I’m already on record as having more than a marginal dislike of Generation Y. Now I see there’s a book, Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to be Young, designed purely to inflame my visceral hatred of these Nathan Barleys. It seems that while they’ve been taking these three month jobs to pay for walking trips in the Andes, they haven’t actually been paying for them at all. Instead, they’ve been mounting up debt on their Virgin credit cards. Gits. Anyone can do that: you’re just lucky enough to be the first generation that credit card companies have been willing to give stupid credit limits to. Now you’re complaining you have to pay it back and you can’t fit your canoeing lessons in any more? Bah!
My reason is too clouded to give a full critique of the book, but Slate has a nice counter to it, written by someone equally as embittered as myself.
