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 ...
well, the youngest boomers were born in 1964. They are 53 now. Most likely they will be dead when the chickens come to roost.
There are no millennial, no get-x, no boomers. There are only grubby publishers seeking to gin up ad clicks on hatred of “others”.
Dividing a population into groups is one more way of dividing people against each other. The reality is every day of every year babies are born into the world. We don’t arrive in batches. Yes, there are peaks and valleys in birth rate, mostly due to wars, but that’s it.
Excuse me, I’m a baby boomer who got her first job in a recession and that first job was full-time with unpaid overtime and less than $100 a week. And remember gas lines?
That needed to be said on this thread.
I think you hit the nail on the head there.
Boomers for some reason decided it would be preferable to park their kids in front of TVs in lieu of raising them.
And as much as many are eager to pass the blame up another generation, I don’t see that anyone else taught them to do that. It was simply easier and more convenient, and allowed them to pursue things other than being good parents.
I remember gas lines, I am of the “silent” generation, born DURING WWII. I also remember when one hundred dollars a week was a dream, anyone who earned that much was considered well off. It was equal to at least fifteen hundred in today’s worthless dollars. As a teenager I was happy to work all day in the hot sun for three or four dollars. I had a classmate in high school who bought a 1955 Cadillac Sedan Deville in perfect running condition for fifty dollars in 1962.
“”The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it. “”
What a stinking pile of horsechit! Conservative Boomers and Boomers in general put in Reagan giving us the longest period of prosperity this country has ever seen. We didn’t inherit shit unless you want to call the Vietnam war an inheritance, I spent 11 months over there. Don’t blame us for what following generations have done to what we created and for GOD sake don’t give us any credit for the last election, we Boomers played a big part in that. We’ve taken a stand twice, wheres everybody else? The author and anybody believing this steaming pile can kiss my ancient Boomer ass! We got Trump in office and things are picking up nicely. Now it’s time for us to retire, should have already been but no we had to come back out and bail this country out again. To the younger generations, we’re done and it’s all on you. Don’t screw it up again because we’re not going to be around to help next time.
-PJ
>>Technically speaking The Republic ended with the passage of the 17th Amendment.<<
That was the beginning of the end and it is sad so few peoplw understand that.
Of course, the 19th was the nail in the coffin (*runs*).
QFT: “Technically speaking The Republic ended with the passage of the 17th Amendment.”
Can’t be said enough, IMO.
Each and every generation starting with the first votes for Progressives in the 1910s screwed America, progressively.
They did a pretty good job trying to get us all killed. I was with the 101st during Operation Texas Star we lost almost 400 men and damn near 2000 wounded by the time they evacuated FSB Ripcord about 5 months later. ARVN lost about the same. Hell they sent us off to fight as soon as they legally could and kept us there for damn near 20 years. 1955 to 1975.
I’m a boomer. My kids are gen X and millennial. They are less spoiled and thinking the world owes them than the boomers.
But I agree. The boomers, spoiled by The Greatest Generation, schooled by Marxists in college, caused the problems we see today.
It is a multi generational cluster f***.
Had we backed Joe McCarthy we might not be in this mess today.
I definitely blame the boomers (my generation). I thought we were being stupid AT THE TIME. And I was just a teenager.
And it is coming home to bite the country big time. We haven’t felt the real pain yet. It will come.
“...ignoring climate change....”
Right there the dumshit lost all credibility.
I am a boomer and can care less to what millennials assert I have done or not done. They are nothing more than tools looking only to blame rather than adapt and overcome. Tissue biatches - I hear K-Mart got a blue light special on Kleenex...get some, yeah?!
The biggest mistake we Boomers have made was falling for the trap/sale pitch of thinking we had to put our kids in college. It was almost to the point of being shamed and ridiculed for not a good parent. I’ll accept the blame for that one.
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