En passant, voici un article d'une autre province (B-C). Les chicanes sont les mêmes intergénération(Désolé des mots en rouge, ce sont les mots sélectionnés pour nous faire sortir des articles par rapport à notre travail) Vient de :TIMES COLONIST (VICTORIA) :
Boomers need to shed sense of entitlement
Worry more about young people without jobs, less about your OAS
Rosa Harris-Adler, Special to the Times Colonist
"God bless our standard of living. Let's keep it that way. And we'll all have a good time."
- Singer-songwriter Paul Simon
Lucky us. Baby boomers in Canada spent most of their early-adult years having a good time while they dodged every economic bullet. Our kids, not so much. Many are getting shot right where it hurts.
Bullet holes in the wallet are one thing. Worse still, their expectations are being lowered every day. Their dreams are being driven to their knees.
We whine about the prospect of Old Age Security cheques on a diet. In the meantime, some 14.5 per cent of young people between 20 and 24 are pounding the pavement just looking for any kind of decent work, according to the latest StatsCan report issued in early February. That figure has gone down for the fourth consecutive month, true. Yet it is still just a shade under the highest it has been in nearly 15 years.
And it's nearly double the overall unemployment rate in the country. (In Spain, the youth jobless rate is hovering around 44 per cent. But we are here and this is now.)
The middle class may be shrinking. In our formative years, however, it was still thriving. The cost of a postsecondary education was dirt cheap. What's more, there were bursaries for those who of us who couldn't afford even that pittance. And when we started earning, housing was affordable, too. Yes, there was a major bump in interest rates in the early '80s, but that didn't last. Mortgages were generally reasonable, growth was constant, life held promise.
Does our generation's good fortune keep us from complaining? Think again. Entitlement is us. We grew up in an era of near full employment, when we could choose from a wide range of satisfying jobs that promised advancement and long-term income security. Back in the day, employers happily kicked in as much as they could to RRSPs and company pension plans.
Great benefits were a given, too. Treating workers well was an important recruiting device when jobs hung like low fruit on trees. And what with a postwar economy on steroids, even the federal government - a far kinder, gentler institution than it is today - was looking out for its young. Remember OFY and LIP grants? Every crazy notion - street clinics run by hippies, trailblazers staking out Canada's Continental Divide - these and other projects all stood a great chance of being funded. And guess what? Some seemingly harebrained ideas added wealth and value to our country. The chance to build and create also gave us precious work experience that served us well when the funding tap went dry.
If we suffer a little from the sin of pride, I suppose it is inevitable. No question, we laboured hard. If we were wise, we socked away our money, too. Perhaps we groaned when the economy went south four years ago.
That prompted many of us to stay put in our positions. But with our mortgages likely in hand, most of us have recovered. So if we're still clinging to the thought of OAS, it might be time to get real.
Many of our kids don't know what it's like to contribute - to the safety net or anything else of worth - and it's heartbreaking to watch what's happening to those we nurtured so carefully. Their future is at risk. Nowadays, the ones lucky enough to find work are often reduced to languishing in jobs that offer little hope. Take a walk through any mall nowadays. Look at the blank eyes of the retail soldiers on the front line of an economy in retreat. Sense the desperation of the servers who scramble for tips.
"At least I have a job," said Ontarian Emily Kisch, 22, one such server who holds a bachelor's degree in communications. "Some people don't even have that."
Working alongside her are a public relations graduate and a respiratory therapist. That's a lot of cold water thrown on burning youthful ambition.
Then there are those running grow-ops. "I looked and I looked for something else," says one student I know confidentially describing his summer "job." "Believe me, this line of work is all I've got going."
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