World War 2 was a time of great peril for the world, when mad men with dreams of world domination took over some of the most powerful countries in the world, waging wars for that world domination they dreamed of. Our poor understanding of genetics at the time justified genocide in the eyes of some of these mad men. Through great sacrifice and a willingness to do literally anything to stop these mad men, a whole generation of Americans and Europeans made massive sacrifices to save the world.
No reasonable people I know of challenge the above narrative. However, if you save the world, there's a certain sense of entitlement that comes with having made that sacrifice. The aftermath of that entitlement - though preferable to what would have happened if they had not made that sacrifice - is still the foundation of many of the problems in our world today.
Our WW2 vets came home ready to fight fascism here in the USA next, and to prevent that revolution they were given "GI Bills" generous enough to not only pay for an ivy league education, but were also sufficient to buy a house with cash outright in addition to pay for that college education. In today's money, depending on how calculated the vet was in using it, the WW2 GI bill was worth about a million dollars.
The WW2 vets also inherited an industrialized economy that was already unionized. The last few generations before them had made great sacrifices to create those unions, but the WW2 generation only had to mutter the a few words including "fascist" and any politician in his right mind would start lecturing on the virtues of organized labor.
They then had the luxury of telling future generations that they were not as hardworking, and that war was good for us economically. This was the generation that categorically threw their unsustainably large number of children ("baby boomers") out on the street on their 18th birthday, convinced that anyone "could make in on their own in this land of great opportunity (where me and half my friends got a million dollar GI bill)."
Their kids, the baby boomers, had to survive in THAT world. They did everything they could to save the world in the face of entitlement that justified wide environmental destruction and massive loss of human life through war. The baby boomers had to take on home-grown racism the greatest generation ignored in the face of the foreign WW2 genocides. Any sense of entitlement the baby boomers had in taking organized labor or other societal advantages for granted was inevitable cultural baggage from the Greatest Generation.
Generation X saw the end of the cold war. We went from living in constant fear of nuclear annihilation to suddenly accepting the reality that "oh wait, no one really wanted to blow us up after all." As we came of age and the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers gave us "the world is your oyster" line they believed so strongly in, we ran into far more hurdles when it came to cost of education, and lack of employment opportunity. Education and organized labor had been severely neglected by these last two generations, and in their deteriorated state we did not encounter the opportunity the two previous generations had.
This instilled a powerful sense of criticism of society's assumptions, and we intentionally looked at the world differently. We started a technology revolution that transformed the way world politics happened. After the internet, no politician could hide what he was doing for long. Just how well you fared financially during this great technological revolution depended primarily on how financially prepared your family was to support you in getting an education or employment under those challenging circumstances, HOWEVER the vast majority of us Generation Xers realize that, unlike the last two previous generations.
The cultural baggage Generation X inherited was the "30 year mortgage" and the "40 hour work week." When the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers speak of 40 hours, they speak of a labor market dominated by unionized jobs, where if your workplace wasn't unionized, it had to compete to retain employees with workplaces that were unionized. Unions at that time were incredibly powerful, and their members reaped incredible benefits including every holiday known to the culture off with pay, weeks of other payed vacation time, weeks of "sick leave," and protection from being fired even when you took time off from work beyond all that time paid off. In general what they called a "40" hour work week was more like what Generation X, working in the grave yard of unions, would have called a "32" or even perhaps "24" hour work week. By contrast, when Generation Xers were able to take advantage of the technology boom, positions were not protected by unions and 60+ hour work weeks - unheard of in generations - were common place.
The Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers had the luxury of affordable real estate, education, and a labor market driven by high wage unionized jobs. In that world of stable employment, even if you didn't get a million dollar GI bill, going into personal debt for much less expensive education and housing made very good sense. However the jobs and inexpensive housing and education were largely not there for Generation X, and now we largely shoulder the burden of the expectation of previous generations by way of outrageous student loans and mortgages. We have learned the hard way that under normal circumstances, the wealth enjoyed by the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers can not be taken for granted.
If Generation Y or Millennials feel entitled to anything at all, it's simply that they don't expect to be thrown out of the house on their 18th birthday, kicked from the nest before it is even possible to fly. Thanks to the information access created by Generation X, they comprehend that the world isn't what previous generations told themselves it was, and they understand concepts like "three generational house holds" and "it's possible for an opportunity to be too expensive to be rational." They have transformed the technology infrastructure created by Generation X to be socially valuable, and now it's possible to contact long lost friends and family or be connected with far more people simultaneously than anyone could before.
Generation Y and the Millennials have uncovered a long lost secret once held dear by Americans: frugality. Generations before the Greatest Generation held frugality in high regard, and did not see going into debt for several times your annual salary for ANYTHING to be a wise investment. What you may be seeing as entitlement with these new up and coming generations is most likely the opposite: some things are NOT worth sacrificing for, and the world does NOT owe you anything, financial decisions MUST be made carefully, and debt almost always SHOULD be avoided. You only have so many years on this Earth, and if there is no imminent nuclear annihilation that we must all fend off by boosting our nation's GDP, it is possible that there could be more worthwhile ways to spend our days:
