DownIsTheNewUp
Well-Known Member
I agree with this a great deal, really. I think it's very difficult for us to square what aggregate data tells us against the lived experiences of ourselves and those around us. I actually encounter this a lot with the posts about how difficult it is for millennials, which I belong to as an '84 baby. Coming from a single income family in a semi-rural midwestern home as the second of four children, I managed to get a good, private college education with only $15k in loans, very little out of pocket expense, and a part-time campus job. 6 months after graduation I landed a job at a help desk making just north of $30k a year, got married, and bought a house at age 24 right as the recession was hitting in the summer of 2008. I held on to my job, got a couple of promotions, and managed to shift it into a professional career with a good salary and benefits. My modest home has appreciated in value, my loans are almost paid, and I'm trying to catch up to 401k savings goals. When I hear about how difficult my generation has it, I trust that the data I'm seeing is correct, but it's not the experience I lived here in central Indiana, or the experience my friends lived, or either of my younger siblings. I trust it exists, but it wasn't mine. Whether that's a testament to my luck, the diversity of experience within each generation, or a function of my specific geography, or all of the above, I don't know.
One thing I will say about the experience I detailed above is that I was, for a long time, highly unusual in terms of my age at the company I work for. My company made a significant effort to sustain its employees as much as it could through the recession (which also coincided with some very fraught patent-related timing for us), but with the net result that lots of the older employees got to full retirement age with an intact pension, but there were very few younger employees in the ranks. Now my company is experiencing major growing pains as the older generation starts to exit the workforce and is replaced by a younger set that lacks the institutional knowledge they would have learned through that experience.
In other words, I think a lot of the generational "split" isn't, at its core, about disputes as much as it's about a delayed handoff of the reins that would have occurred more gradually/organically had the financial crisis not happened.
I'd say it's a lot of luck, a touch regional (though I know a ton of people from Indiana who moved to either Denver or LA because the job market was fucked in the city or town they came from) and partially that you are old enough to have entered the job market prior to the recession. The fact that you already had a home prior to the recession is case and point to this. Or the fact that you got a private education while incurring less than 15k in debt. Or the fact that you were able to buy an house off a 30k a year salary because you had money before the recession hit and, thus, could take advantage of low property costs. In Denver that would currently require a 100k per year salary.
Of my close friends and family in two different states, my brother is one of only two millennials I know that own property and didnt require a shit ton of help from their parents to make it happen.
My world experiences could not be further from yours as somebody whose core friends graduated from college between 07 and 12'.
The story given by @RenegadeMonster or @Bull Shannon is the norm in most parts of this country for people under 35. I appreciate that you are willing to take a step back and acknowledge the data though.
@jaycee I know that the snarkier, more cynical side of me is prone to showing its face in this thread. And I fully agree that its important the left be united versus divided. But I also see it as virtually impossible for us to be united or for me to view anyone as a part of the same team who does not support policies like M4A, student debt relief, or some variation of a green new deal. Because the stakes I see around me are so high that anybody who is against those policies = the opposition regardless of whether their more socially liberal than a Trump supporter.
Maybe that makes me an asshole? I used to be really good at talking to people with opposing view points and finding empathy within our gaps. But now I just find myself frustrated that so many people of older generations seem incapable of seeing the problems that my community lives through.
Interestingly, that last paragraph is very applicable to minority communities and how they must feel towards white Americans. Which circles back to why it's so easy to divide us.
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