jobs, earn good money and are on the housing ladder, even my niece due to leave college in the summer has had 2 job offers.
That is because like me they were taught that no-one gives you a free ride, you go out and earn to pay for what you want.
This is why I really do not understand the attitude of some of the younger posters on here who whine about how privileged baby boomers are, how their futures have been stolen from them, how the older generation will be given anything they want because they vote, because that's not the way my family thinks
When my husband reached 65 in April they all my nieces and nephews were pleased for him, there was none of this rubbish about how his pension (sorry benefit payments)
was coming out of their NI contributions and how he will be taking out more then he ever paid in, or how despite having worked for 45 years he shouldn't even have a pension as they themselves may not get one.
I went around doors selling sticks.
Delivered newspapers
Went and got shopping for neighbours
Worked holidays and weekends on a Farm.
Try that at aged 12 you young folk. ;-)
WRONG! only you, showing you up for the whining brat that you are, and everyone seems to agree with me. I haven't seen anyone rushing to your defence.
Oh, I see that after just 41 posts you are already an inactive member, well as the old saying goes, "If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen" ;-)
They probably did have a bit of luck and a head start when it came to jobs and property, but I disagree with your "lavish retirement funded by stealing from their own children". That's emotive claptrap. State pension is, and and always has been, funded by National Insurance payments, paid by all who work over many decades. In my book that's an honest gain, and not stealing from anybody.
Society has changed partly due to demographics and partly due to population increase. We don't have the "jobs for life" with a final salary pension scheme at the end of it culture, the way we used to. That's not the fault of any individual, it's just the way it is. It's certainly not "stealing" from anybody.
Incidentally, you also have to be careful who you ascribe the "baby boomers" tag to. Actually the true post war baby boomers were born in literally the first two or three years after the war - steep spike on the graph. In the early to mid 1950's the birth rate fell to much nearer normal levels. There is a second and much more long lasting baby boom which started in the early 1960's and peaked in 1965. That is why the retirement age increases over the long term.
see the graph in this link
The older generation went through world wars, rationing of food and material for clothes, poor housing, poor pay, and in some cases, no NHS.
If you had no money, you had to get out and work for some doing anything you could find. There was no social security to fall back on then. If you didn't have it, you had to do without so you had to work to pay your way. The housing consisted mostly of two up, two down no matter how many kids you had.
Then there was conscription to the forces. You had no option. You went and did your time. That taught you respect and how to care for your self and mostly taught you a trade. Maybe that's what's missing now.
There was no restriction on the hours of work you did work and you got the minimum of holidays as a reward.
If you were a girl and had a child out of marriage, your parents had to keep you and the child, no such thing as benefits for that and that's not counting the stigma that went with it.
So I don't think anyone should tell a relative of mine who went through all of that, they have got it easy, I say if they did that, they deserve every luxury they can get and they have my utmost respect.
If you want it badly enough you'll find a way.
Kudos to them, by the way
In general, the elderly deserve respect by virtue of being old, and for what they have contributed during their lives. They do not have to earn it, time and time again. Kids should be taught to respect elderly people.
Just as an example, you rarely see kids giving up seats for the elderly on buses, and you rarely see parents telling them to give up their seats.
I think society is quite coarse nowadaus. Just a personal opinion.
I think society lacks respect for everyone not just elders. Too many want something for nothing and don't want to work.
It sickens me when you see gangs of kids destroying people's property just for the fun of it. If they had to work and scrimp and save, I think they would think again.
My OH was rude to a neighbour once, nothing too bad I assure you but once the neighbour said he would tell his dad, My OH wouldn't go home fear of what his parents would do. These days, the parents want to have a go at you if you told their kids off.
I do respect elders, they deserve it.
What a very odd picture you have of life in the 1970's and 1980's.
Housing was cheaper, on the whole. As a Londoner and parent of adult children, I am not minimising the effect of that; I have a daughter of 27 who has no prospect of being able to buy even a flat. (In some parts of the country of course that is not the case; there are still plenty of flats for under £50,000 in some areas). But mortgages were hard to get in the old days; you had to save long and hard to show that you were worthy of one. Divorced and single women, for many years, could not get one at all. Far, far fewer baby boomers inherited property than has been and will be the case for later generations.
'Education was free' in the sense that a small minority of people got grants for approved university subjects. If you wanted to study a subject that did not carry a grant, there were no loans available; you either got the money from relatives or you couldn't study it, end of. Some professions were pretty well closed to those without a substantial private income as there was no way anyone else could fund themselves for the required period of time.
Unemployment has gone up and down, but during the 1970's was far higher than today; hundreds of thousands of traditional working class jobs vanished forever, and a lot of the miners, steel-workers, ship-builders etc never worked again; they were just abandoned by society.
Baby boomers had far less STUFF than later generations. When I was a student, in a house of 12 people, only 2 had any means (a record player) of playing music. No one had a tv. Apart from housing, it is probably true to say that everything was much more expensive, relative to earnings, than it is today. Parents would have to save for ages to buy a bicycle. Clothes were so expensive that children were regularly denied a grammar school place because their parents could not afford the (more expensive) uniform. Clothes were mended and patched when they got worn because they were far more expensive to replace. I am bemused by my young relations' assumption that when they get their first home - albeit rented - it will have every single thing in it from day one: sofas, big tv's, granite kitchen worksurfaces, luxury garden furniture, the kind of stuff that it took my husband and I 20 years to collect.
