The Luckiest Generation

[SoCalDem]

It's time to start calling "The Greatest Generation" by their REAL name.. "The Luckiest Generation"..

They got the cheap housees...sold for massive profits to the next generation
They got the free education
They grew up in a world not yet covered with concrete
They got the "ramped up" Social Security (Thanks to their children...US Boomers!)
They got the union jobs with benefits and pensions
They got the comfy retirements at timely ages
They got to raise their families in relative "peace & quiet"
They got Medicare when it was "bright & shiny-new"..
They got the "age discrimination" laws when they still had "teeth"..
They came to retirement age at a time of plenty, and relative peace

Sure.. there are some who are still hanging on, and suffering with the rest of us,but for the large part, they came of age at a time of world war.. and UNAMBIGUOUS war. They willingly participated (as would ANY generation). They DID fight and win it, and we are thankful, BUT they have been repaid handsomely, and most have led very comfortable lives due to the gratitude sent their way.

Poor people are with us in every generation, so I am not talking about the ones who "slipped through the cracks".

The oldsters with us today love to talk about the hardships they endured during "The Great Depression", but truth be told, they were CHILDREN then, and the hardships were mostly borne by THEIR parents. Children can and do come through many hardships without the scars that afflict the adults. Children are natural "optimists", and other than hearing their parents complain, most of them did not suffer all THAT much during the depression.. At least not much more than EVERYONE ELSE during those times.

They benefited greatly from the medical and industrial leaps and bounds that came from "their war". Had the war not happened, their adult lives would have been pretty bleak. The Depression would not have ended so abruptly, and completely had not the post-war boom come along.

They were in the "right place at the right time", and they wrung every last drop out of the lives they lived. The licked the platter clean, and not so surprisingly, when our generation came to the table, there was little left for us.

The Boomer generation thought we had the world by the tail, and the sky would be the limit. We were wrong.

We seem to have lived our entire lives on "false hopes".. Our parents' generation inherited a world that was not a very friendly place to live, and we inherited a world that LOOKED friendly, but from the day we reached adulthood, it has slapped us down, and routinely put us in "our place".

Could it be that we bought into the idea, that a problem "once fixed", STAYS fixed? We forgot (or maybe were never even taught) about the "ever vigilant" part of our responsibilities as citizens.

One look at C-Span, on any given day would teach us that the "issues of the day" are pretty much the same as they have ever been. 'We were so vain, that we probably thought that our government was "about US".' It's really just about "our money" and how it can be funneled into things that have little bearing on our everyday lives. The things that we all want, are slipping away from us, because everything worthwhile to society costs money...POOLED money. The GI BILL was not cheap.. Medicare was not cheap.. Social Security is not cheap..Health care is not cheap.

For many years our government has been tossing us scraps, and we have been "filling in the gaps" with easy credit, and "entertainment". We thought we had lots of time to "fix" things, and would do so, when the time came..

Well, TIME is HERE, and we find ourselves standing outside locked doors..The ones inside, know we are out here, yet they pay no attention to us.

All the things we expected to be ours, have been taken from us, little by little,over time, and even the means of challenging the theft, has been taken from us.

So The "Greatest Generation" has become the "Luckiest Generation", and the "Boomer Generation" will go down in history as the "Loser Generation".

I am in NO way negating the bravery of the WWII soldiers. They did what needed to be done, and what ANY generation would do,. faced with the same set of circumstances. I am in no way saying that they did not DESERVE the benefits they received as they returned home. The just happened to be the generation that ushered in a time of prosperity. We LOVE these people.. they are our parents and grandparents, and they did not intentionally "take more than their share". They too, bought into the American Dream.. Hell... They practically INVENTED it, and thought it would only get better as time went on.

Just as they were children in the depression era, we Boomers were children in a time of plenty. It was an "accident" of birth. We did nothing to create the times we were borne into, but what we do as adults, DOES affect the lives of our children and future generations.

Living a life on auto-pilot has serious consequences, as we are finding out now, and we near "landing zone"..

[asthmaticeog]

1. The generation you're *whining* about

handed YOUR generation EVERYTHING on a platter. Amazing, an American Baby Boomer, complaining about getting screwed by fate. Just amazing.

[SoCalDem]

2. Not fate.... Complacency

:(

[sandnsea]

20. What we were handed

Polluted air, water and land. Depleted resources. Broken down factories. Triple FICA taxes. Medicare taxes. And aging parents who didn't want to pay their property taxes anymore, and got waivers so they didn't have to. We are the FIRST generation who took on the tax responsiblity of our parents, our kids and our future retirement. While also being the first generation handed an economy that required two earners to make the same income as single earners had previously. At the same time, we didn't have grandmas who lived across town to help with the kids, because our parents were quick to head off across the country and slap on bumper stickers that said "We're spending our kids' inheritance."

Oh, and let's not forget the greatest gift ever handed to a generation, Vietnam.

Yeah, thanks ever so much for everything you "handed to us on a platter".

[Eloriel]

54. Ah, more

very unbecoming stuff, most of it overstated and/or simply not true.

But then, I think some people consider themselves Boomers who simply aren't. -- they came much later.

All the resentment is SO ugly: "Where's mine? wahhhh wahhhhh! I don't wanna have to worry about anything or do ANy work. Wahh, wahhh."

[Lilith Velkor]

59. Wahhh where's my ozone layer?

Make the big scary military industrial complex go away! Waaaah, wahhh.

