When boomers had the urge to air their grievances about prior generations, they had to make the effort to meet up with friends which was a logistical nightmare. You come on Reddit and anonymously post while your Instagram and TikTok tabs burn energy because your attention span makes it impossible to crack a book open to learn how to manage capital.
If someone’s excuse why they haven’t achieved in life is that “the old folks haven’t died so I can have my turn” that really tells us all we need to know about them.
lol you didn't comprehend my comment. What else could I have clarified?
We could see people are living longer. We could see that homes and jobs would not be released back into the wild at the expected time. They could have prioritized infrastructure for a growing society. They could re-organize their values to not only keep the US affordable but prosperous. They can't see that the way your boat rises is by rising all boats.
Instead, this is the 4th decade of my life where politics are about whats between peoples legs and don't look at Israel. Stop looking at it. Stop it!
Okay I’m still reading the article but I had to pause and come comment on the below quote:
*He asked readers to remember the early‑pandemic moment “when all of a sudden the brands were just wiped off the shelves, along with steaks, roasts, etc because people had that extra money they’d never had before.” *
I’m sorry, but what? What is the myth of free covid money? How does this still persist? We got like one $1200 check at first and then later another $1400 or something? That’s not even one months rent for most people. I’m so tired of seeing this myth thrown around.
The only people who got free money in the early pandemic were sleazy corporations and business owners who took advantage of PPP loans and never had to pay them back. Normal working people, as always, got jack shit.
There’s another element to this that most people don’t seem to realise. The money people received during Covid when viewed at the national and global scales was immense. That money was typically spent on buying normal things, food, household products, groceries, et cetera. So where does that money go?
Well, it goes mainly to the companies who sell those products and then up to their holding companies. All that money trickles upwards and the richest individuals and companies invest that money in assets. This is why there's been such a huge growth in the stock market since 2020. And is part of the reason why there's been such strong inflation since Covid.
For-profit-everything is one of the worst concepts and structures to ever exist, IMO. In the USA specifically, everything needs to be done for profit. Necessities, Healthcare, food, housing, literally everything. Shareholder quarterly earnings run everything.
I'm not talking about "nobody should make money for goods and services." That's a simple brained, idiotic "communism" talking point. I'm talking about everything being skimmed off the top, and in every point in the middle, as much as absolutley possible at the detriment of everything upstream of that profit.
Take, as a very simple example, a grocery store. Food costs money and labor to produce, obviously. That food costs money to buy at the point of sale. The store buys the inventory, pays the staff, pays the maintenance and facilities, etc etc. The store owner pays themselves. In a perfect world, the owners pay themselves well, and the business (including their owner salary) breaks even, and sustains itself. Everybody gets paid. Except in a profit driven system, every chain down the line must extract every absolute penny from every step. The owners can't make enough to satisfy their lifestyles, investors require as much as absolutley possible given back to them, and costs (labor and manpower) are cut to make as much profit as absolutley possible. These two different stores will create incredibly different environments, products, and results. Now extract that to every commerce sector in the entire country.
Obviously this is a utopic vision. I'm well aware of that. But even small scale shifts away from profit above all else, makes a difference.
I have a friend who lives near a very high cost of living city. He worked for minimum wage and lived in a tiny studio apartment paying what someone would pay two rent a three bedroom house for in the Midwest, and he was usually 1-3 months behind in rent, but he was a good tenant so his landlord would let him pay what he could when he had it. He walked to work every day because he didn’t have the money to fix his car.
He was laid off from his job for a few months bc of the pandemic and got unemployment plus the “enhanced” benefits. And he got two refund checks. I remember him telling me that he actually caught up on rent for the first time in years and had put away a few hundred in savings and it felt really life changing for him.
So I think for some people it really did make a difference. And for people that already had enough money to make ends meet, that extra cash from the refunds was used to buy things they wouldn’t normally have, like what the article is saying.
