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Boomer hate
There's a trope in politics to blame the Boomers for everything bad in society and to just wait until they die out. What's amazed me is just how widespread this belief actually is, based on conversations I've had and things I've seen online. People have been waiting for old people to die out since the Boomers were kids. There are also countless Boomers in America that are going to retire in poverty. I don't have much to say aside from, this is stupid and we should do better. In short order, society will probably transfer its grievances from Boomers to Gen X then eventually to Millennials.
I don't know what discussion is to be had here.
For all of history, the choices collectively made by the older generation has been seen to be the cause of the ills affecting the younger generation, true or not.
This might be one of the first times in history that waiting for parents to die and claiming an inheritance is the only reasonable route to home ownership for a large percentage of the population, though. I guess that probably makes it louder.
"Home Ownership" as the path to financial independence is a relatively new concept, and a very minor blip, localized almost entirely within the US, and for a very brief period of 40 years or so.
Post WW2 economic dominance is an aberration that's tainted a lot of people's view of what normal is, and how the entire rest of the world lives.
For the vast majority of places on earth, for the vast majority of human history, the idea that it's a norm that people own 1600 sq ft+ homes is absolutely insane. That became the norm in the US for a while because we had more purchasing power than any modern country on earth ever. We maintained that dominance via globalization for the next half century. We're starting to see other places catch up, and that massive head start no longer be so relevant.
I think the next 50 years will require a dramatic reshaping of what the American Dream looks like for most people.
I'd like to push back a little on that "almost entirely within the US" statement and just say that housing prices across multiple continents have been driving people into economic hardship.
But a lot of those other countries have had housing markets based on renting for a long time. Their vision of financial independence doesn't exclude renting. The US is not the only country with this perspective, but it is, by far, the largest, which is the relevant qualifier, even if "almost entirely" is perhaps a bit of a hyperbole.
I simply don't have the receipts to back my arguments without spending a day looking for those, as such I'm only softly pushing back, yet I did so for a reason. I know absolutely nobody that wants to rent, it's always a stopgap between student/social housing into home ownership.
Here, the Netherlands, owning a home is the logical next step after renting. Financial security may include renting, independence does not.
This is, as far as I know, true for most of western Europe. Though from what I can tell (without being able to prove it at the moment) Canada, Australia, and New Zealand fit this bill too.
I'll concede that the US is the single largest of the bunch.. but I'm not so sure that we don't see the same in other countries if you adjust for population.
Yeah, maybe I'm confused about what Germans tell me. Perhaps renting is just normal to them but also a hit against independence. That seems like it would heavily skew what everyone says about economic security in the US vs Europe.
yeah, renting for life is indeed more common in Germany, but I think it remains a hit against independence. I also think how normalized home ownership is will vary a lot based on where in Germany you are and what economic class you're from.
That's interesting to me because one of my German coworkers is planning to retire next year, and he and his wife had been planning to sell their house to go rent closer to where his kids live. I guess he's convinced her to rent out their house and just rent a second house when they move, which I was glad to hear.
Germany is an odd duck. They actually yell at you when you cross the street with a red light when nothing is approaching for miles.
Then again, it's often said that US policy gets adopted in the Netherlands with a 10 year delay. That is by no means actually true, but there's some truth to it to the point you can find the strongest analogue between the two here.
An example is that our healthcare system resembles the US one the most.
Anyway, point is mainly that I feel there's a difference between security and independence. People that rent can feel secure in their finances, but it's difficult to build the capital into independence without ownership.
Funny you say that, I was just talking about how the Dutch medical system is somewhat in between the American and "standard" European systems literally a minute ago and it's what made me check Tildes. I saw messages in a group chat from American coworkers about their experiences at Dutch ERs...although "at" might be the wrong word because one of them said she was just not allowed in?
I can bitch and moan all day about the privatization of Dutch healthcare but I'll spare you the deets. I haven't heard anyone from being barred from the ED though. They do try to screen you before entering to give high prios a better chance.
I think it was at a Christian hospital on a Sunday. People were discussing how they basically shut down on Sundays when she said that.
