Business

Just call us ‘Generation Why’

At about 15 percent, their unemployment rate is more than twice the national average, yet the so-called millennials (those born between 1985 and 1998) are more often than not portrayed as a generation of whiners.

The “Miserable Millennials” is one nickname; the “Me, Me, Me Generation” was the way Time Magazine decided to depict what is also widely known as Generation Y.

But for Americans born during those halcyon years and forced to make their way during more turbulent times, the best appellation might be “Generation Why?”

Why, for example, is it 20-somethings who have to deal with the triple-whammy of government-inflicted burdens?

First came the collapse of the housing bubble, then the burden of sky-high college tuition prices and now the latest blow: the vagaries of ObamaCare. Why, why, why?

In each instance, government interference — in the form of subsidies for home buyers, students or the uninsured — has produced unintended consequences that have landed firmly in the laps of those who are supposed to supply the fuel that keeps the American Dream alive.

This point was driven home at Thanksgiving when my 28-year-old nephew freaked out about a tripling of his payroll health-care deductions as a result of ObamaCare.

History hints that life will be tough for the millennials. A study of Americans born in 1920 — 10 years before the economy imploded into the Great Depression — showed they fared far worse economically than those born in the early 1930s, when the bad news was out.

Sure, there are the privileged few millennials who feel that they are deserving of riches beyond the imaginations of our grandparents, but those are rare exceptions.

For the most part, the 20-somethings quietly bear the burden of the entitlements that baby boomers now enjoy. But will they be shut out of the American Dream? And if they are, how will older Americans answer when they ask: Why?