Yeah, the unemployed at the time were getting an extra 600$ a week. I was still working at a nursing home all throughout and was just baffled. I don't even make that much a week employed.
And we all agree that the problem is with shitty corporate policies that systematically underpay employees, not the people who were getting unemployment, right?
Agreed. WOW, I enjoyed SNAP benefits and Medicaid and some extra for being unemployed. I volunteered to help in my community by shopping groceries and walking dogs and cleaning homes for three seniors without anyone.
I was Happy, I took the time to Recover from nicotine addiction and alcohol addiction, which helped me find happiness. My life changed for the better when I could make rent, but groceries. And focus on my best person by exercising away bad habits that masked my depression from being paycheck to paycheck.
A neighbor's 16 year old kid had worked at a chain pizza place for a couple of months for extra spending money 8-12 hours a week. When it closed, they even received the $600 a week. Kid made thousands more being "unemployed." But those that did work, their company may have received incentive money but it often was not passed down to the employee.
There was a lot of ppp money that went to small business owners. In my area there were a bunch of real estate agents and tradesman that pocketed a good chunk of money. I was more than a little jealous I didnt have an llc.
The US government spent more than $5 trillion dollars in COVID relief including more than $1.8 trillion in direct payments to individuals. That’s a fuckton of cash. The combined net worth of all US billionaires at the start was about $3 trillion.
It's not the free money that did that. It's the upper middle class that had 40k a year budgeted for family vacations and 35k a year budgeted for restaurants and entertainment who now had crazy amounts of surplus cash. They were the ones buying up everything.
Poor people got free money. Rich people got wfm and free ppp loans. Working people got to go to work and risk their lives for nothing extra.
I work in health care. The front line got unpaid overtime to watch people die. The senior managers were working from home having the time if their life
I had extra money during the pandemic not because I was given any, but because I stopped going out, and wow did the saving accumulate. There was probably a lesson to be learned there, but I blew it all on a Onewheel instead. No regrets.
My husband had a small office equipment company and that PPP allowed him to keep his employees paid because no one was at the office and certainly no one was buying office equipment. At the end the PPP just covered the salaries and office expenses. If he had to close those employees would have been paid unemployment
Sorry I didn’t mean to imply all PPP money was pocketed, it was critical for a lot of companies to keep people employed. But the stories of fraud and abuse are appalling.
Well for one, people had extra money from not spending it on entertainment. But also the unemployment was not just for people who weren't employed at all. I had a full time job, they cut our hours to something like 20 a week and we got unemployment on top of that. I would say for 70% of the employees, that ended up being a pay increase.
If only boomers kept all of the free hand ups they got from the governments - instead of legislating all of the help away - first time home buyers credits, government subsidized higher education, pensions….
Nope they said I got mine screw the future generations
Yeah. It’s not about the house they bought. It’s about the NIMBY attitude they legislated with to “protect” that home. It’s not about the business they created giving jobs. It’s that they voted to remove protections for their workers. It’s not that they burned fossil fuels, its that they got society addicted to them, and ignored pretty clear and simple messages that they were stealing from the future generations. There’s plenty of stuff where they did ok. But most of the conventional wisdom of that generation post-reagan iterated out into this mess. If that’s too hard for them to admit, I’m sorry man. Sometimes a mirror is an unpleasant thing to look at.
The Cold War really fucked with their heads. They got inundated with pro-capitalism propaganda before they could walk and talk, and look! "Capitalism won!" They really think corporate exploitation and prosperity gospel, 'supply-side Jesus' is the God given goodest truth.
Some found a way to inoculate, of course, but it really does feel like a whole generation of American Psychos took over, and there's so fucking many of them it's impossible to do much about it.
Exactly, they continually voted for politicians that promised to reduce their costs and now the system is in a failure state due to decades of under-funding social services. Just because many of them spent that money allowing the rich to become richer, rather than saving it, doesn't mean it wasn't their fault that the economy is in the state it is currently in.