“For all of human history” seems like an overreach. I’m doubtful that was true before the 60’s and it is probably limited to WEIRD countries at best.
I guess the question I'd ask is, why do we think we'd be any better? If an entire generation of people failed in some major way, it's almost by definition a systemic failure. It also seems very selfish to look forward to...your parents dying? Why frame things that way?
You are the one that framed it as "looking forward to" not me.
I only pointed it out as to the current state of the dismal outlook that people have. There is no way up in society without a springboard. The older generation is removing springboards as a collective.
Would I be better in their shoes? Probably not.
Not saying that you're saying that, but I think the framing isn't great.
Preface: yes we should be collectively more careful in our language of blame.
I don't think most people see it as "looking forward to" boomer parents dying, but maybe a short hand of the intersection between "looking forward to finally being no longer housing insecure" and "it's natural and no one's fault that elderly parents will die before the kids do". So not rubbing their hands with glee, but not an unreasonable projection into the near future either.
Similarly, Boomers are a short hand for "those who have power" to be blamed for things (usually rightfully) since time immemorial. In a democracy, that would be the cohort that has enough population to affect positive changes and ensure positive legacy. Like in all references to people groups, you're going to have some who really are to blame, and a bunch that are suffering just as much as the outgroup. Take "white man" as a group, is every single member more privileged than everyone outside of the group, no, people are talking in aggregate, and that makes white men who have no privileges upset because as individuals they dont have any but are blamed along with the group. Short hands are unkind.
Boomers, moreso than any other political cohort, have been able to sway the narrative more than any other generation.
You know how the whole reason we have a Senate is to prevent 'tyranny of the majority'? So that politicians ostensibly must appeal to both rural and populous areas, and not just solely targetting the populous areas?
Boomers being the largest cohort means that it is easier for them to represent their interests by being that largest population. "Not all boomers" and all that, but if we presume every generation is more or less evenly split for social/economic desires, it rounds out. But there are substantial generational splits.
So in their early 20s, when they were young and rebellious adults, we see the civil rights movements of the 60s.
When economic crisis reared it's ugly head in the 70s, they pivoted to the proposed solution by the fuckwits in power: Neoliberalism (and it's bedbuddy the religious right).
When the GenX came of age and wanted social change....the Boomers had a veto.
When Millenials came of age and wanted social change.... the Boomers had a veto.
In the wake of the 60s, we only really saw social changes when a large enough percent of Boomers did not wish to use their veto.
And at least from where I'm sitting, the Boomers were completely overwhelmed by Fox News and the ilk the same way social media overwhelmed Xennials. So the more-religous, largest group is deeply propagandized and has far more money.
So yea. Kinda eagerly waiting for enough of them to die off so their wealth finally trickles down, and maybe we can have some reasonable 40/50 year olds running the country instead of geriatrics.
As Durry put it, "Now we're just big kids living in an old man's world. When's it gonna be our turn?"
This, I think the "blaming boomers is unwarranted" is ignoring a bunch of key facts. The decisions they made have overwhelming been to solidify their own interests and comfort. I agree with the above poster that I think their conformist upbringing was hijacked to ceded control to the elite capital class using issues as wedges to divide the lower classes. However, to not hold boomers accountable for collectively making decisions that have change the trajectory of an average American life seems to be overly biased. The statistics on lower life spans, lower engagement, social safety nets, social mobility,economic prosperity, etc. all coincide with increasingly selfish populism and performative (typically corrupt) opposition.
In general this framing seems to be more of a reductive critique of discourse more than any actual analysis of the reality of each generations actions. As often as I rant against boomers being "the most selfish generation" it really doesn't matter. The "lets wait until they die" stance is mostly based on seeing the failed attempts to get them to advocate for their on interest, much less to help the future. It's probably the most peaceful solution to this, because if things get materially worse for younger generations it will destabilize society and bring wider spread violence.
An interesting angle I don't hear discussed enough is that I've seen millennials getting more radicalized as they get older instead of more conservative. I think the neoliberal carrots are losing their appeal. America's value proposition is increasingly has become "you have a chance to get rich here, but everything else sucks" and when that is no longer appealing we've dismantled the alternatives.
