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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".
These a-holes paid for your schooling, gave your parents jobs that enabled them to feed, cloth and transport you. They are responsible for the 100% of the technology that you probably couldn't survive one day without.
You beginning rant shows your complete ignorance of what life was like before you came into existence, as well as a complete lack of understanding of cause and effect.
Let me guess, that whole "personal responsibility" thing is really getting in the way of you wanting to lay around on your couch smoking pot and hanging around with your friends?
I agree completely with this statement boomer, but I'm at the tail end of the boomer generation. It's the older boomers that don't get it. Many people in my age bracket (now in our late 40's, early 50's) got caught in our prime years by the disastrous policies put down before us. We have been layed off from those manufacturing jobs, pensions and benefits frozen or taken away, wages stagnating, and watching our retirement years slip farther and farther off in the future, if at all.
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.
Guess you must have hit the horrendous unemployment that hit in the late 70's.
This post isn't meant to be taken seriously, and I do quite well for myself, BTW. I'm just sick of people from the older generation making stupid generalizations about millenials, and dismissing there valid economic concerns with the same uniformed platitudes over and over:
"Well, you should've gone to trade school instead of majoring in Art History."
"Well, these kids waste money on new iPhones, in my day, you paid off your tuition with your summer job and saved."
I didn't have a problem with boomers....until I joined CD forums and all I would hear is the same old "young people are lazy & entitled" crap. bunch of self-righteous hypocrites.
I didn't even know what "boomers" were until I joined this site and witnessed these people constantly putting down millennials because their kids turned out to be disappointing losers. not my fault that these breeders didn't get the "lifetime fulfillment" they were looking for by raising these kids. also not my fault that you're broke and two times divorced because your wives got fat(so did you), decided she wasn't happy with you, and cleaned out your bank accounts while the rugrats were in the backseat of her SUV that YOU paid for. but live and learn, right? just don't lecture me about being entitled,lazy,selfish, etc when many of you have more skeletons in your closet than H.H holmes. have fun playing bridge while I pay for your retirementz with little or nothing in that kitty when I reach that age.
social security will be depleted/reduced by the time I reach that age. I don't want to hear "whining" from the geezers about how entitled and lazy I am when I am essentially paying their retirement in today's dollars.
replaced public funding for education and housing with finance schemes that caused global economic catastrophe...
I'm not quite sure what the second half even means, but the first half is definitely inaccurate. Education spending per pupil has more than doubled, even after adjusting for inflation, since 1970. CARPE DIEM: Education Spending Doubled, Stagnant Test Scores
These a-holes paid for your schooling, gave your parents jobs that enabled them to feed, cloth and transport you. They are responsible for the 100% of the technology that you probably couldn't survive one day without.
You beginning rant shows your complete ignorance of what life was like before you came into existence, as well as a complete lack of understanding of cause and effect.
Let me guess, that whole "personal responsibility" thing is really getting in the way of you wanting to lay around on your couch smoking pot and hanging around with your friends?
Babyboomers were the post educated class. They wanted to change the world from the chaos that produced two world wars. They wanted fairness protesting and shouting. When they got their bums in the seats of power they forgot their principles and became greedy.
The boomers were not like the generation of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. And the western systems that exploited labour mercilessly. They just forgot their principles.
Some forgot their principles, but many are involved in environmental work, alternative energy work, democratization and human rights in the 3rd World, and other work that's based on those principles they brought to the fore in the 1960's.
And some Boomers never shared those principles to begin with. The ones running companies like Bechtel, that took control of Bolivia's water supply and made rainwater catchment illegal, never were part of the counter-culture movement in the first place.
Boomers founded organizations like Earth Island Institute, Zen centers around the country, Indian Law Resource Center that fights for the rights of Indigenous people nationally and internationally, and a lot of social and environmental justice organizations the OP has probably never heard of. It was Boomers at the UN who organized the effort that resulted in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. It's Boomers who first raised the alarm on global warming and organized the first Earth Day. It was Boomers who sat in at lunch counters in the segregated South, went on the Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate transportation, and provided the mass of support to the Civil Rights Movement.
The OP needs to get off his rear and out from behind his video games, and go out and explore the world to find out what positive contributions to the world Boomers are making. Has he forgotten Microsoft, and all the money the Gates' pour into education in the US and the developing world, and the AIDS research they fund? The OP takes a lot in his world for granted that he has Boomers to thank for.
I see a research project in the OP's future. He's really missing out on life. Maybe if he starts looking into these things, he'll be lucky enough to get an internship out of it.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 11-06-2014 at 11:34 AM..
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".
What a ridiculous mentality. People are individuals, not a homogeneous blob.
Ah, another one blaming someone else for their own lack of success.
This attitude is one of the primary gripes about the boomers. I don't blame the baby boom folks for taking advantage of the post war economy. Our industry dominated the world, untouched by war we grew at an unprecedented rate. The young boomer getting out of school did not need a college education, at 18 many of them landed very good middle class jobs that they would keep for life. Many of them owned homes and had 2.5 kids, 2 cars etc by their early twenties. Life was good for them, with one huge exception. Vietnam was the only glitch in their easy street life. For those who avoided having to go to Vietnam life was VERY easy compared to what Gen X dealt with, and compared to the nightmare the millenials face, their lives were charmed. Many millenials cannot find any work, or just part time work. They cannot marry and start families, they don't own homes. They went to college for jobs that don't exist, now the 70k student loans are due. The millenials have a lot of flaws, but I do feel for their situation. I am Gen X, my generation has lived in the shadow of the boomers much longer. We did not have the good jobs they did, we scratched and clawed our way through life. At least we have had jobs. We have heard the boomers criticisms of our generation since we came of age back in the 80s. We were slackers, unsuccessful, unmotivated etc. We grew up hearing their overblown stories of the wonderful "sixties". We also were told that the things we were growing up with in the 70s and 80s were inferior to the wonderful life lived in the 50s and 60s. They are a self centered generation, obsessed with everything to do with them. It should not surprise anyone that they overconsumed during their time. They had good union jobs, then demanded more. They milked the cow until 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 connection between their outlandish wage and the fate of their own children. They are ignorant, lazy and overpayed. Like I said I don't blame them for their success, only for how they abused their situation, and for their lack of empathy for those who were harmed by that abuse. Had they not asked for too much, maybe some of the jobs in China and Mexico today would still be in the US. Had boomers who controlled the government and corporations in the 90s thought of more than just their pocketbooks maybe they would not have signed the free trade deals that helped to ruin this nations economy. They are a guilty generation, the way they lived was to enrich themselves with no thought of what would happen in the future. Now the future is here, the jobs are gone and America is diminished. The boomers still hold much of the wealth and their children and grandchildren have little of it because of the way they lived and the decisions they made. The children and grandchildren are angry, and the boomer still does not get it. Its no different than 20-25 years ago when they first started calling people my age slackers. History will likely call them out for their self indulged lives, and their part in the decline of America. However that will not even bother them, since "they got thiers".
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just don't lecture me about being entitled,lazy,selfish, etc when many of you have more skeletons in your closet than H.H holmes. have fun playing bridge while I pay for your retirementz with little or nothing in that kitty when I reach that age.
