As a person who works in the trades mainly doing remodels mostly for the boomer generation (because most other folks can’t afford to remodel the house they live in), I’ve come across some clients that will remark “wow, I don’t know how you kids can raise a family these days, things are so expensive”. These of course are the empathetic boomers, willing to look beyond their own circumstances and have a reasonable assessment of reality. However there are many more of this generation that want to complain to me personally about the high cost of materials and whether or not my rates of labor are justified. They tell me tall tales of their glorious past wherein an extensive bathroom remodel in the eighties was completed before lunch break. I’ve even had to take some to small claims in order to receive payment for the work completed. Their reasons for non-payment never convinced the judge. It’s just that simply some people have the wisdom and humility of empathy and others have a narcissism that places their short term experience on this earth as all that matters to them. They’ll spend their children’s inheritance on frivolity without regard to their own bloodline’s well being. It’s soft people that make hard times for their own children.
Boomer here. Appreciate the article. I wrote some posts about growing up in the 60s and 70s. I think the 60s were horribly destructive. I had many opportunities that my children later 20s to mid 30s in age don’t have. The H1B program is a cancer. The offshoring of jobs is criminal. The giving away of blue collar jobs and globalization is a horror. Godspeed. I wish you well in rebuilding the boomer destruction of our country.
Quite sobering and difficult to read as a boomer. Do I relate to the description of boomers, no… but I see it, I understand it; however Boomers were not the Trust fund babies, their work was focused on creating generational wealth as most boomer parents were part of the Greatest and Silent generation. Personally I work to end the insanity specifically for the generations behind me. My greatest sadness is the extreme changes I have seen in America and that so many will never know the America I grew up in. That is the America I fight for, not for me but for you, all of you. Boomers do have a work ethic and I completely understand the what 2008 did to the future of Millennials, my daughter is one. We have had 4 Baby Boomer Presidents in the last 25 years, one “Silent Generation and one Lost generation…. Yes Biden. Bush Jr, Clinton, Obama, Trump boomers, Bush Sr. Silent Generation . We can talk about the effects of the Boomers, although I am at the tail end and I do recognize the devastation left behind….. not all boomers, but perhaps not enough
The reaction you got was very similar to what another writer here got when he spoke about being raised by Boomer parents. White Collar Barbarian. Worth the read.
I don't get the outcry. If you know something doesn't apply to you why take it personally? There's much written on the sins of the millennials and I know they don't apply to me. Life's too short to make personal what doesn't have to be.
As a GenXer I have grown tired of this debate. There seems to be a complete lack of awareness that the economic boom that the boomers took advantage of was the result of unique post-war, economic conditions.
There was a surplus of industrial production capacity that was migrated from a war machine to a consumer machine from making tanks and bombers to making washing machines and cars.
It’s not as if there was a mountain of opportunity that got mined into oblivion by a single generation. Leaving nothing behind for younger generations, it’s not how the world works.
Most of Europe had been destroyed. The United States was one of the few places that could produce things the world needed, which is why everyone wanted an American cars, American appliances, and American culture.
And let’s not forget those economic advantages were not given to all people equally. Some were able to benefit from those advantages of the postwar era. Others were not. Some were able to buy suburban homes others were kept out of the suburbs. While some passed those suburban homes onto their GenX children other GenXers to this day have no home and have no inherited generational wealth.
That post-war economic condition cannot be replicated, via policy or will. Yes, economic, conditions have indeed changed, but along with that change has come new technologies, new tools, new capability, and new opportunities which generations before could not have even dreamed of.
I don’t need to rehash a list. You already know what those technologies are. Every generation is put through a cultural and economic meat grinder, and social contracts are broken for every generation.
Baby boomers grew up believing that you graduate from high school, go to college if you’re lucky then work for a company for 25 years and retire. For some, this was reality. For most, it was not.
Then came the 1970s, a focus on the bottom line on competitiveness. That’s when everything changed for the boomers. Some were able to recover, some were able to inherit generational wealth from their parents, but the vast majority were not able to do that. Layoffs and economic downturn had taken them out long ago.
You see those people living in tent cities in almost every major metro across the United States? Most of them are the dreaded boomers. What got them there? Well, the stories vary many times its medical bankruptcies these are followed closely behind by GenXers.