[Eloriel]

53. Not only that, but I can add

that living through the Great Depression as a child was no laughing matter. The Great Depression scarred my parents FOR LIFE, and in ways that impacted ME as well, in negative ways.

Living through WW2 was no picnic either. My husband was gone a year to Vietnam (with a nice vacation in the middle); my mother lived without my father for 3 or 4 years. Frankly, I can't imagine that (just as I can't imagine the extended and/or multiple tours of duty in Iraq these days).

I don't get this "resentment" toward any previous generation. A lot of GenXers are very resentful of Boomers -- and I've always found it VERY unbecoming. I think it's possibly even more so to see a Boomer strike out needlessly at my parents' generation.

[tridim]

3. Absolutely

The real estate thing bothers me the most. My parents first house cost them $19,000 and they sold it for $100,000. My first house is a modest town home and cost me $160,000. I'll be extremely lucky if I can sell it for the same price, most likely I'll take a loss. My generation is in for a world of hurt when we start retiring.

[dcfirefighter]

6. I've got a similar feeling

Both my grandfathers served in WWII, and left my parents in a pretty good spot, and my parents have worked hard and saved and are now enjoying semi-retirement.

As for the real estate thing, I recommend a solution, but it means we have to overcome the "I got mine." attitude so prevalent today.

We are all competing for certain fixed resources. In the case of real estate, it's land, but this argument also applies to other natural resources. While we can create more houses, and more energy, and more transportation, etc., we cannot create more land.

A notable corrollary to this is that no one else created land either. No one has legitimate ownership of land - go back far enough and it was taken by conquest. As such, we all have some claim to it.

Certainly, people have, in good faith, worked hard, saved, and purchased land according to the established social and legal norms. Taking this land would obviously be unpopular, if not immoral.

However, there is certainly a good justification for assessing taxes on this land. Fortunately, the distribution of land wealth is incredibly skewed, even more so than incomes. I can't find the statistics, but it's something like 3% own 97% of value.

Not only is there a good moral justification for taxing land wealth, but there are also good moral arguments against taxing labor and the products of labor. Self ownership is the rock bed of liberal philosophy.

The economic effects of shifting government revenue from labor and the products of labor to land and other natural wealth are incredibly beneficial. People, naturally acting to minimize costs to them, will take less land, leaving more for the rest, and lowering the price required to acquire it. The combined effect of many people doing this would be Intensive development of urban areas: the quintessential house won't be a split level ranch with a white picket fence, but a 3 storey townhouse, or a condo in a mid-rise walk up. This leads to higher density, which improves commerce and lowers transportation and energy costs.

The corrollary to the intensive development of urban areas would be the dearth of development in rural areas. These cities wouldn't be surrounded by expansive suburbia, but rather by farms, parks and wilderness, further decreasing transport costs for food and other agricultural products.

The first step is getting your local property tax changed to a split-rate tax, being revenue neutral but with a higher rate for assessed land value than for assessed improvement value. This change typically lowers taxes on more than half of residential properties and around 2/3'ds of owner occupied homes.

[CountAllVotes]

4. some are lucky but others are not

I guess it depends on what you may or may not have had in life (job, spouse, etc.).

A friend of my late mother's is 83 years old and owns two houses and has them both in her daughter's names.

She claims that she "lives in poverty", collecting her late husband's social security and his pension. She never had a job long enough to be eligible to collect a pension or social security.

When my mother passed away, she left her some money thinking this was true. In fact this old woman has a net worth of well over $1 million dollars now easily (maybe even $2 million), yet she sucks the tit for all she can get being she "lives in poverty". Kinda makes me sick to say the least.

Oh well, some got the goods, others don't it seems to me. They were lucky in some respects, but not so lucky in other respects. Calling them the Luckiest Generation is a stretch in many cases as some senior citizens live in poverty being they never had the chance or ability to buy that new house for $15,000.

:kick:

[SoCalDem]

5. I hear ya.. There are some people in any generation who make it

and I think some of the rich ones who "lived poor" did so out of fear of what might happen to them if they spent their money. My grandparents owned about 20 houses in our home town, yet my grandmother wore frumpy housedresses and my grandfather wore overalls. They both died with new things hanging in their closets..tags still attached.

To look at them, one would think they were poor.and their generations "never talked about money".

[MichiganVote]

7. Who?

"They got the cheap housees...sold for massive profits to the next generation"

- Housing after WWII was largely tract housing that was built to accomodate families who worked in milltowns and in factories. All housing costs have risen as have other costs. Some of the baby boomers were trying to buy their first house during the early 80's when interest rates were as high as 17%. Today, college degreed people think nothing of mortgages over $200,000. Who sold them that idea? It wasn't the post WWII folks or even the boomers.

"They got the free education"

- Education is never free. However, schools were vastly improved during the 50's and 60's and have largely been in decline depending on what it is that you feel constitutes a "good" educational environment since. Nevertheless, more students with disabilities are identified and served than ever before.

"They grew up in a world not yet covered with concrete"

- Most of the children in the post war years lived in cities. That is where their parents found work. Today, the sprawl of bedroom communitites accounts for huge capitol outlay in terms of roads leading into and out of suburban areas. All roads lead to commerce and all commerce generates money for the very social programs Americans want.

"They got the "ramped up" Social Security (Thanks to their children...US Boomers!)"

- The month to month "fund" of social security was stable but problems began as early as the 1970's when many boomers were still in secondary schools. Its the politicians who have borrowed and starved SS, not the people.

