Wave

At some level this isn't at all surprising, a sort of "duh" result, but I think people tend to miss the broader implications. Your success in life is, to a great degree, determined by factors completely out of your control. Graduating in a recession greatly hurts your expected life path, graduating in a boom time greatly increases.

I marvel at all of the raging on the young and unemployed one sees in newspaper comments sections and elsewhere. People who came up when state universities were cheap, when defined benefit pensions existed, when health care costs were not prohibitive even for people with "good" insurance, and, at least for many of them, who didn't start their careers in the midst of a horribly long recession, have nothing but derision for people who lack the basic opportunities they had. Be assholes, fine, but have some awareness.

Consider JimBob:

JimBob wrote :

Kids should learn about how macro events can have huge effects in their lives rather than each be told that they are a special snowflake that can do anything.

I'm not even entirely sure what the message is here. We have the oft-stated view that The Kids Today all think they're so fucking special and life is and should be so fucking easy. And then we get to: those stupid kids should understand that bad shit happens and just suck it up.


I don't even really understand what the point is.