Posted on 08/15/2016 11:06:57 AM PDT by Lorianne
Millennials are not some vast unsolvable mystery. According to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau (PDF), they earn $2,000 less than their parents did at a comparable age, they are more likely to live in poverty, and they are more likely to live at home.
But Baby Boomers and Gen Xers still seem to find it hard to believe that basic economic math can explain much of the younger generation’s behavior.
After several news outlets, including The Daily Beast, reported that rates of millennial sexual inactivity in early adulthood are surprisingly high, armchair social theorists came out in force to blame it on everything but the fact that nearly one-third of young adults are still living at home.
One right-wing college news website found a way to attribute the finding to millennials’ desire for “safe spaces.”
Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat speculated on Twitter that it was an example of the “porn paradox,” whatever that means. Others attributed it, predictably, to the effects of technology or increased anxiety. A Rutgers biological anthropologist even suggested that millennials might be too “motivated” and “ambitious” to even bother with sex.
The most likely explanation—which was mentioned in the study itself—is that parents’ basements do not make great boom boom rooms. But who needs Occam’s razor when you’re publicly opining about the behavior of an entire generation? Lower wages sending 22-year-olds back home after college isn’t nearly as sexy as complaining about porn or political correctness.
The truth is that lower wages and poverty can account for so many of the things that older generations find so mystifying about millennials.
For example, millennials drive less than their parent’s generation—and until recently, at least—were relatively uninterested in buying cars. As The Atlantic reported in 2012, this crisis prompted automakers to appoint “youth emissaries” and come up with new car colors like “techno pink” and “denim.”
But trying to make cars cooler doesn’t change the fact that, as CityLab found, there’s a significant gap in vehicle miles traveled between millenials who make over $30,000 a year and those who make less. Simply put: Cars cost money and millennials have less of it.
Millennials have also been shamed for how much they spend eating out instead of say, saving for retirement. “Millennials Are Spending an Embarrassing Amount on Brunch and Takeaway Pizza,” Vice recently declared.
It’s easy to chalk that generational difference up to some sort of narcissistic short-sightedness but the truth is probably a lot closer to fatalism: When millennials can’t save for retirement anyway, why not spring for some bottomless mimosas instead of enrolling in a 401(k)?
SNIP
LOL...INCOMING!!!
“Catholics didn’t settle America.”
Maryland was Catholic. So was anything we got from the French and Spanish (Louisiana, Florida). Many of the Indian tribes as well.
And as far as the Puritans were concerned, Episcopalians/Anglicans were covert Papists anyway. Dutch New York shared a Calvinist influence with the Puritans, but from New Jersey on south the Puritans had zero to do with anything.
Baby Boomers are exactly the selfish little turds the "Greatest Generation" taught them to be. For all the good things they did, the parents of the Boomer generation caused most of the social ills now bursting through the skin and becoming festering sores. The Boomers just followed in their parents footsteps.
JMHo
You missed the point.
The problem today is the missing Puritan work ethic; not the present Catholic charity system.
I don’t have a problem with MGTOW at all. The pool of women now days isn’t so great. But I have to be fair. Just as women have unrealistic expectations of what a relationship is via romance movies (divorce porn), millennial men think that it’s normal that woman should engage in vile acts they see on the internet. There brains are so fried from the internet porn that sex with a woman is not stimulating.
Internet porn is likely one of the greatest deceptions Satan has created in some time.
Didn't know that, but there ya go. Did the Lutheran Swedes who settled PA and New Jersey, who invented the log cabin, not have a similar work ethic?
Not sure why we lionize the Puritans so much. *shrug*
How’s all that big government social programming working out?
One thing I learned a long time ago: the difference between a man having an "opinion" and one having an "attitude" is whether the relevant woman agrees with him or not.
How do you validate that statement?
Talk to me about this on some other thread and you’ll find out exactly what I think about those kinds of Catholics. Socialism was condemned by Leo XIII:
https://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/L13APOST.HTM
Google: Porn+Millennial+Crisis. Start your research there.
“One thing I learned a long time ago: the difference between a man having an “opinion” and one having an “attitude” is whether the relevant woman agrees with him or not.”
Absolutely agree. There’s a standard for a woman, and a standard for a man. The two vary wildly. Another favorite is when the woman thinks you’re wrong you must admit 100% guilt immediately. If you think the woman is wrong, she just turns it back on you and gets mad at you for a few days.
Are you not getting the part where I am a skeptic?
I do not need to “research.” I need a falsifiable argument from YOU.
Just wow, dude. Assume much?
As a postscript:
Haven’t you ever wondered about the remarkable similarities between the proverbial reaction of an infatuated young girl to a romantic rival, and the “doctrinal” criticisms of pornography?
I honestly believe the best bet on getting any traction on Roe v. Wade would be the following:
right to privacyof medical records WRT the government in the Constitution.
Good observations, but it should be noted that feminism has poisoned American women, and once you realize that feminism is the mode of thought that hates everything feminine it all becomes much clearer — they're taught to hate the feminine, but being women it can't be their fault (by feminist philosophical 'reasoning') so they try to release their self-hate onto men, but since that does nothing to address the underlying causes they generate more hate, it's like a sore that never heals because of the temporary relief of scratching at it and reopening it.
Young men these days seem almost afraid to lead, which is understandable when you see how men are portrayed in the media and the incessant indoctrination in schools. (The last show with a respectable father-character off the top of my head was Family Matters. [Granted that I don't watch a lot of TV any more.]) — And given that the authority in their lives has been often rather arbitrary and unjust [think about zero-tolerance school policies] it is rather a natural outcome.
>My generation had ‘a longer chance’ to do something about it, therefore we are responsible? I don’t think so. I understand your frustration, believe me I do, but your argument to me seems akin to a child saying, ‘I didn’t ask to be born’. Guess what, neither did I!
>
No, I was responding to your ‘against our will’ comment. For THAT, yes, your generation is responsible...In as much as mine will be, or the next, if the wrong is not corrected.
Lastly, IMO, your analogy is way off. There’s a difference between ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ vs. ‘You have no authority to enslave me since birth’. The latter has righteous, and correctly so, indignation.
Haha... nice line of questioning.
Always fun when facts and logic decimate feelings and opinion.
Our military is in a bad way under the current administration. I think (hope) the majority of the people going in are good people with good intentions. But under the current admin, they're sure going to have to keep their heads down while the unworthies are darling-ed by the higher ups.
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