3 ms·

As an X-er watching the millenials and the boomers lobbing grenades at each other, it amuses me that the millenial argument sounds like this: "Those greedy boom

by vacri 10y ago

As an X-er watching the millenials and the boomers lobbing grenades at each other, it amuses me that the millenial argument sounds like this: "Those greedy boomers have fucked up the world for everyone else with their overly lavish and unsustainable lifestyles... and they won't let us into their cushy club!" Point of fact is that if you were to give the choice between today's 20-year-old lifestyle and the same in 1970, you'd be insane to choose 1970, especially if you were a minority or a woman. Sure, houses are cheaper in `70, but the jobs are much more menial, life is less comfortable, medicine is less advanced (particularly pain medication), social opportunities are much more stratified, entertainment is much harder to get, communication is considerably more limited, shopping times are much more limited, so on and so forth. Summing up the differences between now and then as merely "houses and uni costs" is basically just propaganda.

bottled_poe 10y ago
It seems perverse to say that just because previous generation had it tougher, that they should be entitled to a better quality of life.
bbcbasic 10y ago
First that first paragraph is a Straw man argument. So I will ignore. Your other point is they if A gets better it is ok if B gets worse. I think lack of affordability of essentials like somewhere to live is of grave concern. Unaffordable housing causes homelessness. It means people have to start families later and have less time to raise their children.
- vacri 10y ago
  My first paragraph wasn't meant to be a summation of yours, sorry, it's just that your statement reminded me of the last part of it. It's just odd that the criticisms of the boomers includes both "they're being unsustainable" and "they won't let us be unsustainable wtih them". As for starting families later, that happens with wealthy, stable societies. People were starting to have children later well before housing costs j-curved. Family sizes have reduced as well - plenty of western democracies are now below replacement birthrate. In short, the problem is this: housing costs are a problem. Bitching about the boomers is going to help no-one, especially the millenials. Rather than spend that energy creating division, find forward-thinking solutions. Instead of being bitter about the one problem that generation has, be happy that things like job quality has improved[1] (yes, for the slightly lower amount of jobs per worker these days), education is more available[2], society is less discriminatory, food supply is of better quality, entertainment is more easily accessed, travel is much easier, so on and so forth. Hence why I say that focusing only on house + uni price is just propaganda. [1] Those jobs that immigrants do in modern western societies, the ones that the natives don't do because they're too menial? Those were the jobs that the young boomers and earlier had to do. [2] Uni courses are more expensive, but there's a ton of education out there that isn't in the form of a four-year degree, and that's independent of the amazing resources available on the internet.
dredmorbius 10y ago
The factual errors in your argument are extreme. Working class wages were proportionately higher in 1970. Drawing a dividing line is hard, but somewhere between 1970 and 1980, wage gains became decoupled from productivity increases. Medicine quite simply hasn't advanced significantly since 1970. Access to medicine by the underserved has, and accounts for much of increases in outcomes, as well as reduced environmental polutants and healthier lifestyles: clean air, clean water, unleaded petrol, lead-free paint, reduced smoking, and reduced alcohol consumption. "Lifestyle" shopping was only just being invented at about this time -- shopping as recreation largley didn't exist. "Amazon" was called "Sears, Roebuck", you could buy a house, or a bed, or a wardrobe, with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Communications and entertainment are about the only area with significant improement, though I'd argue the quality of news coverage 1970 - 1980 was far higher than today -- most cities had multiple local papers with detailed coverage, and newsmagazines weren't the joke they are today. Television was more limited and video didn't exist, but movie theaters were much more common (and cheaper), and live performances easier to find. There was also a form of entertainment and information called "books", freely available in these terminal service devices called "libraries". You've failed to account for decreased labour union participation (stronger job security), general life and housing security, highly subsidised educational opportunities, the burgeoning of opportunities resulting from the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movement, the long boom in opportunity in California (offsetting the decline of the rust belt), affordable air conditioning making life in the southeast comfortable for the first time, and the fact that in 1970, the advances of the next 30 years were rapidly approaching. I (and others) see the information revolution as largely played out -- its peak period seemed to be ~1995 - 2005. Sources: varied, though Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth covers much of the changes in lifestyle, transport, health, communications, and work, from 1870 - 2015. It's especially damning on info/comms technologies excepting 1995-2005, and healthcare since 1970. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century is one of many books addressing the rise in inequality, see also Anthony Atkinson's Inequality.
- vacri 10y ago
  Yeah, my 'factual errors' are 'extreme', and then you rebut pretending that books don't exist anymore. You're painting an overly rosy picture of the past, and you are wrong about medicine not improving in the past 45 years (mental health in particular). Not to mention that you seem to think that the civil rights movement was done and dusted by 1970. Union participation is not a measure in and of itself of life quality, and you conveniently ignore that jobs back then tended to be much more menial and boring - in the modern day we have the relative luxury of saying 'no' to those jobs (hence immigrants doing them). And, frankly, saying the internet and mass interpersonal communication was 'played out' as of 2005 is utter horseshit. Besides, how seriously should we take a source which damns radio, television, the film cinema, the telephone, and the internet, over 150 years when humanity had none of these beforehand? Should we go back to pre-1870 times, when being illiterate was commonplace instead of being notably unusual? I'm not sure how info/comms was somehow better then. Picking out 1995-2005 as being 'the only good decade for comms' is ludicrous. It's also possible for inequality to increase, yet have the lower bound also increase. Yes, income disparity has increased, but life quality is not measured only in dollars. Try being gay in the '70s for a clear example. And it's not like homeless people are a new thing this century - they were around back then as well.