There isn't a good solution to this either. Even as the boomers die or downsize those homes aren't going to drop to the price that the rest of us can afford, they are going to get bought up by companies that will be happy to rent it to you to extract as much value out of you as possible.
The One Percent had their Media Mouthpieces create this Generation vs. Generation cover story as they continued to vacuum up the wealth of the country.
This propaganda was very effective as the Capitalists stagnanted wages over 6+ decades, while steadily increasing prices across the board.
Now we have reached the point where normal American life has degenerated to a bleak reality where 70% of families don't have the financial ability to handle a $1,000 emergency.
But we appear to be on the cusp of celebrating the first Trillionaire......
It’s pretty much a trope that GenX has always been and always will be ignored. I didn’t realize it until someone pointed it out and now I see it everywhere.
as a millenial american, i think this is an underrepresented point. we have had our boot on the necks of the rest of the world for ages, and we have enjoyed too much for too long. im a poor middle ager, but id be sanguine if i saw our wealth being distributed outward instead of being consolidated upward to the financier class.
apparently, your southern states are richer than most european countries, while some neighbourhoods look distinctly third world.
(granted, I have not been there since 2001)
I enjoyed the follow up article to the opinion piece. As an older boomer I do accept the “pig in the python” metaphor and wonder what will eventually happen in our economy when the wealth of a generation is spent, the large homes have aged and the excess wealth is burned off in healthcare and inheritances.
America will be a poorer place for having lost a huge and vibrant generation who “did their own thing”, who began with rebellion and ended in obstinance and disdain for what is left of America.
Dude all the tech bros shitting up the world are Generation X. You better stop waiting and get off your ass now, unless you’re waiting for them to croak too.
Different problem. The Gen X cohort is too small to cause problems in the exact same way as the Boomers,
and was never going to be squatting in the c-suite -- because the Boomers are still there right now, as Gen X is getting ready to wind things down and the Millennials are in their prime.
The Millennials currently outnumber Gen X by a ratio of 9 to 8. The Baby Boomers outweighed them even more: 3 to 2 when both groups were at their peak.
The very few Gen X tech moguls are gaming wealth consolidation that had already started and gained scary momentum by the time Gen X was out of college.
The polls do show that Gen X went majority for Trump, which, speaking as a Gen Xer, will always baffle me. I don't have any maga friends or associates my own age -- no, thank you -- and I live in the Deep South.
Anecdotally, maga is a complaint that I hear my acquaintances make about our 80 year old parents' generation -- even older than Boomers -- and the reason why we no longer want to see some of the weirder older cousins at the holidays.
Seriously, I do not get it. It just doesn't match all the other data on our generation. Relatively tech and internet-media savvy compared to the Boomers, thus more capable of recognizing propaganda. Raised with Earth Day, and Mr Rogers, and Dr Spock's childcare manual ... supposedly always reported more progressive values, compared to the Boomers. Right up until 2016. Shrug emoji.
It's tempting to blame bad polling or bad reporting. Every info source seems fishy, or compromised ... undependable now. Hypernormalization, maybe? But something doesn't add up.
(By the way, since I keep having to have this conversation lately, every time I type more than a paragraph: No, I'm not using an AI. I've been puking out em-dashes since before you were born, ya whippersnapper.)
I am similar to you, Gen X, grew up in a major progressive city, thought society was going in the right direction, more humane, more equal, more environmentally conscious, alternative or whatever. No MAGA friends. I hate to say it but I do think the propaganda worked on Gen X.
They flocked to FB around 2010 and got bombarded with all the racist, anti-science, alternative facts bullshit. The men with no college got hit with outsourcing, number 1 job is truck driver and listening to right wing crap on the radio. Other factors too, uncontrolled immigration. Overall result, anti-education, anti-government, racist bullshit.
