Boomerang Generation

A word coined by the media to describe the current generation of young adults (roughly ages 18-35) who still live at home with their parents and are not financially independent. The word "boomerang" implies that the kids come back home from college or elsewhere to live with their parents after not being able to support themselves financially in the real world. The boomerang kids are the sons and daughters of the aging baby boomer generation. Newsmagazines like Time have sharply criticized today's youth by giving them the label of the boomerang generation. The boomerang phenomenon can be attributed to many things. Firstly, thanks to eight years of a republican Bush presidency, the American economy is in shambles. America is facing a huge deficit because of the ongoing war in Iraq. Not to mention a terrible fuel crisis that is causing the cost of living to increase exponentially with every passing day. Although living expenses may be increasing in every possible way, wages are not increasing greatly. This has caused inflation of the american dollar. Euros are worth more than dollars these days. And it is hard for young college grads with respectable degrees to find legitimate work these days. The only work cutout for young folks these days is often extremely low-paying, demeaning and insulting to their intelligence and capability. Many jobs are also being outsourced to places in Asia as well as to fresh of the border immigrants. Hell, you could be talking to someone in India when you pull up to a Wendy's drive thru at 2 AM. The newly built republican economy has caused the richer to get rich and the poorer to get poor in this country. The people with the most money in this country are old rich white suburbanites and the poorest are young minorities in urban areas. Since the start of Bush's presidency, mid sized cities with large young minority populations, like Baltimore, have become more dangerous while their rich white vanilla suburbs that resemble retirement communities have become some of the richest counties & towns in the nation. Oddly enough, the inability for young people to be financially independent is not accurately reflected in the ever-present American media and pop culture. Popular music and culture no longer reflect the real lifestyles & ups and downs of young people as Grunge Rock & Hip Hop music did in the 90's. Nowadays, all popular mainstream music is corporate owned and operated formulaic, watered-down droning sound that celebrates hedonism, money and being an illiterate consumer. And it seems like this message really resonates with today's youth. Young people are spending more money that they don't have then ever before. The average American college student is neck high in credit card debt. Young people rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt buying expensive meaningless material shit like clothes. Other young people chose to get involved with dangerous illegal activity like selling drugs in order to put food on the table or to just always have the latest pair of jordans and a matching outfit. Young people struggling to make ends meet these days face the most scrutiny from the older mostly white republican folks who have all the money in this country. Old people with money often blame the work ethic of today's young people. What the baby boomer generation does not understand is that today's youth have it rougher than they did in certain respects. For example, employment and wages for twenty-somethings was at an all-time high during the early 1970's when most baby boomers were coming of age. Nowadays, young people have it fucked up. However, success among young people is not impossible by any means in America in the twenty first century. The kid who created the ubiquitous Facebook was a twenty-three year old Harvard dropout.