The Boomers Ruined Everything
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/"The Baby Boomers ruined America. That sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but its one way to state what I found as I tried to solve a riddle. American society is going through a strange set of shifts: Even as cultural values are in rapid flux, political institutions seem frozen in time. The average U.S. state constitution is more than 100 years old. We are in the third-longest period without a constitutional amendment in American history: The longest such period ended in the Civil War. So whats to blame for this institutional aging?
One possibility is simply that Americans got older. The average American was 32 years old in 2000, and 37 in 2018. The retiree share of the population is booming, while birth rates are plummeting. When a society gets older, its politics change. Older voters have different interests than younger voters: Cuts to retiree-focused benefits are scarier, while long-term problems such as excessive student debt, climate change, and low birth rates are more easily ignored."
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Clearly it correlates that the boomers screwed up America, but was it caused by boomers? I contend that Reagan Conservatism, not the boomers, are the ones who ruined everything. The article stresses that the boomers didn't invent the things that are causing problems but many areas became worse on their watch.
Check out this article. from yesterday(6/24/19) in The Atlantic. It's fairly serious and it has graphs demonstrating the contentions that:
1. Zoning regulations increased because boomers sought to protect their assets--making housing more expensive for younger people.
2. Licensing for jobs increased drastically beyond what is necessary. It is to protect the older generation's jobs requiring younger generations to get expensive sometimes unnecessary educations to get the job.
3. Jailing of people increased partly in reaction to the 1960s, 70s crime wave but it happened in other countries too and they don't incarcerate at this rate.
4. Debt and "state" intervention to require that it be paid back no matter the circumstances.
5. Young workers are dying and there are fewer of them. Who will cover social security costs?
msongs
(67,496 posts)customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)dawg day
(7,947 posts)Saying I probably only had to pay a few thousand a year tuition for my college. I replied that was true, but I had to pay many thousands for HIS. He kind of forgot that part.
SWBTATTReg
(22,201 posts)Each generation has its own challenges...some rise up and accept and beat the challenges, some do not. I guess every generation has its ups and downs. Take care.
redstatebluegirl
(12,265 posts)DURHAM D
(32,617 posts)and designed to create riffs and separation.
F' them and this article.
Triloon
(506 posts)Generational bigotry is as ignorant and ugly as any other bigotry. Everything I ever did to promote social progress was resisted and blocked by conservatives. Don't fix the blame on Boomers when it all belongs on Conservatives, unless you want to replicate the mistakes and failures of the past.
But what do I know, I'm part of the generation that 'ruined everything'. Whatever that was..
redstatebluegirl
(12,265 posts)I grow weary of the generational bigotry here and on other sites I frequent. Doesn't help one tiny bit and pisses me off totally!
Thekaspervote
(32,820 posts)stillcool
(32,626 posts)and their offspring.
JudyM
(29,294 posts)The Wizard
(12,556 posts)Bullshit.
emmaverybo
(8,144 posts)it continuing by as much as three years. Many who fought in the war fought against it when they came back.
Boomers fought against the war on college campuses across the nation; four students died and nine were wounded during a mass protest against the escalation of the war, US military bombing Cambodia, at Kent State in the May Day Massacre.
Boomers white and black joined the black-led civil rights movement; Boomers helped register voters across the South, sometimes at peril to their lives.
Boomers brought us the womens liberation movement.
Boomers brought us the gay rights movement.
Boomers launched the environmental movement.
Each [movement], to varying degrees, changed government policy and, perhaps more importantly changed how almost every American lives today.
http://www.lessonsite.com/ArchivePages/HistoryOfTheWorld/Lesson31/Protests60s.htm
I am a proud boomer who has fought for all these causes all my life and I am so sick of this nonsensical and pointless trashing.
emmaverybo
(8,144 posts)ChazInAz
(2,579 posts)I had my limping, Hungarian ass in the streets trying to end the criminal lunacy of the Right Wing: the holdovers from the McCarthy Era, the Viet Nam War, the galloping fascism of Reagan and his heirs. Got beaten up by cops in Chicago during the '68 Democratic convention.
I was there for Civil Rights and the ERA.
When Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were murdered, I was in the streets.
emmaverybo
(8,144 posts)murielm99
(30,782 posts)You like your technology, younger generations? Would you like to go back to a world without it?
dawg day
(7,947 posts)"And it was stuck to the WALL!"
murielm99
(30,782 posts)in the boomer generation, and there are some I could live without.
We have had to adapt to a changing culture far more than you realize.
But we have contributed quite a bit. My husband and I are still activists. We raised solid Democrats. They learned their activism and sense of civic responsibility from us.
Many members of the younger generations cannot even be bothered with voting.
http://www.boomerslife.org/boomers_social_leaders_actors_musicians_list.htm
BigDemVoter
(4,158 posts)In fact, I would say I am no more responsible for this shit than YOU are for our Pussy-Grabbing Pig in Chief.
As others have already written more than once, generational bigotry is no more attractive than it is with race, age, sex, sexual orientation, etc, etc, etc.
Skittles
(153,298 posts)the writer makes some points but it is disappointing she blames so many people
Crowman2009
(2,507 posts)Especially the ones who were ahead of their time and did not waiver to the right for one instance.
