s/o Boomers

[IIOY]

On an individual level, I wait to find out what their political views are. If a Boomer is all "gimme my SS and cut my school taxes," I take them off my Christmas card list. If a Boomer is willing to acknowledge the economic and political fuckery his or generation has wrought, we're good.

[Velar Fricative]

The Boomers who care about the world they leave for their kids and grandkids? I like those Boomers.

The Boomers who consistently vote to cut education funding at all levels, don't believe in climate change, and have bigoted beliefs? Bye Felicia.

[mrsbro]

Oct 22, 2014 6:41:48 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

The Boomers who care about the world they leave for their kids and grandkids? I like those Boomers.

The Boomers who consistently vote to cut education funding at all levels, don't believe in climate change, and have bigoted beliefs? Bye Felicia.

^ You said this better at 830am than I could. So ditto above.

[ttt]

Oct 22, 2014 6:21:53 GMT -5 susquehanna said:

If you have a definite opionion of Boomers, either favorable or unfavorable, do you separate Boomers into various types before deciding on your feelings? For example, do you distinguish between Boomers who went to Vietnam and Boomers who were peace activists or conscientious objectors? Do you have different feelings about white Boomers and Boomers of color?

My "definite opinion of Boomers" is an opinion of the generation as a whole, the leaders they elected, the policies they chose, and the consequences they left behind for their children and grandchildren. 

I don't have a "definite opinion" of individual people that I don't know personally. 

[AJL]

I haven't met an individual boomer I didn't like. But the boomers in my life are the ones who were involved in activism and social justice in their younger days. They're still involved in those things today. They're interested in making this world better and hate what their generation has done to it. I think because that's my experience, I don't really get the boomer hate.

[eclaires]

I don't know any boomers that I personally dislike but I do know a lot of boomers who in various ways totally fit boomer stereotypes, if that makes sense. None are quite the caricature of what we joke about here but a lot of them do things, express opinions or have attitudes that typify what annoys me about their generation as a whole.

I'm not sure that makes sense but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I personally know boomers who fit some boomer stereotypes but I don't dislike them. I mean if they were real assholes (like give me my SS, fuck education, kids these days), I would dislike them, but for the most part it's milder viewpoints, actions and attitudes with the people I know. But the boomerness is there and easily identifiable. Like in every group, some get it, some don't. Some are more offensive and defensive - it just really varies.

I don't think that boomers are bad people individually but collectively they've done a lot that has had a negative impact. I can separate that from the individuals though. I actually think at this point the problem is less of what they've done and more of what they are doing now that stands in the way of making things better for the rest of us. That's what is really frustrating.

[heyjude]

Oct 22, 2014 7:32:37 GMT -5 ttt said:

Oct 22, 2014 6:21:53 GMT -5 susquehanna said:

If you have a definite opionion of Boomers, either favorable or unfavorable, do you separate Boomers into various types before deciding on your feelings? For example, do you distinguish between Boomers who went to Vietnam and Boomers who were peace activists or conscientious objectors? Do you have different feelings about white Boomers and Boomers of color?

My "definite opinion of Boomers" is an opinion of the generation as a whole, the leaders they elected, the policies they chose, and the consequences they left behind for their children and grandchildren. 

I don't have a "definite opinion" of individual people that I don't know personally. 

Shut the thread down. There is nothing left to say after this post.

[lys]

There are pros and cons of the Boomers as a group - as any group.
I try to take them on an individual basis.

The pros that I like are that they were the first to push the limits of protesting our government,
be openly anti war
they ecome educated at a huge proportion of their population

They created  some pretty good music, both black and white artists

No generation leaves only good for the next -generation, it is always a mixed bag of good and bad .

[ESF]

This morning on FB, I have a boomer complaining about having to serve on jury duty and the judge's speech about civic duty because he has already done enough civic duty in his lifetime.

JHC.

