New Kid In Town
January 8, 2020 7:34 PM   Subscribe

Gen Z arrives in the work force. Millennials have long held the oft-craved title of youngest and laziest members of the workforce. But there’s a new sheriff in town. Gen Z.
posted by mono blanco (71 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh good, another article about how Millennials are bad
posted by aubilenon at 7:38 PM on January 8, 2020 [28 favorites]


Pretty darn tired of generation generalization.
posted by signsofrain at 7:47 PM on January 8, 2020 [62 favorites]


As an Old Millennial, I spent Christmas recruiting my Gen Z cousins into my Jetson's economy world vision. We live in the clouds because we destroyed the world, but we only work 10 hours a week.
posted by politikitty at 7:48 PM on January 8, 2020 [6 favorites]


The Millenials I work with are among the most motivated and hard-working people I've ever met. TBH it shits me because I'm pretty reluctant to work outside of work hours, and they'll make me look bad. I don't think this mob even grok 'work hours'.
posted by pompomtom at 7:55 PM on January 8, 2020 [17 favorites]


We have a 19 year old and a 22 year old (I'm assuming this is Gen Z) working in our warehouse and they are both some of the most focussed and successful newish teams members we've had in a long time.
posted by hippybear at 8:04 PM on January 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


I, a Millennial, have 2 people at work who report to me: a Gen Zer and either the youngest Boomer or oldest Gen Xer depending on how you feel about definitions.

It's like the setup for some kind of joke except the punchline is they are both wonderful and do their jobs very well while also being extremely protective of their personal time and I adore them both.
posted by phunniemee at 8:05 PM on January 8, 2020 [79 favorites]


my generation is so lazy, they had to invent a new word for being lazy and it spawned a small religion
posted by ryanrs at 8:07 PM on January 8, 2020 [19 favorites]


This is either bad satire or good trolling.
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:08 PM on January 8, 2020 [5 favorites]


I blame media. Have we even seen a depiction of a blue collar workplace since Taxi? And have we ever seen anything depicting factory or warehouse work?
posted by hippybear at 9:40 PM on January 8, 2020 [11 favorites]


All I got from this article is that the author is kinda mean and if I were a millennial, I wouldn’t want them speaking for me.
posted by Jubey at 9:44 PM on January 8, 2020 [4 favorites]


> And have we ever seen anything depicting factory or warehouse work?

Superstore (NBC) is pretty good at highlighting the difficulties faced by retail workers, including the ones who work in the warehouse. I don't know how it's doing ratings-wise, but it's a fun show and isn't afraid to take a stand on issues like minimum wage, immigration, etc. But I guess that makes it the exception that proves the rule.

Back on topic: no, fuck this topic. This article is trash and the generational cycle of abuse needs to die yesterday.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:45 PM on January 8, 2020 [16 favorites]


However much “exposure” the writer got “paid” for this, it’s exactly the right amount.
posted by armeowda at 10:25 PM on January 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


The Simpsons depicts a blue collar workplace.

e: wait, he wears a tie and has his own office. how does this work again?
posted by ryanrs at 10:35 PM on January 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


politikitty: We live in the clouds because we destroyed the world, but we only work 10 hours a week.

I liked that line so much I made a hasty poster for this Jetsons economy world view.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:46 PM on January 8, 2020 [9 favorites]


filthy light thief: Love the poster, but we both know Rosie doesn’t work a mere 10 hours a week.
posted by ejs at 11:18 PM on January 8, 2020 [6 favorites]


I did the author the courtesy of reading some of her other pieces, and they're mostly all the same disappointing brand of shallow zeitgeisty snark posing as satire - except these.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:46 PM on January 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


18 comments in and no "OK boomer"?
posted by chavenet at 1:38 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Rosie is automation personified. Because we all cried about Opportunity, why wouldn’t we give our robot help a personality to cure our crippling loneliness crisis.
posted by politikitty at 1:50 AM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]




Rosie is automation personified. Because we all cried about Opportunity, why wouldn’t we give our robot help a personality to cure our crippling loneliness crisis.


