Guest Post by Howard Gold
It’s become received wisdom: Baby boomers have ruined America by spending all the wealth and leaving their children nothing but debt. And the upper-middle class has hogged all the opportunities and rolled up the drawbridge behind them.
It’s all laid out in recent books like “A Generation of Sociopaths” by Bruce Cannon Gibney and “Dream Hoarders” by Richard Reeves, and has provided rich fodder for columnists. “Over the past generation, members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status,” wrote the nominally conservative David Brooks in The New York Times. “They have also become devastatingly good at making sure the children of other classes have limited chances to join their ranks.”
“Upper-middle-class Americans threaten to destroy everything that is best in our country. And I want them to stop,” the slightly more conservative Reihan Salam wrote in Slate.
The arguments are related. Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 and raised by permissive parents, may have started out idealistic (spearheading the anti-Vietnam war movement) but quickly became selfish and greedy. They borrowed heavily, bought McMansions, and supported policies that kept their taxes low but bankrupted the country.
And the upper-middle class, which may comprise 30% of all Americans, passes on their professional and educational advantages to their children and shuts out others through their money, political clout, and support for NIMBY policies that keep poor people and minorities out of their neighborhoods and schools.
There’s some truth to both of these arguments, but they’re superficial and, to my mind, miss the real point of what’s gone wrong for so many Americans: Baby boomers like me flourished in a postwar meritocracy that favored the college educated. Over the past four decades, the economy has undergone a sea change and offers many fewer long-term opportunities to Americans coming of age now.
Meanwhile, the ultra-rich — especially the top 0.01%, never mind the top 1%, 10% or 20% — have used their wealth to bend political institutions to their interests. Exhibit A: last year’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which slashed corporate tax rates to 21% and gave disproportionate tax relief to the top 1% and above, but screwed upper-middle class homeowners and taxpayers in blue states like New York and California. (Take that, “coastal elites”!)
Let’s look at the boomers first. It’s hard to generalize about a group that was 74 million strong as of 2016. Politically, they couldn’t be more divided: 44% of boomers leaned Democrat in 2017, and the same number leaned Republican, according to the Pew Research Center. (Succeeding generations tilt more Democratic.) That’s hardly a consensus for a “baby boomer policy agenda,” whatever that might be.
Nor is the baby-boom generation uniformly affluent. True, a huge 78% of them own homes (vs. just 41% of millennials, according to Realtor.com). Boomers had the good luck to form households when interest rates dropped in the 1980s and they benefited from a mortgage-interest deduction that has existed since the beginning of the federal tax code.
But nearly half of them aren’t on track to afford basic expenses in retirement. Maybe they were all crazy spendthrifts, or maybe many lost their jobs or homes in the Great Recession and never recovered. That’s why 90% of Americans take Social Security before their full retirement age: They desperately need the money.
True, some 10,000 Americans will turn 65 every day until 2029, threatening Social Security’s and Medicare’s solvency. And politicians have punted on this for fear of losing votes. But there are solutions, such as raising payroll taxes on high-earners. Should we blame the boomers just because they’re getting older? What do you want them to do? Drop dead?
Boomers who became the upper-middle class joined the workforce just as America was moving from an industrial to a service and information economy. At first that created opportunities for college-educated workers in business, law, Wall Street, and other professions. But as information technology developed and corporate America focused exclusively on shareholder value, more and more of those jobs were eliminated or moved overseas.
People with the skills to flourish in a technologically driven economy got outsized rewards, while everyone else fell behind.
As my former boss Steven Brill lays out in his new book,”Tailspin,” wealthy corporations and individuals worked with bought-and-paid-for politicians to advance their own narrow interests at the expense of everyone else. Meanwhile, people with the skills to flourish in a technologically driven economy got outsized rewards; everyone else fell behind. That, in a nutshell, is the root of the widening income and wealth inequality over the past 40 years.
When there’s such a premium for high skills and such a penalty to those who don’t have them, wouldn’t it be malpractice for upper-middle class parents not to give their kids enrichment, tutoring, test prep, and other things that could give them a leg up? Is that “protecting privilege” or providing insurance for their kids to succeed in an economy where humans are increasingly expendable?
Baby boomers and the upper-middle class have become easy scapegoats for problems that are much deeper. Blaming them may feel good, but it won’t solve those problems or make things better for everyone else.
