Editor:
Re: You can afford a house in Burnaby if you work as hard as we did, NOW Letters
I read through Don Anderson’s opinion with amusement and some disappointment.
I would like to address my fellow young people.
The struggles that Don faced as a young person and the challenges we face are certainly different; they may come from the same place because humans in general want the same things, yet our circumstances are different — vastly different if we’d compare Don’s generation and Don’s parents’. But each following generation has the benefit of added hindsight. I know that many of us feel that following our parents’ path feels wrong.
The struggles that Dan and his fellows are facing are felt by young people as well. And I’m sure I speak for all that the thought of seniors struggling does not bring us any joy.
But we are humans, and it does test our patience when we experience our elders wag their fingers at us, telling us to wait our turn, especially in hindsight.
To distill it down, Don is a proud victim of attribution bias. A sordid phenomenon we see too often. Does it come from a place of insecurity? Do they lack emotional maturity? Do we become like that as we age? Are they many, or are they a few squeaky wheels? For some reason, they all feel like they come from the same vein, the trucker convoy vein, NIMBYs. They take for granted all the benefits of the social contract and attribute their situation to “hard work.”
I indulge in presumption, but my advice to people like Don is to be grateful and to not take themselves so seriously. You have your backyard, be grateful for it. If you still feel the need to complain, it probably isn’t our fault. We’re here to at least pay for your CPP, OAS and GIS; in return, you left us scrambling for shelter, among other concerns. If we are all struggling as a society, a democratic society, again, dealing with the fallout of your generation’s actions and inactions, I’ll venture that in the balance of things, your generation has a greater part in this mess than we do.
Boomers assume too broadly that we want to end up like them. This may be true of some really wealthy ones who are leashed to their parents, or some questionable parvenus like Taleeb Noormohamed, but my hope is that they are the exceptions as more than half of Canadians under the age for 40 sees the Baby Boomer legacy as negative. We are not surprised to learn this. And as we continue to innovate solutions to the long term trickle down destructive fallout of that generation’s actions and inactions, this number is only bound to increase. There is a silver lining though, this situation is pushing us to be exceptional.
Young people in general all around the world have revealed themselves to be so much better than their adults, this has become obvious during the pandemic. This gives me so much hope.
I will agree with Don, however, that young people should not be living in cages. Young people cannot raise families in cages. There is no community without families. There are the families who have built these ugly cages, and we all know their personal wealth have reached ridiculous heights. They haven’t done anything illegal, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. Our government is too happy raking in property transfer taxes, and we now know for a fact that funds accessed through ill means have been integrated into our economy. Too many Canadians have multiple homes while so many cannot find shelter. So, when we are told to “wait our turn”, it is equivalent to asking us to put our life on hold. Don’t do it.
Young people are already building affordable green communities away from metropolitan centres, and the avocados are following us. We don’t need our parents’ capital for this. We will be known as the generation of empathy, compassion, creativity, and fun. So my message to my fellow young people is to listen to yourself, trust your intuition, if Don’s plan doesn’t look good, then don’t follow it, you are not alone. We can make a world that is better for all of us and we certainly don’t need to wait our turn for it. We will have the opportunity to drive another industrial revolution, and who knows, maybe even get rid of money!
Jerome Kim, Burnaby
