They Just Hate Us.....

 I was with my nephew a large part of this past week. He is the one who just graduated from Texas Tech, and we flew out for his graduation. 

He is pretty much me, seriously. His personality, thought is well, me in a 21 year old body. And his dad recognizes this. He has gone back to Lubbock to work and ponder his next move. 

He and I talked for almost 10 hours about the thinking of Gen Z. 

If you are older than say, age 35, in general, they hate you. 

They think we've messed up the economy, the nation's politics, especially those of us in the Baby Boomer age group. Not individual people, but the generation as a whole. 

And in truth, the average baby Boomer doesn't understand what is going on with their grandchildren and what they are going through. 

They can't afford a house. They can't afford a new car. With the economy the way it is, the hope of getting married is just a dream for many of them. 

Now, don't think of it in SE Texas terms. Here is Beaumont-Orange-Buna-Lemonville, we are different than the rest of the world. Yeah, they are building new plants, refineries here, but there are other major industries shutting here and construction at said plants is temporary. Most of the construction workers are not permanent residents. ( Don't give me, " My husband or I work construction here", think about how many people are from other parts of the state/country.) And people are not moving here like the rest of the state. We are stagnate in growth.

We are behind the rest of the state, and well, always have been. Other than us, who in their right mind wants to move here, and it's because many of us see " here" as a panacea for living. 

Those "pine trees" call us back like a magnet. And many of our best and brightest leave because, there is no real opportunity here outside the oil industry. 

And the dating system they are stuck with just, well, I can't get my mind around. 

No longer can you go up to a girl and ask for her number or ask her out for coffee.....Doing so might get the police called on you, as you're seen as a "creep." Dating is all online through apps. And God-forbid you want to find out at some-point who else the person are "dating' is seeing someone else. And if they've slept with 50-60-90 people, well, according to Gen Z, you ask, it's like using racial terms around people of that race. I thought he was just "pulling a story", but I asked another person of that age group, and they agreed. 

Sorry, but, there is stuff you can get sleeping from people that don't wash-off, and penicillin doesn't cure. 

Again, don't look at this from a SETX point of view, we are behind the rest of America. And we will at some point catch up. 

They also hate us because there are more of us than them, and can out-vote them....They hate us because salaries really have not kept up with inflation.....They hate us because they have college degrees they'll be paying for the rest of their lives. ( I can't with a straight face tell a kid get a college degree, go into massive debt to teach.)

And they see AI taking over so many of their jobs in the future, including blue-collar ones. They are the ones who think UBI is going to happen whether you think it is good or not. 

They are scared to death the government will "fight a war" to try and cure the economy. 

I have been looking at the economics for 2025, and it doesn't look good. 

And whoever the president is, sorry, they can only do so much....

Anyway, this is not individuals. This is the generation as a whole and like I said, SETX is often an outlier. Sometimes our local economy is a conundrum compared to the rest of the nation. But it comes here at some point in time.