You're onto something there. I do remember reading that the right wing AM radio takeover was intended to reach truck drivers, specifically, because they were prosperous enough to be influential in working class communities.
Maybe also it has to do with Gen X's nihilistic streak. The "slacker" thing. Quiet quitting avant la lettre.
"We were never going to be in charge so fuckit, let's call in sick, watch cartoons and eat Capn Crunch" became de factoaccelerationism. "Elect the monster clown, burn it all, and mosh in the ashes."
Gross, I hope not. I hate that. But maybe, sort of.
The article mentions the nurse who has $100,000 saved for retirement. As if its pretty good. That is very little in this economy. Scary for a lot of us. The median retirees have saved is $87,000.
Can we say for the billionth time: a generation spans abject poverty/abuse to those who surfed waves of prosperity. Broad brush strokes denies a person their humanity. Ya all stop characterizing a generation as one person, it tears at the fabric of life.
Why doesn’t a more liberal agenda entertainment company come up with something analogous to Fox News? Use US nationalism at it’s pandering core. Then focus on fear-mongering on issues important to older generations like social security, negative economic policies of the conservative establishment, etc. Wrap the whole thing up with attractive overly made up red lipstick ‘news’ anchors. Sensationalize the most trivial topics and add some false over exaggerated narratives. Like “Over budgeted Louisiana PD targets seniors for lawful Bingo gathering!” or “Russian immigrants invade the WH!” or “They are taking away your Social Security and coming for your home next!”
theGalation | 14 hours ago
I didn’t think we blamed boomers because they only hoarded jobs and homes but because of their government policies and inability to change course.
thinkB4WeSpeak | 13 hours ago
Boomers really are the worst thing to ever happen to the US, their legacy is going down in the history books as some Nero type shit
LocoMod | 5 hours ago
When boomers had the urge to air their grievances about prior generations, they had to make the effort to meet up with friends which was a logistical nightmare. You come on Reddit and anonymously post while your Instagram and TikTok tabs burn energy because your attention span makes it impossible to crack a book open to learn how to manage capital.
Vegetable_Quote_4807 | an hour ago
There are plenty of younger politicians taking the place of the right-wing boomers in government.
Quit sitting back and complaining, and get out and VOTE for liberal candidates to replace them.
jameson71 | 7 hours ago
If someone’s excuse why they haven’t achieved in life is that “the old folks haven’t died so I can have my turn” that really tells us all we need to know about them.
CharmedConflict | 6 hours ago
Jameson, are you suggesting that we kill Nana?
jameson71 | 4 hours ago
No, but Gen Z sure is.
Someone should also tell Gen Z that we already have "UBI." We call it wellfare.
altiuscitiusfortius | 3 hours ago
You obviously know nothing about either of those programs if you conflate the two.
temblors | 2 hours ago
Getting the feeling that ol Jameson does not know too much about too much
theGalation | 2 hours ago
lol you didn't comprehend my comment. What else could I have clarified?
We could see people are living longer. We could see that homes and jobs would not be released back into the wild at the expected time. They could have prioritized infrastructure for a growing society. They could re-organize their values to not only keep the US affordable but prosperous. They can't see that the way your boat rises is by rising all boats.
Instead, this is the 4th decade of my life where politics are about whats between peoples legs and don't look at Israel. Stop looking at it. Stop it!
UnluckyWriting | 15 hours ago
Okay I’m still reading the article but I had to pause and come comment on the below quote:
*He asked readers to remember the early‑pandemic moment “when all of a sudden the brands were just wiped off the shelves, along with steaks, roasts, etc because people had that extra money they’d never had before.” *
I’m sorry, but what? What is the myth of free covid money? How does this still persist? We got like one $1200 check at first and then later another $1400 or something? That’s not even one months rent for most people. I’m so tired of seeing this myth thrown around.
The only people who got free money in the early pandemic were sleazy corporations and business owners who took advantage of PPP loans and never had to pay them back. Normal working people, as always, got jack shit.
