It's the baby boomers fault

"dogisbadob" (dogisbadob) 11/18/2015 at 16:36 • Filed to: None

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The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

Tekamul > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:41

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Couldn’t we just fix that by getting even half of the Gen X & Y population to actually show up and vote? They own the poles because of apathy.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:44

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BUT MILLENIALS! CELL PHONES! FACEBOOKS!

K-Roll-PorscheTamer > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:46

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It’s totes the millenials fault for everything. With their damn interwebs, snapchats and selfies, bad music, drama this and drama that, Kardashian whatevers, trying to raise minimum wage and laziness blah blah blah fuck Kanye. :p

B Reynolds > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:48

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I love learning about the different generations and their personalities and traits. Gen Y is going to solve all of our problems and save the environment, so don’t worry too much about the boomers, we will figure it out! Not too sure what the millennials are going to contribute yet.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:52

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And don’t forget, all the technology these days makes us anti-social:

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:57

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Somethin, somethin... boot straps...

Dwhite - Powered by Caffeine, Daft Punk, and Corgis > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:58

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Thats what always bothered me about the whole “You can work your way out, I did” argument that many older people use. We have a worse economy, relatively lower wages, and a government that invests way less in making it easier to succeed all the while telling us we cant be anything in life without a college degree.

Ash78, voting early and often > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 16:58

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In a perfect world, everyone over 65 would start thanking me for my service as if I were in the military* just because I work and pay taxes.

*not equating the two, just making an analogy.

davedave1111 > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 17:00

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I think that article’s rather overstating things. Sure, the Boomers weren’t great, they could have done things differently... Oh, hang on, where’s that bit about abolishing the Civil Rights Act and bringing back segregation come from?

Anyone who tries to tell you how great things were for the Boomers is either pig-ignorant or flat-out lying. The ‘golden days’ of the fifties and sixties were only golden if you were ‘white’. Lots of people’s grandparents and parents enjoyed the advantages of being on top in a segregated society, of exploiting lots of incredibly poor ‘black’ people, but that’s disgusting, not praiseworthy.

Really, this view of the Boomer years is just as racist as when people say how great the Plantation Era was for slaveowners.

wiffleballtony > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 17:02

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I’m going to be completely honest. That article partially absolved the baby boomers saying they didn’t know the consequences of their actions. That is overly generous and laughable. Any reasonable adult should be able to understand that everything costs money and will have to be paid by someone. The baby boomers clearly didn’t care, as long as the person footing the bill was someone else. Now, having social security as part of the general fund was a mistake, the politicians spent the money anyway.

dogisbadob > Ash78, voting early and often 11/18/2015 at 17:03

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Actually, it’s good that you bring up the military.

The boomers dodged the Vietnam draft in droves, celebrated the draft dodgers, and treated those who actually served with great disdain. What else would you expect from them?

wiffleballtony > Tekamul 11/18/2015 at 17:04

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Who are they going to vote for? I don’t recall any politician claiming any real social security reform.

Short-throw Granny Shifter is 2 #blessed 2b stressed > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 17:04

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America sucked until they invented broadband anyway.

wiffleballtony > davedave1111 11/18/2015 at 17:06

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Yeah, that’s all true however the vast majority of the population at that time was white, so it still stands.

K-Roll-PorscheTamer > wiffleballtony 11/18/2015 at 17:13

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Pretty much, yeah. The vast majority had “golden days”, just not everyone.

davedave1111 > wiffleballtony 11/18/2015 at 17:14

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a) No, it wasn’t. ‘Black’ people have pretty consistently made up around 10% of the US population throughout the period we’re looking at.

b) Even so, that doesn’t make a blind bit of difference economically. You don’t need a particularly large underclass to make the overlords significantly richer.

wiffleballtony > davedave1111 11/18/2015 at 17:18

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A) 80 to 90% doesn’t constitute a vast majority?

B) If the above percentage is doing really well it makes a massive difference economically. Sure it’s morally abominable but that’s not the point.

El Rivinado > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 17:26

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I should know, hearing the stories about my how my Granddad was treated when he got back home from Nam, yeah, you can say I ain't fond of the Baby Boomer generation in the slightest.

davedave1111 > wiffleballtony 11/18/2015 at 17:33

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a) No, not in my book. Those words imply five nines, at least. I might let you have 99%, but we’re looking at a minimum of a tenfold difference. Either way, seems we agree on the number, so we’re just arguing semantics.

b) I think I must have not been very clear there. I wasn’t saying that the ‘white’ population don’t contribute to the economy, but that you don’t have to have a large underclass to make a big* difference to the lifestyle of the overlords.

