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How the baby boomers — not millennials — screwed America
Vox ^ | 12 Mar 2018 | Sean Illing

Posted on 04/26/2018 2:43:10 AM PDT by Cronos

Everyone likes to bash millennials. We’re spoiled, entitled, and hopelessly glued to our smartphones. We demand participation trophies, can’t find jobs, and live with our parents until we’re 30.

But is the millennial hate justified? Have we dropped the generational baton, or was it a previous generation, the so-called baby boomers, who actually ruined everything?

That’s the argument Bruce Gibney makes in his book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. The boomers, according to Gibney, have committed “generational plunder,” pillaging the nation’s economy, repeatedly cutting their own taxes, financing two wars with deficits, ignoring climate change, presiding over the death of America’s manufacturing core, and leaving future generations to clean up the mess they created.

I’m 41, and when I was born, the gross debt-to-GDP ratio was about 35 percent. It’s roughly 103 percent now — and it keeps rising.

The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it. They habitually cut their own taxes and borrow 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 their children.

We used to have the finest infrastructure in the world. The American Society of Civil Engineers thinks there’s something like a $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure in deferred maintenance. It’s crumbling, and the boomers have allowed it to crumble. Our public education system has steadily degraded as well, forcing middle-class students to bury themselves in debt in order to get a college education.

(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: babyboomers; bookreview; boomers; liberals; millennials; sociopaths; taxandspend
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From the article: I think the major factor is that the boomers grew up in a time of uninterrupted prosperity. And so they simply took it for granted. They assumed the economy would just grow three percent a year forever and that wages would go up every year and that there would always be a good job for everyone who wanted it.

This was a fantasy and the result of a spoiled generation assuming things would be easy and that no sacrifices would have to be made in order to preserve prosperity for future generations.

1 posted on 04/26/2018 2:43:10 AM PDT by Cronos
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To: Cronos

Boomers seem to be the only ones who aren’t aware that Boomers screwed things up for everyone else in a big way.

In fairness, some Boomers do acknowledge the facts.


2 posted on 04/26/2018 2:48:21 AM PDT by thoughtomator (Number of arrested coup conspirators to date: 0)
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To: Cronos

Bleep Vox!


3 posted on 04/26/2018 2:49:10 AM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
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To: Cronos

The Boomers voted for what made them feel good and not what was right. They voted in people who looked good on TV, made themselves feel good in their shriveled souls and did not care what these people actually did once in office.

And they raised their children, if they had any, to be just as self centered and selfish as they are (were).

We keep voting in the totalitarian busybodies who desperately want to control everything, and then we look around for someone to blame. We are to blame and we will all pay before this is over.


4 posted on 04/26/2018 2:50:11 AM PDT by wbarmy (I chose to be a sheepdog once I saw what happens to the sheep.)
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To: wbarmy

Pretty much. They assumed they would be dead when the chickens came home to roost and choose to live it up.


5 posted on 04/26/2018 2:51:45 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)
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To: Cronos

How about the small problem of dealing with the Soviet Union and how much that cost? Millennials are absolutely bigger whiners. They learned that from the race pimps the boomers built an obscene welfare system to support.


6 posted on 04/26/2018 2:55:43 AM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
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To: Cronos

It was the ones the hippies called “square”, the Bob Hope generation, that gave us the 18 year old drinking age. Once the hippy generation got into power, it’s illegal to smoke outside in a park. Makes one wonder who the real squares were.


7 posted on 04/26/2018 2:57:49 AM PDT by Mark was here (Fake news = "Hands up ... Dont shoot")
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To: Cronos

Dang they are still angry Clinton was Trump(ed). Oh welll.....


8 posted on 04/26/2018 2:59:16 AM PDT by no-to-illegals (..There is no difference between liberals/rinos/moslems/illegals/lamestream media ...)
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To: thoughtomator

If Boomers like myself screwed America blame our parents and then blame their parents , etc,,,etc,,,


9 posted on 04/26/2018 3:04:52 AM PDT by sushiman (i)
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To: thoughtomator

“Boomers seem to be the only ones who aren’t aware that Boomers screwed things up for everyone else in a big way. In fairness, some Boomers do acknowledge the facts.”

