Boomer, not Millennials, Screwed America

I've never trusted people who use blaming others as a defense mechanism.

K

Rexedgar said:

How old is the axiom, “spare the rod, spoil the child?” (This in no way condones child abuse.)

As stated, I am a middle Boomer, (1952). I experienced many disappointments that served me well when I encountered set-backs as an adult. No offspring just because I didn’t want any. As a parent, I think you need to expose your child to as many different things as possible and let them fail so they are prepared for the inevitable failures encountered in RL. I get blowback often as I have no first hand parenting experience, only three step-children in my first marriage. Still one of my pleasures is people watching, can learn much from watching....

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I am a late boomer....I was the middle child of five born to a navy medic that served three tours in nam, won two Purple Hearts and a bronze star. He was a hard man...and it wasn’t until his last few years that he was able to talk about the horror of his experiences. One of our best days together was a half day spent at the wall. He raised us to stand on our own two feet...told us nothing worth having was free, and was the best man I have ever known in my life.

We didn’t have a lot growing up. Raising five kids on an E6 wage, and with your mom a waitress doesn’t put you in designer clothes or fancy cars. We shopped at goodwills, and drove 10 year old wagons. We learned respect, courtesy, manners, and to say yes sir. We learned that family matters, and love comes in a lot of forms.

You want to blame the problems of today on the boomers...yeah....every generation probably deserves some. But take a look in the mirror, and ask yourself if you are making a difference. I know my dad did. I know I am. Isn’t that what every generation needs to do? Be accountable?

calamity said:

“The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it."

They also raised the Millennials, typically as grandparents after their X Gen kids abdicated parental responsibility, probably because their Boomer parents never taught them any. And, that by itself proves the Boomers are America's worst generation.

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Putting partisan spin on an analysis that chastises one generation really undermines the case. I think we need to get very specific about the core financial mechanism that caused this generation to harm the subsequent one. Wars, parental responsibility, the environment, climate change, all of that is fluff partisanship.

Partisanship aside, the literal financial mechanism that enabled the Boomer generation to bankrupt the subsequent one is pensions. Boomers didn't invent this whole concept, they just carried it forward. Nonetheless, here we are, with historic unfunded pension liabilities and an elderly generation that has never been better off coupled with a younger generation that has never been worse off.

There are two ways to even this out. One is to change our laws so that pension benefits can be cut. The other is to find ways to raise taxes specifically on older affluent Americans.

Neomalthusian said:

Putting partisan spin on an analysis that chastises one generation really undermines the case. I think we need to get very specific about the core financial mechanism that caused this generation to harm the subsequent one. Wars, parental responsibility, the environment, climate change, all of that is fluff partisanship.

Partisanship aside, the literal financial mechanism that enabled the Boomer generation to bankrupt the subsequent one is pensions. Boomers didn't invent this whole concept, they just carried it forward. Nonetheless, here we are, with historic unfunded pension liabilities and an elderly generation that has never been better off coupled with a younger generation that has never been worse off.

There are two ways to even this out. One is to change our laws so that pension benefits can be cut. The other is to find ways to raise taxes specifically on older affluent Americans.

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At last a sensible post.

It is self-evidently ridiculous to lump everybody who was born between some pair of dates into a single group and generalize about them. It is even more ridiculous to blame current problems on the moral failings of everybody born between those dates.

Economic and social forces are the real drivers of change, and they apply across "generational boundaries" (whatever that is supposed to mean). If anyone wants to improve the prospects for people starting off now, it would be better to have a close look at what forces may have reduced opportunities compared to past years, and how they might be changed.

But that requires harder thinking than moaning about a "generation". Blaming things on Boomers makes about as much sense as blaming everything on Libras or Jews.

gdgyva said:

K

I am a late boomer....I was the middle child of five born to a navy medic that served three tours in nam, won two Purple Hearts and a bronze star. He was a hard man...and it wasn’t until his last few years that he was able to talk about the horror of his experiences. One of our best days together was a half day spent at the wall. He raised us to stand on our own two feet...told us nothing worth having was free, and was the best man I have ever known in my life.

We didn’t have a lot growing up. Raising five kids on an E6 wage, and with your mom a waitress doesn’t put you in designer clothes or fancy cars. We shopped at goodwills, and drove 10 year old wagons. We learned respect, courtesy, manners, and to say yes sir. We learned that family matters, and love comes in a lot of forms.

