How To Make Millenials Happy

Via Instapundit, some great thoughts from Susanna Breslin on the subject over at Forbes. Apparently, we want to be happy and do work with 'a purpose.' Hardly what I would call earth-shattering news as that's probably what most people want to begin with. Of course, it brought down the usual condemnations in the comments... some highlights:

Aw, that’s nice…don’t expect mine revolve around you.

We’d all like to have a “fun” job that allows us to “play” and “experience” our “personal freedom” and all that happy bullshit, but someone has to work late and do reports, sort invoices and all that other dull stuff that makes the world go around.

Bummer buzzkill, dude.

Someone has to make the damn donuts.

What is it about Boomer/GenXers that can make them such absolute douchebags sometimes? And more important, who the hell are these twentysomethings, that way I can slap them for giving fodder to the elder and definately not wiser in their quest to send us all straight over the falls.

Seriously. I want to meet someone my age that actually has some of the characteristics that we apparently have... I'm sure they're out there. There are rich, spoiled suburban kids all over the country, but they're rich, spoiled suburban kids. Of course they're going to be selfish and entitled and dislike the fact that life's unfair. They've had it easy. (Another comment pissed and moaned about supervising young lawyers at his law office and what arrogant little pricks a lot of them are. Jesus man, they're lawyers. What were you expecting?)

I've come to the conclusion that whenever a reporter/blogger/writer/pontificator writes a long treatise about the travails and snotty entitlements of the younger generation they're taking their sample size from the richest, whitest group of young people they can find. The way my supposed generation (the Millennials) is usally described is as whiny, selfish, apathetic, naive, foolish who don't want to work for a damn thing and have it all handed to them on a platter.

Problem is, none of the people I know who are my age fit that bill. What I do think is that people my age just want to be left alone at some level. We don't want the government messin' with our junk (of the gential variety or otherwise) and we want the freedom to really make our mark on a country like that. We may be a little fluffy with admittedly idealistic notions of work, family and wanting to 'express our creativity' but the old buggers out there don't get it. Creativity is going to be what builds the economy and not just the economy but the economy of the 21st Century.

Sure, you'll have the usual frothy cream topping of whiny rich suburban kids, but the rest of us have been beating the streets, getting jobs, getting houses (in my own case), getting hitched and building an existence one brick at a time. Which is what we're supposed to do- these whiners of which you speak? Don't know 'em. Never met any of 'em. So, blogosphere, so journalists of the world, pundits of America: write me a story about the people in my generation that you don't talk too.

Then maybe, you might actually know what we're thinking...