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There's a much more substantial article in esquire about this: http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-recession-0412?page=all http://www.esquire

There's a much more substantial article in esquire about this: http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-recession-0412?page=all http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-recess... It was submitted recently but didn't make the front page. If I think about this stuff too much, it makes me want to burn things. It's going to come back to bite the boomers in twenty years when the youth feel absolutely no obligation to support them. I and a lot of my peers are planning to leave our home countries specifically so we don't have to spend a single penny supporting the twilight indolence of that morally vacuous cohort who literally ruined the world for their benefit, after spending their youths supposedly saving it, and their middle ages talking endlessly about how great they are for having done so, all while they carved chunks out of their children's future.

switch007 15y ago
Honest question: how have they ruined the world? I understand what baby boomers are, but I don't see how their actions have ruined everything! Was it their action or inaction? Are you referring to a specific subset of them?
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences: they know that there will be no consequences because they will be dead. Then there was the entrenchment of the cult of the market into every corner of human thought, the sacrifice of compassion on the altar of misread darwinism and thermonuclear psychosis which now dictates every aspect of existence as a matter of presumed necessity. The deliberate development and adoption of a pseudomathematical framework to justify and rationalise absolute contempt for one's fellow man. Nothing short of the death of enlightenment ideals. I freely admit that I cannot rigorously justify every aspect of my views in the manner that HN usually demands, but IMO pretty much anything that happened in the world during the period of time that the boomers had/have geopolitical, financial and cultural power is fair game to blame them for to some extent. TBH I'm just trying to express how I feel when I think about my future and that of my friends. This probably isn't the best place for it, and so I'll leave it here before I say anything even more ill-thought-out.
  - pg 15y ago
    I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences If that's what you're worried about, the boomers may have been less irresponsible than previous generations, given the technology available to them. A few millennia ago, people were eradicating mammal species with stone tools.
    - JonnieCache 15y ago
      You are right, and there are many ways in which the world has objectively shown uninterrupted progress throughout history. Murder/violence have apparently been steadily decreasing since biblical times[1]. The same probably goes for other things, like prejudice and freedom of expression. Also there is the important point that problems like environmental harm seem more acute now only because we are more aware of them. During the industrial revolution, the extent of the harm caused by the use of fossil fuels wasn't a consideration to anyone because we couldn't even conceive what it would mean. Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, all of this is cold comfort when you have dark thoughts of widespread conflict over fresh water in your future. [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...
    - tptacek 15y ago
      That's good food for thought; whaling is perhaps another good example. But previous generations had less capability to exhaust nonrenewable resources than more modern ones, and the side effects of killing all the Syrian Elephants might be less harmful than the side effects of blowing the tops off of mountains. Similarly: most species extinctions seem either to have occurred BCE or after the industrial era. The older extinctions caused by people who knew less about the impact of their (for instance) hunting, which makes them less morally culpable.
- michaelochurch 15y ago
  Honest question: how have they ruined the world? No. Most of them are in "the 99%", and the fact that the upper class of our society is extremely parasitic has nothing to do with generations. Look at the elite of the U.S., and you'll find that the kids are shittier than the parents, and the grandparents often are fairly normal people who are disgusted by the shit their youngers pulled. I wish it wasn't this way, and that there was a single person one could blame it on, but the decay of the U.S. starting in the late 1970s was a product of impersonal historical forces. It's not about Reagan or Thatcher or Boomers or oil prices or Yuppies or Wall Street. People matter but personalities don't. Rather, post-FDR America did such a good job of eradicating the parasitic elite that people started to romanticize it and want it back (assuming, of course, that they'd have a good chance of entering it; in reality, they had no chance). With New Deal-esque social regulations and the dismantling of them after 1980, it's much like the anti-vaccine movement. Vaccines worked so well that people forgot why they needed them.
  - chrisbennet 15y ago
    Your well reasoned and nuanced comment has no place on HN. :-)
- Androsynth 15y ago
  I'll try since I disagree with JonnieCache. They allowed decades of undeclared wars. They allowed decades of military-industrial complex buildup. They allowed business and government to become more intertwined than ever before. (This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism) They allowed the constant inflation of their money because it appeared that they were getting richer, when in reality it was shrinking what little savings they had and absolutely destroyed the savings of their retired parents generation. Now we are left with a debased currency that has the potential to become worthless within our lifetimes. We are left paying the interest on the consumption loans they took out to fuel their lifestyle.