Let’s talk about Gen X for a second since no one ever fucking does. Our generation is now taking care of our boomer parents, our kids, and our kids children. GenXers are the ones that are holding this whole shit show together right now. It’s why we don’t expect our kids to move out. We know that rents are ridiculous. We know that the dating scene is screwed. We’re not blind to it. We see it every day we hear about it every day.
Let’s get back to those broken social contracts. Gen Xers were told to go to college get a good job. Enter into the middle class. You want to know what we got instead; we went to college we watched our degrees become worthless, and we wondered how the hell we were going to pay off our student loans while taking care of our children and our grandchildren and our boomer parents. That’s the reality that the vast majority of us now live with multiple generations, under one rented roof. It’s why we carry excessive amounts of life insurance. We know we are a generation that will either die on the job or be replaced by AI. Right now; it seems like both are happening.
Millennials and Gen Z were sold the same promises, despite the fact that the world of getting a degree and entering into the middle class simply does not exist anymore.
Again, we’re not blind to that, trust me we are all painfully aware of it. You know why because we are the ones that witnessed the destruction of the middle class. By the time my generation got here, things were already in the process of falling apart, and we learned from early on you better take care of yourself because no one else will.
I’ve said enough, my point is no generation has it easy, not one.
Boomer women went into the workforce and stopped having kids. What kids they did have they raised to be even more work-centric. Domestic labor, of incalculable worth (literally can’t count it) got a price tag put on it and exported from the home, sacrificing the future.
Women aren’t to blame, nor are men, just stating the facts here, the old system produced something we don’t have anymore - primarily, children, which are the future.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better because of population collapse - mass migration only adds more abuses, not solutions, like some argue.
I am glad that you mentioned GenX. This article bothered me because it predictable skipped over GenX. Certainly, GenX isn’t the end all be all. But as someone who these last few years has been consumed with taking care of kids and older relatives while working a more than full time job, yeah, it does sometimes feel like we are the glue holding things together. GenX as slackers? If only!
Even my Boomer FIL who laments mass immigration is obsessed with his SS check/retirement/worker's comp and literally said out loud that he can't bring himself to care about anything past his grandchildren because he'll never see them born or grow up.
The sheer reflex of "NOT THIS BOOMER" when you mention anything online about that cohort is on par with "found the vegan" and it's truly astonishing.
The lack of self-awareness may just be a cover for not wanting to feel helpless or take responsibility for doing something. He also told my husband it was "stupid" to risk his career to not take the jab.
The problem with Boomers is that they trust institutions, commercials, and can't tell what's an AI image. But the high-trust society that bred this naivete into them is gone, leaving them clueless dupes to the system.
Wow, a really broad brush. Once you have more echoes and sorry or your "friends" you'll find that probably only 15% of humans will stand up for what they believe in. This number hasn't changed, ever, and is not exclusive to ANY generation or era. If you don't realize this, you will end up chasing "free shit" also.
Once again, excellent writing on your part Arthur. When my wife retired, she purchased a new Corvette as a gift to herself. We joined a local Corvette club and at 64 and 62, found ourselves to be some of the younger members of the group. What amazed me was how many of the members have two or more Corvettes. I once thought, “No wonder the younger generations hate us”. The second Corvette is the avocado toast of my generation.
Thank you Tom. Hopefully, this longer essay conveyed a more fully-formed picture of what I meant from the Note. Nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of one's labor, but I see what you mean regarding those who collect Corvettes like they're Hot Wheels.
I commend you for your excellent skills as a writer. I have to admit that your choice of a title for your well written essay captured my attention right away.
I sincerely appreciate your effort to study the errors of the past and the failures that have affected this country. It is wise to make that effort, especially if it is your purpose to learn any valuable lessons that will prevent those kind of failures from being repeated in the future. Failures are a vital part of success inasmuch as they carry within them lessons that make improvements possible. For that reason I salute your desire to examine the failures of the past as you have done.
I also appreciate your recognition that those who are currently in positions of power are among the generation that has been collectively designated as the “baby boomers”.
I must, however, register my long held objection to judging people as a “collective” and ascribing to them all,as individuals, of possessing common characteristics that presumptively belong to the entire collective.