Howard R. Gold is a MarketWatch columnist and founder and editor of GoldenEgg Investing , which offers exclusive market commentary and simple, low-cost, low-risk retirement investing plans. Follow him on Twitter @howardrgold.
As a leading edge boomer I call bullshit on Gold’s article. When it came time to give back the majority of my cohort kept on taking.
Upper middle class is 30% of the population? Try 5%, Howard….And you forgot the fact that Boomers voted for politicians who outsourced manufacturing, insourced tens of millions of low IQ immigrants to feed off the US welfare system, bailed out the big banks several times with taxpayer money, signed a completely unfair trade agreement with China, which forces American manufacturers to build plants in China, taxed Social Security, provided unlimited student juice loans, thereby causing college costs to explode…and generally did everything they could to clobber the “dirt people”.
Great post, Pyrrus
this is a classic divide an conquer article,
call out a straw man, and put the blame on them.
“black people would be rich, if it were not for the fact that whitey has been putting us down for years”
and so forth and so on.
please downvote to show your emotional triggers are still working.
You nailed it Py !
Damn Pyrrhus, you done stuck a red hot poker up his keister real well and proper!(LMAO)
“Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 and raised by permissive parents, may have started out idealistic (spearheading the anti-Vietnam war movement)….”
Boomers also fought in the Vietnam War:
“United States military involvement in the Vietnam War officially began on August 5, 1964…The war was officially ended by Presidential Proclamation on May 7, 1975.”
https://www.benefits.va.gov/persona/veteran-vietnam.asp
The point made in the article that the majority of boomers take social security at 62 is telleing as they give up 25% of their benefit doing so. Also, over half of boomers have less than $1000
in savings as a safety net.
Does that sound like a segment of our population that is rolling in the dough?
Got screwed out of what should have bee a 30 plus year pension and benefits but I still got taxed heavier on lower income so government employees still got theirs but it looks like in most government pension plans there are more feeding off the trough than putting in . I love the narritive “we earned it” like everybody that got fucked out of it deserved the screwing but you , your special !
It’s going to be ugly and soon !
I miss SAH.
I miss Maggie. Though I recall SAH described a worn out coochie and then said she now wanted a roast beef sandwich.
Good Lord Maggie come back before EC pines away. Come on back Mags!
It’s the damn fault of that sex-doll article. I think they used Maggie’s topless beach photo as a model for those sex-dolls.
El- Did one of those Jap sex dolls look like Melania to you? Maybe I’m seeing things.
Pfft. You can’t see, period; let alone “things”.
dawg- Thanks for the kind words, I am for sure in better shape than my brother as he is totally blind in one eye and almost blind in the other.
They are generic faces, Then they customize them.
Ratty, as long as Bea can find the boobs in the dark, he’s OK.
EC- I feel fairly confident that since they have perfected dolls with realistic hooters and vaginnys(?) they will now move on to the lesser important things like replacement eyeballs. Hopefully the day will come when I can just pop in a new one like you would replace a LED bulb.
Maybe one day Ratty can upgrade his brain with a thumb drive he can wear on top of his head.
I agree, come back, Maggie, even just for a few words.
Vic, I’m guessing Maggie is not even reading, while avoiding commenting.
I think she’s been so active outside, and making such positive progress in many areas, that she realized maybe that too much time on the web was hindering her too much previously.
Maybe when winter sets in, she’ll have more time indoors, and will have interesting updates to convey. She last mentioned improved health as a result of staying active outside, I think, and I’d bet she has these, and more as higher priorities nowadays.
If she IS reading, she knows she has friends and fans here.
She green-lighted Wirth, she ain’t coming back.
Assessing blame has never solved any problem anywhere. It is probably about the most useless thing we humans do, and yet which of us does not do it?
Not true. How are you going to fix a problem without determining the cause(s) of the problem?
The main problems, not just in the US, but all through Western Civilization, began a century ago.
The various Kalergi-type Plans were created by the generation of parasites who really instigated the two world wars.
It was the world war two generation, the “greatest generation”, who finished selling America and Western Civilization out, and made the world safe for communism, White Genocide, and the parasites who thrive off of it. The “greatest generation” also threw open Western Civilization’s borders to the third world.