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    >(This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism) Just to clarify: I don't have anything against free markets in abstract, just in the dogmatic application of market ideas. The notion that always acting in ones self interest is optimal for society always justifies anything and everything, leading inevitably to cronyism, corruption, whatever. "Free" seems to mean "allowed to do whatever you want" as far as I can tell. Hmmmm. I should really be venting this somewhere else. Sorry people.
  - WalterBright 15y ago
    Inflation is hardly a characteristic of the boomer years. We've had persistant inflation since 1914, went we went to a fiat money system.
chimeracoder 15y ago
> . I and a lot of my peers are planning to leave our home countries specifically so we don't have to spend a single penny supporting... I have a friend who's planning on doing exactly that. If the US ever stopped taxing income earned by US citizens living in foreign countries, the number of expatriates flocking to Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands would be astounding. You'd get the best of both worlds. The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't remember that.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  "Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands" I guess if your idea of paying 60%+ taxes is "the best of both worlds", then by all means do it. "The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't remember that." Should we also talk about the state of women's rights or minorities during that time? Oh yeah, and stop complaining. 92% marginal tax rate was wrong then..and it's wrong now.
  - mvzink 15y ago
    1. "stop complaining" is the best advice to give to someone who wants to ruin a democratic country. 2. "state of women's rights or minorities": Please don't embarrass yourself by giving said advice after waving around a huge red herring to distract from an enormous, subtly woven social problem that touches every part of modern society.
  - leoedin 15y ago
    You're somehow suggesting that because policy on rights for women and minorities was poor, the taxation system used at the time was also wrong. Beyond attaching your claim that high tax is wrong to the universally accepted claim that institutionalised racism and sexism is wrong, you give no real justification for what you're saying. Perhaps the smallest income disparity ever seen in modern society occurred during that period of high taxation. The gradual erosion of high tax rates (similar levels occurred in the UK around the same time) is almost certainly due to pressure from the wealthy. Tax is a great leveller, providing an underlying safety net for the most vulnerable or the most unfortunate in society, and limiting the self awarded incomes of those at the tops of companies. While I wouldn't argue for taxation rates to be increased to those levels, I really struggle to understand how the erosion of tax rates is in any way beneficial to the vast majority of people. Assuming the target of society is to have some level of equality across it's population, tax reduction is simply wrong. The actions of politicians working to reduce tax are clearly driven by the interests of those already wealthy enough to have a voice.
acslater00 15y ago
Wow this article couldn't miss the point by a wider margin if it tried. Unionization reinforces seniority hierarchy, which hurts young people. The current social security and medicare system reinforces a young-funds-old mentality, which hurts young people. The higher education system, which has been bloated after years of public subsidy, requires normal people to take on debt, which hurts young people. Deficit spending leads to future taxation, which hurts young people. Conservative, free-market types have been saying all of this for well over 30 years. Government support of inefficient institutions causes them to become more expensive and even more inefficient, and the after a while everyone becomes dependent on the support. But when everyone is dependent on government support, then there's no one paying for the support, and the whole system comes crashing down. And here we are in 2012, watching it happen in higher education, in health care, in housing, and in state and local governments all around the country. What exactly is the author proposing as a solution; some sort of uber-occupy-wall-street movement that will flip over cars and demand a new wave of the sorts demonstrably unsustainable institutions we have now? These industries are BEGGING to be liberalized (in the original sense of the word). Ron Paul is a bit of a lunatic, but a path forward that truly expands opportunities for young people is going to look a lot more like a Paul-ian utopia than a left-ist one.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  America has been exclusively electing irresponsible assholes to public office for the last 60 years though. It is the last nation you would want to hold up as an example for anything, no matter what your agenda, left or right. There are plenty of great public education, public health, and public pension systems implemented in the world. That none of them are in the US has nothing to do with the idea of it, but rather who was in charge of getting it done (i.e. ultimately, the American population itself).

switch007 15y ago

Honest question: how have they ruined the world? I understand what baby boomers are, but I don't see how their actions have ruined everything! Was it their action or inaction? Are you referring to a specific subset of them?

