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Being a white man in your 50’s in America today is to be a punching bag for every selfish group in this declining country.

Unless you are employed by the government the higher salary you have earned from decades of hard work makes you a target for every cost cutter in the company. Your knowledge and experience is devalued and every special interest group with a quota demand wants you out. The politically correct rules require you to walk on eggshells, choose your words carefully and be sensitive to everyone around you but anyone can ridicule and attack you with impunity. You are typically ordered to clean up the messes made by young, politically correct careerists who are given authority without responsibility, screw things up and then move on to something else.

Wives and children in this era of self-absorbtion are typically unappreciative of all that you have done for them. You are expected to be a bottomless pit of money and fix things when there is a problem. Other than that none of them care about you.

Social Security is insolvent and may or may not be around when you need it. Probably not.

All you have to look forward to is doing things for other people who will never do anything for you.

Here is a movie that was made about what you posted:There's Always Tomorrow

There's Always Tomorrow is a remake of a 1934 film of the same name. Fred MacMurray is a toy company executive whose wife (Joan Bennett) and kids (Gigi Perreau, William Reynolds and Judy Nugent) take him for granted. Barbara Stanwyck is Fred's former girlfriend, whose own business activities result in a surprise reunion. MacMurray falls back in love with Stanwyck and prepares to leave his family. MacMurray's children go to Stanwyck and politely ask her to back off. She does so, and MacMurray's wife Bennett, who's been out of town during all this, is none the wiser. In the original There's Always Tomorrow, the male and female leads (Frank Morgan and Binnie Barnes) were farther apart age-wise, making their brief encounter all the more poignant.

Great post! My solution is to "Go Galt", or more specifically, "go Hank Rearden". When I hear a co-worker complain about how unappreciated they are by their family, I urge them to read Atlas Shrugged. Focus on the metamorphosis that Henry Rearden goes through regarding his relationship with his mother and worthless brother.

There was a lot of Hank Rearden in my stepfather. I just didn't know it until I read the book. My admiration for him, always positive, grows more with each day. He set a great example for me, in the way he lived his life.

“Your knowledge and experience is devalued and every special interest group with a quota demand wants you out. The politically correct rules require you to walk on eggshells, choose your words carefully and be sensitive to everyone around you but anyone can ridicule and attack you with impunity. You are typically ordered to clean up the messes made by young, politically correct careerists who are given authority without responsibility, screw things up and then move on to something else.”

This has been the MO for the software development field for over 10 years now.

Being a white man in your 50’s in America today is to be a punching bag for every selfish group in this declining country.

Including a few on this thread. I usually avoid generational psychiatry such as this article because it's seldom useful to apply the resulting generalizations to such an individual thing as suicide. Nevertheless, the statistics cited (30% male suicide, 7% female) are a little disturbing if true.

I can think of broad trends that may contribute - we are a vastly over-medicated society, especially with respect to depression, and not only the direct effects of that medication but the effects of changes in dosage, changes in the form of medication, and withdrawal from that medication, are areas where the whole thing turns from therapy to a giant chemical experiment with an unknown outcome.

That, however, does not explain the racial and sexual disparity. The cultural bias against white males that is stoutly denied by the Left even while they're doubling down on it can certainly be a bit depressing, especially if one is restricted to television as a source of cultural input. The real problem is buying into it in the first place, a thing a lot of my generation were far too uncritical about over the last forty years or so. If you have faith, a fair idea of who you are, and a withering skepticism about pop sociology that makes you out the universal bad guy, avoid medication, have participated in your country in the form of military service; in short, if you're stubborn, lucky, and conservative, you're pretty much immune. These days that tends to be a smaller portion of society than it used to be.

I don't think any of this is restricted to the Boomers, either; it's just that many of us in that generation are reaching that retrospective point in life that can lead those who haven't lived one to a morass of regret. That isn't something that is restricted to a generation.