You want to blame the problems of today on the boomers...yeah....every generation probably deserves some. But take a look in the mirror, and ask yourself if you are making a difference. I know my dad did. I know I am. Isn’t that what every generation needs to do? Be accountable?

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You say your dad served in VN. You identify as a Boomer, can I ask what your birth year was? Boomers were over represented in Vietnam Nam and on the Wall.

poweRob said:

Boomers then:

• Stole their parent's retirement by inventing vulture capitalism. Closed down and/or stole pensions and pushed most everyone remaining into 401k's for wall street to steal with their boom and bust cycles that they call "market corrections."
• Then created a debtors society so that they could bilk future generations while simultaneously stealing from past generations' retirements.

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First of all, the idea that 401(k) style plans are "for wall street to steal" is nonsense, because where do you think pension funds have always been invested? Stocks, significantly. They had to be, in order to expect anywhere near the rates of return that were necessary to have any hope of funding the benefit promises. If you think pensions should never have been invested in stocks, then contributions (including from employees' paychecks) into pension funds would have had to be enormously higher all along the way, and who would have opposed this back then? Everyone. Taxpayers, employers, employees, unions, everyone.

However, pensions by nature create the debtors society you mentioned. This is basically unavoidable so long as there are pensions. Why? Because they are based on complete guesswork predictions as to what's going to happen over the next 30 years, which no one can do accurately, and (2), despite that unpredictability, benefits by law can never be cut until an entity is facing total insolvency. That combination creates a system of perverse short-term incentives to sabotage the system over the long-term, resulting in the debtor's society.

Boomers beginning to shift retirements to 401(k) style plans is not what has screwed and is screwing the subsequent generation. Their failure to do so sooner and more sweepingly comprehensively is what screwed and is still screwing the subsequent generation.

jnug said:

There is absolutely grounds for intergenerational grievance. But you have to go back to the greatest generation for the roots of this mess.

Not only did we come out of 1945 with a self important air when in fact we were spared by an accident of geography more than anything else.

Then that WW2 generation never heard about getting help for their many ailments and maladies. Lots of mothers that were stark raving maniacs driven more so having hysterectomies without hormone replacement. Fathers simply leaving their families to these mad-women as they went off to work off the family mortgage. Neighborhoods were a hidden swarm of domestic violence with everybody thinking that this is just how its supposed to be.....isn't it?? For example does anybody really think those guys coming from from WW2 were not a bit loopy? Heck they were at least as loopy if not more so than troops coming home today.

Once we discovered "therapy" and there was widespread deployment without the stigma attached to it (about 1970) we went overboard with it which led to participation trophies and school teachers that had no means to control students on and on and on. That was a big mistake. But it could have and should have been predicted as a backlash to a generation of hidden domestic violence that was extraordinary for its depth and scope.

But through it all from 1945 onward, no matter how crazy we were societally the one constant has been consumption at an ungodly rate.....and that is in fact what has brought us to this cliff edge were we are actively participating in crapping in our own nests. Gotta' keep consuming. Its the great American way certainly since 1945. Frankly, that is what a rejection of human impact on Climate Change is for one....crapping in our own nests.

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Tagging on that "consumption" observation : the invention of consumer credit in general and the credit card in particular helped accelerate our transition into a debtor society.

calamity said:

“The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it."



They also raised the Millennials, typically as grandparents after their X Gen kids abdicated parental responsibility, probably because their Boomer parents never taught them any. And, that by itself proves the Boomers are America's worst generation.

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That piece makes some decent historical observations, but it's a gross simplification to pin the problem on an entire generation. Same goes for blaming millennials or Gen-X'ers.

One thing in there that I haven't seen before but totally agree with : the late boomers (I'm one of them) are not anything like the early boomers. Growing up in the 1970's was very different. The world economy was a complete, spastic mess during that period.

<alt>doxygen said:

That piece makes some decent historical observations, but it's a gross simplification to pin the problem on an entire generation. Same goes for blaming millennials or Gen-X'ers.

One thing in there that I haven't seen before but totally agree with : the late boomers (I'm one of them) are not anything like the early boomers. Growing up in the 1970's was very different. The world economy was a complete, spastic mess during that period.

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Agree with the late boomer vs early boomer, big difference. I'm an early X'r and find a lot more in common with late boomers than later members of my generation.

Winchester said:

Agree with the late boomer vs early boomer, big difference. I'm an early X'r and find a lot more in common with late boomers than later members of my generation.

