So the argument is the how can young people pull themselves up from boot scraps with dead end jobs and limited opportunities. This is the very reason y they have their hands out and are entitled. I do not agree with that attitude but i understand their perspective. If you are told you're entire life you'll get a good job and have a upper middle class life if you do this, this and this, while ur parents work at the ford plant, you're going to feel screwed when best you can find is working as a temp at whirl pool.
I think you have a good point there, our current generation of working adults from 40ish through the early 20 year olds were all raised by or heavily influenced by the Boomer generation telling us to go to school, and with a college degree you can have a successful life. No denying that.
However, today's world is not that world. College degrees are not longer a conduit for a "guaranteed' secure job. That is because the baseline requirements for some indutries and jobs have changed, some of the degrees are downright almost useless for a secure job and the cost of a college degree has quickly outstripped the economic advantage to the degree. There are many reasons for this and none are easy fixes. Secondly, as Joe described our "idea" of a middle class or upper middle class life is very skewed compared to most of the rest of the world and that's "our American" perspective. Finally, the path to success that our parents and grandparents followed is not the path to success today, the job market is more fluid and requires a completely different mindset and skillset than the "move up the totem pole" of previous generations.
We have tried to maintain the same plan but not changed it or updated it to today's world. This leads to a feeling of anger and disappointment and feeling "robbed". However those individuals also lack the perspective on how skewed our world view is compared to most of the rest of the world. There is also the aspect of personal responsibility for making decisions (good or bad, or with good intentions that ended up bad) that some seem to have issues dealing with. If you look back most of your memories of your parents are when you were a teenager or later...that's when your parents were probably near or entering the peak of their earning potential and had moved past the tougher years of the 20s and early 30s. Now you have these younger kids who are trying to emulate or keep up with their parents lifestyles at peak earning years while in their early years. Then you have the influx of media that shows all these incredibly unrealistic lifestyles that they try to emulate and then you wonder why they make unwise financial decisions and end up horribly in debt. Its not sustainable but something has to change.