"They got the union jobs with benefits and pensions"

- Male workers supported unions to work in 'go nowhere' jobs doing monotonous work. We won't be returning to work out of red barns anytime soon and the country is littered with vacant factory buildings. Women did not fare so well accounting for low wage jobs in even less productive work environments.

"They got the comfy retirements at timely ages"

- They saved instead of spent every last dollar. A $4.00 cup of coffee at Starbucks bought with a credit card? Please...

"They got to raise their families in relative "peace & quiet""

- The Korean war, the Cold War, Cuba, and eventually VietNam

"They got Medicare when it was "bright & shiny-new".."

- Public health, as we know it today, was not around during the Polio Epidemic that many were afflicted with in their childhoods. Medicare has actually enlarged in the past several decades and therein lies the problem. All of the "free" programs have been forced to become too much to too many.

During the Depression children died from hunger, ailments related to malnutrition, and illness. They stood in line with their parents for food, warmth and anything else they could get. Families lost farms, homes, and generations of families who had grown up in communities were displaced. There was no easy street for anyone during the Depression or after the Depression.

Over 58,000 men and women were killed in VietNam. The sons and daughters of the post WWII generation. Hardly a thing to be envied regardless of its cause.

A confluence of factors have enabled the Boomers to prosper and that, in turn, has enabled their children to prosper. There may be no "greatest generation", there may only be generations of families who have been unable to persevere or prevent as much hardship as possible from coming their way. There are no guarantees.

The current administration has as its goal the enlargement of power at the Federal level. It seeks to train states to expect less, yet do more. That is the primary shift we face and it won't be pretty as states compete more and more for money, influence and resources.

Buckle up.

[Individualist]

38. Excellent points, MV

My mother had to quit school after the 8th grade to go to work and help support the family. In the 70's she was laid off from her job at a Levi Strauss factory at an age when no one would hire her for another job; my father had died of a heart attack in '64. Her social security income was so low that I eventually had to move back home so that she could have medical and dental care that she needed (I certainly couldn't support two households on my income). At the time of her death, she had a life insurance policy of $1,000. Some "lucky generation", huh?

[MichiganVote]

39. Hard to find too many silver spoons among the working class

[Gyre]

8. They made $ hand over fist if they were marginally competent

My step-father is a perfect example. VP of Bechtel 'til he retired. Consciousness of James Watt. Now he longs for the adoration of his "children" who don't want anything to do with him. Pathetic.

Gyre

[Eloriel]

55. Gee, I guess that makes my working class father dumb and useless

or something, eh? HE didn't make $ hand over fist, nor did he get to retire at all. He worked hard all his life, and died on the job of a heart attack, hammer in hand. Must've been his fault, I guess: INCOMPETENT.

[newportdadde]

9. Pensions...

That is one thing I wish we still did as a nation and its dieing out. Knowing you could go to work for 25/30 years and retire with decent insurance and pension.

My job in the IT industry.. hell I'm too busy dodging H1B's in the hallway watching my coworkers get fired to think about pensions or company loyalty.

[SoCalDem]

10. Yep.. a poster "upthread" commented on "go-nowhere" jobs

but one has to consider that lots of union guys in days past, did not have college educations, and even though the work might have been dirty and "go-nowhere", they had the benefits that were necessary to raise a family comfortably and had a REAL carrot at the end of the 30 year stick... a retirement check WITH health benefits (for most)..

OUR generation will have very few people with such options.. Most will have trouble even fining jobs with long-term employment even possible,.

[Mist]

11. A huge part of their "luck" was being a fairly small generation -

IIRC, the smallest generation in US history.

[pretzel4gore]

12. but we came SO close!

there were elements in the 'greatest' generation who would have supported hitler... they were forced to stew in silence until the hippies came along, and, at the price of poisoning the well ie 'liberal' democracy, they began plotting the end of the very thing the 'greatest generation' supposedly fought for...worse, they operated in the dark, in silence, under the 'radar'...the media was corrupted beyond belief and the bushevik agenda was then presented as a fait accimpli in 2000....such heroes as John Wayne, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Reagan and so on were rightwingers all the way...i wonder what they would have thought of geeb (brother of, omfg, 'jeb' lol!) Recently Johnny Carson, who began wiseing up somewhere along the line and died loathing geeb (bro of... hahaha!...'jeb') went quietly away (you think the media woulda gone nuts over it, but, because carson became anti bush, it was ignored)
The fact is, until reagan came along, a guy could buy a house with only 2 years savings from most jobs...in 1970 a highschool kid could within several months, be earning the same wage as a police/fireman iow middleclass...jobs were plentiful and gas was cheap and so on; there's a famous song that say '$50 dollars down to buy a car! (it's very difficult to tell kids what world was like before reagan, and you didn't have to be a millionaires' kid to share in it!) reagan begat aids begat crack begat rush limbah-humbug begat...bush...lol

[SoCalDem]

14. Yep.. Our first house 1977 cost 39,900..my husband made 22K

a year..housepayments $325 PITI...3 years later we sold, made a modest profit about 3K...BUT the next house came with 15.9 interest (Thanks Raygun)....

Our NEW car (a chevy wagon) in 1977 came with $83 a month car payments a THREE-yr loan..

That was our LAST new car..


Reagan changed everything, and it's been down hill ever since..