I also appreciate the hint you have given in your essay that you sense this mild injustice by pointing out that you do not possess the characteristics that many in the “boomer” generation ascribe to the ,so called, “millennial” generation. You were kind enough to us older folks to point out that many of us also do not fit the prescribed “characteristics” of our generation.
With all of that in mind, I still believe that you are wise to consider our actions, decisions, and failures and the impact those failures have on the country in preparation for the time, soon coming, that the mantle of authority, responsibility, and ultimate accountability that will fall inevitably upon your shoulders as a member of your generation. Learning lessons from our failures can really help guide you should you face similar decisions in the future.
I only caution you to be aware that there will be,for you, many situations that will be entirely different yet just as difficult as the ones we faced. You will need a set of principles to guide you in how to make good decisions as well as how to persuade the fellow members of your generation to agree with you as to how to proceed in the best interest of the country and future generations that will immediately follow you.
I will end my comments by offering a bit of advice that I sincerely hope will help your generation fare better than mine in guiding this country to higher levels of success, prosperity, unity, and genuine happiness.
First let me suggest that you rid yourself of the rather defeatist attitude that our country has been “destroyed” by the previous generations. That idea overlooks the reality that the previous generation has also been very successful in important ways despite its myriad of flaws. After all, a balanced view that considers successes as well as failures of the previous generations is equally practical in charting your course.
Second, I suggest abandoning the concept of assessing and casting “blame” on anyone for any of the difficulties you encounter. Casting blame feels good but it does not solve problems. Learn lessons from failures, as you have done in your essay, is good but it must be followed up with workable and practical solutions of those problems. Casting blame will not remove the burden of responsibility your generation inescapably will bear.
Our generation were just as concerned for the future as you seem to be and we had a similar naivety about how well we would do. Now we look back and feel good about our successes and recognition of our failures and pray for your success and urge you to brace yourself with courage and go forth and conquer the challenges you face.
Thank you for making us ever more aware of our failures, though I would love to read your excellent writing style giving us the benefit of your research and opinion of our successes.
Of course one can look up the depictions of the Mongols in history and note how they were described in reference to historical accounts of their joint achievements and relatively common behaviors.
One cannot, however, judge them all as having the exact same personality traits in all aspects of their lives because nothing in history can demonstrate any justification for judging individuals on the basis of general observations of their collective group identity. History is not capable of such judgements.
But to answer your question, the Mongols have been historically described as:
“a large, nomadic, East Asian ethnic group known for their military prowess and the vast empire they created under Genghis Khan. They lived in the steppes of Mongolia, primarily as pastoral nomads, raising animals and moving from place to place.”
>my long held objection to judging people as a “collective” and ascribing to them all,as individuals, of possessing common characteristics that presumptively belong to the entire collective.
Further to your article, boomers seem either hellbent on destroying or entirely ambivalent to maintaining the generational wealth that they could pass on to their children.
My parents made (and continue to make) incredibly poor financial decisions - they are part of the growing cohort of House Rich Cash Poor boomers. They never saved for retirement. Will they adjust their lifestyle to live within their means? No. Will they attempt to set any money aside for me to help me get ahead in life? Unlikely. They are going to coast off into retirement and kept alive far too long, past any ability to enjoy or even experience life, by modern medicine. Hate that I just said that about my parents.
I have long since disabused myself of the belief that anything will be left for me. I have always known I'll have to make it on my own terms, but there is no chance that I will ever achieve their level of prosperity, which they achieved very casually. I'm going to be fine, many others won't be.
I just find it a damn shame that there's a perfectly good house that's going to get sold and all the equity from that is going to get paid towards their mismanaged line of credit and towards keeping a stupid lifestyle post-retirement.
My Boomer parents raised me well and just celebrated their 56th anniversary two weeks ago. My father was always there for me, even becoming a Scoutmaster for my troop. He and other fathers made sure that one was in the room with the boys to keep an eye on a certain priest who likes driving a sport car. 20 years later I learned that this Father was tied to the abuse of boys, something I now realized must have been sensed by the men in the 1980s but have no proof to demand his removal.
