{"id":15288,"date":"2012-05-30T09:09:08","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T14:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15288"},"modified":"2014-03-18T08:25:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T13:25:06","slug":"boomers-versus-millennials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/05\/30\/boomers-versus-millennials\/","title":{"rendered":"Boomers versus Millennials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/05\/30\/barbara-kay-if-this-is-war-the-millennials-dont-have-a-chance\/\" target=\"_blank\">Barbara Kay<\/a> on an insight into the generational conflict triggered after a waiter dumps a glass of water into her lap:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We were dining at a good bistro. The waiter \u2014 early 20s \u2014 accidentally knocked a glass of water onto my lap. Suppressing annoyance, I was summoning a gracious smile to acknowledge his forthcoming apology when instead he chirped, \u201cIt\u2019s okay, stuff happens.\u201d Stung, I responded, \u201cYou\u2019re unclear on the concept. You\u2019re supposed to say \u2018I\u2019m sorry,\u2019 and I\u2019m supposed to say \u2018It\u2019s okay, stuff happens.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>Our narrowed eyes locked: the Senior and the Millennial (a.k.a Gen Y or Echo Boomers). I was thinking: Your teflon complacency comes from a lifetime of helicopter parents and teachers ensuring you were failure-proofed to protect your precious self-esteem. He was probably thinking: Why aren\u2019t you dead yet so I can get a decent job and afford the meal I\u2019m serving you.<\/p>\n<p>He would have a point.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re witnessing an unprecedented generational social tussle. In 1950, people my age were doddering retirees. Today, we\u2019re healthier longer, enjoying still-productive lives. By clinging to our jobs, or starting new ones, we\u2019re blocking the natural economic pipeline. Yet we\u2019re also hanging on to our untenably expensive government benefits, because politicians genuflect before our massive voting numbers, not to mention our tendency to vote in higher proportions than the already far less numerous 18-34s.<\/p>\n<p>But I have a point too. Cossetted, self-satisfied millennials lack humility and competitive drive. They think real life will echo their easy ride through high school and the artificially inflated grades they got for their dumbed-down university courses. An October 2011 National Report Card on Youth Financial Literacy polled 3,000 recent high school grads on their expectations. More than 70% erroneously assumed they\u2019d own their own home in 10 years. The average respondent over-estimated his future earnings by 300%.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barbara Kay on an insight into the generational conflict triggered after a waiter dumps a glass of water into her lap: We were dining at a good bistro. The waiter \u2014 early 20s \u2014 accidentally knocked a glass of water onto my lap. Suppressing annoyance, I was summoning a gracious smile to acknowledge his forthcoming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,79,53],"tags":[598,407,956,375],"class_list":["post-15288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-education","category-politics","tag-aging","tag-babyboomers","tag-millennials","tag-parents"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3YA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15289,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288\/revisions\/15289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}