How the baby boomers not millennials screwed America

[Hermit-The-Prog]

“The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it."
By Sean Illing Updated Mar 12, 2018

Everyone likes to bash millennials. We’re spoiled, entitled, and hopelessly glued to our smartphones. We demand participation trophies, can’t find jobs, and live with our parents until we’re 30. You know the punchlines by now.

But is the millennial hate justified? Have we dropped the generational baton, or was it a previous generation, the so-called baby boomers, who actually ruined everything?

That’s the argument Bruce Gibney makes in his book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. The boomers, according to Gibney, have committed “generational plunder,” pillaging the nation’s economy, repeatedly cutting their own taxes, financing two wars with deficits, ignoring climate change, presiding over the death of America’s manufacturing core, and leaving future generations to clean up the mess they created.

I spoke to Gibney about these claims, and why he thinks the baby boomers have wrecked America.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

[...]

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/20/16772670/baby-boomers-millennials-congress-debt

[Zorro]

1. Fuck that noise

It was the Reagan voters who sent the country down this path where we are today.

[chuckstevens]

2. A lot of Baby Boomers abandon the New Deal and Great Society and voted for Reagan

[brush]

32. BS. The boomers were/are a divided gneration. There were activists who became Democrats...

and young republicans on the other side who became repugs who voted in Reagan, Daddy Bush, W and now trump.

If the premise of the book is that the entire Baby Boomer generation is responsible for those poor repug presidents who destroyed unions, started historic wall street collapses, two wars and the Great Recession and the debacle that is the trump admin, the writer needs to fire his researchers and start over with a sounder, more thought out and less amateurish premise.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

36. the transcript doesn't distinguish

The transcript of the interview appears to treat 'boomers' as a monolithic block, the same as it does 'millenials'.

Here's a wikipedia article about the author:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Gibney

Looks to me like a millenial lashed out after being blamed for TrumPutin. Maybe he found a statistic that fit what he already believed.

Part of the division you mention was evident before Reagan -- see the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There were boomers fighting on both sides of that divide.

[brush]

44. You are correct. You last sentence says it all.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. rotten ronnie installed by boomers

From the article:

But it’s really the white middle-class boomers who exemplify all the awful characteristics and behaviors that have defined this generation. They became a majority of the electorate in the early ’80s, and they fully consolidated their power in Washington by January 1995. And they’ve basically been in charge ever since.

That pretty much matches your comment, at least as the beginning of "this path".

(Disclaimer: I'm a boomer but I didn't vote for any of the shit we've been pelted with since Carter lost).

[Hortensis]

19. All this talk of generations, where's WAVES?

The Gilded Age was part of a conservative wave, a reaction to what came before.
The New Deal era was a liberal wave, a reaction to what came before.
The Reagan Era and what came after was a conservative wave, a reaction to the era before.

It's the nature of electorates to eventually start blaming whatever party's been dominating power and choose "change" by voting the other direction.

It's the nature of waves to wear themselves out and be replaced by new ones.

We should be in a new liberal era now and would be if new technology and the massive growth of wealth creation didn't empower ultraconservatives to undertake massive brainwashing, effectively moving most of our nation farther right and systematically demoralizing much of the rest. This is delaying the new wave.

I know where to place the blame for that last, and it's on specific people, not on an entire generation. We've never been here before and didn't know what was happening until too late. But I will blame those of us capable of understanding if we don't belatedly get control back, rebuild what was destroyed, and continue the progress that is our duty.

[bettyellen]

29. White midwestern men and their wives- both boomers and the greatest generation. Not women and POC at

all. Don’t lump us city dwellers in with this bullshit, either.
The differences are stark- and still are, sadly. Fuck those voters.

[SharonAnn]

25. I'm ashamed to say that many of my baby-boomer cohorts

1. Voted for Reagan
2. Supported GOP "tax cuts for the rich"
3. Cut support for unions
4. Cut support for appropriate minimum wage legislation
5. etc, etc.

As I was telling someone the other day, our parents who grew up in the Depression and WWII are the ones who taxed themselves to build schools, hospitals, airports, highways, etc. And, they are the ones who strengthened wages and regulations that benefited workers. Those who knew what it was to have nothing built the country where we could all have something. And we've thrown it away.

As a baby-boomer, I've been aware of this for some time. My age group has not strengthend this country or our economy.

[Iggo]

3. How The People Pitting Millennials Against Baby Boomers Are Screwing America.

There's an article I'd like to see.

(Trash Thread.)