Frankly I know precisely zero people in real life who have managed to become rich in the US. I have talked online with people who have become relatively wealthy, but none of them have been “rich” rich. I can’t recall the last time I heard anyone who wasn’t on the right call America a “land of opportunity” either, and frankly when the right wingers do talk about it they sound incredibly out of touch (“why don’t you just get a job?”).
And tough luck if you manage even to get on the path to wealthy, much less rich, and happen to be in a disabling car accident, be diagnosed with cancer, etc.
It’s only the land of opportunity if you’re lucky and stay healthy.
The closest I've seen in my ~40yr old college-educated peers making in that top 80-85% income bracket is buying houses, with a small handful saving over half of their income to hope to retire by 55 and/or afford retirement home for parents.
This quote is a great illustration. In two sentences, you've painted a nebulous group with one broad stroke, and then pointed out how unfair that is.
As a millenial, we've been blamed by many media articles and politicians since before avocado toast.
The young are blamed both for not wanting to do any work as well as the plummeting of alcohol sales for not wanting to party / marry / have kids. We're blamed for being too irresponsible for home ownership as well as being ridiculously entitled for wanting homes.
It's all a great big concerted effort to assign blame absolutely everywhere except towards the billionaire class. So, dont take the boomer hate personally, they don't mean you in particular, and also the people spewing garbage are also pointing at us all as well.
First of all, most of it is all fake because outrage sells and also keeping regular people mad at each other distracts from the billionaires who are picking everyone's pocket regardless of their age.
But on the other hand, there are several reasons for the specific anger at boomers. They grew up during probably the time of greatest wealth in the United States. They were often able to afford raising a family on a single income. But now they seem kind of indifferent to the struggles of younger people. Also it's a little confusing if you look at the 1960s and see how progressive they were when they were young, and they seemed to forget all that once they had money.
I get the sense from polling that the younger generation (maybe zoomers or whatever they're called now) are at least as conservative as boomers. And that probably has to do with propaganda served through social networks. Boomers got their propaganda from right wing TV and newspapers.
Anyway people are individuals and I know multiple boomers who are very progressive and are full of empathy, and many Gen X or Millennials who are right wing or "karens".
Just anecdotally, it's a mixed bag, as every generation is. I know a lot of Boomers who are quite conservative and a lot that are pretty liberal. I know a similar handful of younger folks (20's-40's) who are the same gamut.
This depends on the specific political issue ofc, but it very much isn't the case in general, at least not according to US polling data. Age and political partisanship are highly correlated, and the difference between generations is markedly greater than it was in 1990. There may be some specific issues where Gen Z tends to be equally conservative as Boomers, but I don't think the poll data as a whole remotely reflects that they are in general.
Unless you're comparing Gen Z to Boomers when they were Gen Z's age, which is harder for me to find a direct comparison for.
Boomer as a colloquial term has made it difficult to tell when someone is referring to the olds or actual Baby Boomers. Baby Boomers have a pretty wide range, but it usually cuts off in the early 60s. Looking at some of the graphs in your link, that would make Gen X the more conservative generation, which is one of the arguments made by Jean Twenge in her book Generations. According to Twenge, Gen X is the most conservative generation (apparently, that's what growing up with television, lead paint, and Reaganism will do to a person), and their Gen Z kids appear to be following their footsteps.
I always find it interesting how generations get their own little cultural identities and how they change over time. Personally, as a millennial, I always thought of Gen X as the Pavement-y, slacker, 'don't sell out' generation, and the Boomers as the hippie, protest, rock-'n'-roll generation, but neither of those brands match the reality, nor have they stood the test of time. Gen X is a lot closer to Ben Stiller than Ethan Hawke on the Reality Bites scale, and all the progressive/radical politics of the 60s that Boomers take credit for was actually led by the silent generation. Meanwhile, someone who is older, younger, or had a different media diet than me probably has a completely different impression of Boomers and Gen Xers.
A lot of the younger boomers don't identify with the rest. They are more like Gen X or maybe something different entirely. Modern culture changes a lot in 10 years, so why group people in 25 year blocks?
