Think being young today is hard? Let’s see how Millennials feel 30 years from now
The older generation foots all the bills and still gets blamed for everything that is wrong in the world, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
‘That fiver on the old-age pension was treated as if it had been snatched from the pockets of the young as they slept’
‘HOW sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” So said King Lear, though he didn’t know the half of it.
Imagine an entire generation of thankless children, all blaming their elders for every bad thing that befalls them — and continuing to do so long into supposed adulthood — and that’s a fairly accurate description of the world right now.
They were out in force after the Budget, sinking their serpents’ teeth into those who were deemed to have unfairly benefited at their expense, emboldened by the claims of populist politicians, such as the Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy, that this was an “anti young people’s Budget”.
Heaven forbid that they should be encouraged to get a sense of perspective, or to see things through the eyes of others less fortunate than them- selves. Though how could they when they’re literally the most hard-done-by group of people on the planet, like, ever?
One writer could even be found complaining midweek that the older generation just didn’t understand how terrible it was to be a member of “Generation Rent”.
Yeah? Try being a member of Generation Negative Equity, or Generation Getting The Blame For Everything Despite Footing The Bill For The Whole Kit And Caboodle.
You’re worried about the future. We get it. What makes you think the rest of us aren’t? My house still isn’t worth what I paid for it 10 years ago. Years of sacrifice to build up the capital to buy it, followed by 10 years of hard work to keep up the mortgage payments, all down the drain.
So 20-somethings have to wait a little longer to buy a house? Be grateful. At least your entire existence isn’t reduced to being a life-support machine for an unsustainable mortgage. You can go where the opportunities are.
Good luck doing that if you’re indebted up to your oxters, with children who stubbornly refuse to become less financially draining as they got older. When do elders get to stop paying for all your stuff and spend some on themselves? Never? Thought not.
The amount of collective moaning that went on after the Budget was something else. Even that fiver on the old-age pension was treated as if it had been snatched from the pockets of the young as they slept and handed over to a generation that had doomed them deliberately to penury.
Young adults seem to consider it unfair that old people are supposedly doing better than they are. Has it ever crossed their self-pitying little minds that this might be because older people have worked for decades to get where they are, not because of some pyramid scheme of age-based discrimination?
It’s ludicrous to compare the lifestyle of a 20-year-old unskilled, unemployed person, or even a 30-year-old working for a little internet start-up in Temple Bar, with a 70-year-old retiree with 50 years of work behind them. You have to compare like with like. Come back when you’re 70 and see whether you think it’s so unfair now that you have a little more than those decades younger.
Who exactly are they resenting, after all? If it’s people in their 60s, that generation hit 30 in the 1980s — that era was hardly a bed of roses economically. Proportionate to GDP, the debt crisis was worse than it is now. Those in their 70s came to adulthood in the 1970s. Those in their 80s, in the 1960s.
Are young people seriously suggesting that they would swap places with any of them and take their chances in the economy as it was back then?
Or perhaps it’s those of us in our 40s and 50s that young people resent. Because we had it so easy, didn’t we? A few years of partying beyond our means, according to the version of events peddled by the Taoiseach to European economic elites, followed by a lifelong nightmare of debt.
You want to swap places? Be our guests. Make our day.
This generation of 20-somethings are loosely called ‘Millennials’, but ‘Moanellials’ would be a better name for them. They complain about the cost of going to university, conveniently forgetting that the greatest part of the burden is borne by their parents.
They complain about still having to live at home, when that is every bit as restrictive, not to mention financially burdensome, for their parents. Since when did a free room and board become most unfair to the people making use of it rather than those providing it?
As for those apartments you resent paying rent on when you finally do move out, who helped you stump up the deposit? One of those horrible older people, wasn’t it? No doubt they will chalk that up as another awful thing the supposedly selfish elders have done for them, even though they did also try to warn you that your media studies degree from Mickey Mouse College probably wasn’t going to help in your quest to be rich by the time you hit 30.
Fancy that. It’s almost like they knew more than you did. Because they had more experience of life, or something. Crazy, huh?
The Moanellials did the same in the UK over the Brexit vote, losing the head because the older generation had allegedly “stolen” their futures by opting to leave the EU. How dare the coffin dodgers, as they were insultingly called, have a say in the future of their own country, just because they’re the ones who worked to build the present.
How dare the over-50s have more influence on political decisions than the under-25s, just because they get off their behinds and actually go out to vote, rather than lying at home, glued to a mobile phone in the belief that getting a hashtag to trend on Twitter is going to change the world.
Each generation has probably recognised that it was more fortunate than the one which came before; that they had easier lives, with greater choice, opportunity. I certainly saw that people my own age were luckier than their parents and grandparents.
The Moanellials don’t. They just ‘know’ they got the sticky end of the lollipop. They don’t need to provide facts to prove it. Their feelings are enough. Why, sometimes they can’t even get access to free Wi-Fi for a whole 10 minutes.
They purport to care deeply about refugees and global injustice and the environment, but in fact, spend most of their time on Planet Me, feeling sorry for themselves.
If anyone needs to “check your privilege”, it’s them, because they live in greater comfort than 99pc of the people who’ve ever lived; and they still feel hard done by because Granny got a fiver last week whilst no one’s yet figured out how to satisfy their sense of entitlement by giving them all the things that they’ve grown up thinking should be theirs by right.
Those who think life’s hard now should wait another 20 or 30 years until they have mortgages and children of their own to fund and the next crash comes, because — OMG, who’d have thunk it? — it turned out that you didn’t have all the answers either.
Then, the 20-somethings will be lecturing you about your failings instead, demanding to know why you’re so much better off than they are, even though they’ll only be seeing the benefits of your situation and none of the burdens. You know, exactly the way that you’re doing now?
That’s what’s so infuriating about this envious notion that older people have plenty whilst the young have nothing. You might think yourselves the ultimate victims of a heartless property and jobs market that has shut you out, but there are plenty of older people who have what you say you want, and who would swap with you in a heartbeat.
Because sometimes, having a bit more only makes you a bigger target for the vultures.