AlDente | 8 hours ago
There’s another element to this that most people don’t seem to realise. The money people received during Covid when viewed at the national and global scales was immense. That money was typically spent on buying normal things, food, household products, groceries, et cetera. So where does that money go?
Well, it goes mainly to the companies who sell those products and then up to their holding companies. All that money trickles upwards and the richest individuals and companies invest that money in assets. This is why there's been such a huge growth in the stock market since 2020. And is part of the reason why there's been such strong inflation since Covid.
gitbse | 5 hours ago
For-profit-everything is one of the worst concepts and structures to ever exist, IMO. In the USA specifically, everything needs to be done for profit. Necessities, Healthcare, food, housing, literally everything. Shareholder quarterly earnings run everything.
I'm not talking about "nobody should make money for goods and services." That's a simple brained, idiotic "communism" talking point. I'm talking about everything being skimmed off the top, and in every point in the middle, as much as absolutley possible at the detriment of everything upstream of that profit.
Take, as a very simple example, a grocery store. Food costs money and labor to produce, obviously. That food costs money to buy at the point of sale. The store buys the inventory, pays the staff, pays the maintenance and facilities, etc etc. The store owner pays themselves. In a perfect world, the owners pay themselves well, and the business (including their owner salary) breaks even, and sustains itself. Everybody gets paid. Except in a profit driven system, every chain down the line must extract every absolute penny from every step. The owners can't make enough to satisfy their lifestyles, investors require as much as absolutley possible given back to them, and costs (labor and manpower) are cut to make as much profit as absolutley possible. These two different stores will create incredibly different environments, products, and results. Now extract that to every commerce sector in the entire country.
Obviously this is a utopic vision. I'm well aware of that. But even small scale shifts away from profit above all else, makes a difference.
TheNavigatrix | 5 hours ago
Classic Keynesian economics
PandemicSoul | 14 hours ago
I have a friend who lives near a very high cost of living city. He worked for minimum wage and lived in a tiny studio apartment paying what someone would pay two rent a three bedroom house for in the Midwest, and he was usually 1-3 months behind in rent, but he was a good tenant so his landlord would let him pay what he could when he had it. He walked to work every day because he didn’t have the money to fix his car.
He was laid off from his job for a few months bc of the pandemic and got unemployment plus the “enhanced” benefits. And he got two refund checks. I remember him telling me that he actually caught up on rent for the first time in years and had put away a few hundred in savings and it felt really life changing for him.
So I think for some people it really did make a difference. And for people that already had enough money to make ends meet, that extra cash from the refunds was used to buy things they wouldn’t normally have, like what the article is saying.
SplinteredInHerHead | 14 hours ago
Yeah, the unemployed at the time were getting an extra 600$ a week. I was still working at a nursing home all throughout and was just baffled. I don't even make that much a week employed.
Choomasaurus_Rox | 5 hours ago
And we all agree that the problem is with shitty corporate policies that systematically underpay employees, not the people who were getting unemployment, right?
the_TAOest | 3 hours ago
Agreed. WOW, I enjoyed SNAP benefits and Medicaid and some extra for being unemployed. I volunteered to help in my community by shopping groceries and walking dogs and cleaning homes for three seniors without anyone.
I was Happy, I took the time to Recover from nicotine addiction and alcohol addiction, which helped me find happiness. My life changed for the better when I could make rent, but groceries. And focus on my best person by exercising away bad habits that masked my depression from being paycheck to paycheck.
