Considering that the boomer generation also spent quite a lot of effort raising their own children, I doubt they consciously said "I've got mine, screw young people" or "Pay my pension, who cares about schools?" It's incongruous that they would do so much to expand opportunities for their children in the private realm, with extracurricular sports and tutoring and whatnot, while simultaneously constraining them in the public realm. I think part of the problem is that no-one thinks of young people as a political constituency, whereas old people very much are one. Cutting state college funding is only thought about in terms of saving money. Layoffs and outsourcing and wage freezes are just thought about in terms of increasing profits. For some reason people don't make the connection between paying less taxes and the twenty-five year-old living in their basement because of crushing student debt and a dodgy job market.

While kids are young, parents tend to see their potential, and either think they are better then the loosers other people have born anyway, or focus their effort on giving them an edge over the competition. It's also not so uncommon, that young people themselfs are overly optimistic about their abilities. Sure someone is going to loose, but i suppose few parents assume, their kids would be the loosers.

Elderly people have barely any potential anymore. They have reached, whatever they could reach and thats it.

So essentially, most parents don't really care about the situation in aggregate, they just want their own kid to beat the competition?

So what do you make of all this ranting about the millennial generation (those born after 1980)? Are they spoiled and entitled and happy to feed off their parents' incomes? Did they make themselves unemployable while putting themselves in debt by choosing impractical fields of study because they swallowed a bunch of pablum about "following their dreams"? Are they (we) just not doing very well economically because they're (we're) idiots?

The overall opinion until quite recently seems to have been that the ecconomy overall was doing fine and by and large people get richer. And lots of people have a family history of upwards mobility, as a portion of the lower class advanced to middle class.

However there is now much fewer room for further advancement, and some people not even get to the level of their parents. But since upward mobility and an increase in wealth on the long run looks like a given, that is interpreted as temporary setback, that you can sit out. Your live from your parents only until you get a proper job. You can pay back your debts, once you get a proper job.

Wages have been flat for a generation. It takes about a generation for that effect to actually sink in to the popular gestalt. Therefore, until very recently, the idea that perhaps the system wasn't working and everyone was not benefiting equally (GDP continued to grow, and it was inconceivable that the vast vast majority of that growth was being reaped by a tiny portion of the populace, so the truth wasn't even explored) was completely unthinkable.

Therefore, anyone not striving was clearly failing to perform, for the system was obviously working*, and thus any failings had to be personal, not systematic.

*(As I just covered, it has in fact not been working for almost the entirety of my own life, and for the actual entirety of the millennials' lives. Their failure to thrive is, in fact, systematic, not personal.)

To add some concrete figures to this discussion, here's a study from last year finding that the wealth gap between the old and the young is at its highest historical level ever. It looks at wealth (net worth) rather than income, though. And it's about the US.



And this is because of the recession, and because of soaring student debts.

I can't find any data on earnings.

I'd be curious to see a comparison of consumer debt between the two groups, as well.