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> It's exactly the kind of "we got ours" BS that the boomers are so known for. The boomers are just recipients of an anomalous post-war economic order that hea

> It's exactly the kind of "we got ours" BS that the boomers are so known for. The boomers are just recipients of an anomalous post-war economic order that heavily benefitted the US for a couple decades. The average 60-year old had no role in pulling the rug out from millennials.

logfromblammo 10y ago
Right. The average Boomer had nothing to do with it. To be fair, the Boomer politicians and business managers didn't screw the Millennials, either. Not directly. They pulled the rug out from the Gen-Xers, and let the domino effect take out the Millennials, too. Yeah, as a generation, we still exist, even though nobody talks about us. The Boomers were the beneficiaries of post-war prosperity, but they also decided to steal money from the future to finance their generational party/gravy train. The Greatests gave them a gift of some free money, but then they also decided to smash open their own childrens' and grandchildrens' piggy banks and fill them full of promissory notes. Except they aren't IOUs that are promises from the parents to pay their kids back. They are UOMEs that obligate the kids to pay their parents more money, if they ever actually get some. I'm biased by anecdote, because I'm old enough to have seen typical (late) Boomer lifestyles and compare them to typical Gen X lifestyles in the same age range. In other words, I'm old enough now to compare my own life with that of my parents when they were the age I am now.
- brandonmenc 10y ago
  > The Boomers were the beneficiaries of post-war prosperity, but they also decided to steal money from the future to finance their generational party/gravy train. I hear this a lot, but what exactly do you mean? The real reason we don't have the same great lifestyles our (let's be honest - mostly white, male) parents and grandparents did is because no one can get a good paying factory job right out of high school anymore - an inevitable, global, structural change that no one could've prevented.
  - hx87 10y ago
    It's also because they consistently cut taxes and public investment in infrastructure while passing legislation to inflate the costs of basic life necessities such as housing.
  - monocasa 10y ago
    I'd point to the massive amounts of privatization of what was public infrastructure. If you're into documentaries, I'd really recommend some of Adam Curtis's stuff on the topic; he covers the topics much more completely and eloquently than I. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    No - that's an important structural reason, but I dispute your claim that it's the overarching economic factor or that it's entirely out of our control.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I don't know about your family, but 50% of my ancestors were female. What I mean is that as Boomers took control of government and business from the previous generation, they overwhelmingly preferred current consumption over future growth. They preferred to benefit their own generation rather than attempt to improve the lot of future generations. And in many cases, they took on a lot of public debt, spent it for private benefit, and mailed the bill ahead to the year 2030. Then they forgot to build the businesses, infrastructure, and capital investments that are absolutely required to be able to pay not just the interest, but the principal, too. So now we get events like interstate highway bridges collapsing into the Mississippi River. But we can't have that, so instead how about we sell an interstate highway bridge to a private company and let them collect tolls on it? Then maintenance is their problem, right? Oh, and hey, we're driving cities into bankruptcy with the benefits we voted to ourselves, so let's make sure that rather than avoid the bankruptcy by stepping back some of our own foolish economic choices, we instead focus our efforts on making sure they can't discharge those future obligations when the bankruptcy happens. And when retirement benefits finally exceed the productive capacity of all the working people in the nation, the Boomers will mostly be dead already, and the Gen-Xers will be the ones stuck scavenging meals from the garbage while dodging the roving bands of Gen-Z cannibal marauders in their spiky, Mad-Max-style wasteland buggies. It's all just exactly what can go wrong when you have too much democratic leverage in your republic. The Boomers had just enough of a numeric advantage over other generational voting blocs that they got a disproportionately large share of representation. Then they just voted themselves all the cookies out of the cookie jar.
anigbrowl 10y ago
You're right, but the many boomers have been happy to accept the benefit even while seeing the cost fall on succeeding generations, though it's hard to blame individual people from drifting along with their cohort.

logfromblammo 10y ago

Right. The average Boomer had nothing to do with it. To be fair, the Boomer politicians and business managers didn't screw the Millennials, either. Not directly. They pulled the rug out from the Gen-Xers, and let the domino effect take out the Millennials, too. Yeah, as a generation, we still exist, even though nobody talks about us. The Boomers were the beneficiaries of post-war prosperity, but they also decided to steal money from the future to finance their generational party/gravy train. The Greatests gave them a gift of some free money, but then they also decided to smash open their own childrens' and grandchildrens' piggy banks and fill them full of promissory notes. Except they aren't IOUs that are promises from the parents to pay their kids back. They are UOMEs that obligate the kids to pay their parents more money, if they ever actually get some. I'm biased by anecdote, because I'm old enough to have seen typical (late) Boomer lifestyles and compare them to typical Gen X lifestyles in the same age range. In other words, I'm old enough now to compare my own life with that of my parents when they were the age I am now.

brandonmenc 10y ago
> The Boomers were the beneficiaries of post-war prosperity, but they also decided to steal money from the future to finance their generational party/gravy train. I hear this a lot, but what exactly do you mean? The real reason we don't have the same great lifestyles our (let's be honest - mostly white, male) parents and grandparents did is because no one can get a good paying factory job right out of high school anymore - an inevitable, global, structural change that no one could've prevented.
- hx87 10y ago
  It's also because they consistently cut taxes and public investment in infrastructure while passing legislation to inflate the costs of basic life necessities such as housing.
- monocasa 10y ago
  I'd point to the massive amounts of privatization of what was public infrastructure. If you're into documentaries, I'd really recommend some of Adam Curtis's stuff on the topic; he covers the topics much more completely and eloquently than I. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  No - that's an important structural reason, but I dispute your claim that it's the overarching economic factor or that it's entirely out of our control.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I don't know about your family, but 50% of my ancestors were female. What I mean is that as Boomers took control of government and business from the previous generation, they overwhelmingly preferred current consumption over future growth. They preferred to benefit their own generation rather than attempt to improve the lot of future generations. And in many cases, they took on a lot of public debt, spent it for private benefit, and mailed the bill ahead to the year 2030. Then they forgot to build the businesses, infrastructure, and capital investments that are absolutely required to be able to pay not just the interest, but the principal, too. So now we get events like interstate highway bridges collapsing into the Mississippi River. But we can't have that, so instead how about we sell an interstate highway bridge to a private company and let them collect tolls on it? Then maintenance is their problem, right? Oh, and hey, we're driving cities into bankruptcy with the benefits we voted to ourselves, so let's make sure that rather than avoid the bankruptcy by stepping back some of our own foolish economic choices, we instead focus our efforts on making sure they can't discharge those future obligations when the bankruptcy happens. And when retirement benefits finally exceed the productive capacity of all the working people in the nation, the Boomers will mostly be dead already, and the Gen-Xers will be the ones stuck scavenging meals from the garbage while dodging the roving bands of Gen-Z cannibal marauders in their spiky, Mad-Max-style wasteland buggies. It's all just exactly what can go wrong when you have too much democratic leverage in your republic. The Boomers had just enough of a numeric advantage over other generational voting blocs that they got a disproportionately large share of representation. Then they just voted themselves all the cookies out of the cookie jar.

anigbrowl 10y ago

You're right, but the many boomers have been happy to accept the benefit even while seeing the cost fall on succeeding generations, though it's hard to blame individual people from drifting along with their cohort.