Well, if we chase this back to source or root cause I would say it was the Depression/WWII generation who “screwed things up”. This generation who lived through the two most tumultuous events in U.S. history is the generation who raised, doted on, spoiled their children and created this narrisstic, ego centric demographic aka Boomer Generation. Now, in defense of the Depression/WWII Generation, they were merely guilty of wanting to protect and spare their children from experiencing their hardships which was flawed logic. But, this is now history and baked in the cake so to speak. Now you know the rest of the story...


10 posted on 04/26/2018 3:06:10 AM PDT by snoringbear (W,E.oGovernment is the Pimp,)
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To: Cronos

We screwed ourselves. Nobody teaches civics in America anymore.

Civics teaches people their proper relationship to the Constitution and to civil government.

Constitutional government is the road map to indepnedence and prosperity.

All the forces in the world the original colonists were escaping from still exist out there-and now are in DC itself. They hate the Constitution which empowers independent individuals.


11 posted on 04/26/2018 3:06:50 AM PDT by mo (If you understand, no explanation is needed. If you don't understand, no explanation is possible.)
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To: mo

We’re also letting the Teachers & Media get away with saying we’re a “Democracy”.

We’re a “Constitutional Republic”!!


12 posted on 04/26/2018 3:11:47 AM PDT by LiveFreeOrDie2001 ( Thank GOD Hillary didn't get elected!)
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To: Anti-Bubba182
Bleep Vox!

Yup!

I'm not into bashing millennials as my kids are part of that generation and my wife and I raised them right and they're all hard working and contribute to society.

I'm from the baby boom generation and volunteered to serve our country after I graduated from high school, at the end of the Vietnam War. I'm a pro-lifer and a political conservative. People seem to forget the sacrifice, 58,220 who gave their lives in Vietnam, who were mostly from my generation.

13 posted on 04/26/2018 3:12:30 AM PDT by rochester_veteran (All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.)
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To: Cronos

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Boomers were never a majority of the voting population, and they were of course relatively evenly split in how they voted.

This idiot whining based on simple untruths is pathetic.


14 posted on 04/26/2018 3:13:27 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: Cronos

Boomers are still actively destroying this country. Millenials walk around thinking they are responsible for the legalization of marijuana and don;t even realize that the baby boomers have just been waiting for the older and wiser generations to die off so they can install their long hoped for hippie paradise.


15 posted on 04/26/2018 3:14:13 AM PDT by cdpap
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To: snoringbear

My “Depression Era” Parents NEVER spoiled me.

- Never asked me what I’d like for Dinner.
- Never gave me a Dollar.
- Never said I love you.
- Always had to help ourselves & others, then never hear a thank you.


16 posted on 04/26/2018 3:17:22 AM PDT by LiveFreeOrDie2001 ( Thank GOD Hillary didn't get elected!)
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To: no-to-illegals

Cue up “Royals” by Lorde; the Millennial national anthem.


17 posted on 04/26/2018 3:18:47 AM PDT by elcid1970 ("The Second Amendment is more important than Islam. Buy ammo.")
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To: LiveFreeOrDie2001

“My “Depression Era” Parents NEVER spoiled me.

- Never asked me what I’d like for Dinner.
- Never gave me a Dollar.
- Never said I love you.
- Always had to help ourselves & others, then never hear a thank you.”

Well, I had pretty much the same experience. But, we are the exception not the rule. If we look at populations, demographically parsed as generations, the obvious becomes obvious.


18 posted on 04/26/2018 3:22:30 AM PDT by snoringbear (W,E.oGovernment is the Pimp,)
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To: LiveFreeOrDie2001

Technically speaking The Republic ended with the passage of the 17th Amendment.


19 posted on 04/26/2018 3:27:38 AM PDT by Article10 (Roger That)
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To: thoughtomator

Boomer Children were raised by the media.


20 posted on 04/26/2018 3:38:29 AM PDT by ImJustAnotherOkie (All I know is what I read in the papers.)
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