Well said. And Fck AfD. You guys keep fighting the good fight.
Folks this is a garbage study. N=18, and then extrapolating the dangers based on aggregated stats of disease states?
The team I manage are Millennials and Gen Z (I'm a slightly older Xer, born a couple of weeks before Kurt Cobain).
Here is a problem some folks might not have considered that doesn't really have anything to do with the "nature" of the younger generations. I fight very hard for flexible hours, better compensation, scheduling flexibility, etc. I do not tell my folks how to do something, I leave that to them, and they'll generally find a better way than the way I initially imagined. Someone needs a day off or to come in/leave at a different time or to WFH, I never ask why.
And generally our CEO has given me what I want, and I can give my people what they want. Admittedly, this is in part due to the nature of what my team does and the visible quality of our work (not IT, btw). So far so good.
The problem is other managers. Other Xers and a couple of Boomers. They see my department getting all this stuff, and they start getting paranoid their departments (or other companies; we are a conglomerate) will start demanding the same. And they do not understand WFH, worse they are afraid of it. Likewise with all the QoL and work/life balance stuff. And if their people found out about the raises my people got, oh boy would that be a problem for the other managers.
That's often where the real fight inside companies is, between managers vying with each to determine which way the company will go, or to, at least, to keep their part of it a nice ecosystem to work in. Fear of change is a big factor.
None of them were there long, but none of them moved to higher paying jobs either.
Wow the tankies are out in force on the comments on this one.
I disagree and think the core problem of too many guns could be solved the same way other Anglophone nations did it.
However, your argument was very well written, and I appreciate both its intention and its focus on the human.
Hate to break it to you, but making any friends in/past your 30s is very difficult. But I do get your point that choosing childless makes it even more difficult. I'm lucky enough to have had a couple of close friends who chose to remain childless before I had kids, and we are still close. But we would have remained close in any case.
I'm in my 50s now, and maybe I'm an asshole, but the last time I made a new friend (a real friend, not acquaintance) I was in my early 40s, and that friendship did not survive me moving an ocean away, to my great sadness. This happened with me several times starting in my early 30s, but I've moved continents three times, so mostly my fault.
It would take an act of congress, and the D's don't have the votes. Shitty but true.
I kinda did this with my wife a very long time ago, so long ago I doubt any of my experience is still relevant. And we had saved up considerable money before we left and still had a nest egg to return to. So, not exactly low budget but not trust fund either.
I met a lot of people who had almost no money however. The principal I learned is that if you have a) enough money or b) enough time, you can get to almost anyplace you want to go to. The people with no money had enough time. They would often stay in one place and work for two or three months to earn enough money to move on to their next destination. These people were pretty chill, except for the ultra minimalists who had like one pair of underwear and would ask to "borrow" yours. Those people sucked.
The right to access the internet via broadband wherever possible. Money should not prevent this.
You know, fuck this company and the people who run it.
If you are skilled labor, yes: https://www.expatica.com/nl/finance/taxes/the-dutch-30-ruling-explained-101641/
But what @abbadon420 said is equally true. Housing market's fucked beyond belief. Now, if you want to WFH and live out in the sticks, you'd be set.