Working Hard or Hardly Working

David Dawson

We live in a divided society. The term ‘You’ll never please everyone’ feels more relevant than ever as around the globe people are polarised by their opinions. Left vs right, new vs old, and, of course, Jacob vs Edward; it feels like there’s always a disagreement to be had somewhere - and thanks to social media, you don’t have to look too far to find it.

One of the more prominent debates - or 'feuds' would maybe be more appropriate - is the endless passive aggressive (and sometimes just aggressive) ramblings of millennials and baby boomers as they go at each other hammer and fist about who ruined everything, who’s had a harder time and who is just worse in general. So, who better than myself, a millennial, to see if there’s actually any substance to either side of the argument; or whether it’s just keyboard warriors with too much time on their hands.

Working Hard

According to many boomers this is a concept that millennials will not be familiar with. It’s the argument that’s bandied about the most; millennials love to sit and complain about the world and how hard life is, but really if they just got off their backsides and put in some graft, for once, maybe they’d achieve something with their lives. This is usually responded to with some quip about how boomers had a much easier time of things back in the good old days. So, is there substance to either side?

Well, as a millennial, it’s hard not to feel a little insulted when the generation before us writes us all off as lazy. It’s no secret that times are tough. The world is literally being destroyed, the economy sucks, politicians suck and the employment market sucks. House prices have gone crazy in this past year or so, and even before that were steadily increasing at a rate that is hugely disproportionate to that of the average salary. I won’t bore/depress you all with the figures, but the fact of the matter is that it’s just a lot more difficult to buy property these days, unless you’re in a very well paid job. Well guess what, that’s harder too. The employment market now is very different to what it has been in the past. How many stories have you heard from as little as 30 years ago of companies taking a chance on someone only for them to work their way up the ladder; or your grandad telling you he walked into some company or other, told them he wanted a job and got his first pay cheque the next week. Nowadays, even to come in at the very bottom of the pile, university degrees and experience just simply aren’t enough. Half the time you fill out two hours’ worth of application forms and skills tests for a job only to hear nothing back. So what if you went and got an education, so did the other 80 people who applied. Let’s not forget that we are looking into our long futures at a planet scarred by climate change and an ever-growing overpopulation problem. Whilst we aren’t angels, we certainly haven’t been around long enough to do that sort of damage. It’s like getting your inheritance through and finding you’ve been left a burning building – sure, you’d always wanted the house, but there’s not much you can do with it now.

Hardly Working

So it seems that life was just easier back in the day, right? People could walk into half decent jobs, earn good money and buy a house – and guess what – thanks to the housing market, you’d be able to sell that profit on for a ludicrous amount of profit 10 years down the line. Millennials aren’t just whinge bags, we have it tough!

Well, true…ish. Sure, things are tough right now, but when it comes to these social arguments millennials are just as bad as the boomers. It often seems that us millennials are so wrapped up in our own hardships that we forget that other people had their own. Of course there were some things that were better back in the day, but there are some things that are better now. The term boomer literally comes from the baby boom, a phenomenon during and after the second world war in which soldiers would return home, and after time away would want to start families. We are literally talking about a generation born into a world trying to pick up the pieces after one of the most brutal conflicts the world has ever seen. Even moving later into the generation, the 60s through to the 80s was a time of huge divide and was far from a picnic politically. Sure, we can look back and say that jobs were easier to come by and money was easier to make, but it’s not like it was all hunky dory. Also, is it fair to blame boomers for climate change? Everything these days is disposable; everything gets thrown away and everything is wrapped in copious amounts of plastic. It’s not always been like that, and as a generation we have to take some responsibility for how we act for the environment. After all, in the good old days, if something was broken it got fixed, not chucked.

So, maybe the boomers didn’t have it easy, but does that make it right to label us all as whingers? Well, sort of. I mean, we are a little, aren’t we? Let’s face it, as a generation we were born with the world at our fingertips. Thanks to vast developments in technology, we now have the attention spans of goldfish and expect everything instantaneously. Travel is easier than ever before and we interact with technology 24/7. Have we got used to the easy life it has given us? Recently, I was driving home from the Long Road festival when the sat nav on my phone that links to the screen on my car inexplicably decided not to play ball. The signal was blotchy and even when I managed to get some it wouldn’t link through properly – just all-around frustrating times. I remember an urge to launch my phone out of the window bubbling up inside me – but looking back now, it makes me realise that maybe we don’t realise how good we have it. I’m not saying our life is easy by any stretch, I know first hand it isn’t, but actually looking back at that I realised how privileged we are. I was annoyed because the device that at the touch of a button literally guides me the whole way home, tells me what lane to drive in and where the speed cameras are momentarily didn’t work, but what about times before us when people were juggling paper road maps and trying to figure out where they actually were; relying on road signs to guide them and just praying that they ended up somewhere familiar. A common jibe I see from boomers is that us millennials don’t understand how to save money, and that if we did, maybe things wouldn’t be so tough. This sometimes feels like a stupid argument, as if scraping together our pennies will be the difference between us being nowhere near and able to afford a house worth 15 times our salaries; but there is some truth to it. I know plenty of people who complain all the time that they’re broke, but don’t bat an eyelid at spending six quid on a posh coffee. Even when I was a kid, it seemed that luxuries were few and far between as our parents seemed to have to work much harder to make their money last, even though in reality they were probably somewhat better off. Sure, dropping your coffee order isn’t going to get you that house in the next 30 years, but that doesn’t mean we should just give up on saving money, does it?

I’m not going to say that any generation has it easier or harder, because the truth is I don’t think they do. Both present different challenges. Sure, it winds me up when a boomer calls my generation lazy, as much as it probably winds them up when we suggest that they didn’t have any real issues to deal with, or when we blame them for climate change.

​The real takeaway is that both generations need to look inwards. Boomers really need to begin to appreciate that actually, just because they managed to buy a house when they were 19 from a lower-than-average salary ,that doesn’t mean millennials should be able to do the same. The fact is, times are different now and it wouldn’t hurt to have a little understanding. Similarly, millennials need to realise that, actually, we are pretty lucky to have a lot of the luxuries we have, and that technology has certainly made some aspects of our lives easier. We also need to understand that we aren’t the first people in the world to have hard times, and that just because things suck for us doesn’t mean they don’t for anyone else. Beyond that, I guess the real takeaway would be to stop arguing with people on Facebook; it just isn’t worth anyone’s time and only serves to leave two people who have never met filled with anger and contempt.