[Charon]

56. Raygun

Think you should be beholding to President Carter for the High Interest rates. Bought my first house in 1980. Had a 16 % interest rate. By 86 refinanced the loan to 9-1/2%

[SoCalDem]

57. I think our 1977 house was about 10%..

The late 70's & all of the 80's were pretty brutal to people just getting started..and even though Carter was president, we had too many problems to balme them on him..he was a one termer who was pretty much hobbled for the last few years he was in office..

I sometimes think that he was the "testcase" on how the right wingers would avenge watergate...

[CountAllVotes]

16. huh?

-- in 1970 a high school kid could within several months, be earning the same wage as a police/fireman iow middleclass...jobs were plentiful and gas was cheap and so on; there's a famous song that say '$50 dollars down to buy a car! --

Ahhmmmm, I don't think so! My first job paid $2.88 an hour and I scrimped to pay my $175. a mo. rent and had nothing left. Impossible to save money in this situation.

As for $50 down to buy a car? Huh? I did not even OWN a car until I was in my mid-20's and I did not qualify for a Jimmy Carter era loan of 17% interest being my income was "too low".

I think we got screwed is what I think.

As for the Greatest Generation, many of them were/are indeed lucky. Hell my mother collected my father's pension, her pension, her social security and she was was always "going to go broke" after he died being they wouldn't allow her to collect his Social Security as well. She was bringing in well over $4,000. a month clear and yep, she had it all but unfortunately she also blew it all the last few years she was alive by making a series of physical moves and spending money and giving it too people that prey on the elderly. When she died there was not a whole lot left (no property at all). It kinda makes me sick, especially when I consider this "friend" of hers that I mention in my earlier post. She acted like she did not have enough money to call her while she was near death so I sent her a personal check for $100 (as if I could afford it!) to help her with the phone bill! God it makes me mad looking back on this situation.

Greedy as hell - many of them were and are; others are not and SoCalDem, I had an uncle like your grandparents (clothes with tags on them in the drawers when he died and he looked like a bum).


:kick:

[pretzel4gore]

29. why even work then?

everywhere i went, and i travelled by rail hitching all over north amer. one could find others doing similar and crashpads...every town and city had a haight-ashbury, at least on the mainlines. Mind you, if one wasn't footloose then you couldn't go to sea or work on railway extra gangs, or pick fruit throughout south...money seemed to be for pot and bus fare...lol, and bus fare was optional....so you see this is very singular attitude that vast numbers of kids never had a chance to experience because of school, family catch, the draft or a hometown worldview (where nothing, but nothing, is free, and only hard work gets you coffee break)...you sound like the burdens, cares and worries of life were piled on your shoulders early..i was lucky in that, well, no one paid attention to me....lol!
>I think it was a british researcher who proved that the ONLY WAY a person increased his class status (ie wealth) was by inheriting something from his people, and building on that. A squandered legacy has been the central idea of many dramas for a reason, and your experience tells the story!

[ultraist]

50. Social mobility in the US is generally a myth

Your last comments about social mobility rings true for the US:

excerpts
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0428-01.htm

They find that the US has the lowest share of workers moving from the bottom fifth of workers into the second fifth, the lowest share moving into the top 60 per cent and the highest share of workers unable to sustain full-time employment. The most exhaustive study by the OECD confirms the poor rates of relative upward mobility for very low-paid American workers; it also found that full-time workers in Britain, Italy and Germany enjoy much more rapid growth in their earnings than those in the US, who rank roughly equal with the French. However, downward mobility was more marked in the US; American workers are more likely to suffer a reduction in their real earnings than workers in Europe - the log cabin to White House effect in reverse.

The cumulative evidence since the Second World War is that measured mobility in the US is little different from Europe's, despite all the propaganda. Lipset and Bendix in their groundbreaking study in 1959, Social Mobility in Industrial Society, could find no evidence that American men were moving any more rapidly from manual to non-manual labor than in other industrial societies. Later studies comparing the income mobility of the US with the Nordic countries and Germany either find no difference or that the US is worse.

Leading sociologists Robert Erikson and John Goldthorpe found precisely the same result in a more detailed breakdown of mobility, whether measuring what happens inter-generationally or over one individual's lifetime. The mystery, they write, is that given that there is no evidence of American exceptionalism or increased social mobility, why the myth persists.

The answer is that nobody in the highly introverted society that the US has become can believe that foreigners might do it as well or better - and the conservative intellectual ascendancy is not going to disabuse them. The combination of reduced educational opportunity for low-income students and more advantages conferred on the rich - the great achievements of conservatism - can only have one result. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and serfdom of the poor and, in so doing, threatening its own economic vitality.

----

And it's getting worse. Fewer and fewer can afford to go to college. (Level of edu and income are positively correlated). The percentage of college grads is down to approx 23% of the population.

[pretzel4gore]

58. the class war against the people by the hogs is real:

and its main feature is the constant propagada which, though mainly to protect their privileges, inadvertantly warps the ability to deal with other routine situations; for example the space program was funded by everybody, but it mainly involved a certain class of people...when it became necessary to 'sell' the program, after the moonlanding, nasa simply couldn't do it because 'the people' couldn't be made to feel too much they were responsible for the successes-and that allowed anti government rightwingers to strip away at it until it basically was just another military project (which thus meant a large part of the taxpaying base didn't care about it enough to demand nasa be funded!)...the existence of different classes means the US is just another oven state....i wonder that no one has been able to point this out!