JonnieCache 15y ago
I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences: they know that there will be no consequences because they will be dead. Then there was the entrenchment of the cult of the market into every corner of human thought, the sacrifice of compassion on the altar of misread darwinism and thermonuclear psychosis which now dictates every aspect of existence as a matter of presumed necessity. The deliberate development and adoption of a pseudomathematical framework to justify and rationalise absolute contempt for one's fellow man. Nothing short of the death of enlightenment ideals. I freely admit that I cannot rigorously justify every aspect of my views in the manner that HN usually demands, but IMO pretty much anything that happened in the world during the period of time that the boomers had/have geopolitical, financial and cultural power is fair game to blame them for to some extent. TBH I'm just trying to express how I feel when I think about my future and that of my friends. This probably isn't the best place for it, and so I'll leave it here before I say anything even more ill-thought-out.
- pg 15y ago
  I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences If that's what you're worried about, the boomers may have been less irresponsible than previous generations, given the technology available to them. A few millennia ago, people were eradicating mammal species with stone tools.
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    You are right, and there are many ways in which the world has objectively shown uninterrupted progress throughout history. Murder/violence have apparently been steadily decreasing since biblical times[1]. The same probably goes for other things, like prejudice and freedom of expression. Also there is the important point that problems like environmental harm seem more acute now only because we are more aware of them. During the industrial revolution, the extent of the harm caused by the use of fossil fuels wasn't a consideration to anyone because we couldn't even conceive what it would mean. Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, all of this is cold comfort when you have dark thoughts of widespread conflict over fresh water in your future. [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...
  - tptacek 15y ago
    That's good food for thought; whaling is perhaps another good example. But previous generations had less capability to exhaust nonrenewable resources than more modern ones, and the side effects of killing all the Syrian Elephants might be less harmful than the side effects of blowing the tops off of mountains. Similarly: most species extinctions seem either to have occurred BCE or after the industrial era. The older extinctions caused by people who knew less about the impact of their (for instance) hunting, which makes them less morally culpable.
michaelochurch 15y ago
Honest question: how have they ruined the world? No. Most of them are in "the 99%", and the fact that the upper class of our society is extremely parasitic has nothing to do with generations. Look at the elite of the U.S., and you'll find that the kids are shittier than the parents, and the grandparents often are fairly normal people who are disgusted by the shit their youngers pulled. I wish it wasn't this way, and that there was a single person one could blame it on, but the decay of the U.S. starting in the late 1970s was a product of impersonal historical forces. It's not about Reagan or Thatcher or Boomers or oil prices or Yuppies or Wall Street. People matter but personalities don't. Rather, post-FDR America did such a good job of eradicating the parasitic elite that people started to romanticize it and want it back (assuming, of course, that they'd have a good chance of entering it; in reality, they had no chance). With New Deal-esque social regulations and the dismantling of them after 1980, it's much like the anti-vaccine movement. Vaccines worked so well that people forgot why they needed them.
- chrisbennet 15y ago
  Your well reasoned and nuanced comment has no place on HN. :-)
Androsynth 15y ago
I'll try since I disagree with JonnieCache. They allowed decades of undeclared wars. They allowed decades of military-industrial complex buildup. They allowed business and government to become more intertwined than ever before. (This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism) They allowed the constant inflation of their money because it appeared that they were getting richer, when in reality it was shrinking what little savings they had and absolutely destroyed the savings of their retired parents generation. Now we are left with a debased currency that has the potential to become worthless within our lifetimes. We are left paying the interest on the consumption loans they took out to fuel their lifestyle.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  >(This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism) Just to clarify: I don't have anything against free markets in abstract, just in the dogmatic application of market ideas. The notion that always acting in ones self interest is optimal for society always justifies anything and everything, leading inevitably to cronyism, corruption, whatever. "Free" seems to mean "allowed to do whatever you want" as far as I can tell. Hmmmm. I should really be venting this somewhere else. Sorry people.
- WalterBright 15y ago
  Inflation is hardly a characteristic of the boomer years. We've had persistant inflation since 1914, went we went to a fiat money system.