"Hi Rosie! Talk to me!"

--- "天皇陛下万歳!"
posted by Cardinal Fang at 2:40 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Have we even seen a depiction of a blue collar workplace since Taxi

Working-class sitcoms: a timeline

And there are a few missing here. I'd add The Office, for their warehouse characters, and how they dealt with warehouse v. office dymanics. It also doesn't extend to the aforementioned Superstore, which is great. Also I'd include any show set in a bar or restaurant, like Cheers or It's Always Sunny. Also Letterkenny.
posted by Miko at 4:07 AM on January 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


chavenet: "18 comments in and no "OK boomer"?
"

OK Zoomer.
posted by signal at 5:02 AM on January 9, 2020 [4 favorites]


Genzies sub foo king mill annuals.

phones constant.
posted by srboisvert at 5:07 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


I mean, probably there's an interesting thinkpiece out there about the workplace dynamics between Millenials (who represent the inflection point between a service/manufacturing economy and an information economy) and their younger counterparts (who have literally never been alive and conscious in a time when the sum total of all human knowledge wasn't available on a portable device in their pocket). It probably has a Marshall-McLuhan-esque thesis about the medium as the message, and how communicative norms have changed so drastically in the space of less than twenty years.

This is not that thinkpiece.
posted by Mayor West at 5:42 AM on January 9, 2020 [8 favorites]


I find it at least funny that so much of this article is just assigning millennials the role of gen x in this morality tale.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:42 AM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


This is just bollocks:
But Gen Zers aren’t exactly like us millennials. They grew up during a recession, and their attitudes about work and money vary wildly from those of their peers.
If gen-z grew up during a recession, young millennnials went to work during that very same recession and old millennials grew up during the recession before that.

Every US generation from boomers onwards either grew up with or entered the work force during a recession.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:45 AM on January 9, 2020 [11 favorites]


who have literally never been alive and conscious in a time when the sum total of all human knowledge wasn't available on a portable device in their pocket

I mean the iPhone came out in 2007 - are 'gen z' 13 year olds here, or is 'and conscious' doing a lot of work?
posted by aspersioncast at 6:12 AM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


As a GenXer I find this hilarious. I'm just trying to keep my head down in the hopes that I may be able to retire someday. Good luck, kids.

I mean the iPhone came out in 2007 - are 'gen z' 13 year olds here, or is 'and conscious' doing a lot of work?

The oldest Zoomers were 10 when iPhones came out, and Blackberrys and other smart phones existed before then. I think it tracks.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:21 AM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


I mean....

Young people are generally energetic and clueless and idealistic and bratty and hopeful and want a lot and don't know what they want and are too empathetic but too self-involved and don't respect their elders while not being entrepreneurial enough and don't understand money and want a lot of money even though they don't like money and...

Generationally? I don't think this changes from younger entering workforce to younger entering workforce very much. The circumstances of what's going on in the world change around young people that affects how all the different ways in which they interact with the workplace change drastically, but young adults are young adults, I think.
posted by xingcat at 6:30 AM on January 9, 2020 [7 favorites]


The Office, for all its problematic cringeyness, did depict, however ridiculously the warehouse crew (Pam's ex fiancee Roy, Craig Robinson's Darryl didnt get promoted from nowhere).
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 6:41 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


What the absolute shit was this? I get that it was meant as a joke but jokes only work if they're funny and this would be a lot funnier if the stereotypes about millenials even vaguely resembled anything I have encountered in life and also weren't making fun of people for being frivolous and picky about their employment situation when they have few if any options for work that is stable and can support them.

Like, maybe I'm just terminally online and this is entirely confirmation bias but not one millenial I know "admires those who are willing to tell their own story (on their parents’ dime) and craft their own identity (funded by the bank of Mom and Dad)" or "look[s] up to business leaders who’ve created things on their own, like Mark Zuckerberg and Kim Kardashian", everyone I know finds it absolutely exhausting that wealth is presented as achievable when in fact it is always subsidized by having a rich family (and who the actual fuck thinks Mark Zuckerberg or Kim Kardashian created things on their own? Do people...think this?). Millenials don't desire jobs? I thought we all desperately wanted jobs and worked hard at them, even though many people have shitty gig-economy jobs. And basically every single example was like this? This was awful and mean to people who are already having a super fucking hard time.