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I see a kinship with early X'ers as well. I think maybe cutting off the boomer block at about 1955 makes sense.

A good read is a book titled "Generations, a History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069".

It tracks American generations through history. It provides four major categories which speaks to the kind of backlash one generation to the next we have in part discussed in this thread. the four major buckets are Idealist, Reactive, Civic and Adaptive in that order. While you need the book to understand the four categories in depth, if you have some understanding for American History you can about guess what these categories are meant to imply. The Boomer generation in their analysis covers Americans born from 1943-1960 and is identified as an Idealist Generation, followed by a Reactive generation known as the "thirteenth". These are the Xers born from 1961-1981 followed by the Millennials considered a possible Civic generation born after 1982.

One thing that becomes obvious tracking generations this way is how quickly it all gets ahead of you. Time flies. The earliest of the Millennials are approaching 40 years old. The other thing you are struck by is the greying of distinction at the crossover points. This current group of political activists would appear to be a blend of late Xers and Early Millennials. Millennials are still not voting or certainly not voting enough. So it is too early to call this generation a Civic generation if they don't even vote. Proudly took my kids to make their first votes this year as they just turned voting age.

What is often referred to as the "Greatest Generation" is referred to in the book as the GI Generation for obvious reasons, born 1901-1924 it is identified as the last Civic generation (assuming we don't actually know about the Millennials yet). The GI is my father's generation. That is followed by the Silent generation, categorized as an Adaptive generation born 1925-1942. Then back to the Boom Generation I identified earlier in the post.

The premise of the book is not far fetched though there are no hard and fast rules about making determinations about generations of Americans. That basic premise is that generations do follow a pattern from Idealist to Reactive to Civic to Adaptive and that those basic groupings are also then defined by a major dynamic that overarches as few as three or as many as four generations at a time. Those major dynamic underpinnings are defined in the book as the Colonial Cycle beginning in 1584 followed by the Revolutionary Cycle, the Civil War Cycle, the Great Power Cycle and the cycle most of us including Boomers reside in, the Millennial Cycle (not to be confused with the Millennial generation).

It does sort of add color to this discussion in the sense that generations reside on a continuum and it is very difficult in that context to point to one American generation as more responsible than another. We are an aspirational Constitutional Republic wrapped around a Capitalist system that included Slavery at inception and then went on to gleefully engage in genocide. We flung off the utter injustice of Royalty which plagued Europe all the way up through the middle of the 20th Century. The plain truth of it is that we have struggled with the various contradictions that flow out of the circumstances and conditions of our inception and Declaration of Independence the entire history of this country.

The thing that is most difficult for Americans to deal with IMO is that 250 years is just a drop in the bucket. It is no time at all. While we have benefited greatly from having no rivals of any consequence on our land borders and two huge oceans either side of us we have screwed up as often as we have triumphed and calling the country "great" after a mere 250 years, especially our 250 years would seem self serving and unrealistic to this point. Just because we were able to throw off Royalty thousands of miles and an ocean away is not a pre-determinant for greatness in my estimation. It gives us a heck of shot at it, but not much more than that.

Rexedgar said:

You say your dad served in VN. You identify as a Boomer, can I ask what your birth year was? Boomers were over represented in Vietnam Nam and on the Wall.

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My dad was 36...me 61...end of boomers

Reagan/Friedman didn't asked me if I wanted to plunge the country into exponential debt, ship middle class jobs overseas, destroy unions, deregulate corporations a business, ignore the Sherman anti-trust laws or any of the other crap you're accusing boomers of.

I worked hard as a single parent, stayed as debt free as possible and paid taxes all my life; If it matters. If you're looking for a scape goat … one is as good as another. On the other hand look to the power people, of any generation, if you want to discover who really put America in the situation it is.

jnug said:

The simple truth of it is that we as a country have been frittering away the once in a millennium advantage of having been on the winning side in a war that left the entire rest of the world in rubble without having a single bit of US property damaged outside of Pearl Harbor...

...So this "phenomenon" predates the boomers. The "greatest generation" certainly did nothing to suggest that they truly understood the scope of the advantage they had coming out of 1945. If they did, they would not have begun the process of consuming ourselves into oblivion....handing that aspect of American life down to future generations in the process.

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You're right about our country squandering the huge advantage we had coming out of WWII. The world was in ruins, we manufactured almost everything and most industrialized countries were rebuilding. Although I couldn't agree more that the Boomers inherited more opportunities then the Millennials, you have to keep in mind that each generation sees more and more change at a quicker pace than the last.