[BeyondGeography]

4. Sounds like Republicans to me

Carter won voters aged 30 and under by six points in 1980. That’s everyone born after 1950 so the author’s thesis that boomers elected Reagan pretty much falls apart right there. The destructive changes in this country have been ideological not generational.

[Va Lefty]

6. "The destructive changes in this country have been ideological not generational."

Spot on.

[Kittycow]

31. Exactly.

I'm tired of getting blamed. But personally, I blame Republicans and people who don't vote.

[beachbum bob]

7. kinda cracks me up as a boomer we all worked and paid taxes, had to find a way to

pay for our own college degrees, many of us served in the military. I'll make this one observation concerning millennials>>>>

for the most part, many of them thought they could have a lifestyle that took their parents 30 years of working to obtain in just a few years out of college....

[shanny]

9. "had to find a way to pay for our own college degrees"

That cracks me up: back in the day I could support myself and go to university waiting tables part-time and with a summer job. Yeah but kids these days are just lazy and entitled....

[beachbum bob]

11. student loans were unheard of 45 and 50 years ago and those I knew who went to college

worked in doing so, all of them. The statistics tell you when loans came more common....

[KPN]

24. That's the point. I could work a summer job for

What, 14 weeks or so and make enough money to pay tuition room and board for a year at my State university. Kids haven't been able to do that in decades now. Ergo loans. It has nothing to with willingness to work and a lot to do with skyrocketing (uncontrolled) costs coupled with reduced subsidy (costs covered via State taxes) making it impossible for many to attend college without loans. Hard to imagine there's been no feeding at the trough in all of that.

[Hoyt]

33. Tuition back then was nothing like it is now. It's increased much

more than inflation would suggest.

[dawg day]

16. My parents paid $3K for my 4 years of college--

I paid the rest. Took 7 years to graduate.

I learned from that. I paid every penny of my kids' schooling, and they graduated debt-free. Many parents aren't able to do that, of course, but many young people in the upper half of the economic ladder are getting a lot from their parents. And (I teach community college), many of those from lower-income families are allowed to live with a parent long after high school, and get free childcare besides.
It's never easy for students to pay for college, and college is much more expensive relatively now than back then. But in my experience-- and I'm a college instructor-- students are much more likely now to have some support from their families. And it shows-- the percentage of millennials going to college is much higher than it was for boomers. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/

College attendance is up about 300%, in fact. Back in the 60s and 70s, access to higher education was restricted a lot, especially because of race and gender. Many schools (esp in the south) were white-only, and many were male-only. You don't see that much anymore!

Again, it's more expensive relatively now-- much more. But there's much more support, much less "sink or swim". The college I went to actually tried to flunk us out the first year. Now the college I teach at does just about everything trying to retain students.

What changed for the better is access to college and support within-- education is a lot better now.
What changed for the worse is cost. That's much worse now. However, it's also something that's a lot easier to fix, and maybe that's the task the millennials can set for themselves -- to take this great access we have now and make it affordable also.

Fix the problems you see, that is. Don't just blame, because it's pretty clear that the guy who wrote this article had no clue what it used to be like.

[liberalmuse]

38. Boomers had it way easier.

Try comparing the wages vs cost of living and college tuition from then and now. There's no comparison. Millenials are dealing with astronomical housing and rental costs, college tuition that has increased pretty close to 100x, along with high very basic cost of living expenses while wages have gone down, if you take inflation into account. This is a direct result of boomers voting to take away benefits such as affordable healthcare, college, housing, etc. all so they can increase their portfolios. They're raking in profits at the expense of their kids and grandkids and then they turn around and chide them for not working as hard as they did. Bullshit! What kind of fucked up, selfish people do this? I've been saying this for decades, but the Baby Boomers are going to be the most hated generation for a long, long time, and deservedly so.

[brush]

45. Yeah, boomers had it easy...Kent State, Jackson State, Selma, Detroit, dying in Vietnam...

Last edited Mon Mar 12, 2018, 10:59 PM - Edit history (2)

Watts riot, Newark riots, police riots at political conventions, assassinations of King, JFK, Malcolm, dying in 'Nam, coming back from 'Nam and being spit on and called baby killers, Hoover and Cointelpro spying on King and infiltrating the original Black Panthers, racist cops brutalizing the black community (the reason for the founding of the original Panthers. Yeah, that's still going), Reagan and his "ketchup is a vegetable stingyness, SDS, Cesar Chavez and the grape boycott, recessions over and over—and you still say boomers had it easy?