*Again, words aren’t numbers, we might infer different things from that. By ‘big’, I mean something around and about the same size as the effect we’re talking about. So the exploitation of the underclass makes a ‘big’ difference if it explains by itself why people (now) often think things were so good back then. (It’s also worth pointing out that it’s quite possible the boomers actually had a lower standard of living than we’d expect, given the exploited underclass, the cheap oil, and so-on.)

One reason for that is that those being exploited - the underclass - have to work much harder than their exploiters. So you take that ~10% of the population, and add 50% for the extra hours they have to work. Then double that (in this context), because women of that class are also forced to go out to work, whereas women in the fifties mostly didn’t. (You can also add extra child labour into the picture too, but I have no numbers for that.) All of a sudden 10% of the population is doing something like 30% of all working hours. That’s more obviously going to affect the economy than might seem the case when looking at the population numbers alone.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 17:36

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Where have the millennials, Gen-X, or Gen-Y, or whatever the hell...

Where have they been, clamoring for fiscal responsibility? Reduction of the national debt, restrictions against deficit spending? Zero-base budgeting?

Liberal fiscal policies of spending other people’s money for whatever anyone wants, whenever they want it, as much as possible, and even leveraging the future, knows ALL generations.

The young want just as much or more than anyone else for the gravy train on biscuit wheels to keep rolling, often without any implication of earning anything at all, or what things actually cost, or what taxes actually implicate.

I don’t care how young or old.

Are you responsible, or are you demanding things to be paid for by “everybody else” without realizing that you are part of “everybody else.”

The problem with Socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money. - Margaret Thatcher

(and calling socialism by any other name like Liberalism or Progressivism, which all seek to redistribute wealth, doesn’t change the nature of the big-government value-consuming beast.)

Whether you are young, or as old as Bernie Sanders, the reality is the same. There is no free lunch, and people have been running up the tab for most of a century, at an accelerating rate.

Keep in mind that it is hypocritical to condemn others for their excess, when you still want your “benefits” just because you like yours, but don’t like theirs.

I want to keep my earnings, and be self sufficient. Being gradually driven broke by ever increasing government taxation, rising prices due to over-regulation, and crushing economic pressure that has kept wages flat for almost 2 decades is not any of us keeping our earnings, it is us losing economic opportunity.

PatBateman > dogisbadob 11/18/2015 at 17:41

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Spoiler alert: In 30 years, it will all be Gen X’s fault. This is the cycle of blame that has occurred for decades, if not centuries.

Millennials, yes, eventually you will be blamed as well.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > davedave1111 11/18/2015 at 17:50

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who exactly pushed for, and eventually PASSED the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Hint: It wasn’t Democrats, and it wasn’t millennials.

It was white baby-boomer and previous-generation center or right republicans, and maybe some blue-dog democrats.

Bull Connors certainly didn’t, he turned dogs and fire hoses on black people. The 50s and 60s democrats were the most racist, and democrats predominantly made up the old white hood club. Robert Byrd was in the US Congress from 1953 until he died in 2010, and was a ranking member of the KKK, and a staunch democrat party leader.

The Republicans fought slavery, and then again fought for civil rights. It is revisionist history to say it happened otherwise, and democrats have tried like hell to spread that revision, to keep minorities voting democrat, and hating republicans, especially truly conservative ones who were actually the backbone of abolitionists and equal and libertarian civil rights proponents.

President Johnson, after long OPPOSING IT, only signed on at the 11th hour to the Civil Rights Act because he realized that it would dove-tail into his Great Society plan to REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH, and make poor recipients dependent on democrats for continuation of those benefits, and a tacit permanent voting block.

This was predicted almost 200 years before that, and it is playing out in current events. The republic is all but an oligarchy that bears almost no accountability to the citizenry they are supposed to serve, but actually mean to rule.

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”  Benjamin Franklin

davedave1111 > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 11/18/2015 at 18:07

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Wow, what triggered that bit of copypasta? I didn’t mention any political party here. For what it’s worth, I think it’s plain that racism in the US (and anti-racism) does not follow party lines. Especially these days, when the far right have focused on infiltrating the ‘lefty’ parties around the world, having noticed the lefties have a complete blind-spot when it comes to neo-Nazism and so-on within their own ranks.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > davedave1111 11/18/2015 at 18:29

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It wasn’t all directed at you, some of it at the Washington Post info that you refer to, and also kind of meant to join the conversation with some of the other replies to your comment, as well as to reveal a bit of covered-up history.

The article-portrayed theme that the baby boomers are at fault, is false. They are no more and no less at fault, socially, or economically, than other generations, taken in aggregate. It isn’t an age issue, it is an issue of politico-economic ideology. I am not surprised at Washington Post’s leftism, and a young liberal’s blame throwing at people older than himself. I am well aware of that trend.

