Vox: How the baby boomers — not millennials — screwed America

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I actually own Bruce Gibney's book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America and it's a very qood read.

They were raised to be selfish and feel entitled to everythinq. They qrew up in an era of plenty because their parents had carefully saved their resources in the aftermath of the qreat depression. But now, they've burned throuqh the savinqs from their parent's qeneration, all the resources of our own qeneration, they've used virtually all of our qeneration's resources before we even came of aqe, and now they're takinq out so much debt that even their qrandchildren won't have anythinq to their name either. They've done more to destroy our country than any enemy, foreiqn or domestic.

Sounds like it's worth reading, just ordered a copy.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Truly a bunch of selfish, self serving pricks

[Badger]

Totally agree with this thread. Millenial bashing is guilt transference.

[mvd10]

Millennials will be the new boomers imo. Watch how we'll f**k things up in 40/50 years . Anyway, they did some very bad things, but I also don't wanna live in countries with 1970s tax systems and labour regulations (and the European welfare states in the late 70s were criminally bloated).

[pbrower2a]

Economic elites and their political stooges are the problem. Those people have no empathy for anyone enduring any hardship. They have insatiable appetites for indulgence no matter what the cost is -- for others. They are not antiwar; they are all for the profits and have no qualms about sending others' kids to return in body bags. They want the lavish indulgence of Gilded plutocrats without having done the innovation that improved people's lives. Boomer innovation in business is to get people to pay more for what they get.

They want the common man to work harder and longer under more brutal management for less for themselves but more for those elites. They want to put an end to Social Security and welfare so that people work under harsh terms or die. Much unlike the GI generation that may have worked in the small familybusiness or done farm chores before serving their country in combat and know something about hardship and recognized such as character-building experiences, these elites see any personal hardship in life as evidence that one is 'damaged goods' who must be shut off from the Good Life. These people have an ideal of a world that looks like a Marxist stereotype of capitalism.

But those are the economic elites. Non-elites who do real work? Those people aren't so nasty. They can get away with little. They are often victims.

It's easy to be a classist if one has lived like an aristocrat all one's life. Boomers who have had some acquanitance with rough times can be as humane as people of other generations who have endured genuine hardships. But those are not the most visble Boomers.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Totally agree with this thread. Millenial bashing is guilt transference.

[kelestian]

Isn't millenials the most socialism-liking generation?

[America Needs R'hllor]

Isn't millenials the most socialism-liking generation?

I mean, millenials didn't lead the communist revolutions in Russia, Cuba, China etc...

[American2020]

I expect, there'd be a Great Restoration period after Trump'll be gone. This could be the 4th major change in the US history, after the American Revolution, the Civil War-Great Reconstruction and the New Deal Era. It'll be the time for the millennials to correct, rebuild and restore America and success where Trump is failing: Make America Great Again.

[MasterJedi]

I think this article ties in well with this article I came across a couple weeks ago.  One big difference between boomers and millennials is that we are the generation of downsizing, not the one that's always been obsessed with the endless pursuit of owning more, controlling more, and spending more than they can afford.  (I do believe that millennials need to stop the fetishization for living in urban areas, which I believe weakens individual autonomy and contributes to the problem of oversocialization... but that's a rant for another day.)  But it's quite a stretch to assume that all these awful Boomer habits will continue into the next generation.  Millennials may be more in debt, but we are already more financially responsible than our generational predecessors.

BK is completely right here.

Sprawl is deadly, remember that!

[PoliticalShelter]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-22/millennial-americans-are-moving-to-the-burbs-buying-big-suvs

Contrary to most of Atlas posters experience most millennials are not hipsters who want to flat share for the rest of life and eat avocado toast.

Infact they, shockingly, are quite similar to their parents in their habits they are begining to develop.

[Torie]

Well to join in the fun, with these broad sweeping generalizations, that obscure more than enlighten, Boomers tend all too often to be basically at once self righteous and self absorbed pigs, and in more extreme cases, utter narcissists (e.g. Trump).

I am never been particularly in love with my generation.  The obsessive focus on self actualization blinds one to the fact that much of what gives life meaning is using one's skills and time to reach out and help the other, thus missing the fact that much of effecting self actualization is about being well, selfless.

[The Mikado]

Can't we all just get along and agree to mutually blame the Gen Xers? They're smaller than either of our cohorts and are too politically weak to defend themselves.

[Yank2133]

Didn’t read the article. We already knew this.

Yeah, and we know that millennials will be even worse when they get older.

I doubt it.

They won't be anything left for us to be selfish about.

[Cory]

I expect, there'd be a Great Restoration period after Trump'll be gone. This could be the 4th major change in the US history, after the American Revolution, the Civil War-Great Reconstruction and the New Deal Era. It'll be the time for the millennials to correct, rebuild and restore America and success where Trump is failing: Make America Great Again.

[pbrower2a]

Well to join in the fun, with these broad sweeping generalizations, that obscure more than enlighten, Boomers tend all too often to be basically at once self righteous and self absorbed pigs, and in more extreme cases, utter narcissists (e.g. Trump).

I admit to being self-righteous about drugs, deunkenness, political corruption, personal violence, and child abuse. I have complained to the state troopers about speeding on a local highway, a two-lane blacktop on which many people do freeway speeds.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Self-actualization is not itself selfish. It is an attempt at transcendance, and one aspect of that transcendance is abandoning the idea that 'he who dieswith the mosttoys wins'. The trick of happiness is to not need those toys...and to abandon the fraudulent quest for 'luxuries'.   

