Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, were raised after the war with very little trauma or deprivation at all, especially when you compare their experiences to the Greatest Generation. It's really the middle-class white boomers who epitomize all the awful shit that define that generation.
They became majority of the electorate in the early 1980s and they fully consolidated their power in Washington by 1995. They've basically been in charge ever since.
The damage they've done to the social fabric of our country is pretty obvious. The damage is equally obvious when looking at the economy. 44 years ago the debt to GDP ratio was about 35%. It's now 120% and continues to go up.
The boomers inherited a rich, powerful country and have gradually bankrupted it. They made a habit of cutting their own taxes and borrowing money without any concern for future burdens. They've spent virtually all our money and assets on themselves and in the process have left a financial disaster for future generations.
We used to have the best infrastructure in the world. The American Society of Civil Engineers thinks there's something like $4 trillion in deferred maintenance. Boomers have allowed it to crumble. Public education has been steadily degrading, forcing middle-class students to bury themselves in debt to get a degree.
And of course, on the issue of climate change, they've done almost nothing. By the 1990s, the science was clear, but they still did nothing.
Now most of these problems have not been addressed because that would require raising taxes and actually giving a shit about your fellow citizens, but again, the boomers have no appreciation for solidarity I guess. Also, politicians respond to the most important / largest part of the electorate. It just so happens that boomers are not socially inclined and they have a lot of maladaptive personality issues.
Starting with Reagan, we saw them take Kennedy's motto about asking what you can do for your country and flip it. There's a massive push for privatized gain and socialized risk for big banks and financial institutions. This has been the Boomers’ dominant economic theory and it's poisoned what's left of them today.
The main factor is that Boomers took everything for granted. They just assumed the economy would grow 3% a year forever and wages would go up consistently and there would be a good job for anyone that wanted one. This was the fantasy of a spoiled age group assuming life was easy and that no sacrifices would have to be made in order to ensure prosperity for future generations. Boomers as a generation are trust-fund babies. They inherited a country they had no part in building, seized on all the benefits, and left nothing behind.
And why are they so hostile to science? Because for all the people they call snowflakes, this generation has been dominated by feelings and not facts. You can see this in their policies. Take the whole trickle-down economics daydream. Maybe it was worth a shot, but we know now that shit don't work. Boomers still cling to this belief today though. Time after time, when facts collided with feelings, the boomers chose feelings.
The worst thing they've done is destroy a sense of social solidarity, an idea that you have a commitment to your fellow citizens. That belief is gone and has been replaced by a cult of individualism. I'm not sure one can overstate how damaging that is.
On a more tangible front, their policies of under-investment and accumulating debt have made it very hard to deal with challenges going forward. Because we failed to confront decaying infrastructure and climate change early on, they're going to grow into bigger and more expensive problems. When something breaks, it's going to cost a lot more than it would have just to maintain it all along.
So now, future generations, our generations, are going to have to make tough choices between saving Social Security and Medicaid and slowing climate change, which will soon start to displace people and become a matter of national security. We'll have fewer and fewer resources to deal with the problems and, I would bet, barring some major technological innovations, that this will actually start killing people.
Not only do other generations need to start voting more, they need to start electing people from their generations. Boomers don't give a fuck what the world or country will look like in 30 to 40 years. We need people in power who do give a fuck. We are going to have to sacrifice in ways the Boomers refused to.
They became majority of the electorate in the early 1980s and they fully consolidated their power in Washington by 1995. They've basically been in charge ever since.
The damage they've done to the social fabric of our country is pretty obvious. The damage is equally obvious when looking at the economy. 44 years ago the debt to GDP ratio was about 35%. It's now 120% and continues to go up.
The boomers inherited a rich, powerful country and have gradually bankrupted it. They made a habit of cutting their own taxes and borrowing money without any concern for future burdens. They've spent virtually all our money and assets on themselves and in the process have left a financial disaster for future generations.
We used to have the best infrastructure in the world. The American Society of Civil Engineers thinks there's something like $4 trillion in deferred maintenance. Boomers have allowed it to crumble. Public education has been steadily degrading, forcing middle-class students to bury themselves in debt to get a degree.
And of course, on the issue of climate change, they've done almost nothing. By the 1990s, the science was clear, but they still did nothing.
Now most of these problems have not been addressed because that would require raising taxes and actually giving a shit about your fellow citizens, but again, the boomers have no appreciation for solidarity I guess. Also, politicians respond to the most important / largest part of the electorate. It just so happens that boomers are not socially inclined and they have a lot of maladaptive personality issues.
Starting with Reagan, we saw them take Kennedy's motto about asking what you can do for your country and flip it. There's a massive push for privatized gain and socialized risk for big banks and financial institutions. This has been the Boomers’ dominant economic theory and it's poisoned what's left of them today.
The main factor is that Boomers took everything for granted. They just assumed the economy would grow 3% a year forever and wages would go up consistently and there would be a good job for anyone that wanted one. This was the fantasy of a spoiled age group assuming life was easy and that no sacrifices would have to be made in order to ensure prosperity for future generations. Boomers as a generation are trust-fund babies. They inherited a country they had no part in building, seized on all the benefits, and left nothing behind.
And why are they so hostile to science? Because for all the people they call snowflakes, this generation has been dominated by feelings and not facts. You can see this in their policies. Take the whole trickle-down economics daydream. Maybe it was worth a shot, but we know now that shit don't work. Boomers still cling to this belief today though. Time after time, when facts collided with feelings, the boomers chose feelings.
The worst thing they've done is destroy a sense of social solidarity, an idea that you have a commitment to your fellow citizens. That belief is gone and has been replaced by a cult of individualism. I'm not sure one can overstate how damaging that is.
On a more tangible front, their policies of under-investment and accumulating debt have made it very hard to deal with challenges going forward. Because we failed to confront decaying infrastructure and climate change early on, they're going to grow into bigger and more expensive problems. When something breaks, it's going to cost a lot more than it would have just to maintain it all along.
So now, future generations, our generations, are going to have to make tough choices between saving Social Security and Medicaid and slowing climate change, which will soon start to displace people and become a matter of national security. We'll have fewer and fewer resources to deal with the problems and, I would bet, barring some major technological innovations, that this will actually start killing people.
Not only do other generations need to start voting more, they need to start electing people from their generations. Boomers don't give a fuck what the world or country will look like in 30 to 40 years. We need people in power who do give a fuck. We are going to have to sacrifice in ways the Boomers refused to.
