Quote:
Originally Posted by zerospinboson
Your cheap populism disappoints me, Harry. Blaming it all on the young is as old as the bible, and it proves nothing, other than that the generation that raised them either collectively failed as parents - which seems rather unlikely - or that the younger generation just grew up in a different environment, and was raised differently, with parents that got them everything they ask for without ever telling them that they'd still be happy if they "wanted" a little bit less, because they could just afford it, or because they were willing to go into debt themselves.
Sure, you can call that expectation unrealistic, but to issue a blanket "sua culpa" and stopping there is just intellectual laziness.
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My parents were of the generation who were children during WWII, and they grew up with rationing, etc (there was rationing of most things in the UK until the mid 1950s). Consequently, people of my generation (ie born in the late 50s/early 60s) most definitely did NOT have the "you can have everything that you want NOW" attitude that I get the impression is commonplace today - we were taught to wait until we could afford to buy it. I don't know whose "fault" it is that the "I can have anything I want now" attitude came to exist, but the fact that is DOES exist is undeniable, and personally I think it's a very bad attitude to have - it leads people into debt.