The worst might be the sentence "they want that job to be A) remote; B) without a boss; and C) extremely impermanent" which just sounds like a cruel joke to me because it feels like it's basically blaming millenials for the fact that they end up with unstable, underpaid gig-economy "jobs" (because you're not an employee, you're an "independent contractor"), just absolutely fucking vicious. Like, this is what working for Lyft or Uber or DoorDash looks like and you're telling people that this perfectly describes the jobs they want? It describes the jobs people can get that suck and don't pay enough to support them! I hated the others too but this one really stuck out to me. Jesus Christ!
posted by an octopus IRL at 6:53 AM on January 9, 2020 [24 favorites]


Every US generation from boomers onwards either grew up with or entered the work force during a recession.

Sure, but mine (ours, Gen X), in the early 90s, was fairly brief, and was followed by a robust recovery and then the dot-com bubble. Everyone was making money! Quite a contrast to the "jobless recovery" after the 2008 crisis.
posted by thelonius at 7:06 AM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


chavenet: 18 comments in and no "OK boomer"?

You outted yourself as an old. That meme has passed its peak, we're on WW3 gallows humor now. ;)

[I only know this because my wife, a high school teacher, keeps me updated on what the kids are doing (on my lawn).]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:11 AM on January 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


As a GenXer, I'm glad to simply be irrelevant to the conversation again. It means more time for day-drinking and snarky comments from a comfortable chair off to the side.
posted by bonehead at 7:30 AM on January 9, 2020 [32 favorites]


While the gig-economy does indeed suck (imo), I don't think the author was referring to Lyft/Uber/DoorDash type jobs there- to me, "remote" implies that you aren't working inside the building where most of your coworkers work. I think she was referring to jobs like "freelance technical writer".

Sure, but that's kind of what made it cruel? It felt like a monkey's paw situation like oh, you frivolous millenials with your desire to work remotely at a job you don't have to have forever, here you go, enjoy being a Task Rabbit! I also don't know that these ARE the characteristics millenials want in jobs, I think a lot of us want stability, but what really seemed so awful to me was that this clearly refers to jobs like "freelance technical writer" (and also, freelancing is fucking hard!) but these actually are characteristics a lot of available jobs have and they are absolutely destroying a lot of the people who do them.
posted by an octopus IRL at 7:48 AM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


I don't think the author was referring to Lyft/Uber/DoorDash type jobs there- to me, "remote" implies that you aren't working inside the building where most of your coworkers work. I think she was referring to jobs like "freelance technical writer".

I mean that only tracks if you're operating under the assumption that Millennials assume everyone works in an office. Which, if you read this thread, we don't.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:49 AM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


these branded generation pieces always attract a lot of energy and discussion

we seem to have strong views on how we've been classified by others. i'd just like to add, i am a Water Rat and it's Year of Metal Rat
posted by elkevelvet at 7:55 AM on January 9, 2020 [4 favorites]


This was really offensive.

I'm left wondering what the OP's intention was by sharing it with us. If they were trying to let us know that now it's not just Boomers, Gen X and Millennials getting bashed in the name of humour, and that Gen Z is now considered fair game by people who like to stereotype and mock, I suppose it was a reasonable thing to do. But if they considered the article funny they have a very different sense of humour than I do.

Someone above mentioned that the writer of the pieces is a Millennial and poking fun at her own generation is one of her stocks-in-trade. That doesn't excuse it from being hurtful. Self-deprecating humour is a good thing. But it only works when it doesn't attack other people. Just because the writer is a Millennial doesn't excuse her from aiming nastiness at other Millennials. You can make in-jokes all you want but when some of the people listening are members of the group of the group who will be hurt by it, and some of the people listening are not members of the group and will take it seriously and gleefully pile on with an attack that isn't even intended to be funny, it's not an in-joke, it's at best gauche and more likely straight on malicious.