[misanthrope]

25. Sinatra...

...may have fooled around with Nancy Davis, but he was no right winger. He had attitudes toward race that were pretty unconventional in the '50s and '60s, to say nothing of his lifestyle that pretty much repudiated "family values." Plus, Frankie Baby would have done whatever it took to help the Kennedy clan.

[pretzel4gore]

33. okay, but Frank wasn't that curious about what politics meant

to Sinatra, as to most of that generation, the old platitudes were enough (remember 'we don't smoke marrajuana in muskokee, we don't take no trips on lsd...')...and it mattered not that sinatra and friends DID smoke pot, Cary Grant famously every day...they saw world very cleanly divided as right or wrong, and it sorta trapped them when the rightwing polical conmen stole the show....it was no accident that skits on SNL had Frank Sinatra character facing some modern extremeity with his timeless wisdom hahaha!

[SoCalDem]

42. Sinatra was "cool" in a time when "coolness" was appreciated

by MOST people.. He was one of a kind too.. He got away with a lot that others did not:)

[Art_from_Ark]

47. That song about Muskogee was by Merle Haggard

and was written during the Vietnam era. It had little to do with Sinatra. Sinatra, a member of the infamous "Rat Pack", made no attempt to portray himself as some upholder of moral values. In fact, his public image was one of hedonism-- drinking and womanizing, with a bit of "class".

[pretzel4gore]

52. yes...

merle haggard's song was a sort of anthem for middle of the road middle class sensibility...which Sinatra etal agreed with even if they maybe inhabited a different more rarified atmosphere; they still subscribed to the ideas held up as heroic in the song....btw even merle haggard, i hear, has been very critical of the extremism that has replaced the stolid journeyman republicanism that once was the face of conservativism....gerald ford was the last really 'small town values' republican president...reagan represented a real change in approach, bush senior even more (junior is no longer even in the ballpark, unless you consider the john birch society, or the kakaka, as 'small town america'!)...btw it's isn't strange how the super rich have united their interests with the supposed interests of white conservative middle and workingclass americans - 'babbitt' by sinclair lewis warned the US elite about the dangers of 'pretending' america was something anyone could see even then it wasn't (for example, take the italian mafia, it's become part of the healthy, normal today re: the sopranoes, whereas in 1926, when 'babbitt ' was published, italians were looked down on, at best!) this shows a little of how america has changed, and while oldtime republicanism resented it, they still accomadated it so much so that today the soprano actors are mostly republicns!

[KittyWampus]

13. This Is A Nice Piece & I Agree About Complacency.

Taking things for granted.

Pehaps that's why things get all too interesting at times.

[sandnsea]

15. Just look at the forests and know

The greatest forest depletion happened during the middle of the last century. Everything is just like that. Sucked every resource out of this country with no regard to consequences. That's exactly what happened. I agree with your post 100%.

[CountAllVotes]

18. my father always said there was enough to last forever

and we used to fight about it. Remember the "Ecology NOW" movement of the 1970s? I sure do. He really hated it SO much! He said that the resources were endless. However, by the time he passed away, he had changed his mind (a bit late ...) and started recycling even.

My father was born in 1922; one of 4 children, 2 of which died before age 2 due to a congenital problem. My brother was born with the same problem and he had surgery at 6 weeks old to correct it and is now in his 50s. Lucky? Sometimes I wonder about that.

:kick:

[Sapphire Blue]

17. My father, grandfather, and uncle were "lucky" & "got the union jobs

... with benefits and pensions." To 'get' these unions, my father, grandfather, and uncle, steelworkers all, fought a long, violent, bloody struggle... had gunshots fired at them, were brutalized with clubs by the police... my uncle got his skull bashed in and suffered permanent brain damage as a result... were they "lucky" or extremely courageous? Who today would do what they did to achieve these "lucky" jobs & benefits?

Take some time to listen to what "the oldsters' have to say... they have a wealth of knowledge, courage & wisdom.

[CountAllVotes]

19. my grandfather was a teamster

and he was one of the 1st men to join the Teamster's Union in America. He also had 3 working birth dates being he was a totally disabled WWI vet (hit with gas and lucky him lived - ??? Lucky?). Anyway, he died at the age of 63 and he couldn't collect social security being he told them he was 9 years younger than he was so he could keep working and get a job during the depression which was very difficult, especially considering the fact that he was a 100% disabled veteran (and he hid this fact).

I come from a family of people that were and are in unions. I belong to two labor unions myself.

So, yeah UNION YES is where it is at, and you are right, the era of the rise of the Unions in America was a bloody time to live in with often dire consequences.

:kick:

[SoCalDem]

21. Most of the union brutality was not in the 50's

The ones who fought the battles were definitely courageous..and the ones who followed were definitely lucky..

Look at the "right to work" states that allow the non-union workers to benefit from the efforts of the union workers..they willingly take benefits that they did not "earn"...all the while trashing the unions that protect their benefits.:puke:

Not everybody is "nice"..

And yes..we DO listen to them.. They were our parents, grandparents, teachers, doctors, mentors..

The fact that they have something to tell us, has little bearing on the fact that our world is infinitely different from their world..

They probably listened to THEIR elders talking about WWII and the Spanish American war, and all the hardships THEY endured..

