Generación cangrejo

[Perikles]

Can anyone explain to me the expression "generación cangrejo" as a title for this article in El País?

Thanks

[Don José]

First time I hear it.

It is said that crabs walk backwards*. Supossely, progress will make one generation to live better than the last one. The crab generation would be one that live worse, and in this sense they are going back.

* But the crabs I've seen walked to one side, right or left but neither front nor back.

[Rusty]

I was thinking along the lines of 'wanting to side-step everything - wanting the rewards without the labor'. This generation wants now what their parents have worked a long time to acquire.

[Perikles]

Perhaps, yes. There is the very perceptive comment in there that the present young generation does not want the economic situation of their parents when the parents were that age, but they want the economic situation of their parents at the present time - something quite different. Tough.