by vacri 10y ago

bottled_poe 10y ago

It seems perverse to say that just because previous generation had it tougher, that they should be entitled to a better quality of life.

bbcbasic 10y ago

First that first paragraph is a Straw man argument. So I will ignore. Your other point is they if A gets better it is ok if B gets worse. I think lack of affordability of essentials like somewhere to live is of grave concern. Unaffordable housing causes homelessness. It means people have to start families later and have less time to raise their children.

vacri 10y ago
My first paragraph wasn't meant to be a summation of yours, sorry, it's just that your statement reminded me of the last part of it. It's just odd that the criticisms of the boomers includes both "they're being unsustainable" and "they won't let us be unsustainable wtih them". As for starting families later, that happens with wealthy, stable societies. People were starting to have children later well before housing costs j-curved. Family sizes have reduced as well - plenty of western democracies are now below replacement birthrate. In short, the problem is this: housing costs are a problem. Bitching about the boomers is going to help no-one, especially the millenials. Rather than spend that energy creating division, find forward-thinking solutions. Instead of being bitter about the one problem that generation has, be happy that things like job quality has improved[1] (yes, for the slightly lower amount of jobs per worker these days), education is more available[2], society is less discriminatory, food supply is of better quality, entertainment is more easily accessed, travel is much easier, so on and so forth. Hence why I say that focusing only on house + uni price is just propaganda. [1] Those jobs that immigrants do in modern western societies, the ones that the natives don't do because they're too menial? Those were the jobs that the young boomers and earlier had to do. [2] Uni courses are more expensive, but there's a ton of education out there that isn't in the form of a four-year degree, and that's independent of the amazing resources available on the internet.

dredmorbius 10y ago

The factual errors in your argument are extreme. Working class wages were proportionately higher in 1970. Drawing a dividing line is hard, but somewhere between 1970 and 1980, wage gains became decoupled from productivity increases. Medicine quite simply hasn't advanced significantly since 1970. Access to medicine by the underserved has, and accounts for much of increases in outcomes, as well as reduced environmental polutants and healthier lifestyles: clean air, clean water, unleaded petrol, lead-free paint, reduced smoking, and reduced alcohol consumption. "Lifestyle" shopping was only just being invented at about this time -- shopping as recreation largley didn't exist. "Amazon" was called "Sears, Roebuck", you could buy a house, or a bed, or a wardrobe, with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Communications and entertainment are about the only area with significant improement, though I'd argue the quality of news coverage 1970 - 1980 was far higher than today -- most cities had multiple local papers with detailed coverage, and newsmagazines weren't the joke they are today. Television was more limited and video didn't exist, but movie theaters were much more common (and cheaper), and live performances easier to find. There was also a form of entertainment and information called "books", freely available in these terminal service devices called "libraries". You've failed to account for decreased labour union participation (stronger job security), general life and housing security, highly subsidised educational opportunities, the burgeoning of opportunities resulting from the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movement, the long boom in opportunity in California (offsetting the decline of the rust belt), affordable air conditioning making life in the southeast comfortable for the first time, and the fact that in 1970, the advances of the next 30 years were rapidly approaching. I (and others) see the information revolution as largely played out -- its peak period seemed to be ~1995 - 2005. Sources: varied, though Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth covers much of the changes in lifestyle, transport, health, communications, and work, from 1870 - 2015. It's especially damning on info/comms technologies excepting 1995-2005, and healthcare since 1970. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century is one of many books addressing the rise in inequality, see also Anthony Atkinson's Inequality.

vacri 10y ago
Yeah, my 'factual errors' are 'extreme', and then you rebut pretending that books don't exist anymore. You're painting an overly rosy picture of the past, and you are wrong about medicine not improving in the past 45 years (mental health in particular). Not to mention that you seem to think that the civil rights movement was done and dusted by 1970. Union participation is not a measure in and of itself of life quality, and you conveniently ignore that jobs back then tended to be much more menial and boring - in the modern day we have the relative luxury of saying 'no' to those jobs (hence immigrants doing them). And, frankly, saying the internet and mass interpersonal communication was 'played out' as of 2005 is utter horseshit. Besides, how seriously should we take a source which damns radio, television, the film cinema, the telephone, and the internet, over 150 years when humanity had none of these beforehand? Should we go back to pre-1870 times, when being illiterate was commonplace instead of being notably unusual? I'm not sure how info/comms was somehow better then. Picking out 1995-2005 as being 'the only good decade for comms' is ludicrous. It's also possible for inequality to increase, yet have the lower bound also increase. Yes, income disparity has increased, but life quality is not measured only in dollars. Try being gay in the '70s for a clear example. And it's not like homeless people are a new thing this century - they were around back then as well.