There's a subreddit for them: r/GenerationJones
This highlights how the whole "generation" thing is kind of nonsense. To me, associating people in this way is similar to associating them by astrology sign or Chinese zodiac animal. Are people born in a specific month really "Tauruses" or "Capricorns", or in a specific year really "rats" or "dragons"?
I think it's a little flippant to equate generations with something truly arbitrary like zodiac signs. While the lines between generations and their labels are more or less arbitrary, it is true that there are trends among people born around the same time, both because of similar experiences living through world events and just being at a similar age. Generations are a very flawed way of describing that, but they're not completely fake nonsense like zodiac stuff is.
I don't think you're really looking at the same graphs I linked if your conclusion is that Gen X is more conservative than Boomers (though many seem to reflect them being more or less equally conservative). The graphs very consistently seem to show younger people, including Gen Z, as being far more likely to vote Dem than their older cohorts, and that this trend based on age has increased in intensity compared to earlier decades. Gen Z may have particular issues that they tend to be more conservative on as a cohort, I'm not gonna claim anything universal here, but I don't think the evidence that Gen Z is "following in [conservative Gen X's] footsteps" is particularly strong -- certainly nothing convincing on that front has been posted in this thread, and the graphs I linked directly contradict that conclusion.
In general, of course, generations are fake and the lines between them are arbitrary, so in terms of actually looking at data, going based on age or year of birth directly, as the pew research stuff does, makes more sense.
When it comes to the 'Gen X being the most conservative' thing, I did a terrible job explaining what I meant. I wasn't trying to say that Gen X are more conservative than everyone else right now, and neither is Twenge (or at least, that's not how I remember it). But when you compare them to other generations at various stages of their lives, they appear to be more conservative, and some of the graphs in your link seem to support that, though not enough to be definitive since there's some overlap with how the ages are broken down. For example, ages 60-69, which includes some older Gen Xers, is surprisingly more conservative (R +10) than 70-79 (R +5), which is all Boomers. But the one that really stands out is the "Snapshot of the partisanship of age cohorts over the past 25 years." Those who were in their 20s and 30s in 1999 were more conservative than people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and the people who were in their 20s (all Gen Xers) were as conservative as people in their 70s. That's pretty weird, right? (Completely unrelated: look at the Obama effect in 2009. God damn, Democrats need better leadership) We're kind of comparing apples to oranges since these polls aren't looking at specific generations, and your link doesn't have info on how the Boomers leaned politically in their 20s, but IIRC, they were more liberal than Gen X was at that age. I listened to Generations as an audiobook about a year ago and I don't have time to revisit it tonight to hear Twenge 's full argument about Gen X's conservativism, but I could check it out tomorrow and update if you're interested.
As for Gen Z, I used "following in their footsteps" as it relates to them being more conservative than other generations at that age. There was a lot of riffraff about that after the 2024 election when there was a big shift in how young people voted compared to previous elections.
Obviously, as people age, they tend to become more conservative. Their brain starts to turn to mush, they watch more local and cable news, and the world changes faster and faster. It's no surprise that they gravitate towards the party/ideology that says 'keep it like the olden days, resist the scary changes, and keep your money.' People have been using the line "If you aren't a liberal at 20, you don't have a heart. If you aren't conservative at 50, you don't have a brain," for as long as I've been alive, probably longer. So yeah, of course, Boomers, as they enter their 70s and 80s are more conservative than other generations, and young people, despite some of the trends in 2024 and weird social media induced conservatism (tradwives/manosphere), are broadly more liberal/progressive. There will likely come a day when Millennials and Zoomers are the most conservative generations. Yuck. Or yay? Idk.
I guess it depends on what you're trying to look at. The lines between generations are arbitrary, and there's a lot of blurring between generations, but I wouldn't say they're fake. I'm not a Strauss-Howe guy or anything, but I think there's some use in having generations as a very basic cultural identifier for people born during a particular stretch of time. No one's going to fit neatly into a box, but times change and we're all influenced by our environments, so it makes sense that shared childhood/adolescent experiences that are unique to a specific era would broadly shape the identity and worldview of a group of people.
