I feel like you're neatly making all the counterarguments yourself there.
There's an intra-generational divide, too, that many people have missed: generations aren't singular units with combined agency and experience. They contain individuals that have a variety of life outcomes
I think this is important, so I'll admit on reflection: respect is earned, including respect for your elders. They had more time to earn the respect, so it's already biased towards them anyway. I guess we can just measure everyone against whatever values we deem important and save ourselves the prejudice.
on and on the endless circle of resent and inequity goes.
I look at it like this: if there are no problems to solve, people get complacent, so it's good to have some inequity between people that already had the chance over time versus those that haven't even had the opportunities to engage with yet. It's also better to not be complacent when you're young, because you'll get these opportunities in a time where it's relatively inexpensive to make mistakes. As you grow older, mistakes become more expensive: you'll have less time to recover.
Bottom line some people will solve the problems thrown at them, others will not. Some will even do it without scamming everyone else and I think that's what ultimately makes the difference to me: the how is important and the how much is really irrelevant: You have gazillions? Good for you. Now pretty please fuck off to your island and get out of the way.
howis important and thehow muchis really irrelevant: You have gazillions? Good for you. Now pretty please fuck off to your island and get out of the way.