OK, boomers; look at what we've left for our grandkids

[Warpy]

13. My picture wasn't quite as rosy, since I made women's wages

and they were far, far less than yours. Male students could work part time. I had to work full time for less money in order to survive.

However, my parents made enough to offer considerable help. That's the main difference in my case.

We didn't leave this shit to them, cheap labor conservatives who refused to raise our wages for 50 years did that, whether they were Republicans or "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" Democrats. They all fucked us over three ways from Sunday and they never asked our permission to do it.

Our grandchildren will have a better world in one way, at least: they won't face the labor oversupply that allowed these cheap bastards to depress wages. We're aging out, retiring, and dying off. There won't be ten applicants for every job when they hit the labor market.

Yes, automation and AI will cut into a lot of what we did for work, but that's not a bad thing, ending mind numbing and repetitious work.

These days, I tell bright kids to consider a 2 year degree in a field they can stand so they can pay the bills. Life is screwy and they never know where they'll end up and I certainly went through enough career changes to make anybody dizzy. Being able to pay the bills will present them with choices that just jumping into an expensive 4 year degree program with a mountain of debt won't give them, especially when they're not passionately academic in nature.

Every single generation comes into the world with a shit sandwich of problems the preceding generations were too busy to solve. We had our own to deal with, like 30 years of wondering if every new day would be nuclear Armageddon, having our wages depressed below subsistence, and watching our jobs exported by a bunch of greedheads. We also managed to make civil rights progress at the grass roots level, no mean task in a country full of hidebound conservatives.

So, Gen Z, we're sorry about your own shit sandwich. You'll be sorry about the one you leave your kids and grandkids. It's the human condition.