One side says young people are entitled, fragile, and allergic to hard work. The other says they inherited unaffordable housing, gig jobs, and burnout as a starting condition. Who's actually right?
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Add your commentim 60 and ill defend the kids. i bought my first home on one factory wage and my son cant do it on two degrees and two jobs. that isnt character. thats a rigged starting line and i refuse to pretend otherwise
Call us lazy while a house costs 9x the salary it cost 8x less than when you bought yours at 24 on a single income. We're not lazy, we did the math and the math is insulting.
everyone in here yelling across the generational fence when the people who actually broke the system are the same handful at the very top laughing as boomers and gen z blame each other for it. divide and rule, classic
my dad calls me lazy then asks me to fix his phone, his laptop, his smart tv and his car bluetooth in the same afternoon. we have different definitions of work and im starting to think mine counts too
or... they watched their parents give 30 loyal years and get laid off anyway, so they refuse to bleed for a company that wouldnt blink at firing them. thats not entitlement. thats pattern recognition
the 'boring stable career path' you mention barely exists anymore my guy. the pensions, the loyalty, the affordable training, you HAD that. you cant tell kids to take a path you already bulldozed
I teach 18 year olds. They're not lazy. They're tired in a way I didn't see 20 years ago. Tired before they've even started. That should frighten all of us more than it apparently does.
the 'lazy' label is hilarious to me. gen z works gig jobs, side hustles, AND a main job just to afford a shoebox. they work MORE hours for LESS security than any generation in 70 years. lazy how exactly
The generation that says 'just work harder' was the last one where working hard actually worked. That's the whole tragedy in one sentence. The advice is sincere and completely out of date.
as gen z myself: some of us ARE soft and some of us are grinding ourselves to dust. the loud entitled ones get the screen time and the rest of us get judged by them. youre meeting our worst on the internet
Fact: wages adjusted for inflation are roughly flat for 40 years while housing, tuition and healthcare exploded. You can call that whatever you want, but you can't call the people living it 'lazy' and be honest.
every generation thinks the next one is soft. our grandparents said it about us. the kids will say it about theirs. its the most boring tradition in human history and we keep falling for it
Gen X here, the forgotten middle child of this fight. We watched boomers pull up the ladder AND we hear the gen z complaints, and honestly? The kids are mostly right and nobody's listening to them. Or us.
mental health is the part everyone skips. its not that theyre 'fragile', its that they were handed a doom machine in their pocket at 11 and told to be productive inside it. the burnout is engineered
that last point is huge. you judge a whole generation by viral videos of the worst 1%, then wonder why they judge you back by the worst boomer at the town hall. algorithms feed us each other's villains
ok but as a manager some of it is real. ive had 22 year olds ghost interviews, quit by text, expect a promotion in 6 months. its not ALL economics. some of its a genuine entitlement shift
Both things are true and this thread refuses to allow it. The system IS broken AND some young people have weak work habits. Adults can hold two ideas at once. Apparently the internet can't.
nobody said they invented struggle. they said the deal got worse: more education required, more debt for it, less housing, less security, for the same dream. thats measurable, not a feeling
Every old generation had hardship too. War. Famine. Real poverty. The idea that today's young people invented struggle is its own kind of entitlement. Perspective cuts both directions, friends.
Counterpoint: working three jobs to afford avocado toast in a city you can't afford while refusing the boring stable career path your parents took is also a choice. Some of it is values, not just economics.
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