The one challenge facing the 13th Generation (born somewhere around 1961-1981). If you look at the 13 challenges for the 13th generation node, every item is some sort of fix for things the baby boomers (and previous generations) did wrong, or a continuation of things they wanted to do but never did.

Basically, we're screwed as a generation. Except for the computer industry, there were (and to an extent are) no real careerish jobs, just make-work and layoff fodder. Remember the recession during the Bush years? Subtract the 13th Generation from the statistice and it disappears. The whole sexual revolution and social revolution stuff hit when we were growing up. Great fun for the parents, not so good for the children that came home to empty broken homes, divorced parents, and all that crap.

The G.I. Generation, the one that fought World War II, gets all sorts of government handouts. Think AARP here, where they get Social Security, Medicare, retirement communities, and things like that while we support them through taxes and cuts to education and social programs aimed at young people. Social Security meltdown, National Debt, depleted natural resources are their gift to us.

The Silent Generation, parents to a good portion of us (with a few older boomers like my mother at the tail end), therapists, teachers, social workers. The ones who run the bureaucracy we deal with. Kids were inconvienient to their quest to recapture their lost youth. Litigation, divorce, bad TV, "self esteem" instead of work because it was easier.

Boomers, the generation that everything refers to. Look at the papers: Boomers facing retirement like no one has done it before. "Turn off the lights, we're the last ones out" and we get left in the dark picking through the debris. Look at the trends they started, and who got the punishment when things went wrong? Live the life for free, change into yuppies, legislate and sell it to the highest bidder.

The future isn't completely bleak though. About the time we graduated school, things improved. Finally stuck in a rut in the workforce, and things improved. Sort of. If we can keep one half of the coming generation from self-destruction, then maybe it will have been worth it. I've seen both sides, the kids benefitting from the improvment and the ones trapped in poverty hoping for escape.


Maybe you think this is some pointless rant. Maybe you agree. i don't really care. i would like to see other points of view.

A good bit of the underlying facts were gleaned from 13th Gen by Neil Howe and Bill Strauss. Some of it's accurate, some of it different as you approach the younger edge. Read and think.

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