That's such an uninformed, no-knowledge-of-history opinion it's not even funny. Who do you think the opposing sides were in all the above mentioned conflicts—civil rights marchers and freedom riders both black and white, demonstrators of all colors were protesting against the war vs the other half of the generation who sided with Nixon and Reagan and HW Bush and W Bush.

We were/still are a split generation ideologically and still fighting, our side for justice and social safety nets and the other side for selfishness and greed, just as the current millennial generation likes to portray themselves as fighting against.

The thing is though, this current generation doesn't go out in the street and fight (except for their kid brothers and sisters still in high school who know how to fight)—keyboard warriors are they, except for Antifa and they're afraid of them because why? Please tell me. Maybe they don't know Antifa stands for anti-fascists and they're on your side against the alt-right, nazi, KKK goons. Go get some pointers from the high school kids.

And don't tell me no millennials voted for trump or Stein either and helped the orange bozo get in.

And if you still say boomers had it easy after all of the above, to that I say, fuck that.

[shanny]

8. It was the Greatest Generation that led the transformation in the 70s and 80s

while the boomers were still recent graduates and at the entry level of politics. That said, boomers have largely gone along, shifting ever more to the right while the structure of the nation crumbled around us.

I am a boomer myself and growth in real wages has been flat since I graduated high school. Most of my life has consisted of working harder and harder just to stay in place. That's not an excuse, just a statement. But I have acquired a level of learned helplessness and cynicism along the way, along with waning energy. Bravo for millennials, they give me hope.

[enough]

15. Very important points. Thanks for bringing some actual analysis to this conversation.

[malchickiwick]

10. Any other GenXers out there feeling squeezed between two behemoths??

I remember the feeling of helplessness I felt in the 1980s as a teenager, too young to vote, witnessing as Reagan destroyed the middle class. Today, social media, which I despise, seems to be destroying our institutions of democracy.

That said, I have high hopes that the Millenials (three of whom are my progeny) and Gen Z will embrace progressivism more aggressively than my contingent did. I'm predicting that Gen Z will have the same sort of influence on the zeitgeist that all you Boomers did in the Sixties. Hopefully, far fewer will ultimately sell out their ideals...

[Docreed2003]

37. Lol...yep

As a kid born under Carter and raised under Reagan, for the longest time we were considered the last of Gen X. My generation is even less talked about and it’s interesting and infuriating.

[Journeyman]

12. How myopic, to lay blame on a "generation". . .

I'm 60-some years old, and if the truth be told, I just got here myself. The planet seemed unbelievably screwed up when I arrived -- dead Hitlers and Stalins littered the Earth, McCarthy wouldn't be censured for another month or more, Rachel Carson was only beginning her career -- it couldn't be more surreal if Kafka himself were orchestrating it.

I spent my childhood beneath a school desk hiding from nuclear destruction. As a teenager, I won my only lottery prize -- early induction to fight an asinine war no one believed in anymore. And despite all my best efforts -- and the best efforts of some of the best minds of my generation (those not destroyed by madness, who could do more than Howl) -- it just seems to be getting worse.

For every step forward we stumble three back. Again I face nuclear annihilation, though this time without the comfort of a protective desktop. Now it's my grandchildren who may face the horror of death by lottery. McCarthyism (or its equivalent) runs rampant in the halls again, the ecological disaster we face is far beyond anything Carson envisioned, and the ghosts of totalitarianism seem to stir yet again.

Point a finger of blame at another generation? Why, because they arrived a day or more before or after me? No. It's no one's fault and it's everyone's fault. . . take your fair share of blame. There's enough for all.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. a chart of hope

Here's a Pew Research graph from an article at
http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/30/a-different-look-at-generations-and-partisanship/

[Hortensis]

17. Great post! So agree with the reality of stumbling progress.

Which Hermit-the-Prog's post also in its way illustrates somewhat.

[dawg day]

13. Let's talk in 40 years -- well, I won't be here then, but-

First, Millenials haven't had time to ruin the country yet. Come back in 40 years.

And the boomers == as much as you can say a group of millions did anything together= transformed the world. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, anyone? Oprah and Sally Ride?

Believe me, the world we got wasn't a great world. There was a Cold War that threatened nuclear holocaust every day. There was massive pollution that millenials, at least in the US, can't even imagine. Women could legally be beaten by their husbands in many states, and often were legally forced to quit their jobs when they got married or pregnant. Women could not get much medical care without the consent of their husbands. Women couldn't get abortions-- heck, they couldn't get birth control -- in many states. People of color weren't just discriminated against-- discrimination was enshrined in the law.

