This Huffington Post repost of a Wait But Why post draws an unflattering picture of Generation Y:
Say hi to Lucy.
Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.
I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group — I call them Gen Y Protagonists — Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.
So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:Lucy’s kind of unhappy.
These commenter presents an alternate (and, I believe, a more accurate) explanation of why “Lucy” is unhappy. Here’s one:
Can’t really have a discussion of this sort without looking at the reality of Gen-Y and millennial lives. $100k in school debt. College grads unable to find anything but service jobs. No job security no matter how hard one works. Money poured into social security to fund the retirement of the boomers, yet little hope of a secure retirement themselves.
Most of the gen-y and millennialist I know are scraping by. Working multiple jobs at 60 hours total a week isn’t unheard of. Not exactly the same situation as the secure, 40 hour a week, living wage paying, pension paying jobs that were in vogue for older generations.
and this one:
Here’s another scenario. Lucy was born in 1980. She started to vote in 1998. By that time, the previous generation had fought a war in Iraq. The previous generation had started shipping jobs overseas decades earlier. The rich were hiding thier profits in overseas acounts and refusing to pay taxes. Then the result of the previous generations international policy lead to terrorist attacks in the United States. The terrorist attacks lead to two wars. The two wars occur at a time when the Baby Boomers are too old to fight, leaving it to Lucy’s generation. then because of Boomer economic policy, the economy crashes- it is called the greatest recession since the great depression. Lucy comes home from over a decade of war and can’t find a job. Lucy now has to go back to school and support her family with an uncertain future ahead of her. But it is Lucy who is the problem? It is the GYPSY’s who will have to clean up the mess left us by the Boomers, thanks!
In short, Lucy was born into a world where job security is a distant memory. Why shouldn’t she feel disillusioned when the promise of a prosperous life is endangered?