[cattledogkisses]

Oct 22, 2014 6:29:52 GMT -5 IIOY said:

On an individual level, I wait to find out what their political views are. If a Boomer is all "gimme my SS and cut my school taxes," I take them off my Christmas card list. If a Boomer is willing to acknowledge the economic and political fuckery his or generation has wrought, we're good.

The irony is that these are the same people who view millenials as the "me" generation. 

[tacosforlife]

I feel like my mom and dad are such great examples of the dichotomy between Boomers I like and Boomers who are insufferable.

My mom once went off on Rick Perry fundraiser because of Rick Perry's education policies. She taught public school for 30 years and in retirement has done some volunteering at a Title I school. She gets upset about the excessive spending on athletics while curriculum budgets are gutted. She basically always votes for more education funding.

My dad, OTOH, bought a few farm animals (remember that mule?) so that he can get an agricultural exemption on his property taxes, but he also complains that the schools in his area are terrible.

I really do not understand how these two people were ever married, let alone for 15 years.

[Velar Fricative]

I hate to say it, but now that I've been living with her for 2 months, I have learned that MIL is "that Boomer" to a T. FIL is too, but not to the extent as MIL. We were discussing SS and of course she went on about how she deserves that money and asked me why I don't think she deserves that money (which I never said). But I was annoyed enough that I asked why our generation and our daughter's generation and generations beyond that are any *less* deserving than Boomers of SS, and all she did was roll her eyes and say "You guys are going to get SS, I'm not sure why you're so worried about that."

*headdesk*

Honestly, I don't even care that SS won't be around because at least we found out young enough that it's not going to last until we are eligible for benefits. It's just that she's not a stupid person and should understand why SS will be drained by the time we're eligible for it. But I think she secretly does understand that but didn't want to say "too bad, so sad."

[Velar Fricative]

Oct 22, 2014 9:52:35 GMT -5 @lcap said:

Well I feel like I know a lot of Boomers who are like "give me my SS" which is apparently an unpopular opinion on here, lol. But I kind of understand their feelings on it. My Dad, for example, retired on a fire dept. pension and in NJ there's always chatter about possibly cutting pensions for municipal and state workers. As we know now, giving out these kinds of pensions to people in their fifties is not a sustainable trend. My parents could easily live for another 30 years (and obviously I hope they do). I *do* want him to get what he was promised and what he trusted he would get all those years and would be very upset if it was cut in any way. So if I want that for him, isn't it kind of hypocritical to think other Boomers shouldn't get SS?

As for our generation, I know cuts have to be made in the future and do not plan on receiving any SS or Medicare.

Don't get me wrong, I would be LIVID if I were a Boomer and my pension was slated to be eliminated or drastically cut, etc. It's the rampant sacrificing of the unborn that doesn't sit well with me.

Plus, I'd love to learn more about when reputable analysts were first saying that SS wouldn't last forever - probably a very long time ago, yes? Yeah, it's unfair for a 55-year-old person today to be told that, sorry, no SS and/or pension for you! But I have to wonder if Boomers knew just how dire the state of SS would be, say, in the 80s when they were mostly still fairly young (and thus could have been doing what our generation is doing these days with retirement-saving, and even that has a shitload of challenges as we all know) and just didn't give a shit as long as they got all theirs. 

[josieposy]

I'm struggling with the idea that I'm supposed to dig myself out of debt, prep for retirement, and pay for someone else's retirement all at the same time.

And let's not even get into the epic disaster we're leaving for our own kids.

[Velar Fricative]

And besides retirement, don't get me started on their skepticism of climate change. I almost slapped MIL upside the head when she was parroting the talking points from Fox News about how there's no climate change. It's one thing to leave us all on a planet with no money, it's another thing to just leave us all on, well, no planet. And I'm not even pretending my carbon footprint is totally amazing, but at least I try! The ILs were venting the other night about NYC requiring everyone to recycle or get fined because recycling just isn't necessary and fuck this liberal mayor (even though people were recycling in Guiliani's time, sooooo...).