chimeracoder 15y ago

> . I and a lot of my peers are planning to leave our home countries specifically so we don't have to spend a single penny supporting... I have a friend who's planning on doing exactly that. If the US ever stopped taxing income earned by US citizens living in foreign countries, the number of expatriates flocking to Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands would be astounding. You'd get the best of both worlds. The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't remember that.

paulhauggis 15y ago
"Scandanavia, England, and the Netherlands" I guess if your idea of paying 60%+ taxes is "the best of both worlds", then by all means do it. "The problem is that the people complaining when their benefits are cut are often the same ones complaining that our tax rate is 'too high' compared to the 92% (!) marginal tax rate during Eisenhower's administration. But of course, that's around the time that the baby boomers were born, so they don't remember that." Should we also talk about the state of women's rights or minorities during that time? Oh yeah, and stop complaining. 92% marginal tax rate was wrong then..and it's wrong now.
- mvzink 15y ago
  1. "stop complaining" is the best advice to give to someone who wants to ruin a democratic country. 2. "state of women's rights or minorities": Please don't embarrass yourself by giving said advice after waving around a huge red herring to distract from an enormous, subtly woven social problem that touches every part of modern society.
- leoedin 15y ago
  You're somehow suggesting that because policy on rights for women and minorities was poor, the taxation system used at the time was also wrong. Beyond attaching your claim that high tax is wrong to the universally accepted claim that institutionalised racism and sexism is wrong, you give no real justification for what you're saying. Perhaps the smallest income disparity ever seen in modern society occurred during that period of high taxation. The gradual erosion of high tax rates (similar levels occurred in the UK around the same time) is almost certainly due to pressure from the wealthy. Tax is a great leveller, providing an underlying safety net for the most vulnerable or the most unfortunate in society, and limiting the self awarded incomes of those at the tops of companies. While I wouldn't argue for taxation rates to be increased to those levels, I really struggle to understand how the erosion of tax rates is in any way beneficial to the vast majority of people. Assuming the target of society is to have some level of equality across it's population, tax reduction is simply wrong. The actions of politicians working to reduce tax are clearly driven by the interests of those already wealthy enough to have a voice.

acslater00 15y ago

Wow this article couldn't miss the point by a wider margin if it tried. Unionization reinforces seniority hierarchy, which hurts young people. The current social security and medicare system reinforces a young-funds-old mentality, which hurts young people. The higher education system, which has been bloated after years of public subsidy, requires normal people to take on debt, which hurts young people. Deficit spending leads to future taxation, which hurts young people. Conservative, free-market types have been saying all of this for well over 30 years. Government support of inefficient institutions causes them to become more expensive and even more inefficient, and the after a while everyone becomes dependent on the support. But when everyone is dependent on government support, then there's no one paying for the support, and the whole system comes crashing down. And here we are in 2012, watching it happen in higher education, in health care, in housing, and in state and local governments all around the country. What exactly is the author proposing as a solution; some sort of uber-occupy-wall-street movement that will flip over cars and demand a new wave of the sorts demonstrably unsustainable institutions we have now? These industries are BEGGING to be liberalized (in the original sense of the word). Ron Paul is a bit of a lunatic, but a path forward that truly expands opportunities for young people is going to look a lot more like a Paul-ian utopia than a left-ist one.

bluedanieru 15y ago
America has been exclusively electing irresponsible assholes to public office for the last 60 years though. It is the last nation you would want to hold up as an example for anything, no matter what your agenda, left or right. There are plenty of great public education, public health, and public pension systems implemented in the world. That none of them are in the US has nothing to do with the idea of it, but rather who was in charge of getting it done (i.e. ultimately, the American population itself).