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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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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.’

It is hard to believe that people can be so stupid as to believe that kind of thing.

Even if Boomers had it in their hearts and minds to screw up the country, they could not do it due to the fact that never has just one generation been in exclusively in charge and running things on a whim.

Obama is considered to be the first post-baby boom president and he doubled the national debt with help from three generations.

Boomers were not in charge when abortion was declared a cool thing to pursue, when prayer was declared uncool, and the list is endless.


41 posted on 04/26/2018 4:49:29 AM PDT by odawg
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To: snoringbear; thoughtomator; All

>
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.
>

IMO, you forget the elephant in the room.

The ‘greatest generation’ (and their parents), voted Socialism into the American mainstream: Teddy (to start), Wilson, FDR.

They also allowed these ‘progressives’ to install unconstitutional\illegal programs we fight w/ today: 16th A., 17th A., SS, gun-control, fiat currency\FED, etc.


42 posted on 04/26/2018 4:58:26 AM PDT by i_robot73 (One could not count the number of *solutions*, if only govt followed\enforced the Constitution.)
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To: miss marmelstein

Also having to pay back student loans to obtain a science degree at 7-8% interest rates in the teeth of a nasty recession without the sympathetic bankruptcy climate of today. Compare and contrast with the whiny snowflakes are boo hooing about paying back at less than 2% interest? Sucks to be a barista with a combined gender studies/art history degree, doesn’t it snowflake?


43 posted on 04/26/2018 4:59:10 AM PDT by slapshot ( Speaker Ryan is a sober and less tan version of John Boehner)
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To: thoughtomator

I’m too old to be a boomer and too young to be of the greatest generation although greatly influenced by the latter. There is enough assholery and douchebaggery across all strata of society to spread the guilt. However, the problem now with millenials is that they have been thoroughly brainwashed and indoctrinated by a semi-communist/communist educational system. Hence this jagoff comes up with “,..ignoring climate change...”.


44 posted on 04/26/2018 4:59:51 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: thoughtomator
Pointing fingers at any single demographic is stupid. Liberalism has destroyed America, and liberals are in every walk in life.

But if we're pointing fingers, if baby boomers destroyed America, keep in mind that the "greatest generation" raised those boomers to be lazy, self centered, spoiled, instant gratification, etc.

There's enough blame to go around.

45 posted on 04/26/2018 5:00:12 AM PDT by LouAvul (The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.)
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To: i_robot73

Two other mistakes come to mind:

1) voting age 18
2) elimination of the draft

I enlisted in 1963.


46 posted on 04/26/2018 5:09:21 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Cronos; All

I think we can all agree that the ultimate blame falls at the feet of the Elites who engineered our society to extract the most amount of wealth from the producers, and for that they should pay dearly.

I want my pound of flesh.


47 posted on 04/26/2018 5:09:41 AM PDT by T-Bone Texan (Idiocracy is here, and it votes democrat.)
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To: Cronos

There are always three generations voting and running for office at any one time, plus the 80+ hangers on who always persist in Congress as long as possible. This nation has been harmed by liberalism and globalism, and those pestilences have infected members of all current generations and won’t be defeated by whining about the boomers or any other generation.


48 posted on 04/26/2018 5:12:30 AM PDT by Will88
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To: thoughtomator

I’ve taken to calling them ‘The Locusts’


49 posted on 04/26/2018 5:14:17 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs
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To: Cronos
While I agree about Boomers to a point, if this petulant spoiled child pulled their head out of the insane Leftist bubble world they manufactured for themselves, they would realize how stupid this argument is in fact.

His argument basically boils down to “whaaa, why didn't the boomers sacrifice and creates a perfect world for me to inherit”.

Because you moronic middle age infantile brat, the world IS NEVER perfect. And rather then manufacture hysteric nonsense to whine about, and thus justify your failures in life, get off your ass, take out the piercing, take a bath and go get a REAL job.

50 posted on 04/26/2018 5:21:50 AM PDT by MNJohnnie ("The political class is a bureaucracy designed to perpetuate itself" Rush Limbaugh)
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To: Cronos
"How the baby boomers — not millennials — screwed America"

Gosh!

The boomer generations, just like any generations, had their share of brilliant achievements and stupid failures.

Let's hope those hard-working, responsible millennials step up the plate and fix it for their children.

51 posted on 04/26/2018 5:36:04 AM PDT by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it?)
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To: slapshot

I don’t have much sympathy. Baby boomers made up a great deal of the armed forces of the Viet Nam War. It wasn’t all beer and skittles.