We need more assistance like this to help people
tmgieger | 10 hours ago
A neighbor's 16 year old kid had worked at a chain pizza place for a couple of months for extra spending money 8-12 hours a week. When it closed, they even received the $600 a week. Kid made thousands more being "unemployed." But those that did work, their company may have received incentive money but it often was not passed down to the employee.
leeps22 | 6 hours ago
There was a lot of ppp money that went to small business owners. In my area there were a bunch of real estate agents and tradesman that pocketed a good chunk of money. I was more than a little jealous I didnt have an llc.
penguinjuice | 11 hours ago
The US government spent more than $5 trillion dollars in COVID relief including more than $1.8 trillion in direct payments to individuals. That’s a fuckton of cash. The combined net worth of all US billionaires at the start was about $3 trillion.
altiuscitiusfortius | 3 hours ago
It's not the free money that did that. It's the upper middle class that had 40k a year budgeted for family vacations and 35k a year budgeted for restaurants and entertainment who now had crazy amounts of surplus cash. They were the ones buying up everything.
Poor people got free money. Rich people got wfm and free ppp loans. Working people got to go to work and risk their lives for nothing extra.
I work in health care. The front line got unpaid overtime to watch people die. The senior managers were working from home having the time if their life
CarpeNivem | 13 hours ago
I had extra money during the pandemic not because I was given any, but because I stopped going out, and wow did the saving accumulate. There was probably a lesson to be learned there, but I blew it all on a Onewheel instead. No regrets.
marenamoo | 7 hours ago
My husband had a small office equipment company and that PPP allowed him to keep his employees paid because no one was at the office and certainly no one was buying office equipment. At the end the PPP just covered the salaries and office expenses. If he had to close those employees would have been paid unemployment
UnluckyWriting | 6 hours ago
Sorry I didn’t mean to imply all PPP money was pocketed, it was critical for a lot of companies to keep people employed. But the stories of fraud and abuse are appalling.
marenamoo | 4 hours ago
No need to feel sorry - no offense taken.
We are fortunate to have stayed open. We are also aware of the rampant abuse of the funds.
OldManWillow | 3 hours ago
Well for one, people had extra money from not spending it on entertainment. But also the unemployment was not just for people who weren't employed at all. I had a full time job, they cut our hours to something like 20 a week and we got unemployment on top of that. I would say for 70% of the employees, that ended up being a pay increase.
jgoldrb48 | 13 hours ago
I did go to Cabo on that shit. 🥳🎉
When we were all sitting in the hot tub, the economy obviously came up.
We all spent the stimmy to make that wedding. Hilarious!
OFwant2move | 15 hours ago
If only boomers kept all of the free hand ups they got from the governments - instead of legislating all of the help away - first time home buyers credits, government subsidized higher education, pensions….
Nope they said I got mine screw the future generations
Pulsewavemodulator | 14 hours ago
Yeah. It’s not about the house they bought. It’s about the NIMBY attitude they legislated with to “protect” that home. It’s not about the business they created giving jobs. It’s that they voted to remove protections for their workers. It’s not that they burned fossil fuels, its that they got society addicted to them, and ignored pretty clear and simple messages that they were stealing from the future generations. There’s plenty of stuff where they did ok. But most of the conventional wisdom of that generation post-reagan iterated out into this mess. If that’s too hard for them to admit, I’m sorry man. Sometimes a mirror is an unpleasant thing to look at.
Poonchow | 12 hours ago
The Cold War really fucked with their heads. They got inundated with pro-capitalism propaganda before they could walk and talk, and look! "Capitalism won!" They really think corporate exploitation and prosperity gospel, 'supply-side Jesus' is the God given goodest truth.
Some found a way to inoculate, of course, but it really does feel like a whole generation of American Psychos took over, and there's so fucking many of them it's impossible to do much about it.
kafka_lite | 4 hours ago
How the same generation that protested Vietnam cheerled us to Iraq will never make sense to me.
fgfs262 | an hour ago
They weren't opposed to the war, just the draft.
garyp714 | 2 hours ago
How the free love hippie generation turned to supporting the war on drugs and abstinence only policies is pure insanity.
