Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Silly post. No generation can/should be defined to be all the same based on when they were born. I don't hear all this supposed "hate" for any generation. Mostly just here in CDland.
Same here, although I understand that it is quite prevalent on other kinds of social media, too.
Btw, I work in a small department with three Boomers (including myself), one person about 45, and the other seven people all under 35, and we all like each other and get along just fine.
You're missing the point younger generations have to work 3x as hard for less, This is what many of the older generations fail to understand.
As a millennial, applying for a job isn't as easy as dressing-up and going to your employer, shaking their hand and performing well at the interview. Instead what it means for a lot of us is having to submit hundreds of applications which are parsed & sorted based on hireability by algorithms which often perform a 'deep dive' into your online life, credit-scores, finances etc. to determine if you're even worthy of an interview.
Job security, pension & workforce retirement is almost non-existent in today's economy, The gig-economy & 'independent' contractor system has changed all of that. Heck even as a Full Stack Developer/Software Dev it is hard finding stable employment as companies are guilty of periodically 'temp hiring' at a lower-salary to test the waters and/or hire freelancers in India who will work at a fraction of the wages offered in the US.
I see Boomers who often tout outdated advise and preach hard-work as clueless, I may not speak for my entire generation but what i will say is that most Millennials don't see Boomers as greedy for wanting to keep what they earned; Instead Boomers are viewed as apathetic people who've had it easy in all aspects of life from healthcare/housing, retirement to education and since they're disaffected by current issues affecting the younger generations, All they do is sit-back and criticize while we are left to fend.
I'm a "Boomer" born very late in the game (1962). I just have to respond to all these misconceptions and stereotypes.
1) Applying for jobs, interviewing, etc. has never been easy. And get this - many "Boomers" have looked for a job in the past 10 years or so and go through the exact same process as you do.
2) Most Boomers don't have "job security, a pension or true retirement benefits." (Just like you, they may have a small match into a retirement fund from a company though - but it's up to them, just like it is up to you, to save for retirement.) Many Boomers are still working - and they're working in the very same systems you're working in. For instance, my Boomer husband is an independent contractor.
3) You're not having to "work 3x as hard for less." Listen, when most Boomers were in their 20s and 30s, they weren't wealthy. It's COMMON AND NORMAL for younger people to be poorer than people who have worked for 30 or more years and built a career.
I don't know where you are getting this idea that most Boomers have "had it easy in all aspects of life from healthcare/housing, retirement to education" and are "disaffected by current issues." WE LIVE IN THE VERY SAME ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE THAT YOU LIVE IN.
Just a bit of perspective - my husband and I are paying $1100 a month for health insurance - with a $6750 EACH deductible. Oh and when we bought our first house, the interest rate was about 14 percent. FOURTEEN PERCENT. On a 1300 square foot house.
Once again - we're older now. Just like our parents before us, and their parents before them, we are better off now that we're older and have worked for about 40 years. When we were your age, we weren't well heeled. We weren't living the life of Reilly so to speak. We were scrambling to try to make a living too. Oh, and we were also critical of our parents' generation. In fact, a common phrase when we were in our twenties or so was "never trust anyone over 30." So your angst is nothing new.
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, every literate culture has left a record of its disdain for the 'next generation', explaining that those young whippersnappers are rude and uncouth and are screwing everything up.
Point that out, and many - most, maybe - will think/say: "Yeah, but this time it's true!". The lack of self-awareness is considerable.
Silly post. No generation can/should be defined to be all the same based on when they were born. I don't hear all this supposed "hate" for any generation. Mostly just here in CDland.
I agree, this isn't something I've heard in real life. And I guess since I was born in 1958, I'm the worst of the worst Boomers.
For those who don't know about Boomers my age - it was the kids just older than us who were the Hippie protesters and the ones drafted to fight in Viet Nam. We grew up with Martin Luther King and turning the tide not to judge people by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. We were the bridge between our more prejudiced parents, changing their views as well as raising our children not to be racist.
We didn't work in factories, our fathers did, mine retired at around age 75 from General Motors. We grew up in homes that were 900-1500 sf and we kids mowed the lawns, had paper routes and babysat the neighbor kids at 11 or 12. We were the first students to learn about computers and programming. My first classes used punch cards. We were the ones who got the first personal computers and had to program them for our companies because the first ones came with no programs. We were the ones who set up much of the infrastructure of the internet - you can thank one of my classmates for being able to have a shopping cart on Amazon today.
