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Well then, hopefully YOU will be the shining example of everything a stellar human being should be, and lead the way....
But those attributes, whatever else they might include, would start with the realization that stereotyping any group of people with identical attributes does not give an accurate picture of the unique aspects of individuals in that group, so in that aspect, I would say you've failed in your aspirations there.
But thanks for playing, anyway.
I take it you were too lazy to click on any of the links I thoughtfully provided in my first post on this thread?
No stereotyping, just links to relevant facts & statistics, which speak for themselves.
To keep things fresh, here's one more for your enjoyment...
"over their lifetimes, baby boomers have been nearly twice as likely to die of an accidental drug overdose as the Silent Generation, which came right before them, and 1.67 times as likely as Generation X, the cohort that came after them. This may not be surprising, Dr. Miech and his colleagues wrote in a paper on the subject, given the high rate of illicit drug use by baby boomers."
Even in their old-age, when supposedly "mature", Baby Boomers aren't exactly the paragon of being role models...
You know how those [insert group you don't like] are: they're always [insert behavior you attribute to the group that you don't approve of], and they don't [insert attribute you believe the group doesn't possess that's in your mind essential to being considered civilized, normal or whatever] like we do. [find and insert articles you found that support your contempt for the group]
If you're willing to keep things simple and live in a small town or rural area, I honestly doubt it's changed as much as most folks let on.
Socially, rural areas haven't changed much from 50 years ago, except that people spend more time watching TV and playing video games. Economically, rural areas have really gotten the shaft. Small towns have turned into ghost towns. My mother grew up in Mason City, Nebraska. We visited there when I was 14, and it was a thriving rural community. Today they don't even have a high school any more. In my area, lumber mills that used to employ 600 workers per shift have automated, and now employ 60. People have moved to cities for survival, and many of the people who remain have sunk into grinding poverty.
One of my best friends just turned 65. His wife got leukemia, and in the pre-Obamacare era they had no medical insurance. By the time she died, he had nothing left. He took early retirement SS to have some cash flow during her final illness, so his SS is only $600/month. When he signed up for Medicare, the feds took $165/month out of his SS check. He has back problems, but still puts in 25 hours every 2 weeks at a convenience store. At least mortgage insurance paid off his house, but you have to be careful where you step in the bathroom or you go through the floor.
We have been close friends for over 45 years. In many ways he is more talented than I am, but by comparison I am wealthy. He's so far below the poverty line he can't even see daylight, while I have a comfortable retirement. I guess in many ways I'm an example of how good Boomers had it, and he's an example of how tough it was on them. I'm sure he would trade his life of pain and poverty for the life of a broke Millennial, but we all have to play the hand life deals us.
Clogging up promotions-- why is that our fault? Promotions come if you work for it, and if there is space to get it. That exists in every generation
Stealing from our children because we expect to get Social Security: We paid into the fund for a long time, I paid into the fund for 40 years. If the federal goivernment wants to steal from it why is that my problem. That's stupid.
Not retiring soon enough: I retired at 62. Is that soon enough for ya'
Not accepting a work ethic different than ours: You mean not accepting the concept of getting something for nothing?
Bankrupting pension systems: Why? Because we actually used the system? Rather than dying first? The pension systems bankrupted because money was taken out of them by state governments, and because the economy tanked and the pension managers believed the idiocy that the market never falls.
Enacting Medicare. : medicare was enacted by the gneration before the boomers.
Not having enough kids: I had two.
Having too many kids.: two is a good number
Being sexist: Actually it was the boomer generation that brought sexism to the front and tried to stop it.
Being racist: There are racists everywhere, just like there are really dumb people everywhere. Boomers don't have a collar on that.
Expecting people to be on time: Maybe so... I could go with that one. Most Boomer employers do expect their employees to show up for their shifts on time. Go figure.
Yes, I was a very quintessential 1950s child. I was a Polio Pioneer, listened to the nightly news from Korea on the radio several years before my family got television, had a hula hoop and a pogo stick (as well as strap-on roller skates, a wagon, and a bicycle), took part in drop-and-cover drills, and remember well the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, followed by the Kennedy assassination little more than one year later. That put paid to the semi-Utopian Baby Boomer Age of Innocence, without a doubt.
The events you cite and I also recall were a good ten years or more after the conclusion of WWII in 1945, however, and the elation and optimism of the immediate post-war era had subsided in fear of what seemed to be a very real, multifaceted threat to the Western World and to democracy.
But previously, despite the Korean War, McCarthyism, and the division of Germany and other early to mid 1950s crises, life in middle class America was pretty good for kids. There were so many of us...marketers took note, certainly, and so did television. During the war years, children, like everyone else in the United States, scrimped and saved, were fed and clothed with rationed food and attire, made do or did without, similarly to the children of the Depression. Now - shortages were over, and a new age of prosperity and peace seemed to be dawning. Kids were everywhere, so of course they received more attention than did the children of the two generations which immediately preceded them.
