I don’t think we remind young people enough that life is hard. Bad things happen.
We know, David Brooks. And better than you.
The job market for young adults is about as bad as the job market was for the general population during the Depression. We have to compete harder than than your generation ever had to, David Brooks, for far worse jobs. As we pointed out previously, a recent McDonald’s employment drive hired only 6.2% of its million applicants (comparable to the rate of successful applications to Yale), and now the average McDonald’s employee is 7.5 years older than she was in 2000.
David Brooks, we also know when old people are making bad things happen for terrible reasons. The pain of the employment crisis (inflicted disproportionately on young people) is not necessary pain. Your rationalization, David Brooks, of the “punish people that aren’t me or my children” policy track explicitly favored by Republicans and largely accepted by Democrats, that unnecessary hardship by young people that aren’t your children does a soul good, is maybe the worst, most obscene rationalization going.
David Brooks, fuck you.