We have always expected things to progress in a good way, but we all knwo now, that sometimes we backtrack.. It just sucks to be part of the backwards journey:(

[CountAllVotes]

22. it was in the late 1910s-early 1920 era

and oh yeah it was BLOODY. The 1950s were an era of prosperty and justice for all ... well almost if you can forget about the likes of McCarthyism. :puke:

:kick:

[SoCalDem]

24. It's hard to forget McCarthy.. He's been "cloned" and his clones

are running the show right now :puke:

[Sapphire Blue]

26. Late 30's for the steelworkers

... and let's not forget the 50's 'era of prosperty and justice for all' who were born non-white. :mad:

[SoCalDem]

28. In a perverse way, WWII DID usher in civil rights

because after fighting a war for this country, lots of black men came back and said "NO MORE".. I think they were the ones who started the ball rolling to throw off the yoke of "residual slavery" (through Jim Crow & poverty).....

I would suspect that a lot of the civil rights leaders of the 50's & 60's were veterans..

Prior to serving in the war, lots of them had never left their own communities, but once overseas, the saw that there was a lt more to life than their own little niche that they had always occupied.

[bush_is_wacko]

23. You think the" Boomer" generation has it bad?

Uhh, I am the beginning of what people call the X generation,I guess. My husband is the end of what you call the boomer generation. Boomer's have had GREAT success in this world. THEY had successful parents who sent them to college. Most of the "greatest generation" did NOT attend college, but their kids DID! That would be you boomer's.

It is horrible many of you lost good jobs and pensions, but even I have a shit load of equity in the home I bought 11 years ago. My children can't even touch a falling down junk heap in this state for under $200,000 right now and they aren't even ready to get a job at McDonald's yet!

My parents (boomer's) paid $25,000 for their first home. That home would now be worth well OVER $200,000! If you played your cards right as a boomer and didn't live on credit your entire life, you are doing pretty damn good right now even with pension loss and stock market fluctuations! Most boomer's will be able to retire well before the age of 65! Like ten years before! Gen X-er's aren't likely to be able to retire EVER, from what I can see. They are over extended and most have lives so much in the gimme, gimme world they don't have a dime to their name in savings.

I was taught better than that and I KNOW how lucky I am to have a roof over my head and food on my table. I also know I damn well better appreciate that, cause it's likely to be all I ever have! Actually, I shouldn't say that, my boomer parents aren't likely to be able to spend all the money they have socked away over the years and I will likely inherit whatever they leave behind but who the HELL counts on that? I'd much rather have my parents than their money!

I would ALSO like to mention the fact that boomer's who's kids are currently in their teens are gonna have the shittiest life quality since the parents of boomer's during the Depression! It will have nothing to do with the fact they can't find jobs, cause they won't be able to, or that they will have to live with their parents for freaking ever, cause they will. It will have EVERYTHING to do with the fact they were raised by boomer's to believe they are entitled to WIN at everything! They have no sense of community responsibility whatsoever. I have taught and raised my children right along side these competitive little punks who would just as soon spit on you as look at you.

Now, I know not ALL children of boomer's have been raised this way, but EACH generation gets a little more cocky than the next. If someone does stop this trend they are gonna implode! I see the unbelievable stress we as a society have placed on our children by our relentless pursuit of "winning at all costs" and quite frankly, it sickens me to think MY children will have to live next to and work with people that don't even sometimes qualify as human because they are so profoundly competitive.

My grandparents, who grew up during the depression and fought in WWII are dead. They had a fairly good life, but their children's life, the boomer's they created, was a thousand times more capitalistic and even having instilled liberal values in me and my brother, my parents are STILL plugging away at very high paying jobs and socking it away big time!

They would never even consider a world where parents, children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren HAVE to live together to be able to make ends meet. Without a doubt, I believe my children and their children will have no choice but to live in that manner. Independence is a thing of the past for every generation that follow the boomer generation and Gen-Xer's! WE ahve been greedy little bastards and our children will pay the price for it.

DON'T BLAME the "greatest generation" they lived off far less, expected far less, and gave you every thing they could possibly afford to give you. That attitude is just plain RIDICULOUS and that comes from a Gen-Xer Madame/Sir!

[SoCalDem]

27. I am not "blaming" them. They were born when they were born

and faced their challenges.. just as you and I have done..

and for MY part.. we have lived in the same crappy house for 21 years, and drive old cars.. Not much consumerism here:)

I blame the media, for the most part, for continuing the "dream" aspect of life, and by insinuating that all you have to do is :work hard" and the world is your oyster.. Millions of people work unpeakably HARD, and will never rise above their "station"..

The time has come (actually way past time) for media, government and education to "get real", and quit the "dream nonsense".. Dreaming is for sleepers, and we need to be wide awake for what's ahead :scared:

[bush_is_wacko]

32. It's not the media that has raised our children.

Or at least it SHOULDN'T have been the media. I suspect they have raised some of the kids I run across and that is yet ANOTHER problem with the children we will release upon the world someday.

I have been "lucky "to some degree but mostly my husband and I worked our asses off and got to "middle-class" and will never rise above that station as you suggest. We ALSO drive ratty old vehicles because we choose NOT to over extend ourselves. We live almost entirely by cash. Emergency purchases are occasionally bought on credit which is then paid off as quickly as possible.

My parents however have risen far above that "middle-class" station and I argue with my mother, still to this day, when she attempts to misdirect my daughter into believing that if she just "works hard" she will have it all. Just what "ALL" means to my mother is something even I can't grasp. It isn't that easy AND that isn't conducive to raising children to be productive members of society. IMO, my daughter is far better off knowing that CHILDREN and procreation in general is the REAL purpose for all of us on this earth and ANY parent who believes someone else can raise their kids for them TAKES AWAY from society in the long run. My mother STILL thinks it was acceptable and NECESSARY for her to work all through our childhood. I KNOW other wise. We lived at the poverty level for twelve years until I felt I had avoided the need for someone else to raise my children for me. I STILL am home before they come home from school and will ALWAYS be. THAT decision has cost me a great deal on income, but I could care less what my bank account says.