Any group has members who hate themselves for who they are and are more prejudiced towards their own group than any outsider. People like that hurt their own group even more than the outsiders who attack.

I think that the writer of this piece is pathetic and mean. That's unfortunate because it is certainly true that Gen Z is entering the work force with no sense of entitlement and very little hope, and can therefore probably be exploited far worse than the Millennials have been. They may have been expressing a thought new to many of us. It's unfortunate that they wrapped it up in malicious snark.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:56 AM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


Wildly different attitudes towards work & money!

WILDLY!

Yesterday I saw some genzies just dropping jobs on the sidewalk like they were their millennial dad's empty flavored juul cartridges. They were also throwing away money because it was wrinkly and un-venmo-able.!
posted by srboisvert at 8:02 AM on January 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


I fucking hate the term zoomer and so far, the kids that self-identify as such seem to be some of the most absolute trash white nationalist dumbfucks. It raises my hackles every time I hear the word.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 8:03 AM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


TL,DR but I'm Gen X and the laziest person I know! Suck it Y and Z!!!
posted by josher71 at 8:21 AM on January 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


Suck it Y and Z!!!

I thought I was Y, but now apparently I'm just the last X, and generalizations about generations remain as stupid as they were when Brokaw did it.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:25 AM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


everyone I know finds it absolutely exhausting that wealth is presented as achievable when in fact it is always subsidized by having a rich family

Everyone I knew in business school and everyone at my professional services firm believes wealth is achievable by working hard based on where they were/are.

I don't, but there are millions who do. They're wrong, but they're there.
posted by avalonian at 8:44 AM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


Everyone I knew in business school and everyone at my professional services firm believes wealth is achievable by working hard based on where they were/are.

They are not wrong, it is achievable by those with professional salaries who have 'achieve wealth' as their goal, but it does take a while.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:05 AM on January 9, 2020


Article About Generations Makes People From Those Generations Mad: Film At 11
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:30 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


what I don't get is why this type of article, whenever it crops up, consistently reduces generations to their relationships to and their eagerness to perform work.

that's all there is to it, huh.
posted by One Thousand and One at 9:39 AM on January 9, 2020 [5 favorites]


consistently reduces generations to their relationships to and their eagerness to perform work

Welcome to America! Where education is for increasing productivity, health care is to make sure you stay productive, and retirement is the hope you don't die before the annuity from your productive years runs out!

At least that was the drumbeat the TV taught me growing up.
posted by avalonian at 9:46 AM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]



what I don't get is why this type of article, whenever it crops up, consistently reduces generations to their relationships to and their eagerness to perform work


People spend most of their time at work and work is one place where various generations commingle. Also, workers are measured. So in terms of producing statistics and thought-pieces, analyzing different generations as they compare in the workplace is the lowest hanging fruit.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:54 AM on January 9, 2020


It’s not always about work! Remember all those times when Millennials were ruining not eating avocado toast or whatever?
posted by aubilenon at 10:13 AM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


The oldest Millennials (b. 1981) are turning 40 next year. 40!!! Can we finally stop talking about them like they are adult-sized children now? 40!!! The Millenials are 40!!!

Millennials are the new olds.
posted by cape at 10:59 AM on January 9, 2020 [7 favorites]


Anybody who treats the Gen-whatevers as anything other than a weak joke needs to re-examine their eagerness to believe any random crap marketing consultants dish out.
posted by signal at 11:17 AM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


Generation "foo" are all marketing categories. Case in point: no other "generation" has been accused of even ordering avocado toast!
posted by rhizome at 11:39 AM on January 9, 2020


can we still drag posh edwardians
posted by poffin boffin at 12:29 PM on January 9, 2020 [8 favorites]


Knock yourself out, Beau Brummell died in 1840!
posted by rhizome at 12:53 PM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


first of all that was the regency
posted by poffin boffin at 12:56 PM on January 9, 2020 [7 favorites]


I don't think the author was referring to Lyft/Uber/DoorDash type jobs there- to me, "remote" implies that you aren't working inside the building where most of your coworkers work. I think she was referring to jobs like "freelance technical writer".