But even then, my parents were blind to lot of stuff. Tim Allen’s Home Improvement show was popular but I didn’t care for his henpecked character. They were upset about Bill Clinton and that blue dress but hardly said a word about Waco. The jobless recovery was a concern but everyone really brought in the free trade gimmick. Even in 1990 I was skeptical of college and this was one of the very rare blowups between my father and myself. I loathed Bush 2 as an apparent fake but which my parents adored until 2008. I was deeply troubled by the OJ verdict but the Boomers I knew just shrugged and hoped for the best. There were a lot of blind spots with them because they are the people in love with words and theories. Realism just wasn’t in their blood. Star Trek fantasies were more real to them.
And some Boomers were really hostile to other Boomers and their kids. One thing that get overlooked was that 80 millions boom was HUGE. Birth rates has been going down since 1820 so a big blimp was extremely rare. Before 1945, the normal course would be to funnel the excess men into colonies, but this was now no-no. Instead, attempts were made to move those men into the army, the collages, and alternate lifestyles to reduce the pressure of job competition.
This partly was why the Boomers were so unfriendly to the younger generations, they fought hard to get their positions and, with the rising costs of living, didn’t want to give them up in fear of becoming poor old.
It's always easy to pick out a group to blame and be angry at. It is harder to look deeper into the multigenerational mistakes of giving away our self reliance, self autonomy and self respect, for the convenience of letting someone, or some gov't agency, handle our issues (Which is generally ALWAYS, less efficient, more expensive and usually catastrophically counter productive.)
The "enemy" is not our older or younger neighbors (although there are plenty who need remedial civics training), but with the behemoth of government, at all levels.
"Boomers" didn't crash the economy (multiple times), hyper-inflate the housing market, insurance rates, or insist on the abomination of ObamaCare, government did.
Thank you for taking the time to read my article. I hope it mostly conveyed in the essay that I was not indicting an entire generation, only a specific subset of those who carry an attitude of indifference towards the up and coming generations under them.
I may need to make a series of articles picking on certain category within the last few generations to placate the rumors that I am merely a "Boomer-Basher." Believe me, there are plenty of things to take issue with inside my own Millennial group.
Except asset inflation is a political decision to benefit older voters. The "we must banish death" mentality is supported most heavily by the elderly, thus higher health insurance costs.
Asset inflation is the result of manipulation of the money supply to cover up the malfeasance of gov’t spending.
And health insurance prices, again, are a result of gov’t manipulation to fund the pharma industry, which funds the gov’t politicians and bureaucrats, which rewrite the laws to favor themselves. No one is living longer, and the average middle age person is not healthier (and often quite less so) than a generation ago.
Arthurin…I still maintain the entire generational obsession is garbage. It’s a total cope. And it’s holding people back from fulfilling their destiny.
Newsflash: every generation has its share of narcissists and empaths, cowards and heroes, bad people and good, indifferent and gossipy, magnanimous and envious, wealthy and poor.
I think often of my grandparents born between 1895 and 1910, died between 1977 and 2005. They experienced the best and the worst of the 20th century, and they each personally knew relatives who fought in the Civil War. They knew hardship, and they knew people who experienced much worse than they did.
But they didn’t think in terms of generations. They thought in terms of family and community and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. They lived through the Depression in the prime of their lives. Where do you think their children and their grandchildren (“boomers”) got the phrase? Guess what? That phrase is good advice whether you come of age in boom times, depressions, recessions, stagnations or civil wars.
Sorry, but this time isn’t different. The “bad” boomers have zero agency in how your life is or how it turns out.
Good read. I had a thought regarding boomers recently: Why are they purchasing larger homes in retirement? What happened to the concept of aging with dignity? It seems ‘keeping up with the jones’ mentality grew with their social media use
The biggest problem is the large percentage of Boomers who are both going to live forever AND don't worry about things that will happen after they're dead.
As a person who works in the trades mainly doing remodels mostly for the boomer generation (because most other folks can’t afford to remodel the house they live in), I’ve come across some clients that will remark “wow, I don’t know how you kids can raise a family these days, things are so expensive”. These of course are the empathetic boomers, willing to look beyond their own circumstances and have a reasonable assessment of reality. However there are many more of this generation that want to complain to me personally about the high cost of materials and whether or not my rates of labor are justified. They tell me tall tales of their glorious past wherein an extensive bathroom remodel in the eighties was completed before lunch break. I’ve even had to take some to small claims in order to receive payment for the work completed. Their reasons for non-payment never convinced the judge. It’s just that simply some people have the wisdom and humility of empathy and others have a narcissism that places their short term experience on this earth as all that matters to them. They’ll spend their children’s inheritance on frivolity without regard to their own bloodline’s well being. It’s soft people that make hard times for their own children.