I also believe that anyone that lives their life to attain that "dream" you speak of has entirely missed the point of human existence. That is what has led us to the mess we are in right now. FAMILY is more important than THINGS. It is the only thing you EVER leave behind in this world that matters. The "greatest generation" KNEW that and somewhere along the line their CHILDREN forgot it! I know you are not blaming them, but you need to take a good hard look at yourself and the people around you and realize THAT is the REAL problem with our society. People can't make good choices anymore because they are SO wrapped up in the unattainable and unworthy dream of consumerism/capitalism/greed!

[SoCalDem]

35. I was a stay at home-er who chose less, also

and the media did not raise MY kids.. In general terms though, what we see at the movies, read in papers, see on billboards,see in magazines, etc. DOES affect our lives.. The Boomer generation has been marketed To/At since were were in utero:), and it's little wonder that it worked:eyes:

I always told my boys that it was our job to raise them and then launch them.. We did not let them have jobs during school years because we wanted them to experience their childhoods, instead of just buying stuff..

I fear that today's kids are hopelessly over-scheduled:(

Mine were the opposite.. other than soccer, they had NO schedule at all :scared:

[bush_is_wacko]

43. I'm in total agreement with you but we can't EXCUSE ourselves

for the society WE helped create. Kids are ALSO only in ONE sport. Actually one doesn't do sports. she does LOTS of intellectual style functions at school. My brainiac. She's been writing novels for years now. Won't let me read a darn one of em' though! When she's ready, i hope she decides to let me help her get one published. she's only a freshman in HS so she has time.


I fear for BOTH of them in a society like the one that is yet to come. Capitalism has created a MONSTER and all of us gentle mothers who thought we were raising societies caretakers by teaching our kids to help others, not judge, and ALWAYS consider the consequences might just have made our children targets. Luckily my kids have "good looks" and in THIS society THAT can carry them pretty far! Sadly, it is the last thing I would ever emphasize to them, but I have hope it will carry them through with all these ruthless people they are going to run across in life!

[CBHagman]

61. Good points.

I'm sick of gross generalizations about people based on the year of their birth or any other such characteristic.

And I'm with you on the media selling us a fantasy. It seems selling the fantasy gives people a feeling of well-being without actually achieving anything. I imagine it's like one big escapist movie, at times, in the corporate media. Sell glamour and the prospect that we're all going to get rich.

Then again, the MSM also like to sell stories by scaring us ("Is your drinking water killing you? Details at 11!").

Sigh.

[misanthrope]

30. What?!?!...

...My grandparents all grew up in the Great Depression. It was no cakewalk.

Infant mortality was much higher then, medical care infinitely less refined. Remember polio? How about smallpox? How 'bout lower life expectancy? Transportation and communication was much slower, which affects things like nutrition and medical access in ways most folks never consider.

Educational opportunities were far more limited.

What if you were someone outside the mainstream? What was life like then for gay people? How 'bout women?

You going to tell me a black guy from Alabama would have been better off being born in 1922 instead of 1972?

[SoCalDem]

31. Nope.. that's not what I was trying to say.. The bulk of the boomers

were born in the late 40's & early 50's.. and yes there were diseases in the early part of the century that we no longer deal with, but they were "equal-opportunity" diseases..A rich president even got polio.. These days,people with money and "access" have a real edge on the rest of us.

and people in the depression era, pretty much suffered equally.. A rich guy was as likely to be broke, as the poorer ones.. The middle class , as WE describe it, came as an outgrowth of the war....

a "black guy born in 22" at least KNEW his enemy.. In some ways the civil rights laws created a "new" insidious racism that can be felt, but not proven..:(

Life in the US is difficult in any era, I guess :(

[Tactical Progressive]

34. You missed a generation

The 'Greatest Generation' is pretty much gone. The few remaining are roughly 85 years old and older. The seniors you see in their late 60's through through their 70's, who I think are commonly mistaken for the 'Greatest Generation' just by virtue or their age, are in actuality the children of the 'Greatest Generation'. The Post-War generation would be a proper description, though I don't know if they ever had a formal title. Our parents and grandparents.

They indeed were fortunate to live in the 'American century' that the Greatest Generation fought and died for, and as you say growing up while their parents fought a World War was not the sacrifice and honor that their parents forged. They were the beneficiaries. They don't deserve to be venerated for their parent's courage and sacrifice. They do deserve to be held in esteem for the things they did right, and criticized for their failures. Vietnam for instance, and much of our bad behavior around the world.

We succeeding generations - the Baby Boomers and I guess Gen-XYZ - are also the beneficiaries of the Greatest Generation, as well as the Post-War generation. We're seeing now, in Iraq, lies, torture and the general easy acceptance of fascism and greed, that the Baby-Boomer generation, my generation, has no moral authority to condemn the Post-War generation whatsoever.

In short:
1) The Greatest Generation does deserve it's honor
2) The Post-War generation was a mixed bag of good, bad, ugly and lucky, and absolutely shouldn't be confused with the Greatest Generation
3) The Baby Boomer generation is no better than the Post War generation, maybe worse.

