A Conversation for Talking Point: Ageism
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
Researcher 1300304 Started conversation Aug 11, 2008
i'm not going to sugar coat this. boomers took power in the 80s and 90s and now want to hand it to their children: generation y.
gen x, or squeeze generation, got sandwiched between the 2 most selfish generations in human history. likewise the generation immediately before boomers, whatever they are called, got, and continue to get, pushed out of the way before their time.
in the us, mccain belongs to a generation that never produced a president. i haven't checked it myself but i am told the ONLY generation in us history not to have produced a president.
i really like old people. slimey politicians riding on 'youth' as a positive, instead of the negative it really is, make me want to puke.
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
catrinksa Posted Aug 11, 2008
Interestingly though, because gen y are perceived as selfish/lazy/generally incompetent with delusions of grandeur and ability which they do not actually possess (speaking as a gen y-er myself, I should add), they are discriminated against in a lot of fields. It'll come to the point where employers have no choice, but for the moment the job market is saturated and the gen y-ers lose out to older candidates.
So maybe generation x doesn't have it so bad after all...
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
Researcher 1300304 Posted Aug 11, 2008
see, a gen xer would never compare the massive unemployment of the late 70s and early 80s with whatever hardships are occurring today. i remember when it wasn't unusual for young people to be unemployed for years, whole cities and regions across the anglosphere with 30 percent or more youth unemployment, families with three generations of long term unemployed.
i don't begrudge young people today any kind of prosperity, but it is the lack of even an awareness of how deeply those structural changes bit and how long they lasted that grates.
i have, quite seriously, had gen yers at interview, on the back of bugger all qualifications, expect remuneration in the high 5 figures and sometimes even into 6. (i'm talking oz dollars.) i really don't know how deep or long financial hardship would need to be for these kids to change their mind sets. my guess is they would just sponge off their ex hippy parents till it all comes good again.
anyway, i digress. it is the collusion between boomers and yers to freeze out the generations that respectively preceded them that sees people in their late 60s and early 70s treated as useless and dated. it is merely incidental that as an xer i understand how it works.
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
catrinksa Posted Aug 11, 2008
To add to that tangent, this gen yer does not would never compare today's "hardships" with those of the 70s and 80s either. We were barely embryos at this time and so can't even begin to compare our lives to that time. No offense was intended by my response; I don't mean to start a competition of which generation has it hardest! Gen y are all well aware that they have never had it better, they have never been richer, more prosperous, given more oppotrunity etc.
What I meant to point out is that in today's job market, a gen xer would in most cases be preferred over the perceived arrogance of gen y. They have the experience and the humility that employers want instead of raw talent and a scroll.
Have you considered why the young people you interviewed overvalued themselves so much? They have been told since high school that the world is our oyster and that we are very lucky, have never been richer etc (see above). They are told, "Join the teaching profession! Join the legal profession! Become a doctor! Join big business! Earn megabucks!" only to stroll into University and be told that, actually, there aren't really that many jobs for us at the end of it all. For a lot of them that doesn't quite seem to sink in.
This is swiftly becoming a rant full of sweeping generalisations, so I will stop! Do you not think that the freezing out of the 'in-between' generations can work both ways, though? i.e. if gen x and the pre-baby boomers lost out to the more prosperous generations, in the midst of worldwide inflation, do you not perceive that the arrogant gen y, who are yet to unleash their full impact on the job market, could be frozen out in the same way?
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
Researcher 1300304 Posted Aug 11, 2008
i think in part it is a response to raw numbers. boomers got their generational name because of the post war spike in births. for reasons of economic depression and war, the relative number of people born in the 30s and early 40s was lower. following the baby boom, the contraceptive pill and increased participation of women in the workplace lead to yet another fall in the numbers of births from the 1960s on. in oz, not only is there a mini baby boom happening, but the numbers of young people, gen y, is inflated by immigration. for those caught outside of these spikes a myriad of social and economic forces are aligned against them.
altho i started on something of a rant, the reality is that a politician in his/her late 60s or early 70s does not have a large, definable, age demographic to lay claim to. i expect the phenomenon to be short lived as boomers move into their post retirement years, but will then re emerge as the much smaller gen x follows in about 25 years time.
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
BouncyBitInTheMiddle Posted Aug 17, 2008
This is quite interesting, I had no idea what Generation X even was, or that people thought or identified in generational terms rather than just age. So to have a browse around the internet and find all these articles about how downtrodden they are is a surprise.
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
BouncyBitInTheMiddle Posted Aug 17, 2008
Also, I can't help wondering which generation is to blame for all the banging on about WWII.
from boomers to y without a pause for common sense
Researcher 1300304 Posted Aug 21, 2008
they are sometimes called the 'great' generation. mostly because they survived the triple horrors of the depression, ww2, and having boomers for children.
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