The cretins who write about the “boomers” holding everyone back are really complaining that America and the White race are not being destroyed fast enough for them. Read what they say carefully.
BS. assessing blame is nowhere near the same thing as finding cause. For one thing Blame is always looking backwards to the past. I repeat no problem has ever been solved through blame, correctly placed or not. period.
pyrrhus: “How are you going to fix a problem without determining the cause(s) of the problem?”
A problem like a fire? A car crash? An airplane crash?
Generally, you save the survivors, bury the dead, THEN worry about the proximate causes of the disaster.
We need to FIX the problem rather than carry on arguing about what/who caused it, while it’s still within our power to correct.
If 44% of Boomers are guilty Democrats, then the even greater percentage of every group after the Boomers that voted liberal and are even more guilty. I don’t see youth in the city streets protesting their own stupidity for voting for Socialist. At least the youth can see that severe Socialist Damage has been done to the Economy; they should be working to undo it. Cut Social Security and Medicare but keep in mind that working people paid big money into those supposed insurance policies, and they paid for the Welfare and Medicaid which go to people who didn’t pay. PS: If you look at the annual national high school senior’s test scores, you will see they trend down since about 1964. Some of the youth’s job problems belong on their own shoulders because of their weak academic efforts.
The upper middle class is not 30% of the population.
As a Californian I can tell you that the future of this state is coastal Asians and the brown people living in hot inland valleys who serve them. Even if a McMansion was built by a boomer 30 years ago, it’s now full of three generations of Asians with white Lexuses out front.
The upper classes can give their kids the best technology and education money can buy, but they don’t necessarily give them the discipline and moral center to succeed, which is just as important. They end up as drug addicted burnouts. A moral center is more important than any degree for long term success.
What caused the ‘boom’ was at the end of WWII – Europe and Japan were decimated – they had no factories. The US was making 60% of all manufactured products on the planet. This huge surge in demand created many, good paying jobs. Add to that the second industrial revolution was coming into high gear. Then came technology (IBM 360 – the first machine I programmed on in 1967 at Penn State). The US was going great – until inflation hit – somewhere around 1972. More women entered the workforce – driving up housing prices. Overnight houses that sold for $10,000 in 1950 – were $35,000 in 1975 – this crazy house appreciation has never ended.
I believe all this good fortune and economy drove people into a mode of financing – everything. I can remember a couple who borrowed money to go on a vacation, people borrowing for intangibles – no asset value! The more you borrow, the more the demand, this pushes prices higher, and people borrow even more. It’s a push/pull in engineering terms.
Then about in 1975 the credit card became ubiquitous. This further fueled push/pull. Finally in the late 90’s someone stumbled on the idea of “use the equity in your home” – you could refinance your inflated home value – get some cash out. A double wammy – cash that they could spend any way they wanted and many added their credit card and other debt to the home refi. People were paying for their credit card debt for 20 years – wrapped in the new mortgage. With their credit cards paid off – they could acquire even more debt.
Then in 2008 – slowly at first, then all of a sudden it all went to shit. (Thank you Hemingway) .
As a software developer I’ve looked at SS – it doesn’t matter when you start collecting – the total amount you will receive is about the same (assuming you live to the average age in the actuarial tables)
You can’t receive the ‘full amount’ until you turn 66 (younger people 67 or 67.5 as far as I know). If you take SS ‘early’: For the year 2018, this limit on earned income is $17,040 ($1,420 per month). The amount goes up each year. If you are collecting Social Security retirement benefits before full retirement age, your benefits are reduced by $1 for every $2 you earn over the limit.
My wife and I took SS at 66 – It’s about $4,000 a month – however I paid the maximum SS tax virtually my entire life. I’m 69 and working full time – I have to pay FICA on my first $128,000 + I have to pay Medicare – with no wage cap. WTF – I paid in for ( 66 – 22 = 44 years ), and I still have to pay in to the plan – when I’m a beneficiary of the plan. Then – to really fuck you over – the Federal Government taxes your SS – if you earn more than 1/2 the benefit. And lastly I live in Minnesota – Land of 10,000 Taxes – MN is one of a handful of states that tax SS.