I stand by my statement that it was a more innocent, more optimistic time in many ways. Perhaps "more idealistic" would be a more accurate description, and good and evil were still seen in very black and white terms then (I do not refer to race).
But being a child of those years does not equate to having been spoiled, or receiving more than our share of the goodies either then or now. It just doesn't work that way. While our childhoods may have had many golden moments, our young adult years certainly lacked them, with urban riots, assassinations, and most of all, Viet Nam. All of these events and experiences, good and bad, left their mark on my generation and our country, and those influences continue to affect both my generation and our country today. Every generation has its joys, its successes, and its difficulties, struggles, and tragedies. Life is that way. Blaming one's predecessors for such problems is not the answer, nor is it just.
A good post. I think you've hit on a point that may explain some of the hostility. Having grown up in a town that was poor in the 80's, we scrimped and saved as well. However, because the entire town did it, it wasn't until I marched off to Chicago that realized how poor or rich people could be. The economic viewpoint is the main viewpoint of many of the younger posters.
We don't have to worry about war, there's no military in the world that can match the US war machine. All we see is that debt started going crazy in the 80's. The Soviets are gone, but the debt is still here. What does a draft card look like....I have no idea. Someone should start a twitter campaign to tell Congress no if they try it... The macho brawler diplomatic route seems silly now...but it was very necessary then. There was no talking your way through certain things.
Today the social divide is between Republicans and Democrats. Seemingly endless and stupid. For the most part, being the wrong race in the wrong part of town no longer is going to end quite badly for you. All races, religions and sexual orientations now work together.
What's also important is the age of the individual. No individual can outdo a group, and cohesion in a group is stressed more now than ever. People work in a collective and are constantly supervised. What this allows are for fewer wayward bosses, but also fewer chances to individually succeed. When is the last time you were able to have an honest discussion with your boss that you believed they were going down a wrong path? You can be yourself, but within the confines of acceptable behavior, with nobody that's going to let you know when you make a wrong move, only to judge and act on it. Naturally this makes people more cautious.
So, today's short space in nuclear bunkers are homes and stable jobs. Many young people can look and see there's not enough for everyone. Young honest people can feel frustrated...like Stark entering Kings Landing, the environment of yesteryear is believed to be a place where if you worked hard and applied yourself, things would be ok. Now you need to work smart, play politics and avoid risks...and when the ship sinks, grab reins somewhere else and ride it out. Communities can shrivel, and common well being can die. In that environment, things like a 30 year mortgage look outrageous. Having children seems like a mistake. A hoarding mentality kicks in and they're on the outside looking in. They see the older generation, believe it was roses, 9-5 and a ride up the greatest credit expansion in the world and think...we're screwed.
Education is more expensive than it was, far outpacing inflation, and is only good for a short period of time. There's more graduates, so graduates don't have the advantage they once did. Homes as a multiple of income have risen in value. Medical costs have gotten outrageous. Predatory lenders have gotten slicker. Equality in wages is fully debunked.
Boomers have contributed a lot in many areas as a group to make the world better, but economically they've made it harder for the following generations to get established. I'm Gen X, so I'm good in practiced on hating on the Boomers, but even in my time it wasn't until I was 30 that I could finally look at my balance sheet and say....I'm finally worth 0, and that was with a fairly high savings rate. I can't imagine being an undergrad and having $75K of debt. It's just too far behind the starting line, and I recalled with a bit of sadness how I was hiring starting grads at the same rate I got at graduation much earlier.
So just realize that it is tough for them. It's tougher for them than it was for you or me. They see the glow, and are trying to get into the nuclear shelter, and someone already inside can't be bothered to stand because they've rolled a King size bed in so that they'll be comfortable.
Socially, rural areas haven't changed much from 50 years ago, except that people spend more time watching TV and playing video games. Economically, rural areas have really gotten the shaft. Small towns have turned into ghost towns. My mother grew up in Mason City, Nebraska. We visited there when I was 14, and it was a thriving rural community. Today they don't even have a high school any more. In my area, lumber mills that used to employ 600 workers per shift have automated, and now employ 60. People have moved to cities for survival, and many of the people who remain have sunk into grinding poverty.
One of my best friends just turned 65. His wife got leukemia, and in the pre-Obamacare era they had no medical insurance. By the time she died, he had nothing left. He took early retirement SS to have some cash flow during her final illness, so his SS is only $600/month. When he signed up for Medicare, the feds took $165/month out of his SS check. He has back problems, but still puts in 25 hours every 2 weeks at a convenience store. At least mortgage insurance paid off his house, but you have to be careful where you step in the bathroom or you go through the floor.
