My Turn: You're 18 You're Out the Door!

And Get a Real Job While You're At It, You Bums

My Turn, the first-person Newsweek feature that covers a random assortment of topics from Dude, Where's My Bridge to Nowhere and I Can't Cook Like Grandma, has always been a fave of mine. Primarily, because it allows people to shamelessly air the dirty laundry of life in a major media publication. It can also provide a fascinating look at mainstream trends in your generation that you isolated yourself from long ago by signing up for military service. After reading a Politico article about this new wave of young voters, it sounds like these youngsters are looking for "change" in the form of free government healthcare, free college tuition, and free beer money from the tooth fairy. Call me a cynical asshole if you must, but it's well known that people tend to vote their self-interest and riding the feel-good train to fame and fortune seems to be the lofty aspirations of all these would-be Paris Hiltons based on polling data.

But a looksy at these two My Turns gets to the root of the problem with many young people today, they are just too doggone self-centered and woefully dependent on their parents. An NYC denizen describes her "subsidized" friends living up every hipsters dream of having a studio in SoHo:

Higher rents and the need for deeper pockets are part of the charm associated with city living, but urban pricing aside, it is possible to live in any city regardless of your age or income; it just takes a little budgeting and prioritizing. Surrendering to lifestyle flexibility may be unattractive, but sometimes it's necessary. It's easy to "keep up with the Joneses" when financial responsibility is someone else's problem. The fact is, my peers who flood out of designer stores, arms adorned with shopping bags, wouldn't be able to afford their purchases without ringing up a massive credit-card debt. By continuing to provide for their twentysomething kids, parents hinder their children's ability to be financially responsible. If you don't learn to budget early on, what will inspire you to do so when your finances become your own prerogative?

Another ex-tutor talks about getting paid by well-to-do parents to do their kids homework while the little darlings are out screwing in the backseat of Mom's Lexus SUV:

Welcome to the world of professional paper-writing, the dirty secret of the tutoring business. It's facilitated by avaricious agencies, perpetuated by accountability-free parents and made possible by self-loathing nerds like me. For three-hour workdays, the ability to sleep in and the opportunity to get paid to learn, I tackled subjects like Dostoevsky while spoiled jerks smoked pot, took naps, surfed the Internet and had sex. Though some offered me chateaubriand and the occasional illicit drug, most treated me like the help. I put up with it because I feared working in an office for $12 an hour again.

This frightening trend will most likely lead to these spoiled turds growing up to be CEOs of large corporations looking for more and more government bailout money to fund their pricey lifestyles. This will have a crippling effect on our society as urban decadence is publicly financed, while schmucks employed out in Rubes-ville have to work longer hours to make ends meet and pay their taxes.

Due to a court-order from that smartass judge, I'm not allowed to father children, but if I had some kids I would do them a favor and give them the boot right when they finished high school (with parental affection of course). The world is an interesting place when you make your own way, and it would help prevent a burgeoning class of skinny-jeaned hipsters from continuously trying to vote themselves largesse at everyone else's expense.