All in all SS is a scam. It’s hardly a benefit for anyone – except low income earners. As most government programs it penalizes those who work and succeed. In a way it’s structured like welfare: keep the people poor – which fuels the ‘underground economy’.
I don’t think boomers are getting a free ride – nor are we responsible for this shit show.
Dutch – assuming that what you put in was max all the time for the last 44 years, you put in around three hundred thousand. And based on your comment, your wife probably put in half that. So you put in total under half a million. Based on actuarial tables you and your wife will take out about a million. The money you put in was not invested. So you are getting back a lot more than you put in. And that does not count any medical care amounts you might receive, which is a different kettle of fish entirely.
I think your comment is great, with many truths. But the fact is that SS is a tax and it is welfare – a free shit system – and any money put in was not invested but already spent. People get a lot more back than they pay in, especially folks where one wage earner is a high earner and makes the bulk of the family income, or where the person has been a deadbeat much of their lives. The people who are worst off are two working class folks both working middle class jobs, but even they get back more than they put in. Until the well run dry.
With regards to Dutchy’s excellent exposition, my QOTD would be:
What are your retirement prospects?
Anybody can make plans or have a general idea of a perfect retirement scenario but I would like to know what things will look like if you take into account today’s reality.
This QOTD would apply more to folks nearing retirement or recently retired.
I am not looking for a reply from folks in their 20’s or 40’s, they may never get to retire anyway.
One thing nobody mentions is that folks who appear to be in perfect health still drop dead in their early 60’s after a lifetime of work.
Nominal bucks. That’s like the stag with the rack from here to there that got away…but for some reason, great hunter just can’t put it away. Glory daze:
Tax•onomy: divide into herds – see Mackay (Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds), or Kuenelt-Leddihn (The Menace of the Herd: Or, Procrustes at Large), if looking it up is necessary (rather than just looking out) — which is the easiest thing to do with domesticated manifest destinialers, & then tax the conquered shit out of them.
Exploded starstuff is St. Vitus flame•nco that pre & post dates all checks & balances. Which is to say there ain’t no “flame on.” Nor off, either, despite comic booker’s expert assurances.
I couldn’t help but notice your extended absence. Not sure where you went, but I hope it was nice.
Maybe you could reapeat that? Indefinitely?
Ratty, I invited forgetful for some brewskies at a dive bar in Glendale. I’m still hoping Ed comes back, we were going to go cruising chicks at the women’s prison.
Extended? Time flies.
The planet flies.
Even as it teems with creatures that crawl, bump, fit, start, & engineer lords of flies – if they move at all. Argot & ergot & escargot.
We can’t all be engineers. Gratitude, eh? ☻ Here’s some old gold goin’ out for all you coal-shovel riders: engine engine # nein & locomotive breath – something for which there ain’t no minty freshness to offset all that gummy linearity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ3dcJZ_J3g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNCT6pA5I9A
I’ll never forget the suburban LA cul-de-sac in which I was raised in the 80’s. It was what I call the “high Jazzercise era.” The baby boomer baroque era.
Throughout that decade you had the same thing going on in every house. The workaholic husband making money, the career woman realtor wife in shoulder pads with the BMW. The wives were never satisfied Nothing was ever good enough for them. Illegal aliens started mowing the lawns because the kids were too spoiled. Every other soccer practice some career mom would forget to pick up her kid and he would sit there at twilight with his thermos waiting for her. All of it ending in divorces and broken families.
By the 90’s the now latch-key teenage kids were piercing themselves, smoking dope, etc. Usually a crisis pregnancy with a rushed abortion.
I’ll never forgive the baby boomers. Never. Selfish selfish people who never understood how fragile it was. We’re living in the aftermath of all of that.
Fuque that JR. I’m a mid 50’s born Boomer. Born in a house with a coal furnace and a cistern. Went to school and worked. Sent all my kids to Catholic schools and sacrificed and volunteered etc.
My kids all had jobs of one kind or another and all were in the National Honor Society. One got an MBA while working full time. One is a lawyer. The last graduated in the honors program Summa Cum Laude in three and a half years. She’s working in a lumber yard for a year and then going to Law School.
None of them has ever gotten so much as a ticket and never complained about their old pile of shit cars as long as they started every morning. Two of the three even managed to save and invest their bit of extra money. Maybe you can point out how I messed up my kids? Don’t judge us flyover folks by linking us to La La Land shitheads like you were stuck with.