I don't really think I buy the idea that aging inevitably leads to conservatism, at least not to the same degree among all of us, even when you stay in the realm of statistics and ignore individual exceptions to focus on people in aggregate. Certainly the fact that the difference in party politics based on age has increased over time doesn't really support this being the explanation for older people being much more conservative than younger people nowadays when compared with earlier cohorts. At least, not in combination with the idea that Gen Z is more conservative than other generations at this age. The increase in the difference between the old and young must be due to one of the following: either our current old people have become more conservative in a way that preceding generations didn't, or young people today are less conservative than young people were in previous decades. Or both. Your explanations above don't coincide with this data, and I don't think citing the existence of media reports on election polling evidences a real difference in the political leanings of young people.
I don't really care about the arbitrary line between older Gen X and younger Boomers to the degree you do. I think they have more in common than they do differences, and I think litigating the borders of generations is where they become the least useful as a tool. I agree with some of your points about the usefulness of generations as a concept, but I think when the boundaries are actually at issue is almost always a circumstance in which they are not being used in a way that actually reflects that limited usefulness.
Yeah, I suppose that's one of those things that I've always heard about but never took a close look at. I think it's easy to make that leap when you're bombarded with stuff about how young people lean left because they're young. I took a very quick peek and came across this, which, to save you a click, says:
(The full study is behind a paywall)
And then there was this older article from The Guardian that said:
...
I'm not really sure what to make of all that just yet, but it's interesting and I appreciate you making me think about something I hadn't really considered before.
As for generations (and Generations ... and I suppose the other, more insane Generations) I'm not all that interested in, nor qualified to, defend the any of the claims about the different generations, I was just trying to share a fun little tidbit I came across once.
I think Trump changed a lot of that. We can see Nixon's division of Gen X into two halves based on who was old enough to progress in their career before the 70's recession and who young enough to fall through the cracks. Trump is definitely screwing over the older Gen Z in real time, so it may either cause a split or get an entire generation against him depending on how this plays out.
If nothing else, Trump definitely dispelled the notion of "it can't happen here". His administration very loudly and proudly demonstrated that it's still just as easy to spread propaganda 90 years later. And the unfortunate thing is that it's not like Trump will be the last one. Be it 10, 20, 50 years there will be someone stroking the same fires.
The oldest GenX members were 16 in 1980. I have too many clarifying questions, so I'll just ask you to clarify your point.
I think you may mean Reagan (a/k/a Trump v. 0.9, including the dementia), not Nixon.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's because of how out of touch they seem as a generation. I'm going to call out two things on the front end though, 1. I'd wager a good amount of Tildes user base is well educated and lives in areas that are relatively wealthy and that 2. they most often interact with older folks who are fine to well off. Those two points will color a lot of the opinions in this thread. I fall solidly into that camp and be speaking anecdotally with those glasses on. I live in coastal California and the vast majority of my neighbors are retirees who bought their houses for peanuts sometime between 1970 and 2010. There are plenty of boomers who are headed into the late game with little to no money. That is a reality, but it's not who many of us see in our day to day, either in our community or in the media we consume. My parents would be among them had they not bought their houses (divorced) in the bay area. Now they will both be retiring comfortably.
My parents grew up poor and have stayed quite progressive, so our conversations are largely pleasant. But even with their best intentions they can often come off as out of touch. When I grumble about home ownership being out of reach, they'll sometimes reply with the standard "well we had a 12% morgage!". Yes, mom, on a house that cost 1.5 your annual salary. In their era, a postman could live on his route and own his own home. Their postman, Charlie, did forever until he retired two years ago. That just isn't the experience for us. Pre election, my mom kept talking about how good the economy was doing because her retirement, gotten from selling her house in the bay area, was tied up in the stock market. She didn't understand why our generation felt like things weren't going well. We talked about the "K" economy. How she was benefitting from what was seeming like a pretty barren landscape for a number of us. How I don't have investments, but my cost of living had doubled in like 2 years. So even with best intent it was a frustrating conversation.
