The Boomers Ruined Everything [View all]

[Democrats_win]

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 it’s 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 what’s 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?