GET ME OUT OF HERE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

[ttt]

long article, but worth the read. I'm C&P a few sections here:

Who Destroyed The Economy? The Case Against Baby Boomers

Ultimately, members of my father's generation--generally defined as those born between 1946 and 1964--are reaping more than they sowed. They graduated smack into one of the strongest economic expansions in American history. They needed less education to snag a decent-salaried job than their children do, and a college education cost them a small fraction of what it did for their children or will for their grandkids. One income was sufficient to get a family ahead economically. Marginal federal income-tax rates have fallen steadily, with rare exception, since boomers entered the labor force; government retirement benefits have proliferated. At nearly every point in their lives, these Americans chose to slough the costs of those tax cuts and spending hikes onto future generations.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose twelvefold from the time the first boomers began working until last year, when they began to cash out their retirement. (The growth trend over the 12 years since I entered the workforce suggests that the Dow will double exactly once before I retire.) They will leave the workforce far wealthier than their parents did, with even more government promises awaiting them. Boomers will be the first generation of retirees to fully enjoy the Medicare prescription-drug benefit; because Social Security payouts rise faster than price inflation, they will draw more-generous retirement benefits than their parents did, in real terms--at their children's expense. The Urban Institute estimated last year that a couple retiring in 2011, having both earned average wages, will accrue about $200,000 more in Medicare and Social Security benefits over their lifetimes than they paid in taxes to support those programs.

Those retirees and near-retirees bequeath a shambles to their offspring. Young people are unemployed at historically high levels. Global competition is stronger than ever, but American institutions have not adapted to prepare new workers for its challenges. Boomers have run up incomes for the very wealthiest Americans, shrunk the middle class, and, via careless borrowing and reckless financial engineering, driven the economy into the worst recession in 80 years. The Pew Research Center reports that middle-class families today are 5 percent less wealthy than their parents were at the same point in their lives, after adjusting for inflation, even though families today are far more likely to include two wage earners. Another Pew report shows that those ages 55 to 64 are 10 percent wealthier today, even after the Great Recession, than Americans of that age bracket were in 1984. Those younger than 35 are 68 percent less wealthy than the same bracket was in 1984.



The baby boomers built an economy where young people increasingly need a college education to move into the middle class, or even to simply hold on to the middle-class lifestyle they were born into. But the boomers who run state legislatures and private universities have collectively pushed the costs of that now-requisite education into the stratosphere. Tuition has risen at twice the rate of inflation: In today's dollars, tuition, room, and board at a four-year public college ran nearly $6,800 per year in 1967; it costs about $13,300 today. Private-college tabs have more than doubled in that time. The increase has saddled young workers with more than $1 trillion in student debt--the average college student today borrows six times more from the federal government to finance her education, per year, than the average student in 1970. The boomers keep their low taxes, and their alma maters gain prestige, but the next generation of workers starts with a debt boulder strapped to its back. All for no apparent gain. Today, Pew says, men who grew up in the middle class are just as likely to earn less than their fathers did (adjusting for inflation) as they are to earn more.



Members of my father's generation reaped the benefits of dirt-cheap fossil fuels through most of their working lives, when gasoline price increases ran well below inflation, freeing up cash for them to save or spend on things their children now cannot afford. Because gas was so cheap, they burned too much of it (my father has never owned a car that averaged better than 20 miles per gallon), filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide to levels that scientists warn will likely warm the globe by several degrees. Climate change will cost trillions of dollars to avert or adapt to. It's almost impossible to overstate this level of buck-passing.

Perhaps most egregiously, the baby boomers, led by boomer-coddling leaders in Washington, are bequeathing a runaway national debt and a gaping federal budget shortfall that their children and grandchildren will have to pay--through higher taxes or reduced benefits, or both--if they don't want the country to go broke. Balancing America's future receipts and obligations would require all taxes to rise by 35 percent "immediately and permanently," and all federal entitlement benefits to decrease by another 35 percent, the International Monetary Fund estimated last year. Shielding boomers from that pain--as most so-called deficit hawks in Washington propose--would dramatically increase the bill for everyone else. Brigham Young University economists Richard Evans and Kerk Phillips and Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff published a paper in January that projected a 1-in-3 chance that the U.S. economy will reach "game over" within 30 years. In their definition, "game over" means that the government's obligations to seniors (thanks again, boomers) will exceed 100 percent of everyone else's earnings. In other words, all the young workers in America together won't earn enough to pay down the government's obligations to their parents.

