Former U.S. Senator Larry Pressler puts forth what is bound to be a controversial argument in The New York Times – he asserts that a generation has gotten used to “playing the system” in order to avoid its responsibilities:

“Now that flawed thinking has been carried forward. Many of these men who evaded [military] service but claimed idealism lead our elite institutions. The concept of using legal technicalities to evade responsibility has been carried over to playing with derivatives, or to short-changing shareholders. Once my generation got in the habit of saying one thing and believing another, it couldn’t stop.”

Is Pressler overgeneralizing, or could a similar argument be made for other generations before or since?