Most people cannot do that. Most work is drudgery that practically require one to salve oneself with mindless consumerism.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

JFK said "ask not what your country can do for you" but the rhetoric of the liberalism of that era promised people a lot, an end to war, an end to poverty, the moon. Well we got the moon.
There was a lack of understanding that you can't have it all that long preceded the boomers, and in a way Gibney falls into the same fallacy. So you want to have invested in the world's best infrastructure, the world's best education, health care system, pensions, etc. with ever increasing demands on what we expect from all these areas.... meanwhile we are first in a Cold War struggle then find ourselves the world's policeman. So we need a to spend a lot for that, so we need a lot of prosperity to support that spending, which means growth, deregulation, tax cuts, getting out of this stagflation of the late 70s that's happening just as boomers are starting their careers and families. But that engine of prosperity is financed with debt, and is also contributing to environmental degradation.  And it's dependent on mobile populace, with rapid changes in what industries exist and where, and all sorts of 'redevelopment' projects to promote growth - all with the effects that has on the social fabric, on people living in places far from any intergenerational community while they try to  build the lives for themselves and their children that they have been told they can have.
The reality is we could never solve all this by depending on 'the system' or 'the nation' to solve ever greater and larger questions, rather than facing the honest truth that we might have to sacrifice some of our expectations in order to keep the whole thing from crashing.

[darklordoftech]

Didn’t read the article. We already knew this.

Yeah, and we know that millennials will be even worse when they get older.

Thoroughly disagree. Not all generations share the same values. I'm sure Millennials will have their own sucky attributes, but different from Boomers. Not every generation is individualist like the boomers.

I am mostly opposed to the millennials aesthetically and, to a smaller extent, culturally. Back in my day, instead of wearing “jeggings” or posting pictures of ourselves wearing practically nothing, we walked uphill both ways to the steel mill smoking Marlboro Reds and LIKED it. Remember when this Country used to make things? At least we still have Good Will Hunting.

It wasn't the millenials who made it a crime to be unsupervised, get a job (such as steel mill work), drink beer, smoke cigarettes, or take a picture of yourself underage. It wasn't millenials who grounded their kids for not wanting to go to Harvard.

[darklordoftech]

When they were teens....they didn't want to go to Vietnam so they got rid of the draft

The G.I Generation got rid of the draft because they feared the boomers. The boomers called anyone who opposed the PATRIOT Act and Iraq War an Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

[junior chįmp]

When they were teens....they didn't want to go to Vietnam so they got rid of the draft

The G.I Generation got rid of the draft because they feared the boomers. The boomers called anyone who opposed the PATRIOT Act and Iraq War an Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

I should of said Boomers protested against Vietnam causing the draft to be scrapped.

Look at this way: Every single Boomer president has been a draft dodger (Clinton, Bush, Trump)

[Mr. Smith]

When they were teens....they didn't want to go to Vietnam so they got rid of the draft

The G.I Generation got rid of the draft because they feared the boomers. The boomers called anyone who opposed the PATRIOT Act and Iraq War an Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

I should of said Boomers protested against Vietnam causing the draft to be scrapped.

Look at this way: Every single Boomer president has been a draft dodger (Clinton, Bush, Trump)

Obama's still a Boomer by most accounts, but he was too young.

Also, an actual server who did his duty got robbed in one of those cases, but yeah, the whole "swiftboating" thing should've been a tip-off to all the chickenhawkery that gen has compared to the GI or even the Millennials with all those Iraq vets

[darklordoftech]

When they were teens....they didn't want to go to Vietnam so they got rid of the draft

The G.I Generation got rid of the draft because they feared the boomers. The boomers called anyone who opposed the PATRIOT Act and Iraq War an Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

I should of said Boomers protested against Vietnam causing the draft to be scrapped.

Look at this way: Every single Boomer president has been a draft dodger (Clinton, Bush, Trump)

Obama's still a Boomer by most accounts, but he was too young.

Also, an actual server who did his duty got robbed in one of those cases, but yeah, the whole "swiftboating" thing should've been a tip-off to all the chickenhawkery that gen has compared to the GI or even the Millennials with all those Iraq vets

Dubya defeated three Vietnam veterans (McCain in the 2000 primaries, Gore in the 2000 general, and Kerry in the 2004 general). It seems to me that the Boomers don't value military service the way prior generations did. Pre-Boomer generations saw military service as a requirement for being President and as a patriotic duty (hence the draft). The Boomers don't have any desire to bring back the draft and happily vote for chickenhawks.

[Mr. Smith]

When they were teens....they didn't want to go to Vietnam so they got rid of the draft

The G.I Generation got rid of the draft because they feared the boomers. The boomers called anyone who opposed the PATRIOT Act and Iraq War an Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

I should of said Boomers protested against Vietnam causing the draft to be scrapped.

Look at this way: Every single Boomer president has been a draft dodger (Clinton, Bush, Trump)

Obama's still a Boomer by most accounts, but he was too young.

Also, an actual server who did his duty got robbed in one of those cases, but yeah, the whole "swiftboating" thing should've been a tip-off to all the chickenhawkery that gen has compared to the GI or even the Millennials with all those Iraq vets

Dubya defeated three Vietnam veterans (McCain in the 2000 primaries, Gore in the 2000 general, and Kerry in the 2004 general). It seems to me that the Boomers don't value military service the way prior generations did. Pre-Boomer generations saw military service as a requirement for being President and as a patriotic duty (hence the draft). The Boomers don't have any desire to bring back the draft and happily vote for chickenhawks.

Like I said "an actual server who did his duty got robbed in one of those cases"

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

It is disgusting to see so many people in this thread defend slavery.

[Brittain33]

Can't we all just get along and agree to mutually blame the Gen Xers? They're smaller than either of our cohorts and are too politically weak to defend themselves.

We're just happy to be ignored by everyone.