Millennials are entitled and lazy. They got the wrong degrees. They spend unnecessarily. They killed department stores, golf, napkins, cereal and lunch. At least, that’s what anyone over the age of 40 will preach.

But that’s not the whole truth.

Born between 1981 and 1996, the youngest Millennial is 25 and the oldest is 40. Millennials (or Generation Y) fall between Generation X and Generation Z. While there are exceptions, Millennials are typically the children of the Baby Boomer generation. The Baby Boomer generation, aka Boomers, consists of those born between 1946 and 1964.

Millennials are the products of their upbringing. Their parents are the ones who handed out the participation trophies to their children. Then, when those children grew up expecting something for showing up, Boomers began calling them entitled, as if the Millennials thought up the ridiculous idea of participation trophies at the ripe age of 5.

Margaret Lemp was born in 1986 and identifies as an “outer-skirt Millennial.” She is a mother and works as a psychiatrist. “I think it’s not really fair, because I think they [Boomers and older generations] set them [Millennials] up for failure,” she said. “Things are so different now, then they were for the Boomers.”

But name-calling and heckling isn’t the only thing Millennials are facing.

According to a recent report by the Huffington Post’s Michael Hobbes: “Millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression.”

Study after study display the financial disposition of Millennials.

“It’s been really difficult,” Lemp said. “We were kinda dealt… kinda a bad hand.”

Young Invincible is a student-founded organization that was formed in response to young people’s voices being ignored when it came to social issues like health care reforms. They reported several staggering facts. Millennials made 20% less in 2013 than their parents in 1989. Housing costs are increasing 50% faster, causing a 3% decrease in homeownership. In 2013, Millennials held, on average, 52% fewer assets than their parents did in 1989.

The College Board reported that Millennials have taken out 300% more debt in student loans than their parents. Contradictory to that staggering number, the vast majority of Millennials did not go to college.

The Guardian reported one in five Millennials lives in poverty; not that surprising when inflation is out of control and the cost of living is sky rocketing. For example, in 1980, the federal wage was $3.10, a gallon of gas cost $1.19, a loaf of bread cost 50 cents, and a new car was $7,000 on average. In 2020, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, a gallon of gas was roughly $2.20, a loaf of bread cost around $2.50, and the average new car cost is $45,000.

Adding insult to injury, the federal minimum wage has not been raised in 12 years. The cost of living climbs higher and higher, while the wage doesn’t keep up.

NerdWallet analyzed federal data and found many Millennials won’t be able to retire until they are 75 years old. That is 10 years later than most Boomers, according to Senior Living.

An article by the Washington Post deemed Millennials the unluckiest generation. But they’re not unlucky. They are screwed by the generation that raised them.

Capital & Celeb News, also known as CCN, was founded in the summer of 2013 in Norway by serial entrepreneur Jonas Borchgrevink. The news site claims it does not have any political agenda. CCN outlined four ways Boomers wounded the future of Millennials.

One, they built an economy that required people to have a college education. Entrepreneurs born before 1964 own 60% of 15 million private businesses. So Boomers dictate the rate of success for young workers. But instead of helping them, they made it more difficult. A Georgetown study reported 65% of jobs require some form of college or associate degree. Nine out of 10 jobs have been filled by candidates with a college degree. So Millennials are facing a highly competitive labor market, while a vast majority of them hold no college degree.

Two, Boomers set the costs of a college education into the atmosphere. In 1967, public college tuition per year was around $6,800 in today’s dollar. But today, tuition ranges between $25,000 and $41,000 per year. Remember how Millennials hold 300% more student debt? Makes sense now, doesn’t it?

Three, Boomers stole jobs after the Great Recession. Unemployment rose to 10% during 2010 and 2012. Most mid-skill jobs were lost during the Great Recession. So when the economy eventually recovered, Boomers and other older workers scrambled down the corporate ladder in search of jobs. They pushed “inexperienced” Millennials to the back and took jobs that would have typically gone to younger workers starting their careers.

Four, because of debt and lack of decent jobs, Millennials can’t buy homes. In a 2019 poll, Millennials renters expressed a desire to buy a home. But due to only 12.9% of them having savings greater than $10,000, nearly half of those surveyed have no savings to make the down payment.

“I don’t think it’s very nice or fair for [Boomers] to point fingers, when they really are a piece of this pie,” Lemp said. “Taking themselves out of the equation is inaccurate… We didn’t create this mess ourselves.”

Do you see it yet? Boomers are greedy and too incompetent to recognize they are the problem. They claim Millennials are lazy, entitled and everything wrong with today. But Millennials didn’t do this. They are just reaping what Boomers sowed.