52 posted on 04/26/2018 5:39:48 AM PDT by miss marmelstein
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To: grey_whiskers

He knew the price of everything but the value of nothing.


53 posted on 04/26/2018 5:40:54 AM PDT by wally_bert (I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone & West Germany)
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To: Dusty Road

I’m supposedly the last of the Boomers, though I hardly relate to that generation. I was a kid during Vietnam and have served since the Gulf War. Talk about BS—from my perspective, the country has been headed to hell since LBJ. Reagan was a reprieve, but we have been on a liberal trajectory my whole life. I never voted for a Democrat, but it has hardly made a difference.

We have been at war for two decades and still have no end in sight. Like the theologians arguing over angels and pinheads, modern society is engrossed with trivialities while our nation crumbles. Tribalism has become the norm and equality has overtaken liberty. Meanwhile, the Federal government has been steadily devouring our Republic. Unelected bureaucrats make law as Congress fills their coffers and judges defy the Constitution. Trump is the last hope and he fights the leviathan like Saint George. The millennials can blame whoever they wish, but their “solutions” will only hasten their demise. They have never known freedom and look to the government for salvation.

Our generation started every morning with One Nation, under God, while today that statement will result in a lawsuit. The truth is that we can be a nation under God or a nation under his judgment.


54 posted on 04/26/2018 5:42:04 AM PDT by antidisestablishment ( Xenophobia is the only sane response to multiculturalismÂ’s irrational cultural exuberance)
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To: RipSawyer

You sound like one of the 4 Yorkshiremen, lol!

I don’t know when less than a hundred dollars a week, in NYC, paid the rent, utilities and food. Perhaps in the earlier part of the 20th Century but certainly not in the 70s. It didn’t even pay for my commute. But it taught me how to work with a**holes!


55 posted on 04/26/2018 5:45:41 AM PDT by miss marmelstein
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To: Cronos

I am a baby boomer. While I agree that my generation has been disastrous for ruining America, the generation before mine set the stage for it all and created the climate where radical leftist Boomers could do their damage. The generation before were very permissive and were not able to convey to their children the principles necessary to uphold our free republic.

The grade schools were lost to commie liberals before the Boomers came to power. Certainly Universities were long lost to commie liberals before the Boomers came to power.

Hollywood was lost to commie liberals before the Boomers came to power.

Churches were lost to commie liberals before the Boomers came to power.

The Unions were lost co commie liberals before the Boomers came to power.

Millions of commie liberal non-profits and their lobbyists arose before the Boomers came to power.

The Medical community became dominated by commie liberals before Boomers came to power.

The Bar became dominated by commie liberals before Boomers came to power.

Many state and local government bodies were lost to commie liberals before the Boomers came to power.

I am perfectly willing to admit the horrendous role my generation of baby boomers have played in accelerating the rapid collapse of American society and institutions, pushing us toward socialist totalitarian oppression. But I don’t remember any baby boomers being around when Franklin Roosevelt or President Johnson installed their communist programs of the New Deal and the Great Society.

I don’t remember any baby boomers voting to create Security or Medicare or the welfare state, or the income tax or the Federal Reserve.

The seeds of our destruction were planted in 1913 or even earlier, and accelerated irrevocably under FDR and LBJ. The 2 generations before mine let the government run roughshod over out constitutional freedoms. We are simply reaping now what they sowed then. What would you expect from the grandchildren of the FDR generation and the children of the LBJ generation. We didn’t know any better until it was too late. FDR should have been stopped in his tracks by our grandparents.


56 posted on 04/26/2018 5:54:52 AM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (What profits a man if he gains the world yet loses his soul?)
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To: Flick Lives
Dividing a population into groups is one more way of dividing people against each other.

Which you well know is why they are flooding us with immigrants of every nationality, background, ethnicity, and religion. It is the divide and conquer plan. They know we will balkanize and the various disparate groups will refuse to help each other fight off the tyrannical leviathan. It is a perfect plan to destroy America and it is guaranteed to work.

57 posted on 04/26/2018 5:57:58 AM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (What profits a man if he gains the world yet loses his soul?)
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To: Cronos

Every generation that pushed the expansion of the deficit-funded Welfare State screwed America.


58 posted on 04/26/2018 6:01:12 AM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard (When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.)
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To: rlmorel

That was not funny. It would have been funny if it was not so true. OK, it was funny but it is still sad that it is so true.


59 posted on 04/26/2018 6:02:12 AM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (What profits a man if he gains the world yet loses his soul?)
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To: Cronos

Maybe he should narrow it down to Liberal Boomers.


60 posted on 04/26/2018 6:04:31 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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