Oh, well. Go on, young people, think this is the worst time ever. You're wrong, and wrong to blame your parents (who are probably much nicer to you than our parents, btw, but then, it was legal to abuse your kids back then-- encouraged, in fact- We would have gone to jail if we treated you kids like our parents treated us).

Granted, you are living through Trump. But Obama is a baby boomer too, and Sanders, and all sorts of others you like.

And, of course, we had the best music.

[Hortensis]

18. Thank you, Dawg Day. Another great perspective post.

And at least everyone has to be struck by the truth of that last.

[SharonAnn]

26. And yet, it was our parents (not us boomers) who fixed these things.

[DBoon]

28. millenia ls don't wait for their selective service lottery number

There are benefits to being a post boomer generation

[yurbud]

20. there's something to this, at least for the rich

past generations of the wealthy had some sense of "noblesse oblige" or at least a sense of how far they could push the rest of us before they incite a revolution.

The boomer generation of the elite seems to think their propaganda and surveillance state are so tight, they can screw us as hard as they want and we have no escape.

[Skittles]

22. it needs to be way more targeted

writing off the boomers en masse as a bunch of assholes and thieves is just plain wrong

[yurbud]

23. yes. There is a zeitgeist for different periods, but not everyone is part of it

just as there were beatniks and lefties before the 60's, and lefties during the Reagan/Bush years.

[Skittles]

21. so sick of this crap

[DBoon]

27. so the problem isn't a greedy sociopaths ruling class

It's actually a generation. We've become a pure democracy where entire generations rule

Clever. Blame an entire generation and hide who is actually responsible.

Too bad the 50,000 boomers who died in Southeast Asia aren't around to discuss this.

[GeorgeGist]

30. Fuck that shit ...

get off your ass an do something.

[DavidDvorkin]

34. Thank you for helping the "divide and conquer" strategy.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

42. it's the Irish

Everybody knows the Irish are to blame. Or maybe it's the Okies? Black people? Muslims? Gotta be liberal Muslim Mexican transgender Democrats, now, right? TrumPutin tells us so!

The author of the article and the author of the book both appear to be millenials. What really interests me is, who is feeding them "millenial hate"? They're both feeling it or neither the article nor book would exist. (Well, maybe the book, if it's written just to gain royalties and recognition. Yeah, I'm a little cynical).

The boomer population bubble has been, and still is, a formidable force moving through society and time. Of course it is responsible for the state of the world -- we've owned it and molded it since the first of that bubble came of voting age. The author may as well have stated that people are responsible.

Is "millenial hate" a thing? If so, where does it come from? The usual suspects? Is the reich-wing attempting to halt that generation's apparent swing to blue? (The phrases in the first paragraph -- "participation trophies", "can't find jobs" -- seem familiar).

[DavidDvorkin]

43. Right, that's how it goes

I see posts online from young people complaining about old parasites on Social Security. It's all more of the same.

[liberalmuse]

35. As a boomer...

I agree wholeheartedly. The baby boomers had so much potential, and there are still those who were part of the counterculture tirelessly fighting the good fight. Sadly, for the most part, the boomer generation decided to act like a plague of grasshoppers taking more than their share of what the generations before them worked so hard and sacrificed for, then they pulled up the ladder behind them and now are blaming the Millenials who are their kids and grandkids. I have met a lot of Millenials and collectively they are amazing. Shame on the elders who are trying to push them down. It's fucking disgraceful how some of the old try and eat the young.

If people want to sum up the worst of the boomer generation, they need look no further than Trump who is a direct product of this generation. If you want to get Biblical, he is The Beast that rose out of the sea of the incessant greed that was unleashed in the '80s which continues to this day. From choosing Reagan, in simplest terms, because "Americans shouldn't have to keep their thermostats at 65!" and rejecting making even little sacrifices for future generations, the boomers set the path. If you lived back then, you could literally feel the moment we collectively chose the direction that would fuck up this country for generations to come. The boomers by far and large were the demographic that elected Trump because he embodies the very worst of them.

[Skittles]

41. LOL

Trump doesn't represent Boomers any more than Shkreli represents Millennials.....stop buying into this garbage

[raccoon]

39. If this shithead Bruce Gibney (yes, I'm channeling DT's behavior)

thinks all Boomers had such a wonderful life, they didn't.

They didn't all have a father who had a great union job. My father died when we were kids and we lived off survivor SS.

If anyone younger than Boomers thinks they're going to win hearts and minds this way, they ain't going to.

Just wanted to post before hiding this thread.

[Hassler]

40. We have a white problem, not a generational problem because...

White Millennials voted for the Drumpfster Fire.