I'm still working as our most of my former classmates. We live in an average home, have a small business, drive older cars. We aren't ready to retire, no big pensions for us plus we still have one more wedding and the last child's student loan to pay, not to mention helping our last parent and our special needs grandchildren. And two of our grown children earn 3 times what we do.
'Ok, Boomer' is a retort intended to address the attitude of some folks (of any age) who adopt the naive opinion that the younger generations are largely entitled, lazy, snowflakes without also acknowledging the vast economic changes that have contributed towards wage stagnation, high unemployment rates, declining retirement benefits along with rapidly rising housing and education costs and other obstacles that prior generations didn't have, while simultaneously refusing to understand the privileged position older generations were in relative to today's youth at the same age.
'Ok Boomer' is addressed towards a state of mind shared by some people; it is not an indictment of an entire generation.
'Ok, Boomer' is a retort intended to address the attitude of some folks (of any age) who adopt the naive opinion that the younger generations are largely entitled, lazy, snowflakes without also acknowledging the vast economic changes that have contributed towards wage stagnation, high unemployment rates, declining retirement benefits along with rapidly rising housing and education costs and other obstacles that prior generations didn't have, while simultaneously refusing to understand the privileged position older generations were in relative to today's youth at the same age.
'Ok Boomer' is addressed towards a state of mind shared by some people; it is not an indictment of an entire generation.
I'm a "Boomer" born very late in the game (1962). I just have to respond to all these misconceptions and stereotypes.
1) Applying for jobs, interviewing, etc. has never been easy. And get this - many "Boomers" have looked for a job in the past 10 years or so and go through the exact same process as you do.
2) Most Boomers don't have "job security, a pension or true retirement benefits." (Just like you, they may have a small match into a retirement fund from a company though - but it's up to them, just like it is up to you, to save for retirement.) Many Boomers are still working - and they're working in the very same systems you're working in. For instance, my Boomer husband is an independent contractor.
3) You're not having to "work 3x as hard for less." Listen, when most Boomers were in their 20s and 30s, they weren't wealthy. It's COMMON AND NORMAL for younger people to be poorer than people who have worked for 30 or more years and built a career.
I don't know where you are getting this idea that most Boomers have "had it easy in all aspects of life from healthcare/housing, retirement to education" and are "disaffected by current issues." WE LIVE IN THE VERY SAME ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE THAT YOU LIVE IN.
Just a bit of perspective - my husband and I are paying $1100 a month for health insurance - with a $6750 EACH deductible. Oh and when we bought our first house, the interest rate was about 14 percent. FOURTEEN PERCENT. On a 1300 square foot house.
Once again - we're older now. Just like our parents before us, and their parents before them, we are better off now that we're older and have worked for about 40 years. When we were your age, we weren't well heeled. We weren't living the life of Reilly so to speak. We were scrambling to try to make a living too. Oh, and we were also critical of our parents' generation. In fact, a common phrase when we were in our twenties or so was "never trust anyone over 30." So your angst is nothing new.
Kathryn, you have made a lot of great posts, but this was one of the best.
My husband and I are 63 and 66, and when we were younger, there were PLENTY of times that we were holding our breath when our total checking account had less than $5.00 (five dollars) and we had NO savings; and my husband has had about four periods where he collected unemployment insurance (although we were never so broke as to need SNAP or the equivalent). We also had one debt-in-lieu of foreclosure, after we tried to sell our home due to my husband's job, and couldn't. We lost virtually everything and went from having a net worth of close to $150k to having a net worth of -$20k. As a result, there was a period of eight months when I worked two jobs at 60 hours a week when our kids were teenagers to try to get out of debt, and we did succeed. This was in 2008-10, and since then, we have managed to recoup very nicely and we are now looking forward to a comfortable retirement because both of us worked for most our adult lives, and my husband has earned a very good salary for the last 30 years or so, when he was not unemployed or under-employed. (Yes, being under-employed sometimes happens to Boomers, too.)
In any case, anyone who lumps ALL Boomers into one "spoiled and greedy" group is just ignorant, imo, and makes a very gross and often incorrect generalization.
Again, great post, Kathryn!
Last edited by katharsis; 11-14-2019 at 09:24 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
"Boomer" is an insult?
