I really hate my generation. We're nothing but a bunch of spoiled, entitled, technology obsessed brats that have contributed little to nothing to the world. We've had our asses wiped for us since birth and have been told how special we all are. Contrast this with the World War II era generation and you have a steep, STEEP decline.
After WWII that generation had a lot of advantages that the current generation does not. It was unimaginable to buy a house back then and lose money.. it was just the opposite, you could buy a house, sell it 10 years later for a crazy, crazy profit and buy a bigger, better house. Rinse and repeat. It was easier to build your assets and wealth back then, and you could have a single income from an average job and take care of a family of 4 with 2 cars in the garage.
Investment opportunities aren't there either with some government bonds that would yield a 9% return and pay put every 6 months.. those are a thing of the past.
Yes this generation is a bit more entitled, but we have to work just as hard for half as much these days. My last job I was working as a tech. Proj. Manager and the expectation as a salary based employee was to basically have my job be my life..I was working 70-80 hours a week, having to set my alarm at 2am to wake up and run scripts etc, and they didn't even pay me what the market was paying for my position, nor did they pay overtime and only gave 2 weeks of vacation a year for a highly stressful job... and when you tried to take a vacation day, you were met with scorn and disappointment, and encouraged to either not take the time, or bring your work laptop on vacation with you so that you could follow up on emails etx... after all, who doesn't want to continue WORKING on their vacation right? How dare us entitled kids want to enjoy a vacation after a year straight of 70+ hour work weeks!!
I took the job with an understanding that after a year of proving myself they would significantly increase my pay..
Well, a year later I had 33% of the companies accounts, including the top 5 biggest ones that paid the most money, and I was training new project managers and was the team lead.. they were hiring new Proj managers in at $10-$15k more a year than I was being paid because they desperately needed more to handle the growth and because there was so much turnover in the company.. I asked for a raise and was basically laughed at.. so my "entitled" self took a week long vacation, came back and put my 2 week notice in. They were shocked.
I'm making significantly more at my new job now, with a 40 hour work week but I was lucky because a lot of people still deal with what I was dealing with.
The world isn't the same as it was in the 40s. Every generation thinks they're the greatest, although I think my generation is pretty bad but our generation has different challenges than the ones before us, and we have a different set of skills growing up on a technological age.. humans weren't meant to sit infront of a computer screen for 13 hours a day, but this generation deals with that reality every day and people wonder why we're so ADD etc
Add that to the fact that college tuition is crippling people the second they enter the workforce with insane debt, on top of an economy that continues to see record gains and profits for corporations but a fraction of that is actually going to employees. I know lots of people that went to college for 4-6 years and can't find a job in their field and are working retail or as a waitress/waiter, barely staying afloat working their ass off.
I don't think it's entitled to want to work hard like our parents did before us and achieve the American dream of owning a modest house to raise a family in.. that dream is significantly harder to achieve now, even with a decent job