What are Millennials “Entitled” to?

“Millennials are entitled to a good life!” claims the entitled millennial, immediately drawing criticism from older readers who fire off short, snarky messages from their Galaxy Tabs. (Shout-out to Jim, an angry man with a Galaxy Tab who told me I’m a “woman who overcomplicates everything” and “a young person who has no common sense.” I hope he’s well.)

Before we go any further, let’s clarify one key thing: 

I don’t believe millennials are entitled to a good life simply because they’re part of the “Me, me, me!” generation, as christened by Time Magazine in 2013, which noted that “the incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health.” (Ironically, and perhaps fittingly, the other “Me” generation title was given to none other than the boomers, thanks to the then-newfound pursuit of “self-fulfillment” in the 1970s.)

No, I don’t believe millennials are any more special than those who came before them—just that we’re younger, and newer. And what do we know about each new generation’s lives? Well, if things are working as intended, they’re better than the last. 

Staggering human progress creates some level of expected “entitlement”

Take the last 200 years, for example: A relatively microscopic blip of time in the span of human history, but an eternity of progress. In the year 1820, a staggering 89% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Up until now, at least, life has consistently, relentlessly improved for each passing generation, becoming easier, cushier, and longer. 

Life even 50 years ago would be unrecognizable to those born in the 21st century. 

Perhaps this is why it’s so frustratingly, paradoxically confusing why—for the first time ever—the pendulum seems to be swinging in the other direction (but more on that in a moment, and in this Wednesday’s podcast episode). 

The long-lasting tradition of resentfully calling those who come after you “lazy and entitled” is not new; it didn’t begin with millennials (after all, the boomers’ grandparents dubbed the boomers narcissistic and entitled, too!). 

It’s natural to see those born after you—and benefiting from technological advances that you didn’t benefit from—as self-obsessed snowflakes who rode in the back of Mom’s Escalade to kindergarten and definitely didn’t have to walk three miles in the snow uphill both ways.

But isn’t that…what progress is?

“Progress” is the way the industrial revolution meant the 69% of the American workforce who worked on farms in 1840 could move to cities and pursue other jobs (and, a century and a half later, bless us with the privilege of complaining about how expensive our studio apartment is in a New York City building with an infinity pool and dry sauna). 

“Progress” is the way the information revolution in the 1990s paved the way for many of us to have “fake email jobs,” working from the comfort of said studio apartments or dry saunas or infinity pools. 

“Progress” is the generations that come after you living a fuller, easier, less stressful life than you did. It is—at its simplest—forward movement. 

Fewer people in poverty. More literacy and education. Freedom to vote, get a credit card, and buy property, if you’re a woman. Less worrying about where your next meal will come from, or how you’re going to afford the roof over your head. It’s the freedom to ask questions like, “What mark do I want to leave on the world?” or “Who am I, really?” instead of, “Does that woolly mammoth look too close for comfort to you?” or, “Why did the potato famine kill all 17 of my cousins?”

“Progress” is the fact that my grandma would’ve needed my grandpa’s signature to open an investment account in her name and paid a broker steep fees to pick individual stocks for her, while I can open my pocket computer and buy a (practically free) bundle of the best companies in America with little more than $20 and an internet connection. 

The search for meaning

Our ancestors worried about survival. We worry about meaning. Self-actualization. And while we poke fun at the ephemeral, ethereal worries of young people today (should I put a period or exclamation point at the end of this email?), I’d argue this is a good thing—and no laughing matter. This is progress incarnate! 

In fact, the economist John Maynard Keynes worried in 1930 about how we’d all fill our time in the future when our working lives would be reduced to a mere 15 hours per week, thanks to vast, rapid economic productivity.

“For a while, it looked like Keynes was right: In 1930 the average workweek was 47 hours. By 1970 it had fallen to slightly less than 39. But then something changed. Instead of continuing to decline, the duration of the workweek stayed put; it’s hovered just below 40 hours for nearly five decades,” writes Rebecca J. Rosen for The Atlantic.

That’s right, people—the most famous economist known to business majors everywhere (aside from Econ Daddy Adam Smith himself)—was concerned that we’d all have too much time on our hands (joke’s on me ‘n you both, Keynes), presumably because time on our hands leads to this type of abstract, grand, existential pondering: wanting our lives to mean something. Wanting our work to mean something.

And in an era mostly devoid of defined benefit plans in retirement (read: goodbye, pension brick road), the ties and loyalty to any one company evaporates—and are replaced by a higher search for meaning (and, let’s be real, higher compensation). 

