Future looks bright for fearful Millennials

The New York Times is zeroing in on Seattle’s millennials, highlighting a sense of fear and anxiety about the future.

A recent headline says it all: “Debt. Terror. Politics. To Seattle Millennials, the future looks scary.” But KIRO Radio’s John Curley and Feliks Banel argue there is something millennials, and their parents, are not considering.

Dori: We can’t have a generation waiting around for family to die

Curley: Millennials say they will not have everything their parents had. And they live in a constant state of anxiety. This is due to the fact they have come through the recession, they have seen their parents lose their jobs, they believe everything they see on the internet about the decline of America. And when their parent are asked if their kids will have it as good as they have, most parents say “no.” And that trickles down to the kid. And most kids think the future is dark and ominous for them.

Banel: That’s a bad way to live. Life is always unpredictable. You never know what bad things will happen. There’s war, depression, and recession. If you live in fear, you are missing the point. You just have to prepare. Some of the millennials profiled in the New York Times piece are about to earn $90,000 a year, and they all went to elite coding schools. They have all these things going for them. But they are overloaded with information. This is the first generation that has had to deal with devices that give them a constant, 24-hour connection with, mostly, bad news.

My parents lived through World War II, and they immigrated, they raised a family, they accumulated more wealth than when they arrived here – they arrived with nothing. They just did what they had to do because they lived through hell in the ’40s.

Curley: Take a look at, for example, the stock market. If the kids today were able to compare their opportunities to the opportunities their parents had — they have something their parents did not have, if they were investing in the market. And that is emerging markets. There were no emerging markets 20-35 years ago. Today, these kids have an opportunity to be involved in emerging markets. The future actually looks pretty bright for them. If they put their money aside, invest, they will probably find themselves with better returns. They will be able to retire. There is just more opportunity for these kids. But I think people always grasp at the negative.

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