Boomer here. Appreciate the article. I wrote some posts about growing up in the 60s and 70s. I think the 60s were horribly destructive. I had many opportunities that my children later 20s to mid 30s in age don’t have. The H1B program is a cancer. The offshoring of jobs is criminal. The giving away of blue collar jobs and globalization is a horror. Godspeed. I wish you well in rebuilding the boomer destruction of our country.
Quite sobering and difficult to read as a boomer. Do I relate to the description of boomers, no… but I see it, I understand it; however Boomers were not the Trust fund babies, their work was focused on creating generational wealth as most boomer parents were part of the Greatest and Silent generation. Personally I work to end the insanity specifically for the generations behind me. My greatest sadness is the extreme changes I have seen in America and that so many will never know the America I grew up in. That is the America I fight for, not for me but for you, all of you. Boomers do have a work ethic and I completely understand the what 2008 did to the future of Millennials, my daughter is one. We have had 4 Baby Boomer Presidents in the last 25 years, one “Silent Generation and one Lost generation…. Yes Biden. Bush Jr, Clinton, Obama, Trump boomers, Bush Sr. Silent Generation . We can talk about the effects of the Boomers, although I am at the tail end and I do recognize the devastation left behind….. not all boomers, but perhaps not enough
The reaction you got was very similar to what another writer here got when he spoke about being raised by Boomer parents. White Collar Barbarian. Worth the read.
I don't get the outcry. If you know something doesn't apply to you why take it personally? There's much written on the sins of the millennials and I know they don't apply to me. Life's too short to make personal what doesn't have to be.
As a GenXer I have grown tired of this debate. There seems to be a complete lack of awareness that the economic boom that the boomers took advantage of was the result of unique post-war, economic conditions.
There was a surplus of industrial production capacity that was migrated from a war machine to a consumer machine from making tanks and bombers to making washing machines and cars.
It’s not as if there was a mountain of opportunity that got mined into oblivion by a single generation. Leaving nothing behind for younger generations, it’s not how the world works.
Most of Europe had been destroyed. The United States was one of the few places that could produce things the world needed, which is why everyone wanted an American cars, American appliances, and American culture.
And let’s not forget those economic advantages were not given to all people equally. Some were able to benefit from those advantages of the postwar era. Others were not. Some were able to buy suburban homes others were kept out of the suburbs. While some passed those suburban homes onto their GenX children other GenXers to this day have no home and have no inherited generational wealth.
That post-war economic condition cannot be replicated, via policy or will. Yes, economic, conditions have indeed changed, but along with that change has come new technologies, new tools, new capability, and new opportunities which generations before could not have even dreamed of.
I don’t need to rehash a list. You already know what those technologies are. Every generation is put through a cultural and economic meat grinder, and social contracts are broken for every generation.
Baby boomers grew up believing that you graduate from high school, go to college if you’re lucky then work for a company for 25 years and retire. For some, this was reality. For most, it was not.
Then came the 1970s, a focus on the bottom line on competitiveness. That’s when everything changed for the boomers. Some were able to recover, some were able to inherit generational wealth from their parents, but the vast majority were not able to do that. Layoffs and economic downturn had taken them out long ago.
You see those people living in tent cities in almost every major metro across the United States? Most of them are the dreaded boomers. What got them there? Well, the stories vary many times its medical bankruptcies these are followed closely behind by GenXers.
Let’s talk about Gen X for a second since no one ever fucking does. Our generation is now taking care of our boomer parents, our kids, and our kids children. GenXers are the ones that are holding this whole shit show together right now. It’s why we don’t expect our kids to move out. We know that rents are ridiculous. We know that the dating scene is screwed. We’re not blind to it. We see it every day we hear about it every day.
Let’s get back to those broken social contracts. Gen Xers were told to go to college get a good job. Enter into the middle class. You want to know what we got instead; we went to college we watched our degrees become worthless, and we wondered how the hell we were going to pay off our student loans while taking care of our children and our grandchildren and our boomer parents. That’s the reality that the vast majority of us now live with multiple generations, under one rented roof. It’s why we carry excessive amounts of life insurance. We know we are a generation that will either die on the job or be replaced by AI. Right now; it seems like both are happening.