So what do you get when you couple the realization that you should be able to pursue a higher calling with befuddling wealth inequality, wage stagnation, and political turmoil? 

Well, for one thing, unhinged TikToks. For another, a shit ton of cognitive dissonance.

It’s hard to ignore the reality that we should be working less than our predecessors and benefiting from advances the same way they did. Instead, our fake email jobs somehow morphed into the opposite, according to Cal Newport in The New Yorker: 

“No one is asking you to clock in and clock out. They instead demand, in some ill-defined yet urgent sense, that you’re responsive and get things done. This autonomy has allowed modern knowledge work to evolve haphazardly toward an increasingly unsustainable configuration. The issue in this evolution is not how many hours you’re now asked to work but the volume of work you’re assigned at any one time.”

Sure, it’s not plowing the field, but plowing through hundreds of unread emails day after day, month after month, year after year is enough to make anyone want to bash their head into their webcam and call it a day for good—especially when your reward for plowing through said inbox is…still not being able to buy a house or pay off your college debt before you retire.

Going backward

Maybe that’s why many millennials in the United States feel collectively anxious: Everything from our homes to our education costs more than it did just a single generation ago. “Home prices have increased 7.6x faster than income since 1965 and 3.1x faster than income since 2008, accounting for inflation,” finds a study from Real Estate Witch.

…and higher education costs make these increases look paltry by comparison!

While we spend less of our income and time procuring things like food than ever before—our grandparents spent almost 18% of their income on food in 1965, as opposed to less than 10% today—the other things we need (namely healthcare, housing, and education) are harder to get. 

Blame it on second- or third-order effects of government intervention and corporations going increasingly buckwild in these industries (looser federal mortgage lending restrictions leading to the CDO meltdown that caused the 2008 recession, federal student lending leading to universities unabashedly charging exorbitant prices for higher ed, and even expansionary monetary policy leading to worsened wealth inequality). 

Blame it on population growth. Blame it on BlackRock.

Whatever you do, just don’t blame it on the millennials! We’ve got enough on our hands, in the form of crushing student loan debt and Gen Z TikTokers weaponizing our side parts.

The natural consequence? Generation Hustle.

Quit your job! Follow your dreams! Sell foot pics on OnlyFans! 

This is the result of both (a) being told your life and work should mean something, while also (b) struggling to beat wage stagnation fast enough to scrape together a down payment. 

The result is Generation Hustle: The petri dish in which we created the likes of Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann and Billy McFarland.

Entitled millennials who have scammed their way to the top (and, in three of the four cases, dealt with eventual fraud cases and jail cells—not Neumann, though; he waltzed off with nearly $1 billion for his exploits and has recently received even more from someone else to give it another go). 

In 2022, the rules feel made up. Addison Rae, for example, made a reported $8.5 million in 2021 from sticking her tongue out on TikTok—we see our peers getting rich from apps that sound like they were invented by a 2nd grader for a creative writing assignment, and have to reconcile it with our own realities, understanding that unimaginable wealth and fame is on the other side of a viral dance trend or a coworking space masquerading as a tech company. In that sense, leaning into narcissism and focusing on one’s self is practically a survival tactic—better hope you’ve got a strong enough personal brand and big enough following to support your GoFundMe when you inevitably need surgery that your health insurance won’t cover.

It’s a weird state of affairs, y’all—especially when you remember the average income of half our country (yes, the full extent of the bottom 50%) is $20,000/year. 

Maybe this is why it feels whiny and annoying to complain about our fake email jobs and gas prices spiking our Uber Eats delivery costs—when generations before us fought wars, shot squirrels in their backyards for dinner, and worked dutifully for the same employer for 40 years in an office. 

But those generations still had it better than the ones who came before them, who—just a few hundred years ago—didn’t have running water or electricity or indoor plumbing.

The idea that anyone is entitled to a good life is a relatively recent human phenomenon. Everything from affordable housing to universal basic income is starting to be regarded as a “basic human right,” when in reality, up until a few hundred years ago, the idea of being guaranteed anything would’ve been totally unimaginable. 

But that’s what progress does: It drives all of us forward (perhaps at the cost of…well, other things). For the most part, it puts our collective productivity, technological advancements, and human ingenuity to use, and that makes life better for everyone. The problem is that progress isn’t linear, nor is it a guarantee. We can begin moving backward at any time, and in some ways, it seems millennials find themselves grappling with that reality. 

Millennials aren’t any more lazy or entitled than those who came before or after us—we just want to beat out BlackRock for our starter homes and enjoy our avocado toast in peace.

Maybe nobody’s entitled to a good life, but it seems each generation should be entitled to a life at least as good as those that came before them.