TopRevenue2 | 11 hours ago
Don't forget when in the early 90s they obliterated cash assistance for the poor under the guise of personal responsibility.
click-monster | 8 hours ago
The phrase "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was originally meant to show how ridiculous it is to expect that of someone - it's impossible.
It says so much about themselves how they missed the point and used it all the time to insist on "personal responsibility" (AKA "got mine, f* you")
dragoneye | 11 hours ago
Exactly, they continually voted for politicians that promised to reduce their costs and now the system is in a failure state due to decades of under-funding social services. Just because many of them spent that money allowing the rich to become richer, rather than saving it, doesn't mean it wasn't their fault that the economy is in the state it is currently in.
There isn't a good solution to this either. Even as the boomers die or downsize those homes aren't going to drop to the price that the rest of us can afford, they are going to get bought up by companies that will be happy to rent it to you to extract as much value out of you as possible.
delirium_red | 10 hours ago
Boomers didn't elect the current administration alone. And it did more damage than any since Reagan
Opinionsare | 5 hours ago
The One Percent had their Media Mouthpieces create this Generation vs. Generation cover story as they continued to vacuum up the wealth of the country.
This propaganda was very effective as the Capitalists stagnanted wages over 6+ decades, while steadily increasing prices across the board.
Now we have reached the point where normal American life has degenerated to a bleak reality where 70% of families don't have the financial ability to handle a $1,000 emergency.
But we appear to be on the cusp of celebrating the first Trillionaire......
TopRevenue2 | 2 hours ago
It took Biden - the lone Silent Generation president to break stagnation.
TopRevenue2 | 11 hours ago
"Above all, many of them feel just as stuck as millennials and Gen Z." Writes an article about generations feeling stuck and ignores Gen X entirely.
librarypunk1974 | 4 hours ago
It’s pretty much a trope that GenX has always been and always will be ignored. I didn’t realize it until someone pointed it out and now I see it everywhere.
thehippieswereright | 12 hours ago
american generations arguing over money and opportunity that was stolen by the rich and their political class is the strangest thing to view from afar
Competitive-One-2749 | 10 hours ago
as a millenial american, i think this is an underrepresented point. we have had our boot on the necks of the rest of the world for ages, and we have enjoyed too much for too long. im a poor middle ager, but id be sanguine if i saw our wealth being distributed outward instead of being consolidated upward to the financier class.
thehippieswereright | 4 hours ago
apparently, your southern states are richer than most european countries, while some neighbourhoods look distinctly third world.
(granted, I have not been there since 2001)
GorganzolaVsKong | 14 hours ago
Nothing is easy unless you’re actually rich rich - but turning against each other is a great way to keep the assholes in charge of
21plankton | 15 hours ago
I enjoyed the follow up article to the opinion piece. As an older boomer I do accept the “pig in the python” metaphor and wonder what will eventually happen in our economy when the wealth of a generation is spent, the large homes have aged and the excess wealth is burned off in healthcare and inheritances.
America will be a poorer place for having lost a huge and vibrant generation who “did their own thing”, who began with rebellion and ended in obstinance and disdain for what is left of America.
stinktoad | 15 hours ago
Everyone younger than you is ready for your whole selfish generation to get out of the way so we can start fixing the mess you made
fraktalmau5 | 13 hours ago
Dude all the tech bros shitting up the world are Generation X. You better stop waiting and get off your ass now, unless you’re waiting for them to croak too.
phenomenomnom | 6 hours ago
Different problem. The Gen X cohort is too small to cause problems in the exact same way as the Boomers,
and was never going to be squatting in the c-suite -- because the Boomers are still there right now, as Gen X is getting ready to wind things down and the Millennials are in their prime.
The Millennials currently outnumber Gen X by a ratio of 9 to 8. The Baby Boomers outweighed them even more: 3 to 2 when both groups were at their peak.
The very few Gen X tech moguls are gaming wealth consolidation that had already started and gained scary momentum by the time Gen X was out of college.