Now take the conversation to those who aren't attempting to be empathetic or are out right aggressive. I'm on the local planning commission and the people - vast majority boomers - who come to speak could not be more tone def, obnoxious, or out of touch if they tried. I am the sole commissioner under 60 and the majority of their comments are spewed out as they make deep eye contact with me or one of the city staffer, all of whom are around my age. They talk about the "trash" moving into town. How "nobody wants to work anymore". How "our generation is ruining their quaint little town". How we don't need affordable housing, "not everyone gets to drive a Mercedes and not everyone gets to live here!" They work tirelessly to ensure the life they got from their average 9-5 life cannot be accessed by anyone in our generation working a similar job with similar hours. And they do so with the "holier than thou" attitude of an evangelical preacher.
So while theoretically and academically I understand that there is nuance to the generational question. That economics and wealth play a larger role in the frustration than age or generation. And that reasonably arbitrarily hating a group makes no sense. Fuck Boomers. Fuck them for the ignorance they spew on a regular basis. Fuck them for the regressive policies they actively push at every level of government. Locally we call them Q-tip for their white hair and white shoes. The better part of me likes a number of them in town and knows that I'm being just as short sighted as them in thinking it, but fuck Q-tips.
I hear what you are saying. The situation sucks and it's way worse now than it was a few decades ago. But there may be some things you can do to help yourself.
NOTE THIS IS A TANGENT AND I'M NOT TRYING TO SOUND LIKE A BOOMER BUT:
There is something I wish someone would have told me 20 years ago.
I think most people could have investments but they don't know how easy it is and how inexpensive.
You can go to vanguard and buy a total market fund. Maybe it could be a solo 401k plan for the tax advantages but it doesn't have to be. There are very small minimums. Maybe $1,000 to start the fund. The annual rate of the S&P 500 averages over 10 percent.
If you started with $1,000 in 2001 and added $50 a month you would have $88,000 in that account today.
I know it's very hard for people to come up with the initial $1,000 and even $50 a month. But I think some people could do this and more and just don't think about it. I know of people who tried to save money to put into some real estate or start a small business or something. Those things are probably better for society but way more risk and way more work than an indexed mutual fund.
It's a bit of a cheat code because capital gains are not taxed as much as labor. Also the stock market is often unconnected from reality and is high even when people are out of work. It sucks, but it's been the reality for decades. Some of the things that annoying boomers say have some truth to it. It is sometimes possible to make sacrifices and put some money away. It's just harder now and you can't just stick it in Bank of America or hope your job creates a pension for you like the boomers could.
Of course when you have Trump and Republicans in charge who knows how soon there will be a complete market crash or worse. Then we'll all be eating cat food no matter what.
Caveat, as you said, having that first $1000. Second one is do not be spooked if there is yet another market event and your $1000 goes to $700 after fees. It'll come back if you give it enough time, but it can feel very scary. Third caveat, if you're 5 or so years from retirement don't do high/medium risk investments.
And for other new people : never do options or picking single stocks or do any of those wall Street bets type behaviour. That's not investment that's gambling with better odds but potentially far worse outcomes.
I've met the parents of boomers. While they harbor their share of.....antiquated views, they were raised on enough Great Depression that they at least comprehended what the rest of us were going through.
My boomer aunt worked as a school administrator in a poor school district in PA, my uncle for the Navy. She was full stay-at-home for like 15 years while raising my cousins.
She couldn't comprehend why I didn't have a vacation house by the time I hit 40......
Unless one falls on particularly hard times, generationally, most of the cohort of Boomers contracted Affluenza and consider their privileged circumstances matter of fact and baseline.
So tired of this horseshit about "generations" that was invented by marketers, for marketers.
The generational boundaries are arbitrary and Anglocentric. Wealth generally accumulates with age and will distort the priorities of those who have, with respect to those who don't. In the context of adversarial capitalist propaganda and targeted marketing, it's easy to incite envy of material success or fear and disgust at the poor, and keep everyone controllable.
Full disclosure: Early Gen-X if you believe in marketing generations. U.S.-based, and all I've seen is industrial decline, mostly high unemployment, unsustainable increases in basic costs of living, stagnant wages, the accelerating destruction of state capacity for anything but warfare, and the capture of people's imaginations by resentment at each other fueled through right-wing propaganda. This affects everyone, regardless of which generational band you've been randomly assigned to.
