Generations

A piece on pbs.org (here) asks whether the economic destruction wrought by the profligacy of the last decade has created a new lost generation.  Unemployment among twenty-somethings is up, marriages are being delayed, and a huge number of young people are opting to live with their parents after leaving school.  Aside from the rather dubious designation of the "lost generation" (wasn't Hemingway a member of the last Lost Generation?), the piece hits a nerve with me.  Our twenties are when we define ourselves; we're away from the influence of our parents, and its time to decide what we're going to be and whether we're going to be great at it.



If young people are not given opportunities to do that, if they do not have a collection of early experiences to build on, then they end up like me, who's just now figuring out how he'd like to spend his life, as a result is at least seven years behind where he should be.  My situation is my own problem, but it's a shame that there are so many in a similar spot because business leaders feel no obligation to the future of their society (and by extension, their businesses) and so avoid expanding their staffs by hiring and training young employees.  But then, when have the current crop of business "leaders" felt any obligation to anything?

Hope appears in another piece, recently in Time (here, though you need a subscription to see the full thing), about twenty somethings returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  They're coming back with discipline and skills and finding that no one wants to hire them.  So many of them make their own jobs, with start ups, or further education, and so hopefully will form the core of the real recovery that will eventually come about once we've extracted ourselves from those two financially ruinous wars.

I wish them the best of luck.