Twenty-somethings: Greedy and Shallow

For Shame USA Today. What a piss-poor reporting job!

USAToday reports that a new Pew Research Center poll (which USAToday co-sponsored with McNeil/Lehrer Productions) finds that Generation Y’s “top life goals are to be rich (81%) and famous (51%).” Implying, of course, that 81% Gen Y'ers have getting rich as their number one goal. When I read this, being a few years older than Generation Y (people born since 1980), I felt a surge of moral superiority course through me: how shallow, I thought. How naïve. How stupid.

But then I read the actual poll question: “Which of the following do you think people in your generation or age group think is MOST important…” The choices were such things at “to get rich,” “to be famous,” “to be leaders in their community,” etc.

Anyone see a problem here besides me?

This question is not asking what is MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU, it is asking what you THINK is most important to EVERYONE ELSE. HUGE DIFFERENCE!

People generally assign negative motivations to other people. I would probably have answered the question the same way: getting rich is the most important thing to most OTHER people in my generation; not for me, mind you. I want solve world hunger, help old ladies across the street, and feed little fuzzy animals. But no one else does.

Sorry, Gen Y'ers. I apologize for jumping to conclusions. It seems to me that Pew Research Center and McNeil/Lehrer Productions and USAToday have some sort of agenda to smear Generation Y. Probably because they are run by people like me, who think negative things about other people and love surges of moral superiority.