Conditions of work were often much harsher; I was part of the trade union (Usdaw) campaign to allow retail workers to sit down if it did not impede their work, eg between customers or on check-outs; before that, there was nothing to stop employers requiring all staff to stand up for 10 or even 12 hours a day for no other reason than that they didn't like the sight of them sitting down. Industrial accidents were many times more common; building sites, in particular, were often death traps, with a horrific rate of injury. Holidays were far more modest - I wonder if the whiny OP has ever been further than, say, Spain? Hardly anyone did when the baby boomers were young; most holidays were the British seaside.
In some ways, the years when baby boomers grew up were harsh times. Unemployment was high, benefits were poor, and you saw what you rarely do now: children who were visibly thin and unwell, roaming the streets in ragged clothes. Possessions were far fewer and treats far more modest. The OP seems to be suffering from a grotesquely inflated sense of entitlement more than anything else.
The mortgage would eventually be cleared after years of scrimping, the pension would kick in after years of saving, you could work hard in work to move up the ladder etc and it was all doable and achievable.
Now, with employers sending jobs abroad and the cost of living being so high, so many people can only dream of a mortgage, saving for a pension or getting a decent wage - for too many people, despite them working hard and saving, those things are just not there.
I don't think people are jealous of what baby boomers have, but jealous that the same opportunities don't exist anymore.
You can save for a pension, of course you can. Interest rates are low at the moment, so pension schemes are not doing very well, but that is always a risk with anything involving saving. I promise that living at a time of double-figures inflation had its disadvantages as well. I got a mortgage (with difficulty; as I said, they were hard to get) only to see the mortgage rate rising to 12, 13 even 14%.
And 'the cost of living' is not 'so high' at all; as I said, housing is relatively more expensive for most people, but virtually everything else is considerably cheaper. Food, clothes, holidays, electronic goods (especially) are MUCH cheaper relative to earnings than they used to be. I was nearly 30 before I stayed in a hotel, 19 before I got into my first taxi and probably ate in 5 restaurants in my first 18 years, and I came from a middle class home.
The cost of living is pretty high for people who are stuck on low wages having to cover rent and bills that are rising ahead of wage inflation.
Unfortunately what doesn't help in this country is the culture of 'kicking out at 18'. I do feel that if we adopted a more Continental approach of kids staying at home until their late 20s it would give them a chance to get a much more secure financial footing as they'd pay minimal keep and be able to save more.
edit - I have to say that this shouldn't be an 'us and them' argument. It's more about looking about how socioeconomic changes are affecting younger people and their opportunities in life and how people can work to together to ease what's happening.
Is that right. Do many parents kick their kids out at any age?
They can contribute a fair bit to the figures though!;-)
Kick out their kids! we married at 20 and bought a house and raised children not pouncing around with gap years and crap degrees
How typical of the current generation to blame others for their own shortcomings and failures.
People today are greedier and more materialistic than ever before.
^This.
No you are wrong , the term baby boomers refers to babies born post war to about the 60's.
Young people today have access to much more education than ever before. International travel is dirt cheap in comparison to 30/40/50 years ago. The internet and technology in general is much more affordable and wide reaching than ever. General living standards have risen dramatically in the last 50 years.
However, this has all come at a cost - stability. People who were late teens and early twenties in the 60s/70s had a future of relative stability. They left school - a few went on to higher education (paid for by the state), many walked into jobs or apprenticeships and learned a trade. They could reasonable expect that trade to be a job for life, that it would pay the bills be enough to support a family, enough to eventually purchase a house and pay a mortgage. Enough to pay into a pension. They worked hard and they made it happen.
Young people today have no such stability. Zero hours contracts. Minimum wage jobs which have no progression, no prospects of learning a trade and rising through the ranks. Many young people are flat-out told that if they want a decent job, they have to spend thousands to go to university. Even then, the jobs that are available are transitory in nature. Job for life is gone. BTL investors purchasing typical first-time-buyer houses means that the supply of such houses goes down and prices increase. Young people then have to rent such properties rather than purchase them (especially if they have to move away from home to find work). Insecure housing, insecure jobs, leaving the education phase of life with large debts.
There have never been certainties in life, especially for those starting out in life. But I think older generations had a much better chance at security and stability than young people do today, and I think that is what can be so very demoralising for youngsters. I am resigned to the fact I will likely not own property until (if) I inherit from my parents, which means I face a life time of insecure housing through private renting. At 26 I have had 7 jobs, 3 of those "proper" full-time jobs, one of which made me redundant at 23. I have seen peers lose their skilled jobs to workers in India. I have friends who have been evicted from their rented homes with 4 weeks notice, because the owners simply decided to sell up.
Have young people been shafted by those who have gone before them? No, at least no more so than any other generation. It's always been difficult to make a decent start in life, whenever you were young. That doesn't mean older generations are to blame for the problems young people face today. It doesn't mean young people today are entitled or lazy or disrespectful because their problems aren't the same as they would have been 50 years ago. It just means that society has changed dramatically in the last 50 years or so, and so have the problems that young people face, and all generations would do well to remember that.
The nanny state seems to have created a situation where people have a sence of entitlement and it is up to governments and taxpayers to give them what they want, this was not the case for 'older' people. You can't blame former generations.