I for one call bullshit on this greatest generation crap. They are the guys who got us into war after war and set up all the welfare stuff and fuqued us in ’86 on immigration and to cap off their careers, the savings and loan disaster and Desert Storm while offshoring jobs.
“I’ll never forgive the baby boomers. Never. Selfish selfish people who never understood how fragile [I] was.”
Wirth, here’s some free advice, mano a mano, forget about it. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Your folks were only trying to toughen you up. You are damn lucky you did not have Silents for parents. Those old boys would discipline you with bicycle chains, 2X4s and tree branches. Oh yeah, cry me a river, left at the ballpark after dark. You could have walked home, we did, nobody drove our asses 2 miles to school, nobody. And we carried big heavy books and a lunch if we were lucky. This was before backpacks like you candy asses needed to carry your precious trapper-keeper. Soccer practice? We had after-school fights.
+1000 EC, excellent comment and so true.
As said, some of us were razed by wolves.
Like what the allies-axis wolves did. Euro-japan’s raze was re-raised by marshall Dillon plan. Russia’s raze got deputy Fife. Now they got saucy (to some) Putanesca. So it goes…to despoliating pirates go spoils.
Sometimes the tore down contains the rebuild seeds, other times not. Either way, yay or nay, is luck of draw tho. & sometimes life’s a bitch & you don’t die soon enough. Plenty of those draws, too.
i forget,
Dude…I’m up-voting your music!!!!
I suppose I blame the generation slightly for sure, but only in a vague way. A ton of boomers are hard working people who slaved long hours creating jobs and new technologies. Sure a chunk at the top became fat cats and created a banking-politic skimming operation that continues to this day. The baby boomer generation of politicians lost all common sense and both parties are apparently in the kick the can down the road until money becomes toilet paper club. Demo-commies are the worst, but a big chunk of Rep’s serve the same group of ultra wealthy globalist skimmers. Globalism as a neo-religious movement has been the real downfall of the US and tons of young folk seem more than happy to support neocommunism in America.
My father as a boomer grew up in a time period that allowed his hard work and talents to pay off in a manner that was far easier in the 70’s then it is now. But he took a risk and switched from Electrical Engineering to Computer science at a time that Computers still weren’t that big a thing. It paid off for him, but he worked hard and is an ultra smart guy. He certainly isn’t rich, but comfortable. If I replicated his path, I would have done worse then him, just b/c of the timing of the job market and the challenge in some areas to get into some tech jobs vs. foreign labor and outsourcing which continues to this day. So much of life sometimes is just luck, or bad luck, just the time frame you are born into, you still get to choose how to play your hand, even if you don’t always get the best of cards. This whole fiction economy will not be able to make it through next decade as medicare goes into the deep red. All the youngins that are budding commie’s just reek of desperation and idiocy, since clearly they have no fucking clue that “free” gov’t shit isn’t free and the US is already neck deep in debt.
Bubbah says “My father as a boomer grew up in a time period that allowed his hard work and talents to pay off in a manner that was far easier in the 70’s then it is now. ”
Here is a secret. Only for TBPers. It is far easier for a young person to get ahead today than it ever was. Why? Because there is no damn competition. Hard-working, responsible young folks have the world by the balls at the moment, if they have done the right things. If they have a work-ethic, did not get a degree in art history or some such, have no tats and piercings to highlight their stupidity, and keep their eyes out for opportunity, they have more opportunity than they can shake a stick at.
My kids are killing it, as are their friends. And I mean killing it. I mean, I know 25 year olds that are making $400k a year, and I shit you not. Of the 20 or so young people I know pretty well, all under 25, all but say 6 or 7 are making over $100k a year. The ones that are not are doing ok, but have chosen to “pursue their passion”- oops – or are still finishing grad degrees in medical fields, etc.
These times offer enormous opportunity for the well prepared and industrious and educated. Anyone who says differently has fucked up bigly, or the kids have chosen poorly, or are pursuing their “passion”.
Generally I agree with the concept of greater opportunity now, but everything is much more tightly regulated and licensed ( the gov has its paws in everything).
