Generation Screwed?

Change is tough in the best of times; worse still when the air is filled with invective and half-truths. Fabrications and distortions are predictable features of any election year; but the most pernicious lie is the invented future. Anything said about tomorrow is speculation. There’s no empirical evidence to prove or disprove that which has not happened. Not that any of this inhibits a legion of political fortune-tellers in an election year.

The invented future du jour goes by the name of Generation “Screwed,” a metaphor which suggests coercion (or sex without pleasure). Generation Screwed is supposed to be that part of the Generation Y cohort, now entering the workforce, who will not be as well-off or as pampered (with jobs, Social Security, or Medicare, etc.) as were their parents.

A generation is usually thought to be 20-25 years; a “generation gap” is the assumed difference in beliefs or perspective between parents and their children. Conventional wisdom would have you believe that every generation has a unique worldview. You need a scorecard to play the generation game.

GI Generation (1920-1945) – [six million extant] – also known as the “greatest generation,” children of the Depression who fought and won WWII.