Millennials and Gen Z were sold the same promises, despite the fact that the world of getting a degree and entering into the middle class simply does not exist anymore.
Again, we’re not blind to that, trust me we are all painfully aware of it. You know why because we are the ones that witnessed the destruction of the middle class. By the time my generation got here, things were already in the process of falling apart, and we learned from early on you better take care of yourself because no one else will.
I’ve said enough, my point is no generation has it easy, not one.
Boomer women went into the workforce and stopped having kids. What kids they did have they raised to be even more work-centric. Domestic labor, of incalculable worth (literally can’t count it) got a price tag put on it and exported from the home, sacrificing the future.
Women aren’t to blame, nor are men, just stating the facts here, the old system produced something we don’t have anymore - primarily, children, which are the future.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better because of population collapse - mass migration only adds more abuses, not solutions, like some argue.
I am glad that you mentioned GenX. This article bothered me because it predictable skipped over GenX. Certainly, GenX isn’t the end all be all. But as someone who these last few years has been consumed with taking care of kids and older relatives while working a more than full time job, yeah, it does sometimes feel like we are the glue holding things together. GenX as slackers? If only!
We are often forgotten
No one ever talks about Gen X, and we like it that way. We were the last generation not raised by Boomers.
1955 vs 2025, who actually had it better?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4qqIJ312zI
Even my Boomer FIL who laments mass immigration is obsessed with his SS check/retirement/worker's comp and literally said out loud that he can't bring himself to care about anything past his grandchildren because he'll never see them born or grow up.
The sheer reflex of "NOT THIS BOOMER" when you mention anything online about that cohort is on par with "found the vegan" and it's truly astonishing.
The lack of self-awareness may just be a cover for not wanting to feel helpless or take responsibility for doing something. He also told my husband it was "stupid" to risk his career to not take the jab.
The problem with Boomers is that they trust institutions, commercials, and can't tell what's an AI image. But the high-trust society that bred this naivete into them is gone, leaving them clueless dupes to the system.
Wow, a really broad brush. Once you have more echoes and sorry or your "friends" you'll find that probably only 15% of humans will stand up for what they believe in. This number hasn't changed, ever, and is not exclusive to ANY generation or era. If you don't realize this, you will end up chasing "free shit" also.
I have absolutely no idea what you're rambling about but I suspect that I just "found the Boomer" based on your defensive tone.
Once again, excellent writing on your part Arthur. When my wife retired, she purchased a new Corvette as a gift to herself. We joined a local Corvette club and at 64 and 62, found ourselves to be some of the younger members of the group. What amazed me was how many of the members have two or more Corvettes. I once thought, “No wonder the younger generations hate us”. The second Corvette is the avocado toast of my generation.
Thank you Tom. Hopefully, this longer essay conveyed a more fully-formed picture of what I meant from the Note. Nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of one's labor, but I see what you mean regarding those who collect Corvettes like they're Hot Wheels.
Arthur,
I commend you for your excellent skills as a writer. I have to admit that your choice of a title for your well written essay captured my attention right away.
I sincerely appreciate your effort to study the errors of the past and the failures that have affected this country. It is wise to make that effort, especially if it is your purpose to learn any valuable lessons that will prevent those kind of failures from being repeated in the future. Failures are a vital part of success inasmuch as they carry within them lessons that make improvements possible. For that reason I salute your desire to examine the failures of the past as you have done.
I also appreciate your recognition that those who are currently in positions of power are among the generation that has been collectively designated as the “baby boomers”.
I must, however, register my long held objection to judging people as a “collective” and ascribing to them all,as individuals, of possessing common characteristics that presumptively belong to the entire collective.
I also appreciate the hint you have given in your essay that you sense this mild injustice by pointing out that you do not possess the characteristics that many in the “boomer” generation ascribe to the ,so called, “millennial” generation. You were kind enough to us older folks to point out that many of us also do not fit the prescribed “characteristics” of our generation.