The polls do show that Gen X went majority for Trump, which, speaking as a Gen Xer, will always baffle me. I don't have any maga friends or associates my own age -- no, thank you -- and I live in the Deep South.
Anecdotally, maga is a complaint that I hear my acquaintances make about our 80 year old parents' generation -- even older than Boomers -- and the reason why we no longer want to see some of the weirder older cousins at the holidays.
Seriously, I do not get it. It just doesn't match all the other data on our generation. Relatively tech and internet-media savvy compared to the Boomers, thus more capable of recognizing propaganda. Raised with Earth Day, and Mr Rogers, and Dr Spock's childcare manual ... supposedly always reported more progressive values, compared to the Boomers. Right up until 2016. Shrug emoji.
It's tempting to blame bad polling or bad reporting. Every info source seems fishy, or compromised ... undependable now. Hypernormalization, maybe? But something doesn't add up.
(By the way, since I keep having to have this conversation lately, every time I type more than a paragraph: No, I'm not using an AI. I've been puking out em-dashes since before you were born, ya whippersnapper.)
squeezemachine | 5 hours ago
I am similar to you, Gen X, grew up in a major progressive city, thought society was going in the right direction, more humane, more equal, more environmentally conscious, alternative or whatever. No MAGA friends. I hate to say it but I do think the propaganda worked on Gen X.
They flocked to FB around 2010 and got bombarded with all the racist, anti-science, alternative facts bullshit. The men with no college got hit with outsourcing, number 1 job is truck driver and listening to right wing crap on the radio. Other factors too, uncontrolled immigration. Overall result, anti-education, anti-government, racist bullshit.
phenomenomnom | 2 hours ago
You're onto something there. I do remember reading that the right wing AM radio takeover was intended to reach truck drivers, specifically, because they were prosperous enough to be influential in working class communities.
Maybe also it has to do with Gen X's nihilistic streak. The "slacker" thing. Quiet quitting avant la lettre.
"We were never going to be in charge so fuckit, let's call in sick, watch cartoons and eat Capn Crunch" became de facto accelerationism. "Elect the monster clown, burn it all, and mosh in the ashes."
Gross, I hope not. I hate that. But maybe, sort of.
IpeeInclosets | 14 hours ago
Fix? Lets start small with unfucking, then work on repairs.
SMWW66 | 14 hours ago
The sooner the fucking better!
plassteel01 | 15 hours ago
Revealing what even Boomers are scared?
Laura9624 | 14 hours ago
The article mentions the nurse who has $100,000 saved for retirement. As if its pretty good. That is very little in this economy. Scary for a lot of us. The median retirees have saved is $87,000.
edgefull | 3 hours ago
writer doesn't know a thing about economics
Choano | 8 hours ago
Paywall-free link to the article: https://archive.ph/otXVM
[OP] sfled | 2 hours ago
TY! Upvote for viz
Commercial-Life-9998 | 2 hours ago
Can we say for the billionth time: a generation spans abject poverty/abuse to those who surfed waves of prosperity. Broad brush strokes denies a person their humanity. Ya all stop characterizing a generation as one person, it tears at the fabric of life.
theartoffun | 34 minutes ago
Why doesn’t a more liberal agenda entertainment company come up with something analogous to Fox News? Use US nationalism at it’s pandering core. Then focus on fear-mongering on issues important to older generations like social security, negative economic policies of the conservative establishment, etc. Wrap the whole thing up with attractive overly made up red lipstick ‘news’ anchors. Sensationalize the most trivial topics and add some false over exaggerated narratives. Like “Over budgeted Louisiana PD targets seniors for lawful Bingo gathering!” or “Russian immigrants invade the WH!” or “They are taking away your Social Security and coming for your home next!”
IpeeInclosets | 14 hours ago
Hottake, I'd pay for more data centers if it means we can sunset our legacy human corpus (aka boomers)