If you feel obligated to pay for your child’s college, does that make you an abuser of the poor? If you give your children superior genetics and assist them in learning to be responsible and develop a strong work ethic, does that make you an abuser of others or a successful competitor? We boomers were lucky to grow up when we did, but most of us have been responsible and worked hard to be where we are. That can’t be said of many, many others with less education, work ethic and just plain old intelligence. Indebtedness is a choice-sometimes acceptable but often dumb and it can seriously impede your success in life.
It’s all the baby boomers fault?
And here I was thinking it was all the Jews fault, at least from what is said on this forum.
In any event, blaming someone else for your own failures and problems makes it feel better than accepting personal responsibility for them, doesn’t it?
Anon,
It must be the Joos Boomers fault???
Yea, when things go wrong its hard to look in the mirror to confront the culprit…but every-time I’ve had serious trouble that’s were the blame was lurking.
My first Burning platform rant
Corporations have been displacing workers from automation and low income outsourcing. automation in the factories. when many of the truckers and cab drivers and delivery people are also unemployed we may want to have a plan for helping them shift to something else. In 1980 I made 10.00 an hour in a factory. In 2000 I was a manager in a factory and we paid 10.50 an hour to the workers on the floor. With automation the production was triple per man hour. And that is not even taking into account what the company paid the plant workers in mexico and china.
Income inequality is the key to much of the shit going on and the shit that it feels like is coming. Everyone should be able to make as much as possible to a point maybe 1 million dollars then a slow and steady progressive tax makes sense. It maybe why America was great back in the day. Shit they built the nation that way.
Lowering the corporate tax. Not raising the ss maximum pay in. Letting lobbyist control the government. I just cannot see how that is going to work to make things better. I can only think that that kind of let them eat cake mentality will end badly. My wife and I worked often 2 jobs shift work for 16 years. Night school in my 30s 8 years to get a degree. Then the corporate ladder. My wife clipped coupons and still does. We worked hard saved. Fixed up our own homes with our own hands and moved often to do it again in our spare time. And we made it Retired at 50 with acreage on the ocean. I don’t know if we could have the same result starting today. I just do not think so.
I was born in the last year of the Baby Boomer era and I’m sure as hell not responsible for all of this bullshit going on. I grew up poor in a single parent household. My sister and I both got well educated to work in careers and now live comfortably and RESPONSIBLY. The biggest fault of this younger set is that they went off to college where they spent huge sums of money that put them deep into debt for generally worthless degrees. They could have worked for degrees in worthwhile fields but that would have required hard work that they didn’t want to do because they were LAZY AND STUPID FUCKERS. Now here they are in their late 20’s owing $50,000 + in 30 year student loans on which they’re paying high interest rates, all while working in sub $25,000 jobs. No, their narcissistic expectations fucked them over and I’m sure people told them that they were working for Degrees in Worthlessness, but they didn’t like that. Once I told one the same thing and she was very and bitchly “offended”- a real textbook case of narcissism.
coal – you are exactly right. And hence why I say that today is the golden era for youngster to get ahead. Not all youngster, mind you. But imagine if you and your were dropped into society today. You both would be gold-plated. Your type are rare as hen’s teeth. You would eat the competition. And that is what it is all about.
when you and I were coming up, there was vastly more competition – good competition. Today, look around. the average youngster cannot find his or her ass with a flashlight and a roadmap. Those that are capable are, and will be, in extraordinary demand.
Hell, they can get rich just preying off the stupid of their generation. And I for one see nothing wrong with that. To get ahead financially, you must compete. If some are incapable, especially because of heir own stupidity, that is their own fault. To the victors go the spoils. Same as it ever was. Except somehow most young have never learned that lesson – that a living must be earned, and a better living must be competed for. They feel entitled. They will find that feeling does not pay the rent.
Right on Llpoh; I agree, opportunity has never been greater for someone to succeed. The tools are all around us and they are free.
But, as the old saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make the horse drink it.”
We; because of our mindfullness and many years of experience in the drama of life, can see the potentials available but the young behind us don’t have this experience to see what we do.
Which means very few learn from history books so most everyone learns through experience a priori.
A natural law
Can you imagine how the youth today would yell if they all got Drafted from their job by the Army and sent to Vietnam as an E-3 earning about $3,600 (probably about $10,000 in today’s dollars). Bitch about how bad ya’ll have it now but you have it good compared to the Greatest and the Boomer generation youth.