With all of that in mind, I still believe that you are wise to consider our actions, decisions, and failures and the impact those failures have on the country in preparation for the time, soon coming, that the mantle of authority, responsibility, and ultimate accountability that will fall inevitably upon your shoulders as a member of your generation. Learning lessons from our failures can really help guide you should you face similar decisions in the future.
I only caution you to be aware that there will be,for you, many situations that will be entirely different yet just as difficult as the ones we faced. You will need a set of principles to guide you in how to make good decisions as well as how to persuade the fellow members of your generation to agree with you as to how to proceed in the best interest of the country and future generations that will immediately follow you.
I will end my comments by offering a bit of advice that I sincerely hope will help your generation fare better than mine in guiding this country to higher levels of success, prosperity, unity, and genuine happiness.
First let me suggest that you rid yourself of the rather defeatist attitude that our country has been “destroyed” by the previous generations. That idea overlooks the reality that the previous generation has also been very successful in important ways despite its myriad of flaws. After all, a balanced view that considers successes as well as failures of the previous generations is equally practical in charting your course.
Second, I suggest abandoning the concept of assessing and casting “blame” on anyone for any of the difficulties you encounter. Casting blame feels good but it does not solve problems. Learn lessons from failures, as you have done in your essay, is good but it must be followed up with workable and practical solutions of those problems. Casting blame will not remove the burden of responsibility your generation inescapably will bear.
Our generation were just as concerned for the future as you seem to be and we had a similar naivety about how well we would do. Now we look back and feel good about our successes and recognition of our failures and pray for your success and urge you to brace yourself with courage and go forth and conquer the challenges you face.
Thank you for making us ever more aware of our failures, though I would love to read your excellent writing style giving us the benefit of your research and opinion of our successes.
Of course one can look up the depictions of the Mongols in history and note how they were described in reference to historical accounts of their joint achievements and relatively common behaviors.
One cannot, however, judge them all as having the exact same personality traits in all aspects of their lives because nothing in history can demonstrate any justification for judging individuals on the basis of general observations of their collective group identity. History is not capable of such judgements.
But to answer your question, the Mongols have been historically described as:
“a large, nomadic, East Asian ethnic group known for their military prowess and the vast empire they created under Genghis Khan. They lived in the steppes of Mongolia, primarily as pastoral nomads, raising animals and moving from place to place.”
>my long held objection to judging people as a “collective” and ascribing to them all,as individuals, of possessing common characteristics that presumptively belong to the entire collective.
"Who were the Mongols?"
Further to your article, boomers seem either hellbent on destroying or entirely ambivalent to maintaining the generational wealth that they could pass on to their children.
My parents made (and continue to make) incredibly poor financial decisions - they are part of the growing cohort of House Rich Cash Poor boomers. They never saved for retirement. Will they adjust their lifestyle to live within their means? No. Will they attempt to set any money aside for me to help me get ahead in life? Unlikely. They are going to coast off into retirement and kept alive far too long, past any ability to enjoy or even experience life, by modern medicine. Hate that I just said that about my parents.
I have long since disabused myself of the belief that anything will be left for me. I have always known I'll have to make it on my own terms, but there is no chance that I will ever achieve their level of prosperity, which they achieved very casually. I'm going to be fine, many others won't be.
I just find it a damn shame that there's a perfectly good house that's going to get sold and all the equity from that is going to get paid towards their mismanaged line of credit and towards keeping a stupid lifestyle post-retirement.
My mother born in 1936, (dad in 1934) rented an apartment her entire life. She should have bought a house.
I would say, it was one of the most insane moves in her life. Out of fear, I’m sure!
The area she and my father were thinking of buying, at the time cost 26K. These are now over 1Million+!
She was very savvy, and smart with money. It still bugs me-lol!
Both my parents have been dead nearly 20 years.
At 61, I analyze where they were coming from, and the decisions they made.
Wow 😮
I agree.
My Boomer parents raised me well and just celebrated their 56th anniversary two weeks ago. My father was always there for me, even becoming a Scoutmaster for my troop. He and other fathers made sure that one was in the room with the boys to keep an eye on a certain priest who likes driving a sport car. 20 years later I learned that this Father was tied to the abuse of boys, something I now realized must have been sensed by the men in the 1980s but have no proof to demand his removal.