I think the author was also referring to a stereotype of what Millennials supposedly want, not what they actually want.

I've heard some older workers talk about Millennials exactly the way she does - only she's sarcastic and they aren't. I've head someone say, unironically, that Millennials wouldn't come to work for an 8am meeting, without thinking twice about the fact that many Millennials work in retail (like coffee shops) and may have started work at 5:30am (or earlier).

But I've identified the main factor which influences whether an older person thinks Millennials are lazy and/or entitled: they are inevitably well-to-do, and inevitably talking about their own children. It's not generation, it's just that many people raised in wealth are lazy and entitled.
posted by jb at 1:20 PM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


As a GenXer, I'm glad to simply be irrelevant to the conversation again. It means more time for day-drinking and snarky comments from a comfortable chair off to the side.

As a Millennial, I wish I could afford to day drink and purchase a comfortable chair.
posted by erattacorrige at 3:06 PM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


You have chairs?!?!?

In all seriousness, I use social media sparingly and sporadically but I do see younger people protesting and advocating for actual change like the climate and stuff. Maybe we should respect each other? It's sad and it seems like picking on them. As mentioned upthread it's kinda mean.

May just be me, but there was a younger person on the Ellen show and they were laughing at her because she didn't know how to use a rotary phone and things like that. It made me angry. Imagine if an elderly person was handed technology they did not grow up with or understand and was told to figure out how to use it on national television while being laughed at?
posted by VyanSelei at 3:16 PM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


I fucking hate the term zoomer and so far, the kids that self-identify as such seem to be some of the most absolute trash white nationalist dumbfucks. It raises my hackles every time I hear the word.

Zoomer was already taken by the Canadian Boomers. There is a Zoomer magazine that is targeted to current Boomers. It was a Znaimer (The Znaimers being an independent media mogul family in Toronto) rebrand of Boomers as "baby boomers with zip" and ZoomerMedia took over CARP (Canadian Association of Retired People). It was embarrassing (and egotistical) back when they did it in 2007. It's embarrassing now and apparently about to get even more insipid !
posted by srboisvert at 4:55 PM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


it is achievable by those with professional salaries who have 'achieve wealth' as their goal

And also manage to be extremely lucky, make all the right choices, and suffer no personal financial setbacks. For the most part it's still quite unlikely without inherited wealth, usually in the form of property.

I have a professional salary. There is very little likelihood I'll ever even be able to afford to retire.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:11 AM on January 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


I think it's funny.
posted by dame at 8:35 AM on January 10, 2020


For the most part it's still quite unlikely without inherited wealth, usually in the form of property.

You have to understand this is a circular logic right? No-one will ever become wealthy, except those who receive inherited wealth?
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:40 AM on January 10, 2020


I also think expecting me to show up at 8 am for a meeting is fascism, so
posted by dame at 8:43 AM on January 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


You have to understand this is a circular logic right? No-one will ever become wealthy, except those who receive inherited wealth?

Welcome to social immobility.
posted by jb at 9:07 AM on January 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


I don't ever want to read anything else by the doofus who wrote the article in the OP.

"Millennials: None. Or if they absolutely have to have a job, they want that job to be A) remote; B) without a boss; and C) extremely impermanent."

Really, just eat shit, what the hell is this!?
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:36 AM on January 10, 2020 [4 favorites]


No-one will ever become wealthy, except those who receive inherited wealth?

All those qualifiers weren't enough hmm?

I didn't write "No-one," but rather "For the most part it's still quite unlikely," which is not circular logic at all.

I realize not every MeFite lives in the US, so maybe you live somewhere like Denmark where the bootstraps thing is slightly less of a myth? In the US it pretty much is. The ladder got kicked away and social mobility is on the decline. If someone in your family didn't own a home it's increasingly unlikely that you will.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:54 AM on January 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


All those qualifiers weren't enough hmm?

Well my original statement already had a bunch of qualifiers and I don't really think your qualifiers added anything of value, but I guess we agree...

