It seems fair to blame young adults for their failures to launch. That is getting a job, being self sufficient and not living at home till they are thirty-five.
First of all in my jurisdiction of Ontario, there is a sub minimum wage for students under the age of 18. So first of all young people aren’t paid the same as others in the economy. I bet this would change if we allowed 16 and 17 year olds to vote.
Unpaid internships are a big thing in the USA. Usually they are only permitted in non profit companies. They are also permitted in for profit companies if it is seen to give more benefit to the intern than the employer. In other words the employer must teach more than they get work done for themselves in the arrangement.
Non profits have more unpaid interns. It is assumed that you subscribe to the principles of the non profit and so don’t mind working for free.
And again, In my jurisdiction of Ontario, to graduate from high school, you need a certain amount of hours of volunteer work. Obviously the movers and shakers in our society have not looked up volunteer in the dictionary. When it’s mandatory, it is not voluntary. So I hereby mandate the intellectual titans who came up with this, to go to the front lines in any war we are in in the future. I will say they volunteered.
Anyhow, we keep enshrining in law how young adults can have their work devalued. Then we accuse them of laziness, lack of success and not meeting the standards of a long ago age where work from young people was valued more.
Then we wonder about young people saying, “Okay Boomer.”