We have been close friends for over 45 years. In many ways he is more talented than I am, but by comparison I am wealthy. He's so far below the poverty line he can't even see daylight, while I have a comfortable retirement. I guess in many ways I'm an example of how good Boomers had it, and he's an example of how tough it was on them. I'm sure he would trade his life of pain and poverty for the life of a broke Millennial, but we all have to play the hand life deals us.
This is the sad truth of many small villages and towns which weren't close enough to a city to turn into a suburb. I lived in a small village that looked liked a Norman Rockwell painting. We lived across from the school and town park, and the Main Street was where everyone walked to for the library, churches, bank, dentist, doctor and drugstore. I remember walking "downtown" to the library regularly, with my older sister holding my hand, and we were around 8 and 5 - never considered unsafe. There were some manufacturing plants around where some people worked, now gone.
We went back a few years ago as I wanted to show my children where I lived when young and it was so sad. The downtown area was seedy-looking with boarded up stores. The school district was combined with 2 others for lack of students. My kids had heard such great stories about my growing up in this village that they were quite shocked - visible lesson of the changes of American life.
My parents moved to a suburb near a small city when we were still young and that city has also been decimated by the loss of jobs. We moved away long ago to a "new economy" area and my kids (Millenials) have grown up in an area of new homes, schools, roads, stores, etc. with strict zoning laws. The city we are near is thriving with a big resurgence of downtown building and activities. Not saying it's better, just very different outcomes in other areas of the country mainly due to available jobs.
Sorry for your friend and his wife. The people who left for education or jobs usually came out better financially although many left family behind. My parents encouraged it as they saw what was happening in their area with the high taxes and loss of manufacturing.
Most boomers didn't get the world handed to them either. I know that in my first 10 years in the work force I scraped by on low wages, as did virtually all of my friends. We had a lot of hand me down furniture, shared apartments, no excess income beyond paying the rent, utilities, food, and the insurance on our crappy used cars. In fact even the food part was kind of "iffy" sometimes. I've eaten a lot of Top Ramen, and certainly never bought coffee that cost more than a burger and fries. I didn't even own a car until I was 22 because I couldn't afford one, and certainly nobody was going to buy one for me or even co-sign. Most boomers did not live a charmed Ozzy and Harriet, or Huxtable, lifestyle.
I think the problem is television and this consumer culture. If you see other people with a nice big home and interior decorator type furnishings on a show about 20-somethings you start to think that you should have that too. Then you can become envious of others who do have those things, even if those people are 25 years older and worked for all that time to save and increase their income over time in order to be able to afford all that. When you see rich people showboating all over the reality show in $600 high heels and eating at restaurants where one meal could cost more than your utility bills for the month, you wonder if someone is cheating you, or maybe you believe it when someone says this system is rigged.
Yes, it's rigged so that people with years and years of experience and people skills developed over several decades are valued more than people with no experience and questionable work habits. That value is compensated at a higher rate. It's rigged so that people who live on less than their income, don't abuse credit, work while going to school, and who slowly accumulate property and savings can afford nice things someday.
Most boomers didn't get the world handed to them either. I know that in my first 10 years in the work force I scraped by on low wages, as did virtually all of my friends. We had a lot of hand me down furniture, shared apartments, no excess income beyond paying the rent, utilities, food, and the insurance on our crappy used cars. In fact even the food part was kind of "iffy" sometimes. I've eaten a lot of Top Ramen, and certainly never bought coffee that cost more than a burger and fries. I didn't even own a car until I was 22 because I couldn't afford one, and certainly nobody was going to buy one for me or even co-sign. Most boomers did not live a charmed Ozzy and Harriet, or Huxtable, lifestyle.
I think the problem is television and this consumer culture. If you see other people with a nice big home and interior decorator type furnishings on a show about 20-somethings you start to think that you should have that too. Then you can become envious of others who do have those things, even if those people are 25 years older and worked for all that time to save and increase their income over time in order to be able to afford all that. When you see rich people showboating all over the reality show in $600 high heels and eating at restaurants where one meal could cost more than your utility bills for the month, you wonder if someone is cheating you, or maybe you believe it when someone says this system is rigged.
Yes, it's rigged so that people with years and years of experience and people skills developed over several decades are valued more than people with no experience and questionable work habits. That value is compensated at a higher rate. It's rigged so that people who live on less than their income, don't abuse credit, work while going to school, and who slowly accumulate property and savings can afford nice things someday.