[lys]

Just for perspective
Minimum wage was raised to $1.00/hr in Feb 1967 Public College tuition cost = $6800 so about 6800 hours of work (we won't deal with taxes)

Current tuition $13300, minimum wage is $7+/hr so 1914 hours of work s vs 6800.

Looks like it is "less" of a burden today

[josieposy]

Oct 22, 2014 18:29:17 GMT -5 lys said:

Just for perspective
Minimum wage was raised to $1.00/hr in Feb 1967 Public College tuition cost = $6800 so about 6800 hours of work (we won't deal with taxes)

Current tuition $13300, minimum wage is $7+/hr so 1914 hours of work s vs 6800.

Looks like it is "less" of a burden today

Where are you getting these figures?

Just for shits and grins, I googled and the University of Wisconsin says tuition was $300 in 1967 and is over $9,000 now.
www.wisconsin.edu/budplan/tuition/tuitionHistory.pdf

[josieposy]

Oh I'm REALLY curious now:

1967 costs at Universities (total tuition, room and board):
Private Institutions: $2,545
Public: $1,199
nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp


Where in the hell are you getting $6800?


ETA:

2006-2007 same stats:
Private: $38,400
Public: $14,203

[pinkdutchtulips]

my parents are both Boomers (1949 & 1950)and to a degree I have an opinion. they were the last generation NOT to start their lives massively in debt due to school. both of my parents came out of undergrad debt free thanks in large part bc 1- my grandparents paid for my mom's undergrad (provided she attended the same school her mom went to) and 2- my dad made enough working as a union drywaller hanger in THREE months to cover tution, r&b and books for CSULB ($58/semester) for the entire year.

they're also the last generation to enjoy pensions (both parents have them)so they didn't have to worry about paying off SL and saving for retirement concurrently. my parents realize how lucky they are but it drives me nuts bc they tell us kids stories about when we were little and how they survived but truth be told, it's FAR easier to make it when you don't have to pay rent or a mortgage (we lived in church parsonages until I was 16)so they sometimes have a disconnect when us kids complain about why we feel like we're treading water.

for the most part, I don't mind the Boomers ... that is until they do something that makes me want to slap them upside their head lol

[pinkdutchtulips]

Oct 22, 2014 18:29:17 GMT -5 lys said:

Just for perspective
Minimum wage was raised to $1.00/hr in Feb 1967 Public College tuition cost = $6800 so about 6800 hours of work (we won't deal with taxes)

Current tuition $13300, minimum wage is $7+/hr so 1914 hours of work s vs 6800.

Looks like it is "less" of a burden today

I'm interested too bc my dad paid $58/semester to attend CSU-Long Beach, the flagship CSU bt 1968-1972

today, 2014, a semester costs roughly $3200

 www.csulb.edu/depts/enrollment/registration/fees_basics.html

eta: the difference bt $116 and $6400 is HUGE ! (and that's just tution, let's not get into how much it costs to live anywhere CLOSE to Long Beach !)

[ttt]

Oct 22, 2014 18:29:17 GMT -5 lys said:

Just for perspective
Minimum wage was raised to $1.00/hr in Feb 1967 Public College tuition cost = $6800 so about 6800 hours of work (we won't deal with taxes)

Current tuition $13300, minimum wage is $7+/hr so 1914 hours of work s vs 6800.

Looks like it is "less" of a burden today

Nope. 

You're just factually wrong on this. I would post sources but I know you won't reply. 

