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 ...
Hey, it’s only fair - their inheritance isn’t going to be all that much more than the Social Security Trust Fund. Which claims to be a treasure trove saved by the government to fund the Boomers’ retirement, but which is in fact a mere record of the money that the government took under that pretext and frittered away on the “Great Society” fiscal sinkhole.The Social Security Trust Fund not money, it’s government debt. The government Treasury will have to pony up for the money to fund the SSTF bonds when the cash flow of Social Security goes negative enough to require it. Exactly as if the SSTF did not exist at all.
If only to keep your children whole on that account, you are doing no more than your duty if you give all your Social Security money to them.
And then they put it back into the system via their own payroll deductions, so the Boomers net out as continuing to pay into social security in their retirement on their children's behalf.
-PJ
The BOOMER generation spans the time of birth from 1946 through 1964.
No, I'm not a BOOMER, I'm a WAR BABY, and as one, I remember the recessions and strikes that took place during most BOOMERs' childhoods and mine as well.
Were many BOOMRERS "spoiled" ? Yes, because their parents fell for the stupid Dr. Spock "method" of raising children, which he didn't use to raise his own kids with.
Also, the BOOMERS parents had lived through THE GREAT DEPRESSION and WW II and wanted to spare their kids the kinds of deprivation that they had gone through.
The BOOMERS can be blamed for many things; however, this article is inaccurate and wrong re a lot of the specious points it attempts to make.
No, BOOMERS were not old enough to vote for JFK and he was the FIRST pol, voted for supposedly due to the way he looked on T.V.!
SPOT ON!
I too was born during WW II ( we're called "WAR BABIES !" )and the so-called "SILENT GENERATION" was that of our parents!
Maybe $100 a week was out of your reach, where you live/d, but that was NOT the case where I lived; not by a long shot.
BOOMERs' parents were not even born yet, when TR was elected president and ditto for Wilson; not to mention the fact that most weren't even of age to vote for FDR the first time around, let alone for some or all of his following presidential terms!
$100 a week, take home pay ( after taxes ) didn’t pay for rent, electricity, phone, and food in the 1960s! And I should know...my first apartment, in the mid ‘60s, was $135 a month for a one bedroom! Throw in food/groceries, insurance, travel, laundry, clothes, etc.; not to mention savings ( I’ve ALWAYS had a savings account...from childhood onwards ) and I’d never have been able to live where I did, pay my bills, and saving anything would have been a pipedream.
Yes, we are war babies but I have never heard of that tag being used for a whole generation. Click on the link below, the silent generation refers to those born between 1925 and 1945 so some who were born to very young parents during the war would be included along with their parents in the silent generation. I never said a hundred a week was out of reach, it was not for all but it was for the majority in this area in the fifties. Of course it bought far more here than in the Northern states at that time. A small farm with a house
could be had here for five thousand or less. On the other hand some used items such as furniture apparently were worth more here than up North. I remember one business run by an enterprising family who happened to be black, they ran a truck back and forth to New York and brought back used furniture, old books, bicycles and other odd items to sell here. We bought a number of books from them.
Incidentally you seem very eager to prove me wrong on something. This is supposed to be fun, not a contest.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-silent-generation-definition-characteristics-facts.html
I grew up knowing that I was born into the "WAR BABY" generation!
Actually, generational names was NOT really much of a "thing" until THE BABY BOOMERS came along and swamped schools, etc.! And then, in the '70s, all of a sudden, it became de rigeur to name and use the name for those born between XXXX and XXXX.
You went to work right out of high school? I don't know what the minimum wage/other salaries were, where you lived, in the 1950s; however yes, it was no doubt lower, there, than it was in the Northeast.
No, not "very eager to prove you wrong"; just interested in correcting inaccurate/wrong "facts". ;^)
What's supposed to be "fun"?
Just because you found something on line, doesn't mean that it is true, nor even reliable!
The so-called "SILENT GENERATION" nomenclature was used to imply those who were supposedly steady, responsible, and conformative. Yet even that definition gets blown out of the water when one knows factual history!
There were massive strikes, the "HIPPY LEADERS" were of that generation and they were stinking COMMIES, who told stupid kids "DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER THIRTY", when almost all of them, to a man, were easily pushing 40, with some already in their 40s!
"SILENT" ?
Well yes, most people didn't protest, but it was the SILENT GENERATION, with help from other generations, who got Reagan elected president and FYI...that is the time period when the "SILENT GENERATION" name was first used/abused.
If, perhaps, the words, “liberal” or “Democrat” were inserted in front of “Boomers”, I might agree. However, THIS boomer has been aware that spoiled children, absent fathers, baby-killer abortionists, and in general, unresponsible people have screwed this country, not me, or most of my friends.
No matter what generation, those who refuse to live by good values are at fault. It’s more about whether people follow God’s commands or not. Yeah, yeah, no one’s perfect, even the Founding Fathers - but if you are trying to improve as opposed to actively rebelling, it makes a big difference.
I’m a boomer, and my wife and I have raised two “millenials” who would make any man proud.
Some did, some didn’t.
Manipulation through Identity Politics.
It wasn’t the Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X or Millennials that “screwed America. It was the FRICKING LIBERALS from ALL OF THOSE GENERATIONS THAT “SCREWED AMERICA”.
When I made under $100 a week, it was at WOR-Radio working for the FM station and Dr. Meltzer - remember him? Awful man! Around 1975 I guess, my first job.
It didn’t pay for nuthin’ even though both the subway and Coke cost about 35 cents a pop.
WOW...I had no idea that some radio jobs were paying so little back then. So many other kinds of entry level jobs paid much better 10 years earlier!
Talking about what things once cost, is a light on how this nation has changed, over the years, vis-a-vis inflation and the devaluation of not just our currency, but also currencies all over the world.
Up until rather recent history, prices and salaries would fall during very bad recessions and more so during serious depressions ( of which there were many, a few far MORE "serious"/terrible that the '29 Crash! ) and people who blame the devaluation of our currency on going off THE GOLD STANDARD, do NOT know what they're talking about!
And in good times, yes, prices did rise, but not ever as crazily as they have done over the past 1/2 century!
When was the last time the word "INFLATION" was ever brought up? I can't remember it being talked about in many decades; can you? Yet here we are, and not just us, but in nations all over the globe, staring at very inflated prices for EVERYTHING...for NO good reason!
I don’t remember the word “inflation” any more than I hear the words “tort reform” pass the putrid lips of Paul Ryan in recent years.
My job at WOR was entry level (my first job) so, naturally, the pay was awful. It’s just that the work was so damned exhausting and the hours were long. Eventually, I was laid off which even my parents were too stupid to understand didn’t mean “fired.” It wasn’t until years later that I learned how fickle the radio business was. Despite everything, I loved being there. It was the time of Jean Shephard, Rambling with Gambling and, my favorites, Bob and Ray. Ray wasn’t friendly, btw.
Right you are..."laid off" is NOT and never has been the same as "fired"! It's sort of like being "made redundant" in the UK.
All entry level jobs have low pay; some worse than others.
Stupidly, Millennials now believe that they should get "EXECUTIVE PAY" for entry level jobs. When they don't, they are shocked and angry. MORONS!
Oh BOB&RAY...Love them and have done since they were on T.V. in the '50s.
We have the recording they did, long ago, to show how stereo sound works ( love, love, LOVE the part they talk to and about a flu, whom they call "NEIL" ! ), and several of their books. :-)
Also, as I've told you before...love, love, LOVE Jean Shepard!
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