Whoopi Goldberg has come under fire after she made some pretty lazy and misinformed comments implying that the reason millennials feel that raising a family and buying a house are out of reach is because they simply aren’t working hard enough.
via: MSNBC
Speaking on “The View,” host Whoopi Goldberg insinuated that millennials feel like traditional life milestones are out of their reach because they’re not working hard enough.
“Apparently millennials and Gen Z have a much different view of the American dream than past generations,” she said Wednesday. “Data shows that soaring inflation, student debt and limited room for advancement in the workplace has made them feel that milestones like affording a home, starting a family, excelling within the corporate structure are out of reach. Does every generation feel this way at some point? I say yes.”
“I’m sorry — if you only want to work four hours, it’s going to be harder for you to get a house,” she said later in the segment, before adding: “Every generation is told, ‘You’re gonna do worse than your parents,’ and you know what? People pick it up and they do what they do, and they raise themselves. ... It’s called being a good citizen.”
Ignoring the fallacy of lumping people of different demographics and economic backgrounds into a group, this argument is flawed. (Also, what is this mythical four-hour workday, and how can I have that?)
Goldberg argued that millennials aren’t unique in feeling as though career advancement, having a child and homeownership are unattainable for them, because every generation has had those same fears — that’s fair. She then suggested the difference is that millennials are lazy, recycling a tired trope that has been repeatedly debunked by actual data.
Millennials are in their late 20s to early 40s at this point. Many of them own homes and have successful careers and families of their own. You can argue that many, if not most of them, actually have picked themselves up and done what they needed to do.
But it’s also undeniable that millennials on average are, economically speaking, worse off than their parents. Many of them entered the workforce during the Great Recession, and since then, they’ve experienced the slowest economic growth of any generation in U.S. history because of a variety of factors, such as the Covid pandemic. Many of them are grinding at 9-to-5 jobs or hustling as gig workers, hoping to slowly chip away at their student loan debt and maybe pay it off before they die. Many millennials who work hard have very real economic anxiety because of the climate they came of age in.
Older generations will always find something about younger generations to complain about and vice versa; it’s an odd cycle that even millennials and Gen Zers perpetuate against each other. But it is surprising that this stereotype about soft, lazy millennials is still so persistent, especially when there are plenty of other complaints about millennials to be had — just ask the zoomers.
This goes to show how uninformed she is regarding this subject, and how privilege plays a huge part in her ignorance. Millennials and Gen Z have come to the realization that the so-called "American dream" is a farce. I really wish there was someone on the panel like Alyssa (who is a millennial, BTW) to push back on what Whoopi was saying because she is absolutely wrong.
Are there some lazy people out there who want to be famous without putting in the hard work required to maintain such a thing? Of course there are. However, when rent for a one bedroom apartment in New York is $2,000 and the living wage isn't even high enough for most people to afford an apartment on their own, that's the reality and it has nothing to do with laziness.
I would expect someone like Whoopi to be far more understanding especially since she has spoken about her early days in comedy where she lived in the projects and was on welfare.
So I don't care how much dough she's rolling in. She needs to realize that most people are struggling due to the financial crisis, the housing crisis, student loan debt and the fact that the minimum wage is still in the crapper.
People are having to work two+ jobs in order to make ends meet, and are paying off so many things that they can't catch up. So yes that's why it's so bad that millennials and Gen Z aren't having children because bringing kids into the world is too expensive.
The financial crisis of the boomer generation has been trickling down to Gen X, millennials, Gen Z and soon Gen Aplha for the past four decades.
So instead of Whoopi making a dismissive, know-it-all statement about a topic she doesn't fully understand because she's from a different generation, what she should do is speak to people from that generation (not her grandkids and great-grandkids) and try to understand where they are coming from and the struggles that we have to deal with.
Or better yet give the younger generation some advice on how not to deal with the struggles her generation had to go through, because I would never want my children to have to struggle financially and have anxiety on how they're going to make ends meet. Let's try and help one another and stop the trauma olympics pissing match.
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