Two new books Strapped by Tamara Draut and Generation Debt by Anya Kamenetz (fyi: two ladies who do not return my emails :) ) have recently come out discussing how tough young people have it today, so tough that many of them have to (gasp!) move back home to live with their parents. Both books cite economic and social factors like the high cost of health care, skyrocketing education costs, exorbitant housing prices, and poor credit management as some of the main factors that are making it much tougher on this generation. I have to agree with them to some extent. While many boomers assume that this generation is the whiniest on record, there is something to say about how education is exceeding inflation and the housing prices just being totally ridiculous. It's simply much harder for us to match the middle class lifestyles that our parents enjoyed. Of course, this doesn't mean we should all give up trying and start racking up credit debt. But we should try to figure out how to be more sensible and realize that delayed adolescene and arrested development have a lot to do with our sense of economic optimisim -- or, lack thereof.