What do we collectively call kids today?

It seems like we run through a different label for youth every week.

Generation X seems to have fallen by the wayside. Now we refer to young people according to what’s most popular at the time.

They’re now the “Video Game Generation.” No wait, the “MTV Generation.” How about the “YouTube Generation?”

All sounds good to me. Considering the fact I came from the group that began the panic that destroyed people’s belief in diplomacy and the Social Security fund, I’ve a lot of room to be talking.

Listening to a child — listening, not watching — is an easy way to get a valuable education on the direction we’re moving.

Anyone who is not amazed by what a young person of any age has to say probably doesn’t have a pulse.

The beautiful thing about being overlooked is you have ample opportunity to observe what everyone else around you is doing.

And don’t doubt for a second that kids are watching.

So when we chastise them for dropping the ball when it comes to carrying the future of our society, what does it say about us?

We all know parents who, from pre-K all the way up to high school, have not given the first thought to helping with homework or attending a PTO meeting or after-school activity.

Latchkey kids get cartoons and afternoon talk shows instead of babysitters.

A kid will sit in school and hear teachers and counselors tell him not to drink and smoke, but he won’t get two feet inside his own house before a parent with a lit cigarette and liquor breath greets him at the door.

And we haven’t even touched deadbeat dads, sexual abuse, poor nutrition and obesity and a complete general lack of social awareness.

By my own guess, I would say 10-20 percent of the people reading this don’t have kids. So, obviously, nothing I say has anything to do with them.

Wrong.

If you care at all about national security, home ownership, gas prices or the justice system, you’ll care about the kid living down the street being neglected by his parents.

People who aren’t legally able to drink alcohol are the backbone of the military. They’re being herded like cattle into penal institutions — meaning your tax money goes toward three squares each day and “rehabilitation” — and their ill-prepared minds are going to shoulder the burden of financial crises and broken foreign relations.

I feel better about waking up 20 years from now, how about you?

Now for the sickest part of all — I find the situation absolutely hilarious.

I sit back and laugh at people who walk around unaffected and unmotivated to step out of their shells and do anything to help.

As little as a few weeks ago, folks who were at or nearing financial security were in the front pew after driving past churches for years.

There’s nothing like watching a rich man have to clean the same nose he turned up at people.

But the amusement is only temporary. In the end, this is a boat we can’t bail out of.

It’s sad that people need desperate times to make changes for the better, but that is the history of the human race.

The first two people on earth didn’t notice they were naked until they had something to hide.

Will it change soon or for the better? I don’t know.

I’m sure my grandkids will complain about something that their idiot grandkids are doing to destroy the world.

And I wonder what generation label people will be using