Blame greedy billionaires and their feudal agenda, not the varied ages of our cohort victims.
The structure of generations that we're used to was invented by a sociologist and certainly not invented for marketing. It originally was invented by a German guy, but yes, the current list of generations is anglo-centric because it was decided by anglosphere sociologists to describe anglosphere people. That doesn't mean it doesn't also describe real trends.
What it doesn't do, is attempt to perfectly describe everyone the way you seem to think it aims to do, though the cynicism overload in your comment and user name seems pretty consistent with GenX stereotypes, so maybe it works better than we thought.
Thanks for the new rabbit hole which sent me chasing down Karl Mannheim's 1928 paper, The Sociological Problem of Generations. The difficulty with your framing, which gets back to my point, is that Mannheim identified the "problem" in terms of both birth year and class, realizing that generations are comprised of generational units, each of which has a shared explanatory model. It isn't enough that the same birth cohort goes through the same experiences:
Mannheim further theorized that a birth generation cohort can be characterized by its generation units' ideologies in opposition to each other, that not every generation has overarching ideologies, and that the pace of social change is meaningful in defining generational boundaries.
I can see where this theory was influential in designing the "Silent Generation", "Boomer", etc. categories of Strauss-Howe, which informs the current understanding. Sidenote: Steve Bannon, one of the leading figures of the global reactionary right-wing, is heavily influenced by this stuff.
To be fair, I was educated in the sciences, with a sideline in history of public health. I'm biased to view the theory of generations as akin to astrology, unfalsifiable and predictive only if you squint and make up a validating narrative of the vision that ensues. I'm still waiting for Asimov's psychohistory.
As to GenX cynicism, you'd be cynical too if you'd grown up with Reagan/Thatcher laissez faire capitalism, totalitarian communism, and the ever-present threat of global annihilation by nuclear war between the two extremes. I suppose you could call that a unifying generational experience, and the reason why the unifying political theory of my "generation unit" was based in universal human rights, which transcended the political ideologies then prevailing. That's an idealistic, not cynical, perspective and I continue to hold that view.
And why Millenials are shaped by the post-CFC falling apart of global initiatives, 9/11, authoritarian survielance states, and the rapid spiral of late-stage capitalism.
No wonder we all feel helpless.
Maybe. Thing is that Millenials won't have the kind if wealth the boomers have, and. That "great wealth transfer" will not be captured by the Millenials. We in general shouldn't have a society of billionaires, so boomers dying out will help a little.
But sure, JD Vance is a millennial; it's not like things magically get better. There will simply be an opening for the first time in 50 years where boomers aren't the voting bloc to appeal to. And millennials without the same benefits growing up likely won't make the same decisions boomers make.
In addition to other excellent points some of this comes out of the "ok boomer" trend (which is now dead IMO) which was less blaming anyone and more the youth being annoyed at and annoying older people at the same time.
It sort of fell into people getting upset that they weren't like other boomers which is just the whole "not all ____” thing. And much like "6-7' being annoying is the point.
6-7 has officially tipped to becoming my favorite way to irritate the children that irritated us with it for so long.
Oh yes when you can flip it on them it's so good
I got to do it to a teenager whom I played against in a tournament not too long ago. Our score at the end of the game ended-up being me 6 points, him 7; so I was like, "Oh hey, you know what...?" and dropped it on him. To watch him cringe was absolutely hilarious to me as a 40-something year old man.
Most of my students actually love when I randomly insert 6-7 into a conversation. To be fair its usually my younger students though, and I’d imagine that the high school aged ones would be cringing for the rest of the day.
Gen X? Gen X is the forgotten generation.
Blame is going straight from the boomers, to the Millennials.
To be fair, Gen X is a relatively small generation and doesn't have as much influence as the two larger generations straddling it.
Plus they're just waiting on the world to change.
Like, whatever dude!