I have a soon to be 41 year old daughter who like me left home the day after HS graduation, skipped collage and couldn’t wait to get out in the world (I went in the military) she went 100% on her own and went from: waitress, to receptionist, to clerk, to office manager, to operations manager, to director, to director in a bigger company and like LLPOH said is killing it!
Her husband has an engineering degree and just made partner as a lighting architect. Both have tremendous work ethics.
They are living super large, beautiful son, home, sail boat but saving and investing as well. Just spent some time with them and they were telling stories and laughing about some of entitled, low gear, lazy millennial’s under them.
As a boomer who started his own one man consulting company at 55 and made more in the next 10 years then the previous 25 (and I didn’t do too shabby during those 25 years) I have divided feelings about my generation. I knew a lot of Dr. Spock spoiled spawn but I have also known many throwbacks who skipped Woodstock and cut a wide swath in their lives. I think the problem with too many was they let themselves get caught up in living above (not below) their means and a bunch are going to end up in their golden years eating Alpo in the dark.
I didn’t start the fire either but one thing I taught my daughter and I’m still living is: Life is juicy sweet live it large.
Mark – good job.
Thanks Lloh,
Before I went on my own at 55 I had to move her 7 times…some of those moves were hard on a kid but every move was a corporate promotion and every home was a step up with an improved lifestyle. I was a rough, unpolished lower middle class guy with no education past HS who ended up with 14 title promotions in 3 companies in 25 years before going on my own and one of the reasons was I out worked my peer competition and I brought in P & L RESULTS.
I once had a PHD working under me who was an idiot.
I was extremely intentional in raising her to be independent, out work her peers and understand money. I sent her to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and that reinforced all the lessons I was imbuing.
I am working hard on her and her husband to put some serious PMs away as I did in the late 90’s. I have enough for both families…but I want them to hedge/insure/perserve on their own. Hard to get my Son in Law to see what is coming as he has been riding so high so long. They live in a Blue Bubble and it is tainting their vision. Many of their neighbors are clueless liberals headed for the coming economic RUDE AWAKENING.
Mark- Excellent!!!
Thanks BL!
Why does she look like she’s addressing a mental ward and its nurses?
I’m technically a boomer who doesn’t really like Boomers (as a generational group). Individually, people are people and are judged accordingly. It’s not so much a particular generational trait that bothers me, but the insistence on defending the corrupt systems from reform. I give the millennials a pass because they are young and consumed with the things young people are always consumed with – young marriage, young children, young careers. Somewhere between young and old (35 and 60), marriages, children, and careers are no longer young and we expect people to transition from fighting for their own (marriages, children, and careers) to fighting for the future. My sense of it is the Boomers as a generation transitioned from being young and self-absorbed with young issues to being old and horribly self-serving. I, and perhaps many others, expected more of them.
The problems facing our society are bigger than the boomers, even if all they want to do is talk about themselves. It isn’t about race, or class. The evil our world faces is the same today as it was from the foundation of the world. The same percentage benefited from colonization as it does today from the monetization of debt, and roughly the same families. They serve a god who will as surely destroy them as he would all of God’s creation.
LL’s observation of the success of millennials is not a representative sample. Sure, a nephew of mine is a Sachs VP, but he was valedictorian of his class in business school. LL chooses to segregate himself, even to the point of expatriation. Millennials as a whole are a worthless bunch, as are the boomers. I’m an X’er, the meat in the middle. The US population of each is roughly the same, except now that boomers are dying off. Boomers as a whole are uneducated realists, willing to do anything to get by. Charles H Smith points out recently that a day of reckoning for the current financial house of cards will be due by 2024. Roughly around the time SS and Medi go insolvent. What happens then are bail ins and delayed payments, as Illinois is currently doing. Self sufficiency and independence are the keys, as LL has done.
Over population is a self correcting problem, and when the global system breaks down, it will be return to the dark ages. Nothing the enemy hasn’t seen before. The US is in a good position to weather whatever comes, if we aren’t overrun by the barbarian hordes as Europe is currently experiencing. The Chinese have a lot more to lose than the oligarchs in the US. Russia will survive the winter. AU is an island country, so LL should be OK.