I live in the US and the thing I think Metafilter gets most wrong is social mobility, in that there are still huge numbers of people in the US doing perfectly fine, and that's why the talk of revolution is premature. Also, the number of people owning homes maxed out at like 70% of the population in 2011, and now it's at like 65%, so home ownership is not really a very high bar.

This doesn't mean that huge numbers of people are doing not poorly, but 99% vs 1% is wrong and it's more like top 25% vs lower 75%.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:18 PM on January 10, 2020


"Millennials: None. Or if they absolutely have to have a job, they want that job to be A) remote; B) without a boss; and C) extremely impermanent."

Really, just eat shit, what the hell is this!?


I don't think her tone worked, but this is another ironic statement, parodying what others have unironically said about Millennials - that so many have short term jobs because they like it that way, not because they couldn't find anything else.

So instead of asking "where have all the good jobs gone" (answ: predatory capitalism killed them), media pundits can talk about why Millennials are so flightly and "chose" not to buy a house (bc avocado toast) or keep one job, etc.

And then, to back up that point, they find one (probably trust fund supported) idiot to say how much they like the freedom of gig work, as opposed to 100 stressed out others worried about paying rent this month.
posted by jb at 2:08 PM on January 10, 2020


And then, to back up that point, they find one (probably trust fund supported) idiot to say how much they like the freedom of gig work, as opposed to 100 stressed out others worried about paying rent this month.

You probably don't have to talk to very many people (like IDK, 3?) before you find someone who is willing to talk about their own life in as positive a way as they can possibly manage and at least in a public interview gloss over the difficult parts.
posted by aubilenon at 2:16 PM on January 10, 2020


I live in the US and the thing I think Metafilter gets most wrong is social mobility, in that there are still huge numbers of people in the US doing perfectly fine, and that's why the talk of revolution is premature

For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades

New Research Debunks the Upward Mobility Myth


Now, because people (including myself) are bad at numbers and just want to binary (yes perfect equality! / No we have a caste system!), some people will underestimate mobility. But social mobility in the US is still substantially below that of Canada, and inequality of opportunities and outcomes still isn't great up here.

Is it better than the middle ages? Yes, but that bar is way too low - and the trend is a downward one.
posted by jb at 2:19 PM on January 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


I guess we agree...

Except we don't.

You accused me of circular logic I was not in fact using. I have seen a number of reports from pretty reliable sources that wealth accumulation in the US is largely predicated on the inheritance of real property. I still absolutely don't agree that amassing wealth is necessarily "achievable by those with professional salaries who have 'achieve wealth' as their goal" without the qualifiers I added. And the last OECD reports on the subject placed social mobility in the US as less achievable than the average OECD country and far behind many developed countries.

And to the topic at hand, I despair that the next generation is gonna still have to deal with the same bootstraps mythology I did. Still. Again.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:52 PM on January 10, 2020


As a UK boomer born in the 50s to a VERY poor single parent family I know exactly how limited social mobility used to be. This changed in the 60s and 70s and I was able to go to University though most of my fellow students seemed to from better off families. I got a decent job (and my career provided a so-so pension) and managed to get a mortgage on a house.

Today the same help does not exist, at the very least a student loan would have been a disincentive to a slum kid applying to University. Also today, after inflation, starting salaries seem much the same (if you can get a salaried position) but I calculate that after inflation house prices since the 80s have at least doubled (rents seem much higher too) and the affordability calculations are very different. I think things are more difficult for poorer UK kids today than they were in my day and with Brexit it is about to get a lot worse.

As an aside, I am unfortunate enough to know some people who were privately and expensively educated, I have frequently heard them decry the poor for fecklessness while mythologizing their own self-made success. The UK and US have that in common at least, the complacent middle classes think that life must be easy for others because it was for them.

I have no recent experience of America but would be incredulous if things were easier for poor American kids today than for poor UK kids. Social mobility bootstrapping requires government policy. I was fortunate to grow up when this was UK government policy. These policies do not really exist today and that is a shame.
posted by epo at 3:24 AM on January 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


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