There's been social media attention recently to the issue of Generation Y (generally accepted to be people born after 1979ishand before 2000ish) being unprodcutive and generally unhappy in the workforce. You can see a popular story/meme here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html
The essence of this story is that people in this demographic have unrealistic expectations, face unrealistic and somewhat imaginary pressure from their peers and are going to struggle with career paths as they discover that they aren't special and building a successful career takes work.
I stumbled across this story for the first time while reading a rebuttal on deadspin.com: http://aweinstein.kinja.com/fuck-you-im-gen-y-and-i-dont-feel-special-or-entitl-1333588443. The author of this story stumbles across a couple of nuanced points; that the Millenials may feel special when they shouldn't but that society is so stacked against them that their fucked anyway so why bother? It's an interesting point, as part of conferences I've attended in my career I've heard more than one speaker casually reference how the baby boomers (children of the generation that fought the two world wars, particularly the second) have let society down and created situations like global warming and a series of rapidly escalating financial crises. I wouldn't say I would agree that any of these loosely defined generations are better or worse than eachother, but I would agree that a) The students I work with by and large all face issues of entitlement b) Many young professionals I have hired face significant issues with entitlement and c) When you look at macro issues such as North American health care system or the growing wealth gap, we clearly have a problem.
This brings me to my last thought: I saw an interesting interview on the Daily Show last night with Robert Reich. Available on this link in Canada: http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/shows/thedailyshow?videoPackage=138682. He tells Jon Stewart, the host of the show, to be optimistic because ultimately Americans make the right decision. If we extend this argument to theoretically all of us may eventually make the right decision, then another part of extending Mr. Reich's hypothesis comes into play: These problems will be fixed when we decide to fix them. If we decide that the growing wealth gap in Canada reported in the last census (from September 13, 2013), http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/wealthiest-1-earn-10-times-more-than-average-canadian-1.1703017, is a problem then we can demand that the problem be fixed. We are not constrained by the current choices presented to us, we need to demand better.
When faced with this kind of thought, I refer back to Saturday Night Live. Fix it. Find the problem, fix it, repeat as necessary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo3uxqwTxk0. I don't claim to have the specific answer, but if you're a person who finds yourself relating to either of the stories I referenced above about the Millenial Generation (aka Generation Y) then I suggest you take this approach. We face solvable problems, we just need to fix them.
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