The only real solution is given in Ecclesiastes,
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:13
For, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
While the Boomers are responsible for so much, & are obnoxiously self-righteous despite it, most of the problem lies in what they inherited. Boomers did not invent:
The warfare-welfare state.
Class warfare.
Cultural decay – “freedom” = degeneration.
The financial system.
The educational caste system.
And we weren’t the ones who stole everything.
My Summer job in 1968 was maintenance at a state park; I was paid $1.85 / hr. Minimum wage was $1.65. Using the real rate of inflation, That’s $24.50 / hr today. I introduce here my 35 cent index:
A made to order hamburger, hard ice cream milkshake, pack of smokes, a gallon of gas, & Mad Magazine were all $.35. All are now 10 – 20 x greater. In 1905, pre-Fed, eggs (organic, free range, hand candled) were 4 cents / doz, coffee was 7 cents / lb, etc. The official inflation from that time is 30 fold. It’s more like 100. We didn’t invent that either.
We basically followed the path that the establishment told us was good. They told us it would work. It did – for them. Were it not for real advances (materials, automation, etc.) & cheap imports, we would all be living in our cars eating cat. The “ridiculous” $15 / hr minimum wage is ~ $1.20 in 1968 money. We had it easy because they hadn’t finished stealing everything yet. And we weren’t much help.
The problem w/ blaming us, or pretty much anyone, is two fold:
-You don’t face up to your own need to take responsibility & change.
-You don’t look carefully at what went wrong & when. How can you fix it if you don’t know what’s broken?
There is no “fixing” the problems are vast and not merely economical. Tribal, food/water, rigged systems worldwide. And the systems continue to support the ultra rich globalists and their endless skimming operation. The US has serious predicaments, not problems that have fixes per say. There is no tax raise or growth large enough to functionally fix the massive debt, so eventually a reset of some sort will be tried. Yet any reset almost always involves serious chaos, war, and all the other bad things that come with it. Personal responsibility is great, but its not solving the macro problems when those with the most power couldn’t even fix things if they wanted to, and their fixes would be focused on the .01% not the rest of us.
This notion if we just vote for the right party or their is some sort of savior politician is just wishful thinking. At best we get a Captain of the US titanic that actually cares about saving some of us peasants, rather than just lying to everyone as they secretly set up their own lifeboats for the icy waters ahead.
To those who think Boomers fucked it all up I have a serious question —- WHEN did we start this? I want specifics.
Was it while we were in high school … I mean, is that where we started to take classes in “Let’s fuck up America?” Was it while we were in college? Or, was it while some of us were sent to Vietnam to get our asses blown off? Was it when we were in our mid to late 20s trying to start a family? Was it in our 30s when we were trying to establish our careers? Was it when we were in our 40s and getting divorced, or when we were in our 50s and buying a shiny new red sports car?
Look, if I am in the mix as one of the cocksuckers who is responsible for all this shit … at least give me a fucken idea when I started it. That way I can reflect on that time, and make reparations, or at least send an Apology Card from Hallmark. “Dear 1968, I’m truly sorry I fucked up whatever it is that I fucked up that year. I think I started the ’68 riots in Newark. Yeah, that’s it. So solly!”
Generational tariff & feathering ain’t nuthin’ new.
(Vanity? That scene from no country for old men. Could well be. Vanity silvery-plates a lot of glass house territory.)
Cuz stupid, self-pity, is as ancient as it is present.
War on cohorts, drugs, terror, cancer, ∞. Blahblahblah.
Jews, muslims, niggers, beaners, ∞. Blahblahblah.
Shortest cut to biggest slice sells like hell, & most of those buyers end up eating guillotine-sliced cake in hell.
But, people are pre-made. Not self-made (see vanity). Luck is clear glass that birds & vains wanna fly right thru but can’t.
But birds & vains are very different creatures.
This guy is buried down Taos way. (I skied Taos a couple times, long ago. Now some billionaire hedge fund guy owns the whole area.) Think I will swing by that Taos spot, pay respects, & then on to that corner in Winslow AZ, one of these trips.
“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” – D. H. Lawrence
But luck ain’t commons just cuz its luck. “You didn’t build that” in self-made vacuum is true enough. What’s false is that your luck, good & bad, isn’t yours.