[josieposy]

Oct 22, 2014 19:06:31 GMT -5 ttt said:

Oct 22, 2014 18:29:17 GMT -5 lys said:

Just for perspective
Minimum wage was raised to $1.00/hr in Feb 1967 Public College tuition cost = $6800 so about 6800 hours of work (we won't deal with taxes)

Current tuition $13300, minimum wage is $7+/hr so 1914 hours of work s vs 6800.

Looks like it is "less" of a burden today

Nope. 

You're just factually wrong on this. I would post sources but I know you won't reply. 

Oooh! Pick me! Pick me! I actually took a few minutes to do this (See prior posts).

[secretlyevil]

lys, aren't you a MM reg? Ummm, you're doing a bad job of representing them at the moment.

[cattledogkisses]

Is she really trying to argue that it's easier to afford college today than it was for Boomers? Because no. Not in your wildest dreams. That's not even an opinion; that's facts.

[leeba25]

So, lys got those numbers from the article that ttt posted, on page 1. But she missed an important point: 


Tuition has risen at twice the rate of inflation: In today's dollars, tuition, room, and board at a four-year public college ran nearly $6,800 per year in 1967; it costs about $13,300 today.




Emphasis in the above mine. In actual dollars - at the time - it was in the low 3 figures. So lys is comparing tuition in today's dollars, for 1967, and the actual minimum wage (which I did not verify) at that time, in 1967 dollars. Which is like comparing, say, blueberries to watermelons. 

[josieposy]

I still want my research points!!!

[origami]

Oct 22, 2014 10:05:19 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Oct 22, 2014 9:52:35 GMT -5 @lcap said:

Well I feel like I know a lot of Boomers who are like "give me my SS" which is apparently an unpopular opinion on here, lol. But I kind of understand their feelings on it. My Dad, for example, retired on a fire dept. pension and in NJ there's always chatter about possibly cutting pensions for municipal and state workers. As we know now, giving out these kinds of pensions to people in their fifties is not a sustainable trend. My parents could easily live for another 30 years (and obviously I hope they do). I *do* want him to get what he was promised and what he trusted he would get all those years and would be very upset if it was cut in any way. So if I want that for him, isn't it kind of hypocritical to think other Boomers shouldn't get SS?

As for our generation, I know cuts have to be made in the future and do not plan on receiving any SS or Medicare.

Don't get me wrong, I would be LIVID if I were a Boomer and my pension was slated to be eliminated or drastically cut, etc. It's the rampant sacrificing of the unborn that doesn't sit well with me.

Plus, I'd love to learn more about when reputable analysts were first saying that SS wouldn't last forever - probably a very long time ago, yes? Yeah, it's unfair for a 55-year-old person today to be told that, sorry, no SS and/or pension for you! But I have to wonder if Boomers knew just how dire the state of SS would be, say, in the 80s when they were mostly still fairly young (and thus could have been doing what our generation is doing these days with retirement-saving, and even that has a shitload of challenges as we all know) and just didn't give a shit as long as they got all theirs. 

Well they had to have known as soon as it was obvious the birth rate was not going to recover, since it's a Ponzi scheme. So the 60s maybe? But in the 70s congress made epic fuckups to SS and almost bankrupted it. That would have also been a good time to begin thinking critically about the program's structure and long-term soundness. But considering how people react now, I imagine then it was full of arm flailing hysteria and panic attacks.

[Deleted]

My parents are Boomers and both very obviously feel bad about the world their generation is leaving behind. My mom talks often and at length about how it's not fair that Boomers are draining so many programs and how the policies that make it possible never should have been put in to place. My dad has repeatedly told us to "let him help" with things like home projects and college because "not everyone grew up with the same opportunities we did."

My parents have also both told me to bury them in cardboard boxes and take the life insurance. I've only ever heard them deride people who complain about paying taxes. They're the best.

[secretlyevil]

Oct 22, 2014 21:31:38 GMT -5 josieposy said:

I still want my research points!!!

CEP award of the day, week or whatever you want.