Rich people have been fucking things up since the dawn of time and we refuse to really hold them accountable. Blaming immigrants, jews, boomers and millennials is easier because we love celebrities. Even if we pretend we're outraged because one of them said something incredibly vile, I think in some weird way we like them even more for it because it's gossip material. Look at how many headlines Elon Musk and other tech bros get for statements that are even stupider than you can imagine. But we still need to have someone to blame for their shit, so we need scapegoats.
The endless "CEO says a thing" articles these days can rival the "pastor says a thing" blinders in my protestant upbringing days. It's the natural outcome that when society worships wealth, the rich are our prophets.
Personally speaking, boomer hate seems to be somewhat outdated. It’s almost entirely because of my perspective though, as my Boomer parents are already dead and have been for quite some time now. I can’t help but think there’s not many left. Thinking in a more realistic model I imagine that they are now in the age where they actually are dying off, which means that they are in the process of losing their political power - assuming, of course, you don’t consider they already have.
Today the major political woe is not conservative boomer politics, but fascism. And while it arose from the seed of boomer politics, perhaps, it seems to me that the people most mired in it are from younger generations.
But that’s coming from someone who is living in one of the most progressive places in the country and who essentially socializes in pro-socialism bubbles.
The youngest boomers are roughly in their early-mid 60s, which really isn’t that old. They’ll still be a significant population for a decade or two.
I agree with you that the younger extremists worry me a lot more than the boomers, though. They have a lot more time left to make things worse.
There is a reason retirement homes are being built to facilitate gerrymandering.
I haven't read about this. Do you have more info?
I'll be real: This is an ancedata hunch that I want properly studied. I should not have been so declaritively glib.
I've notice a fair bit of new, high density aftordable housing being built in or around city centers which is specifically limited for 55+ housing.
There are good reasons to build affordable housing in city centers. There are far fewer good reasons to limit said housing to the elderly.
Full tinfoil hat is that it's a strategy to get Boomers to unload their houses to private equity because normal people can't afford Boomer single-family houses.
It could be gerrymandering, but as someone who was on the board of a nonprofit senior housing project, there's a huge amount of need for affordable housing for seniors, and quality of life is much, much better if they're close to things they need and/or solid public transit networks so they don't have to be driving. There's also (for now) extensive federal tax credits available for building/managing Section 8 housing, of which affordable senior housing is a subset. It's a very roundabout way for the government to fund senior housing, but it is working to ensure there's more housing that meets the needs of people as they reach their declining years.
Gerrymandering is a serious issue, but mostly the inhabitants of any given senior housing complex will have lived in the community more broadly, and thus not likely to significantly alter the district borders. In addition, given the slow speed of both construction and the redrawing of the district borders every 10 years, it seems a very roundabout way of gerrymandering as compared to just futzing with the borders as usual.
Affordable housing for seniors is a thing elsewhere in the world, too. Seniors are very much a vulnerable population in a number of ways when they aren't otherwise wealthy.
I don't care much about the "boomer hate". I probably should. What does bother me is being called a boomer at 43. My parents are boomers[1]. I am not.
Also, as @DeaconBlue said, it is unclear what this post is trying to accomplish or express. I'm just riffing here.
[1] They are also Brazilians and I am not sure if one can just "convert" a generation to another country and culture like that. Nevertheless, young Brazilians are aware of the word "boomer" and will use it sometimes.
If you're being called a boomer, it's probably not in any serious sense and is just being used as an insult. That's what the vast majority of "okay boomer" is anyway -- it's rarely an actual cogent political stance about generations, it's the equivalent of saying "okay you old fogey". In this sense, like with most insults, irritating you is most of the point.
Oh, I am not that irritated. It's fine. I actually prefer when people refer to my "old age" because they are opening themselves up to me. It is much worse when people keep that thought to themselves, silently judging me based on prejudices.
Fair enough on that front!
I want to come back to this, if someone sees this, would you kindly ping me?
(this is the Boomer thread, ping, not the nuclear kind of boom, hehe)
By the way did you know there is a Bookmark button beneath each comment / thread, and you can revisit bookmarked threads and comments from https://tildes.net/bookmarks ?
Exciting, now I can bookmark posts and forget about them instead of just forgetting about them!