"...Successive generations’ healthy disregard of the previous generation’s tastes, habits and customs is a necessary ingredient of human progress..."

I don't blame anyone for these posts blaming us, it's not new, everyone blames the last gen, I blame the Greatest Gen. I'm a Boomer too, born in the mid-fifties and came of age in the 70's, well after our consumer and credit society was well established.

But most everyone isn't mentioning everything the Boomers handed the Millennials on a silver platter. Their civil rights, the women's, free speech and environmental movements made radical changes to our society. Without them life would be like the 50's, not a pretty place if you're Jewish, black or a woman looking for work. But not so bad if you were a white male...

RetiredUSN said:

Are you talking about all the boomer liberal burnouts from the 60's that ended up taking over tertiary education?...

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Thankfully, otherwise life would have turned out like it was in the 50's, see above ^^

poweRob said:

...Then created a debtors society so that they could bilk future generations while simultaneously stealing from past generations' retirements....

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The Greatest Gen might have made credit more available, but that in itself isn't the problem. Using my credit responsibly I made it to retirement without a huge debt and I was very glad I had it. You need some self control, which gen has more?

Neomalthusian said:

...However, pensions by nature create the debtors society you mentioned. This is basically unavoidable so long as there are pensions...

Boomers beginning to shift retirements to 401(k) style plans is not what has screwed and is screwing the subsequent generation. Their failure to do so sooner and more sweepingly comprehensively is what screwed and is still screwing the subsequent generation.

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Of course pensions just like socialized medicine most countries provide and our Medicare, they create a debit on society. That's why we have taxes and why we shouldn't double our country's debit to give the rich yet more money.

It's easy to lump a generation all together, but not all Boomers are responsible for our mess. You have to dig a little deeper to find most of the source of our divide and it comes from our politics. Do you you think that most of the executives trying to squeeze the most profit, the one's who're responsible for the loss of the GM plant and 15k jobs announced today were boomers? Most boomers are retired or dead.

Other than our computer design, who are the big players in our major industries, liberals?
I got a pension in just before they went to 401k's and I'm so glad I have it. I don't think it was liberals who pushed for that change.

If you Millennials think you have it bad, don't look at the future. Do you have any idea what your kids will face when automation really kicks in?!? I'm not very optimistic. I wonder what that gen will say about the Millennials...

SoCal said:

You're right about our country squandering the huge advantage we had coming out of WWII. The world was in ruins, we manufactured almost everything and most industrialized countries were rebuilding. Although I couldn't agree more that the Boomers inherited more opportunities then the Millennials, you have to keep in mind that each generation sees more and more change at a quicker pace than the last.

"...Successive generations’ healthy disregard of the previous generation’s tastes, habits and customs is a necessary ingredient of human progress..."

I don't blame anyone for these posts blaming us, it's not new, everyone blames the last gen, I blame the Greatest Gen. I'm a Boomer too, born in the mid-fifties and came of age in the 70's, well after our consumer and credit society was well established.

But most everyone isn't mentioning everything the Boomers handed the Millennials on a silver platter. Their civil rights, the women's, free speech and environmental movements made radical changes to our society. Without them life would be like the 50's, not a pretty place if you're Jewish, black or a woman looking for work. But not so bad if you were a white male...

Thankfully, otherwise life would have turned out like it was in the 50's, see above ^^

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I won't take issue with any of that.

Of course pensions just like socialized medicine most countries provide and our Medicare, they create a debit on society. That's why we have taxes and why we shouldn't double our country's debit to give the rich yet more money.

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Pension-style programs involve giving a lot of people who happen to be rich more money. And I bring up pensions with specific concern for non-federal pensions, because entities responsible for those don't control their own currency. Pensions are not quite like socialized medicine.

It's easy to lump a generation all together, but not all Boomers are responsible for our mess.

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That's true, they're not, but there are certain debts (pensions, frankly) for which no predominantly still-living generation is more responsible than Boomers, and no generation has more wealth than Boomers, so no generation could make a meaningful difference in handling problematic pension debt than Boomers.

I got a pension in just before they went to 401k's and I'm so glad I have it. I don't think it was liberals who pushed for that change.

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Anyone who really understands what pensions have done and are doing to this country push for that change. The unfairness of pensions is not that they've started switching them to 401(k) style plans, the unfairness is that this wasn't done sooner and more sweepingly, which has allowed this problem to continue to grow.