The baby boomers benefitted from the “Greatest Generation” that came before them, and climbed out of the Great Depression, and fought the second World War, and re-built the US economy afterward. The Baby Boomers rebelled in the late 60s, and then prospered in the 80s and 90s themselves, and now are the seniors in the society.

Some of the policies have been horrible. Some of the societal and cultural, as well as technical progress has been astounding.

Blaming them wholesale is not right, or accurate.

And for people mentioning the CRA-1964, it was Greatest Generation and early “baby boomers” who pushed that, and they were mostly white, and the core support was conservative/libertarian republican.

White conservatives and libertarians, especially over a certain age, including baby-boomers, are the ones being vilified as hateful, racist, and any other derogatory term that the left can think of, despite the positive progress that has been demonstrably made.

The economic morass, and social chaos can be drawn from leftist tax-and-deficit-spend policies, and actively promoting societal unrest. That isn’t coming from the US political right.

Santiago of Escuderia Boricua > Tekamul 11/18/2015 at 19:17

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We have shit to do. Boomers have the time and money to go vote.

Plus, you know, all the laws they pass to restrict voting of minorities and poor people

davedave1111 > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 11/18/2015 at 21:12

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“They are no more and no less at fault, socially, or economically, than other generations, taken in aggregate.”

I have to disagree. Their incredible laziness and greed is something only their generation had, because only their generation a) could afford to waste the resources they had (not that I’d really call exploited ‘black’ people a resource, but...) and b) had such a staggering sense of self-entitlement, having had everything handed to them on a plate their entire lives, that they object when someone wants to take any of the vast wealth they stole from their descendants and share it around.

You can see it here:

Then the boomers also own nearly all the rental properties. I forget the total figure, but something like 80% of the homes in this country are owned by boomers. They’ve caused house prices to inflate massively by refusing to allow any government to build more housing where it’s needed, and through that mechanism achieve a massive wealth transfer from the following generations to them.

“It isn’t an age issue, it is an issue of politico-economic ideology.”

Quite. And the Boomers almost all share an ideology that says ‘it’s mine, all mine, give it to me’, regardless of which political party they support.

“The baby boomers benefitted from the “Greatest Generation” that came before them”

Yes. Didn’t stop them fucking them over, though, just like the fucked over their kids. We really ought to call them the Selfish Generation, and the absolutely reprehensible treatment of veterans and pensioners that followed their rise is probably the most vile example of a common thread that runs through every single thing they did.

“Some of the societal and cultural, as well as technical progress has been astounding.”

Well, no. As I pointed out above, there’s no reason to think the economic progress was particularly great given the conditions. If anything they lagged well behind what they should have achieved if they weren’t so incredibly lazy, and wasted everything good that happened to them.

“Blaming them wholesale is not right, or accurate.”

Not every member of a generation is the same, of course not. But the boomer generation as a whole is one of the most disgusting groups of people in modern history.

“And for people mentioning the CRA-1964, it was Greatest Generation and early “baby boomers” who pushed that”

The civil rights movement was a GG phenomenon. The boomers weren’t involved until they hijacked it for selfish purposes right at the end.

“and they were mostly white,”

Nope. Not according to racists, anyway. They were often Jewish, or whatever other light-skinned people racists hate.

“and the core support was conservative/libertarian republican.”

As I said above, no, racism is a cross-party phenomenon. No one party has a monopoly on being evil racist bastards.

“White conservatives and libertarians, especially over a certain age, including baby-boomers, are the ones being vilified as hateful, racist, and any other derogatory term that the left can think of”

Yes. But the left is being vilified by the right in the same terms. And in fact, all on either side are more fucking boomers screwing things up for the rest of us. It’s all just the same bullshit they’ve been pulling for decades.

“The economic morass, and social chaos can be drawn from leftist tax-and-deficit-spend policies”

The Republicans and Democrats basically share an economic view. It’s ‘give us your fucking money or else’. Any politician who claims to believe politicians should have less power is just flat-out lying. The economy would be in the same position whoever had been Pres for the last few years, because actually it’s got almost bugger-all to do with government.

Of course, it helps a lot if the government keeps its fingers out, and the biggest economic problem in the US is the massive over-regulation the boomers came up with as a way of guaranteeing themselves a cushy place at the top of the pyramid via ridiculous licensing requirements for ordinary jobs.

wiffleballtony > davedave1111 11/19/2015 at 08:41

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I get your point of view, I really do. However, it is plain unrealistic to expect people’s opinions of that generation to change. By the numbers, they had it the best and made no effort to invest in the future. Sure, those who were not so fortunate get a pass, but that wasn’t most people.

Just as a thought experiment, let’s take the Great Recession as an example. Would you assert that we shouldn’t assume the working population didn’t have it bad because of a small minority made millions by betting against the market and buying up 99.999% of everyone’s broken dreams?