But even then, my parents were blind to lot of stuff. Tim Allen’s Home Improvement show was popular but I didn’t care for his henpecked character. They were upset about Bill Clinton and that blue dress but hardly said a word about Waco. The jobless recovery was a concern but everyone really brought in the free trade gimmick. Even in 1990 I was skeptical of college and this was one of the very rare blowups between my father and myself. I loathed Bush 2 as an apparent fake but which my parents adored until 2008. I was deeply troubled by the OJ verdict but the Boomers I knew just shrugged and hoped for the best. There were a lot of blind spots with them because they are the people in love with words and theories. Realism just wasn’t in their blood. Star Trek fantasies were more real to them.
And some Boomers were really hostile to other Boomers and their kids. One thing that get overlooked was that 80 millions boom was HUGE. Birth rates has been going down since 1820 so a big blimp was extremely rare. Before 1945, the normal course would be to funnel the excess men into colonies, but this was now no-no. Instead, attempts were made to move those men into the army, the collages, and alternate lifestyles to reduce the pressure of job competition.
This partly was why the Boomers were so unfriendly to the younger generations, they fought hard to get their positions and, with the rising costs of living, didn’t want to give them up in fear of becoming poor old.
So, they are a very mixed bag.
We would have been better off doing nothing about COVID aside from shutting down travel to and from China starting in January 2020
I concur with Janine and Lee's comments.
It's always easy to pick out a group to blame and be angry at. It is harder to look deeper into the multigenerational mistakes of giving away our self reliance, self autonomy and self respect, for the convenience of letting someone, or some gov't agency, handle our issues (Which is generally ALWAYS, less efficient, more expensive and usually catastrophically counter productive.)
The "enemy" is not our older or younger neighbors (although there are plenty who need remedial civics training), but with the behemoth of government, at all levels.
"Boomers" didn't crash the economy (multiple times), hyper-inflate the housing market, insurance rates, or insist on the abomination of ObamaCare, government did.
Thank you for taking the time to read my article. I hope it mostly conveyed in the essay that I was not indicting an entire generation, only a specific subset of those who carry an attitude of indifference towards the up and coming generations under them.
I may need to make a series of articles picking on certain category within the last few generations to placate the rumors that I am merely a "Boomer-Basher." Believe me, there are plenty of things to take issue with inside my own Millennial group.
Correct.
Except asset inflation is a political decision to benefit older voters. The "we must banish death" mentality is supported most heavily by the elderly, thus higher health insurance costs.
I would disagree with both points.
Asset inflation is the result of manipulation of the money supply to cover up the malfeasance of gov’t spending.
And health insurance prices, again, are a result of gov’t manipulation to fund the pharma industry, which funds the gov’t politicians and bureaucrats, which rewrite the laws to favor themselves. No one is living longer, and the average middle age person is not healthier (and often quite less so) than a generation ago.
Arthurin…I still maintain the entire generational obsession is garbage. It’s a total cope. And it’s holding people back from fulfilling their destiny.
Newsflash: every generation has its share of narcissists and empaths, cowards and heroes, bad people and good, indifferent and gossipy, magnanimous and envious, wealthy and poor.
I think often of my grandparents born between 1895 and 1910, died between 1977 and 2005. They experienced the best and the worst of the 20th century, and they each personally knew relatives who fought in the Civil War. They knew hardship, and they knew people who experienced much worse than they did.
But they didn’t think in terms of generations. They thought in terms of family and community and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. They lived through the Depression in the prime of their lives. Where do you think their children and their grandchildren (“boomers”) got the phrase? Guess what? That phrase is good advice whether you come of age in boom times, depressions, recessions, stagnations or civil wars.
Sorry, but this time isn’t different. The “bad” boomers have zero agency in how your life is or how it turns out.
We’re dancing around the entitlement payouts which are in practice a ponzi scheme on the youth.
Social security is going to go away once the majority voting population is no longer the boomers.
GenX already knows we will never have social security in our old age. Yet people still complain because we invest and save on our own.
Good read. I had a thought regarding boomers recently: Why are they purchasing larger homes in retirement? What happened to the concept of aging with dignity? It seems ‘keeping up with the jones’ mentality grew with their social media use
That's possible. Social media has had detrimental effects across the board for all generations IMO.
The biggest problem is the large percentage of Boomers who are both going to live forever AND don't worry about things that will happen after they're dead.