[SoCalDem]

36. You are right.. they have been "mixed" together, and still are

But there are some "cusp"ers who cling to both generations.. I am a 49'er who is sort of looking forward to a "shorter" old age.. If it's gonna be extra-rough, why hope for more of it :)

[Tactical Progressive]

40. Because you can look forward

to straightening this fucking country out of its Post-War and Baby-Boomer debauchery. It's not too late for the Boomers to become a good generation, though it is getting late in the day and we're not even moving in the right direction. The next five to ten years will either re-form America into something resembling what it should have been, or finish its flush down the toilet.

I'm not too hopeful either, to tell you the truth.

[reprobate]

37. Sure, blame the ones who faught and died, not raygun and Capitalism.

You who see that generation as no more than a footnote in history need to think of them as just people.

Also, it strikes me that the parallels between the current generation and "TGG" should ge acknowledged. They went thru a horrific period of depression, when economic activity was hard to find, just like is happening today. The current generation is doomed to repeat the hardships of yesterday.

They lived with the draft, and it killed an ungodly number of them, with far more coming home with horrible lifechanging wounds. This generation will also soon face a draft, and is already experiencing those horrible lifechanging wounds. The difference is that this generation does not have the country supporting the war. And you don't have to carry ration books with you to buy almost anythinga: sugar, gasoline, tires, meat, butter, you name it, you needed not only money but the ration stamps that allowed you to buy it.

The troubles you put on that generation were not caused by them, but by the republican drive to "Drown government in the bathtub" as Grover Norquist so ably put it.

So climb down off your horse and put the blame wher it belongs: the class war the republicans have been running for the last three decades. Your anger will do no good until you turn it on those responsible.

[SoCalDem]

41. Cause & effect are always blurry.. I think it's safe to say

that before Bill Clinton became president, the contemporaries of Boomers have been insignificant in a "leadership" sort of way.. Power, once gained, is not given up easily, and the "old codgers" are still with us, running the show..

I have many more questions than answers..and I think sometimes, that our problems are almost at the point where there may BE no answers..

Humans are resiliant (or we would not still be here) and we will muddle through. It won't be pretty, and there is blame enough to go around to all of us.. Unfortunately, the ones who created and nurtured the ugliness will never accept responsibility, and we will end up doing what we have always done.. we will somehow patch it all together, and hope for the best .

[Hardrada]

45. To go back to one of your earlier points,

I did research when I was writing a book about the old Minneapolis Skid Row and one of the facts I discovered was that many of the denizens of that area had been hard workers. You can work hard all your life and still end up on Skid Row. I think that is more the American reality than anything else. Another point I thought of is that right wing Xianity might be the result of a massive social and cultural despair at ever improving anything here. I.e., politics is not going to work and so let's try a religio-political mix and see what happens. I think that is part of how those people think.

[SoCalDem]

49. and if you can somehow convince them that they "failed"

because they didn't pray hard enough or to the "right" god.. It takes a lot of heat off the governmental types :(

[realFedUp]

44. and Prop 13 in Caleefornia....

Good points SoCalDem.

[Djinn]

46. Personally I'm pissed at the boomers

don't know about the US but here boomers were the FIRST generation to receive tax payer funded university education but when they got into parliament they introduced HECS (a deferred co-payment scheme) and fully funded uni places.

they also got cheap houses (compared to now)and because of their numbers were able to ensure the continuation of bullshit "negative gearing" ie people could reduce their taxload by buying an investment property who they rent out to MY generation who will NEVER afford a house because the boomer generation in charge insist on a 30% deposit (they only needed 10)

they will be the LAST generation to receive a taxpayer funded retirement, those of us who are younger will have to fully fund our ourselves.

they have insisted on preferential treatment throughout their ENTIRE lives, when they were students it was "free uni education", when they became parents it was a demand for free child care, now they're getting old suddenly aged care is on the agenda.

Every generation has reason to be pissed at the one before but just by dint of numbers boomers have got pretty much everything they whined for, it's a bit much of them to piss and moan

[Mabel Dodge]

48. Too many babies

The resources are drying up and have been for a long time. That's why each generation is doing worse than the previous.

The solution is to stop having babies. We're going to eventually drown in our own shit, if we don't curb the population growth. I hate to be brutal but that's the facts.

[KharmaTrain]

51. My Father Called It "The Most Selfish Generation"

He was born in 1918...fought in WWII and Korea and raised a family and did very well in his life.

In his last years he'd say "I had a crappy first 25 years (depression & WWII), but after that it was a pretty good ride". He felt the greatest generation was his father's...that left all they had in Europe with few possessions, hopped on a boat to a strange new land, learned the language and prospered. After doing some studying on my grandfather, who died when I was 3 months old, I have to agree. Imagine what it would take to leave all you have (even if there wasn't much) to move to another culture/country.

My generation is a mixed bag. Some of us have done very well and do live a better life than our parents did (the creedo of their generation), but a majority never quite got there.

While we don't create the time we are born in, we do make the most of that time while we're here. Sadly OUR generation has failed miserably. Our parents generation initiated the consumer generation...and ours took it from luxuary to necessity. Many feel its our right to any and all resources and there's a generation that's beyond that not only take it for granted, but expects these things as their due.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

60. okay everybody take their centrum silver and calm down. . .

I'm sorry my generation is known for it's cynicism.

Where my late-20's compadres is at?

(and no i don't mean born in the late-20's like some of our more seasoned DU'ers)