I think everyone realizes that young people today have it tougher than their grandparents did. A cup of coffee was 10 cents, with unlimited refills. Yes, it was lousy coffee, but we didn't know any better. In college I paid my rent by washing beakers and test tubes in the chem lab 5 hours a week, and rent included water, power, gas and garbage service, with a free building washer and dryer. I paid my tuition and books with summer earnings driving a forklift in a cannery. No, I did not own a car. No, I did not own a TV. It was a financial stretch to buy a portable radio when I was 18, and I did not own a stereo until is was 29. Like you, I bought a car when I was 22, but it wasn't much of a car, an 8 year old compact in the days when an 8 year old car was ready for the junk yard. I shared roommates until I was 28. Life was tough, right? No, not that bad.
The big criticism of young people today I would make is that they don't understand how to be broke. They are often poor and broke at the same time, through trying to live above their income level. They don't understand how to manage money, and the importance of spending less than you make no matter how little you make. When I was in college my income was far below poverty level, but I was never broke. About 20 years ago my wife and I went through a period where we were both unemployed with a mortgage payment to make, but we were never broke and never missed a mortgage payment. Being poor doesn't mean you don't have any money, it just means you have to be insanely careful with the money you do have.
I understand the difficulty of saving and getting ahead on minimum wage, but don't accept that it is impossible. I know a young single mother who saved a down payment and recently bought a house on a convenience store clerk's paycheck. She knew how to keep herself broke.
A good post. I think you've hit on a point that may explain some of the hostility. Having grown up in a town that was poor in the 80's, we scrimped and saved as well. However, because the entire town did it, it wasn't until I marched off to Chicago that realized how poor or rich people could be. The economic viewpoint is the main viewpoint of many of the younger posters.
We don't have to worry about war, there's no military in the world that can match the US war machine. All we see is that debt started going crazy in the 80's. The Soviets are gone, but the debt is still here. What does a draft card look like....I have no idea. Someone should start a twitter campaign to tell Congress no if they try it... The macho brawler diplomatic route seems silly now...but it was very necessary then. There was no talking your way through certain things.
Today the social divide is between Republicans and Democrats. Seemingly endless and stupid. For the most part, being the wrong race in the wrong part of town no longer is going to end quite badly for you. All races, religions and sexual orientations now work together.
What's also important is the age of the individual. No individual can outdo a group, and cohesion in a group is stressed more now than ever. People work in a collective and are constantly supervised. What this allows are for fewer wayward bosses, but also fewer chances to individually succeed. When is the last time you were able to have an honest discussion with your boss that you believed they were going down a wrong path? You can be yourself, but within the confines of acceptable behavior, with nobody that's going to let you know when you make a wrong move, only to judge and act on it. Naturally this makes people more cautious.
So, today's short space in nuclear bunkers are homes and stable jobs. Many young people can look and see there's not enough for everyone. Young honest people can feel frustrated...like Stark entering Kings Landing, the environment of yesteryear is believed to be a place where if you worked hard and applied yourself, things would be ok. Now you need to work smart, play politics and avoid risks...and when the ship sinks, grab reins somewhere else and ride it out. Communities can shrivel, and common well being can die. In that environment, things like a 30 year mortgage look outrageous. Having children seems like a mistake. A hoarding mentality kicks in and they're on the outside looking in. They see the older generation, believe it was roses, 9-5 and a ride up the greatest credit expansion in the world and think...we're screwed.
Education is more expensive than it was, far outpacing inflation, and is only good for a short period of time. There's more graduates, so graduates don't have the advantage they once did. Homes as a multiple of income have risen in value. Medical costs have gotten outrageous. Predatory lenders have gotten slicker. Equality in wages is fully debunked.
Boomers have contributed a lot in many areas as a group to make the world better, but economically they've made it harder for the following generations to get established. I'm Gen X, so I'm good in practiced on hating on the Boomers, but even in my time it wasn't until I was 30 that I could finally look at my balance sheet and say....I'm finally worth 0, and that was with a fairly high savings rate. I can't imagine being an undergrad and having $75K of debt. It's just too far behind the starting line, and I recalled with a bit of sadness how I was hiring starting grads at the same rate I got at graduation much earlier.
So just realize that it is tough for them. It's tougher for them than it was for you or me. They see the glow, and are trying to get into the nuclear shelter, and someone already inside can't be bothered to stand because they've rolled a King size bed in so that they'll be comfortable.
I think society today seriously underestimates major distributions of any kind.
No, I don't think we have to worry about war with organized armies like during the Cold War era or before, but the threat of lone wolves, mass shooters, and small scale attacks seem to be increasing daily. I'm not worried as much about a world ending nuke attack as I am about someone coming and shooting me randomly chanting Allahu Akbar while I'm enjoying a tenderloin and a beer on the patio somehow.
There are significant social faultlines far above and beyond traditional party values. Lots of folks on both sides feel marginalized and left behind, screwed over, and forgotten about.
There are a lot of problems, but I think the generally day to day nature of the world today makes it harder than the stagflation era.
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