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Yes, we are the worst generation ever...feel better now?
The generation of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, that resulted in the deaths of over 100M weren't nearly as bad as those "Baby Boomers."
Right on!!!
I'm a baby boomer and very proud of it. My parents survived the Great Depression and went to fight in the war after the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. My mother was 18, my father was 19. She joined the WAVES, he joined the US Army.
They enlisted to serve their country for "The Duration Plus Six Months." As my mother told me, "Hitler looked unstoppable. We thought we might be at war for the rest of our lives."
Their friends weren't out getting their noses pierced or having a plate put in their ear lobe; they were dying on battlefields. Those life lessons made my parent's generation grow up in a big hurry.
I grew up listening to my parent's stories, and because of their self-less example, I learned a lot about patriotism and the Greater Good, and serving mankind and living by the Golden Rule and honoring the Ten Commandments.
The parents of baby boomers smacked us when we were ill-behaved and didn't mind watching us sweat in the noon-day sun while we earned our first few bucks.
When the teacher called the parents in for a conference, the oft-heard refrain in our household was, "You have embarrassed us. Having a teacher angry with you is the very least of your problems."
They meant it, too.
When I look at the younger generation today, I am deeply concerned about the future of this country. I see too many examples of self-absorbed, self-serving narcissistic, whiny kids who think that everything in this life should be free, and that work should be a laugh a minute, and that their parents are a disappointment.
Baby-boomer parents were archaic. They were unfit for any time beyond their own, and they were barely qualified for that one. The boomers were left with quite a lot of stuff to fix, but have been hampered by the selfish prig wing of the generation the whole way, so it's kind of an uneven story so far.
Guess you must have hit the horrendous unemployment that hit in the late 70's.
No, I was still growing up in the 1970's. Even when I got out of high school and into the work world in the early 1980's, entry level jobs were plentiful.
I hit the horrendous unemployment and wage stagnation that started in the late 1990's and has continued ever since.
Baby Boomers grew up in an era where the US had a huge manufacturing sector, strong unions, cheap gas, a very high progressive income tax, and major expansion of affordable housing and free or low cost quality public higher education.
When these a-holes hit their 30's & 40's and started taking over corporations, they destroyed unions, raided pensions, sent our manufacturing sector overseas, fought against public transportation, demanded tax cuts for the wealthy, and replaced public funding for education and housing with finance schemes that caused global economic catastrophe, and put a generation in lifelong debt before they even had a chance to earn income.
Now that they have destroyed the economy for future generations, they have the audacity to preach about "personal responsibility".
I have to laugh when I hear the media try to spread the complete BS propoganda and, I feel, outright lie, that today's youth do not WANT jobs, or cars, or houses....
My children and their friends want nothing MORE than decent jobs, and cars, and their own houses. It is a struggle for them these days, even with college degress that are supposed to be career and trade oriented. Our community and state colleges are bursting at the seams with young people trying to get an education that will make them job worthy.
Baby Boomers grew up in an era where the US had a huge manufacturing sector, strong unions, cheap gas, a very high progressive income tax, and major expansion of affordable housing and free or low cost quality public higher education.
When these a-holes hit their 30's & 40's and started taking over corporations, they destroyed unions, raided pensions, sent our manufacturing sector overseas, fought against public transportation, demanded tax cuts for the wealthy, and replaced public funding for education and housing with finance schemes that caused global economic catastrophe, and put a generation in lifelong debt before they even had a chance to earn income.
Now that they have destroyed the economy for future generations, they have the audacity to preach about "personal responsibility".
Well said. I hate when they describe Millennials as the "Me Generation." There is only one "Me Generation" and it's the Boomers.
Yes OP, every single one of us boomers are all the same. We are all the same sex, drive the same car, are the same exact age, vote the same way, wear the same clothes, eat the same food, and live in the same house.
But why bother writing it if it won't be read? I skipped it too, too hard on the eyes. It's a shame, because you might have something worthwhile to say. But, I will never know.
I don't get what is so hard on the eyes. I read the long post and found it quite good. I even agree that it should have been broken up into several paragraphs, but I don't agree about making such a big deal about it. Are we losing our reading comprehension in this country?
It is the OLDER boomers that had it made - job security, low cost of living and decent wages, pensions, and the ability to usually live on one income and still save a good nest egg. My own parents don't understand why my kids, in their early 20's, aren't already out on their own because in "their" day, it was much, much easier to do.
I am 70 and I basically agree. I had it easy. Not in the sense that I didn't work hard - I did work hard. But I came out of college debt free, and then out of grad school debt free, as did almost all of my peers. Plus, those degrees were still at that time pretty much an assurance of getting a decent job. I married a younger wife who was a junior in college at the time of our marriage, and I put her through the final three years of her schooling on my salary alone - a high school teacher's salary! And we had two cars! Older cars, but still......
Technically, I am two years too old to be a Boomer (born in 1944), but I feel like one culturally.
....... They had good union jobs, then demanded more. They milked the cowuntil the cow was dead. Look at the auto companies and the bailout. Some of the best examples of how the boomers harmed our economy can be found there. Unskilled union labor demanded more and more until the company was bankrupt. The government stepped in and saved their skin, and even today they still earn that fat wage. Very few non boomer workers can be found at GM today, Why???? GM simply does not replace them when they retire, they move the job somewhere cheaper. Either overseas or they give the job to a supplier company in the US. In areas where car companies have plants you often find the boomer parent working in the GM plant making 30 dollars an hour, while their children work in the sweat shops making 10 dollars an hour making parts for GM. This irony is lost upon boomers working in the GM plant, they dismiss this troubling trend. Often they say their children and their generation just was not as motivated as they were, or that somehow they deserved this fate. They don't make the connectionbetween their outlandish wage and the fate of their own children........
I selected the above portion of your long post (that a few posters didn't read because it wasn't broken into paragraphs) just to say that I basically agree, even though I am 70. With the caveat that one can never describe a whole generation with the same description because any generation is too diverse, I think you essentially hit the nail on the head, especially concerning the unskilled and semi-skilled labor drawing outrageous wages - and the ultimate consequences of those wages.
I particularly like the two sentences which I bolded.
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Yes, we older Boomers had it easy.
