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I meant it was the Boomers who voted him in. I suppose I should've made that more obvious as many readers where quite young at the time of Reagan or weren't eve
by tharmas 3y ago
I meant it was the Boomers who voted him in. I suppose I should've made that more obvious as many readers where quite young at the time of Reagan or weren't even born then at all.
And to be clear I was referring to Boomers voted for Clinton. My bad.
- lapcat 3y ago"The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers In the 1980 Presidential election, won by Reagan with 51% of the vote, the oldest Boomers were 34 years old, the youngest 16, and thus not even eligible to vote. According to the linked document, Carter slightly won voters under 30, whereas Reagan won voters 30+ with 55%. It's unclear how exactly 30-44 broke down, but in any case the total of that whole group was only 31% of the voters, and the oldest Boomers were 34. https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980 https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980 > And to be clear I was referring to Boomers voted for Clinton. But you admitted that you don't even know whether Reagan or Clinton watered down anti-monopoly laws.
- tharmas 3y agoI know that Clinton watered down the anti-monopoly laws but wasn't sure if Reagan had watered down them considerably more than Clinton. Why the confrontational tone? If you think I'm wrong couldn't you have stated so in a more gracious tone? Does all discourse on the internet where you don't like what the person is saying have to be hostile sounding in tone?
- lapcat 3y ago> Why the confrontational tone? Your own original comment was confrontational and hostile: "The most egregious thing the Boomers did", "Either way it was the Boomers." It's not even a question of what the Reagan and/or Clinton administrations did. The problem with your comment was the absurdity of throwing around the "Boomers" stereotype. I think it's silly to blame everything on Boomers, a totally arbitrary slice of the population, who are in fact as demographically and politically diverse as any other age group. Moreover, it has now become commonplace for younger people to call everyone who is older them a "Boomer", regardless of whether that term is accurate, in a kind of willful ignorance. No, not all Boomers are the same, and no, they don't control the world.
- tharmas 3y agoYou're right, I was cavalier in my treatment of Boomers in my comment. I accept your criticism in that regard. Not all Boomers deserve blame. However, there was an embrace of laissez-faire economic philosophy that coincided with their "assuming the mantle". Many of them bought into Milton Friedman (Chicago school) economics and have refused to acknowledge what a massive mistake it was.
- lapcat 3y ago> However, there was an embrace of laissez-faire economic philosophy that coincided with their "assuming the mantle". I dispute that Boomers ever assumed the mantle, as it were. They're a subset of the population. No generation has the mantle. Like I said, Boomers don't control the world. Bill Clinton was the first Boomer President, so you might argue that they assumed the mantle then, but 1993 does not coincide with the embrace of laissez-faire economic philosophy. This occurred much earlier. > Many of them bought into Milton Friedman (Chicago school) economics Milton Friedman was born in 1912, a year after Reagan, and was an advisor to Reagan and to Margaret Thatcher, so I think it's quite a stretch to attribute this to Boomers. Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" was published in 1962, when the youngest Boomers weren't even born yet.
- tharmas 3y agoI wasn't intimating that Friedman was a boomer. I was getting at that Milton Friedman's Economic Philosophy was fully embraced by the Boomers. And Reagan and Thatcher were fully endorsed by the Boomer generation. Boomers are the first generation in American History to hand their successive generations a lower standard of living. And under Bill Clinton the Boomers certainly did assume the mantle. They certainly were in control in all facets of society. Also, Boomers revitalized Ayn Randism. She was dormant, a forgotten relic until they began to embrace her philosophy.