Well yes there are some truths here, but each generation had it's unique character and flavour.

You do hear older people bemoaning the younger generations. It usually takes the form of "we did it tough without baby bonuses, maternity leave, Super, first home buyer schemes..." with a comment about the selfish younger generations still sponging off mum and dad at home.

Then you hear the younger generation bemoaning the baby boomers who benefitted from free education, cheaper housing/ratio to income and because of cheaper and available rental properties, were able to leave home earlier and become independent.

These sorts of comments are unhelpful in the current climate and we should spend more time working out how we can, together get ourselves out of the financial mess we find ourselves in.

The biggest noticeable change is the increasing mentality of spending and consumerism but all generations rode on the back of this phenomenon. It may be harder for Generation Y to throw off the burden of consumerism because they grew up in it but people are very adaptable and there will be very little choice in the matter.

Timothy Watson has not done Generation Y any favours by writing this article.

Everything gets a regular airing in the media. Current affairs programs are a good example; they seem to have a set agenda, each item being dragged out at least once a year. Subjects like homosexuality, Muslims, fat people, aborigines, anorexia nervosa, best grocery prices, young blondes with 26 investment properties. And, of course, the generation wars, including Generation Y.

I monitor the media fairly closely, and I thought people were over Generation Y: they don’t seem to have been getting the regular and periodical media bashing. But, Timothy Watson has relit the fire in the apparent belief that he will help them. But, in saying: “Young people have been aggressively targeted by banks and financial organisations with pre-approved credit cards.” he surely suggests that the Y’s don’t have the brains to resist pressure from banks and other organisations after their money? I wonder if the Y’s would think that was a little insulting, especially when their parents and older people still often fall into the credit trap, or buy all sorts of junk they don’t need because they saw it on TV. Mr. Watson puts a lot of young people in the childishly naïve category of saying ‘it’s not my fault; it’s those nasty banks, shops and car dealers who’ve put me into debt’. Some probably do say that, just like some of their parents; but, a whole generation?

Tim also brands the Y’s as ‘victims’: “…what good does it serve blaming the victims”, he asks. While many of the young people I know would be the last people I would see as ‘victims’, is he not encouraging the less able and weaker ones to see the ‘system’ not themselves, as being in the wrong?

The author also tries to blame the credit suppliers and providers of goods. The ‘blame others syndrome’ again. Not good for people he thinks are too useless to make their own decisions.

I have my own not-always-kind-opinions of the Y Generation. But this bloke makes them look like morons.

I'm a war time baby, does that make me a blood brother of the boomers?

What a pile of bull manuer this artical is.

"More people missing university places" my foot. I see students, if you could call them that, with OP 18s [well below average] getting into science courses. Those science courses having to teach year 10 maths, & english before they can even start a propper syllibus. Thank heaven they don't go even lower in the pile, with uni places.

Then we get Pelican talking about our free education. It wasn't us pelican. I had to get a couple of honours, & 3 As, in a proper exam, & be in the top 8% of my year, [OP 1 or 2] to get a scholarship to do my engineering. It gave me fees, & books, but no more, other than holiday employment. Then I had to work for the organisation, at moderate pay rates, for 5 years, after graduation. Not quite free.

Still, why knock the Ys, their no worse than any others. I have 3 of them.
One owns more than half of their new $550,000 home.

One is totally independent, at less than 20, & has never sponged.

The other, with the highest income, is doing well, but has required help a couple of times, because of an impusive nature, nothing to do with any generation gap.

I'm sure all three would reject the claim that this article has any relationship to their lives.

When I was young I had to walk to school with no shoes in the snow for 25 miles. Young kids these days don't know how easy they have it. We also had to watch TV in the dark because there was no electricity. I think that was from Ted Bullpit actually...

It's a funny world. Young people will always be thought by the old as irresponsible and spoilt and lazy, and old people will always be thought by the young as intollerant and judgemental and inflexible.

Why people pay attention to lazy pigeon holing of people into generations basically for marketing purposes astounds me. I predict in 50 years generation Y will be complaining about the new generation bionic, with their fancy pants hydrolic limbs knocking them over in the streets. We had to walk using the power of only our muscles they'll cry.

Hasbeen
I wasn't dissing any generation. Education was free when I started uni in the late 70s and you actually had to be accepted on merit - no fee paying places. When I say free I meant no HECS and hence no post-education debt.

I also worked during my studies and had a bit of help from my parents. I did not qualify for TEAS (I think it was called). Most uni students worked in casual jobs unless their families were rich or they lived at home. I moved cities to go to uni so that choice was removed.

My main point was that it is futile to play who is the most hard done by.

It is a bit difficult to know where and how to start, but to give a prime example of the deterioration of the Education system and society as a whole; - In that in Marcos Einsfeld- Federal court Judge and the person responsible for and the President of the Human rights commission in Australia – A person who has been found guilty of fraud on a number of occasions- Someone who is guilty of plagiarising a PhD theses – and now Perjury –

Within a system that has been corrupted by mediocrity , idiotic and stupid behaviour – now consider this type of person as a National treasure ; And there are many thousands of examples just as this one.

- Then how do you explain to younger generations and expect them to understand – when the whole system is constructed on a paradigm shift of what constituted good is evil , and evil is good – who is explaining it to generation Y - ? and how is it that they would ever know , when it is never told?

They seem to have become the generations of lost souls and no Idea- That is not their fault.

Timothy's article is a playback of generational history.
As the Three Yorkshiremen would say, "we 'ad it tuff!"