The Kids Are All Right

"The baby boomers were historically fortunate: they missed the Great Depression and World War II, and though they grew up with the hideous ambient hum of potential nuclear Armageddon, until they reached middle age, the only great national trauma was the one — the '60s and Vietnam — in which they were the self-regarding stars. The so-called millennials, on the other hand, have come of age during a period defined by the digital revolution, 9/11, financial bubbles bursting, a possible depression and the election — possibly their election — of an African-American President: the makings, frankly, of a healthier, more useful generational creation myth than assassinations, antiwar protests and countercultural bacchanalia (which, by the way, enabled the risk-taking, party-hearty, quasi-utopian paradigm of the past quarter-century). In other words, the kids are all right."- The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America?, TIME