Older people: Are those in their late teens/early 20's bigger yahoos now than they were 20 years ago?

It's hard to say. We had fun back then, and we were reckless at times. We can't blame the young people for the current economic climate; we could easily afford an apartment, beer, girls, cars, food, and cassette tapes via any stupid job we felt like going to. There's less of that and more XBox now, but when kids do act out, it seems to be more extreme and catastrophic. But maybe it's just my perception.

Baz Luhrmann explained it better than me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

Oh P.S. Us "old dudes" seem way better at baseball than young people today don't we? It seems like Major Leaguers are retiring at older ages too, maybe because of lack of talented young players -- in the U.S. anyway. Omar Vizquel just retired @ 45!!

I've only owned a computer for 5 years and I've even noticed a change in that time.

The software is better now and filters out all the pedophiles and smut questions. This place used to be full of smutty filth questions. There also used to be lots of people from India advertising their escort services and other phone numbers in question titles and they don't show up now, so I'd say the place has improved and become more mature because of better software development.

I think you get a mixture of people on here from all age groups.

I'm 23 and I don't even consider people in their early 30s a different generation from myself. I don't think there's much of a difference. You were my age when Limp Bizkit and Eminem were all the rage.

And I moved out at 21 =]

I moved out at the age of 17, but I lived in a time when I could get grants and low-interest loans to help me go to university, and at that time if one worked full-time at minimum wage one could live above the poverty line. It's not like that anymore. An education costs a lot more, and there's much less assistance for students. Kids graduate with huge debt, and there's a lot less opportunity for a good job when they do graduate. Times are a lot harder than when I was a kid.

Older people? Hmmm lol Well being as im a tad aged ya know I don't know if they are really any worse. I think the older ya get the more you realize how little you did know in your early twenties. I think you just notice idiots more the older you get.

Younger people are certainly more ignorant about life than they were fifty years ago (when I was 20).

I also believe they think that America is going to be just as great a society as it has been in the recent past, and that could all come to a rapid conclusion. I believe that more kids are graduating as functional and economic illiterates than in the past.

If I qualify for anything, I qualify as an older person. I suffered, in my childhood, the "slings and arrows" of WW ll. I hold the generation that succeeded mine, the "Boomers, " the "Me Generation" in greater contempt than the Nazis who tried to blow me to smithereens. Just yesterday, in the supermarket, a young man was the essence of courtesy in showing me where my requisites were. Minutes later, walking to my car, I was scared out of my wits by a Boomer in his SUV blowing his horn in my ear. He berated me for walking in the middle of the aisle and thus delaying his own parking by several seconds. I thought, how phuquing typical of boomers he was.

I'm twice your age and my generation was the first to be intensely spoiled and sheltered. Many in my generation tried to keep the fairy tale world our parents built for us going into their twenties. Didn't you ever hear about the "Hippies?"

I knew a lot of them. They were mesmerized by the "Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. They would have loved to live in that world, except most wouldn't have fought in its wars. They threw a national temper tantrum when the parents who had spoiled them rotten suddenly expected them to go to war like the parents had.

They, and I, fell into the post world war two high tech boom. That fascinated our immature brat minds enough that we actually prospered until the huge hordes of grossly overpopulating excess labor, mostly in Asia, began literally swallowing the economies of the world.

Cheap, fast container shipping took our industries to modern ports with the cheapest labor. Now the young people's future is gone and they know it.

We prospered so much because our wages rose without us undercutting ourselves with large broods of new labor keeping us impoverished. We didn't plan that. We just didn't want a pile of kids holding us back.

Sadly, now the rest of the world's pile of kids are sucking dry what we didn't squander away.

I'm not "older", but in my opinion the Baby Boomer generation was the least personally responsible people this country has ever known.

The children of the "Greatest Generation" created havoc for the rest of us with 'free love', rampant drug use, the degradation of morals, radical feminism and 'latch-key' kids....

the younger generation is really immature and stupid sometimes.... the lack discipline and responsibility. i'm worried about my kids, but i'll teach them. i won't leave it up to the schools.