You’ve got a point. The decline in middle class morals began in the 1960’s and 70’s. We set up a system to help the poor and it wound up destroying the poor family structure. Then, it bled over into the middle class. But the welfare programs of the 1930’s-60’s were written by The Greatests, not the boomers. The Greatests also took us to Vietnam, which gave the young boomers a reason to create a counter-culture and reject Christian morals.
Then, credit got easy and out of control materialism pumped up the economy for a while. The poor started seeing the good economy and demanding, “I want the same stuff that the middle class has”. The economy was good and the government could always borrow more, so no one had a reason to tell them no. The entitlements went from an emergency handout to get you back on your feet to a way of life for a sub-culture. Even today, the entitlements are never enough because someone always wants “mo stuff”.
Add to that the fact that automation and outsourcing has significantly reduced the need for workers, and you now throw a lot of the middle class into the entitlement class.
If you want to pare back entitlements now, you better be prepared for civil war. I’m not saying that we can’t do it. I agree with you that its essential to our survival, but we are all to blame for this and we’re all going to have to give up something to move forward. Blaming it all on the generation that is about to start dying off is the easy way out. The Greatests earned that title because of the sacrifices they made over a 4 year period. If we all face our current situation with honesty and a sense of shared sacrifice, we will be rememebered as the real Greatest Generation(s). If we don’t, there won’t be much of a nation left to curse us in the future.
“The Greatests also took us to Vietnam, which gave the young boomers a reason to create a counter-culture and reject Christian morals.”
Blaming moral laxity on Vietnam is an excuse.
“If you want to pare back entitlements now, you better be prepared for civil war.”
There’s simply no other option. There are not enough of us to pay for everything that is being given. This means that entitlements need to be pared back, starting with public employees. If you want to look at blame, start with abortion and contraception. The whole Ponzi scheme only works with perpetually increasing demand.
“I’m not saying that we can’t do it. I agree with you that its essential to our survival, but we are all to blame for this and we’re all going to have to give up something to move forward.”
Agreed. I have enough problems fighting with MY generation, let alone annoying Boomer hippy idiots. Makes my job a difficult and lonely one when I get undercut by them. I have no problems doing without entitlements. I agree that pension benefits need to be scaled back.
However, what we are seeing is the consistant response of cutting wages and benefits for new hires only. What does that tell me? The entitled boomers will do all they can to hang onto their benefits and damn everybody else.
Everybody has to give up something. Not just young folks. Boomers too.
Those who created the "counter culture" and led the way in taking drugs, revolting against everything and anything, etc., were far older, for the most part, than any of the mewling morons, who followed them. The likes of David Horowitz, Abbey Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Timothy Leary were not even "WAR BABIES" ( those children born in 1942-45 ), but born in the mid 1930s; with Leary born even earlier. Though I'll grant you that a few, a VERY few ( Billy Ayers, Mark Rudd, and that lot ) are early BOOMERS......these folks, as well as the older lot, with the exception of Tom Hayden, were all RED DIAPER BABIES.
As spoiled as some/many BOOMERS were/are, their children were spoiled even more!
The whinging GenXers, here, make BOOMERS ( of which I am not one )look like stoic ascetics !