Apple Fritter
(131 posts)I remember seeing a lot of similar articles like this too. It's good to explain that it's not the entire generation's fault too I mean they are a factor but not a cause. Generation X had not seen this coming and they were powerless to stop something like this. Collective ideas and values matter and there will be a power-shift eventually. It's just that we have to take care of every generation and the boomers are a huge population. We are a lot like Japan in this way with different problems.
McKim
(2,412 posts)I am a boomer who worked in the Anti War and Civil Rights Movement and has been a Human Rights Advocate my whole life. I suggest that younger generations vote for a start and keep going out in the streets even if you dont get what you want right away. The greatest tragedy of my life has been that our 1960s Revolution did not succeed. I will never get over this heartbreak. Articles like this are meant to divide. I am so joyous about the leftward move of younger people More power to it!!! It is the entitled conservatives and fascists who are the real problem.
appalachiablue
(41,199 posts)FakeNoose
(32,884 posts)... thanks to Ronald Reagan and the Repukes who came after him. It's the Repukes who gamed the system for their families, not the boomers. Look at how Fred Trump set his son Donald up for life - and that's how the one-per-centers fixed the system for their kids. But that's only a very small percentage of the Baby Boomer generation.
Most of us were screwed from the beginning. Our whole lives we've had to deal with too much competition from the huge numbers of us. There weren't enough schools for us, not enough jobs for us, not enough affordable housing for us, and pretty soon there won't be enough cemeteries for us.
Democrats_win
(6,539 posts)Especially for those who were in the later years of the boomer generation. Heck in second grade I can remember my teachers talking about how there wouldn't be enough for us. Sometimes it was ok, but mostly, good jobs were hard to come by.
trev
(1,480 posts)I attended were Boomers like me.
We have a long history of working for social change.
Democrats_win
(6,539 posts)Everyone at DU had great responses to this article. As some mention, the article wrongly lumps all baby boomers together. I thought that you might enjoy one of the two responses to the article from the Atlantic's web site:
https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/archive/2019/07/boomers-are-not-blame-letters/592930/
"Lyman Stone misses entirely that plenty of Boomers are also have-nots in the woeful picture he paints, and many have battled and continue to battle the policies he laments. He also fails to note that many Boomers, like me, continue to help our Gen X, Y, and Z and Millennial kids in many ways. We pay off their college loans, keep their cellphones on our family plans, pay their car insurance, pick up unexpected car-repair and other bills, and provide money for vacations. Many of us do this while were also providing support for our Greatest Generation parents. I assure Mr. Stone that we are painfully aware that something has gone awry in our nations economy.
We know, however, that our age isnt the problem: American economic attitudes and policies are. Since our countrys inception, policies have been designed to establish, widen, and protect race, class, and gender divides. Plenty of Boomers are on the self-protective economic bandwagon, along with people in Gen X, Y, and Z and plenty of Millennials. However, theyre not there because of their agetheyre there because they believe they have a right to more than the next person, especially if that next person is a person of color, a woman, or an immigrant. Greed and self-interest know no generational boundaries.
Margie Perscheid
Alexandria, Va.
Although I like the response, it doesn't entirely capture the feelings at DU especially when you consider the service to the country from Baby Boomers both in Vietnam and in stopping the war in Vietnam. Billy Joel's song, "We Didn't Start the Fire" still seems relevant. Although I ask, how can we say that now that we are in our 50s? But the power, the bigotry and greed of those who came before us was so powerful that some of us were "captured" while others fought back and still others suffered in their own ways. The true problem is with conservatism (small government?, trickle down economics?) is now a proven lie and will hopefully collapse.
Me.
(35,454 posts)nocoincidences
(2,236 posts)since the Sixties and Cesar Chavez and the UFW lettuce and grape boycotts. There was a point in my life when the only times I had ever been in Washington was after a long busride to march on it.
I am tired, but still trying. At least I can make phone calls for the Democratic party now.
Me.
(35,454 posts)which disputes a lot of this boomers are bad business. And I agree with you that things began a slow crumble with Reagan, who did more to harm this country except for the current occupant. It was during that time that drowning the gov. in a tub began to raise it's head.
Mme. Defarge
(8,062 posts)told me to my face that the country would be better off when the boomer generation died off.
brush
(53,971 posts)Repug boomers along with others gave us trump, W, Daddy Bush and Reagan. Dem boomers gave us Obama, Clinton and Carteralmost Hillary Clinton except for Putin, repug vote suppressors and Comey so you are correct in blaming the convervative half of the cohort and not the whole.
GenXers and millennials are split too. You hear me, millennials? There are trumpers in your midst too.
klook
(12,174 posts)in service of destroying Social Security & Medicare, courtesy of right-wing think tanks. Its complete horseshit, and I hope nobody here falls for this narrative.
redstatebluegirl
(12,265 posts)Captain Zero
(6,861 posts)But I think one big reason for it is the youngsters degrees not preparing them the ways ours did. Every licensing exam I took recently I got the highest score and some kids had to drop out of the organization for not passing it. Part of it is their phone it in, log on to it degrees from private for-profit outfits that really are not Universities. Another failure of capitalism turning out failures.
lapucelle
(18,399 posts)and a research fellow at the right wing Institute for Family Studies.
https://ifstudies.org/about/our-mission
In addition, given the fact that his entire argument is predicated on a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, it's hard to believe that anyone on DU would trust his conclusion.
https://ifstudies.org/about/our-mission