Young people in American weren’t the architects of the economic downturn in this country. We didn’t invent mortgage-backed securities or adjustable-rate mortgages, didn’t loan money to risky borrowers on the assumption that housing prices would continue to rise, didn’t allow for the creation of a financial industry so powerful it could take unhealthy risks knowing that if they didn’t pay off, we would keep them from going under. And yet we’re the ones graduating college to a world of 9% unemployment where, if we’re fortunate, we serve Cowboy Burgers at Applebees to pay off $50,000 of debt. Politicians can talk all they want about inheriting an economic mess from their predecessors in Washington but the truth is that they’ll do just fine for themselves financially in an economic downturn. The people who really inherited the mess are young people. We have every right to be pissed. Yet when we become vocal about our frustrations and decide to Occupy Wherever, many in older generations balk and dismiss us as either misguided, at best, or as lazy socialists looking for a government handout we can in turn use to get high. We’ve been accused of being an apathetic generation, content with the status quo, unwilling or uninterested in fighting for anything. In Occupy Wall Street young people have found that thing we are willing to fight for. But those same folks who said we are apathetic now say we should stay at home and quietly accept a culture we didn’t create. Which is it?
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