7 Reasons Baby Boomers are the Worst Generation

Fact: Tom Brokaw was correct; the Greatest Generation of Americans was the generation that fought and sacrificed to win World War II, who would go on to build modern America after the war.

Fact: Everyone hates Generation Y/Milennials or whatever they call kids aged 14-30.

Fact: It was the Baby Boomers who, despite being raised by the Greatest Generation somehow parlayed the wealth of the Greatest Generation into creating and raising a generation of overweight, narcissistic, tuned-out, video game players.

Thanks for coming out, Baby Boomers.


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    Fuck off, punk.

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    Thanks for reading a punk blog, maybe someone from your parents' generation could've presented a more articulate rebuttal.

  • In reply to TRSlyder:

    We need to get a "like" button on here so I could like that response.

  • In reply to Jimmy Greenfield:

    Until that day comes, "Like"

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    In reply to Jimmy Greenfield:

    Don't you have a back to mow?

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    Yeah, your mother's.

  • In reply to RockyDennis:

    that says it all rock. Baby boomers had the real worst generation parents ever. Too busy with their new found ww2 victory and t.V. Too busy doing what "the Man" wanted them to do , like sending their kids to the killing fields of Vietnam or blowing money on a fake war on poverty. Electing dummies like LBJ, and getting JFK killed and not finding out who did it. Promoting a fake cold war with Russia, etc, etc

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    In reply to nowarmhere:

    nowarmhere my friend You've only scratched the surface. Anyone who cares to look will find the ones who were truly selfish.. The Greatest Generation.. or So called... From WWII's end right into the 1990s the Greatest Generation played politics like a master to get everything they wanted. 1945 Housing crisis? No problem many medically discharged soldiers and sailors running on their "Hero" status had already busted open Federal coffers to create the most generous GI Bill in 1944, so when housing was needed more Federal Money and tax breaks were given to create Suberbia.. where all those WWII vets could use their GI Bill Housing benefit while Uncle Sam paid for them to go back to school with enough of a stipend that they could even start a family! Luxury indeed, that they of course would deny their children since the survivors of Vietnam came home to the same GI Bill that their Fathers had without any changes for inflation. It gets worse, Credit Cards.. AKA How the returning GI's filled those tract houses with furniture and tvs that oh yes.. they allowed to raise their children.. Sorry Gen Xers.. Mom & Dad were just raising you the way we were raised. Back to Credit Cards.. No problem if the interest was ridiculous you just wrote it all off when you did your taxes and the Government help you pay for all that nice GDP stimulating you'd done. Gen X'ers What? You didn't know that Credit Card interest was once deductable? No real surprise, once they were retiring the Greatests in Congress decided that they'd bought all they needed and got rid of that deduction. How about Social Security... what everyone worries about. Funny thing the FICA taxes were flat for years and years and the payout was left unadjusted for years and years. A crisis was reached where the Evening News was doing stories about the Parents of the Greatest Generation buying and eating Cat food, because it was all they could afford. About this time The Greatest Generation was realizing that they would be retiring before long and their pensions and social security might not cut it.. What? You don't know about Pensions? Well right to it after I say that the Greatest took care of Social Security as they did everything.. For themselves.. They put a rachet into the FICA tax to increase the withholding year by year.. and they put a Get out of Taxes free cutoff in for Higher wage earners which makes no sense unless you are the one on the right side of the cutoff. Boomers took years to get to that golden zone.. some never did. Ahh I know what about Pensions... Well you see for many many years Companies offered Pensions..this was a company benefit that would guarantee you an income when you retired. Yes and your SS benefit would supliment it so that you could have a comfortable retirement. Pension Plans and Company Paid Health care were dinosaurs by the 1970s... You see the Greatest were or already had retired and so the Greatest in Washington saw an untapped revenue stream that their fellow greatest wouldn't object to them tapping.. so tap they did! While they were at it they eliminated the 3 martini lunch and ohh yes Company paid health benefits.. All of which had their deductible status stripped long before the Boomers got control of even the House. At every step and turn the Greatest Generation manipulated this Country's laws and tax regulations to their own benefit. Sorry to burst the Generation X'ers balloon but your Moms & Dads got played as badly as you claim to have been. No Xers it was your precious Amah and pop pop who fleeced they US and ran.

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    In reply to nowarmhere:

    gen x sucks millinum sucks iggernay imatators sucjs

  • In reply to Jimmy Greenfield:

    Seriously. Best reply to a comment EVER!

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    In reply to Jimmy Greenfield:

    You took the words right out of my mouth. Lol.

  • In reply to TRSlyder:

    TRS, brevity is the soul of wit. Ergo, fuck off, punk.

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    In reply to GoAwayNOW:

    Agreed. I am moving to Chicago. I am a gay liber Boomerman and TRJ can suck my mammoth. If it weren't for us Boomer Gays and our elders, all you punk gays would have No right, NO, marriage, and No laws to protect you. What do we get? Ignored, cast off. FU

  • In reply to GoAwayNOW:

    Very mature quoting Shakespeare with the follow up of "Ergo, fuck off, punk"

  • In reply to GoAwayNOW:

    The greatest irony from the worst generation is their inexorable refrain that we are, "losing traditional America", which is to say, "Things used to be better", and they are exactly right- things used to be far better before they were handed the keys.

  • In reply to TRSlyder:

    Fact: Boomers, (me being one, age 53) were/are in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's in the last 20 years when most of the damaging stuff has gone on with our government. Thus, while we did not personally put into place these outrageously destructive policies, we allowed it to happen, and still have not thrown most of the bums out. Thus, we boomers should take a large share of responsibility for what has happened.

    That having been said, there are a lot of younger folks voting for these (I will say it) communist politicians/policies and that is unfortunately been common for decades with the younger generation.

    The fixes are actually pretty simple. The problem is getting people to do it.

    Please see my two posts near the end of this blog and please comment as to my logic and facts.

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    In reply to millers15:

    What you write is a perfect reflection of Baby Boomer narcissism. Deferring the obvious disaster of your generation.

    The government is made of Baby Boomers - but the distressing part is they have the generational qualities of a Baby Boomer. If you... I guess a non-bum... were to be in the government - you would bring all the misconceptions of your generation with you, and be apart of the problem as you already are.

    Your older children will experience an abbreviation of their lives - as too old to change - they will end up in squalor. The younger children will barely be able to secure a livelihood, and must then clean up after you.

    I saw your complete divorce from reality. Buying property with debt, acting as if retirement was assured. The irony - I choose your rest-home - because you're not living with me.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    You don't have me pegged quite right here, but I see you did read and respond to my posts down below and you apparently realized that I am far from typical boomer thinking. To re-state, we boomers are a huge part of the problem, if for no other reason than we allowed all this nonsense to go on, even if some of have paid more in taxes than we have received from taxpayers. My son (in-law) is 28, my daughter 27, and my other son is 23. I tell them all the time that I am ashamed of what my generation has done to them and their future. And I educate them and anyone who will listen of any age about the true change that we need to implement immediately. Washington will never fix itself because they are the problem and they have no self-interest in fixing themselves. Can you say unabashed greed and unmitigated outright gall? Read Mark Levin's new book about Constitutional Amendments (that require politicians to actually be responsible and put the people first) and tune it to his nationally syndicated radio show as much as possible. We the people have to take back our country. Plug into the TEA party.

  • In reply to millers15:

    Hey Mark Levin these are your guys with their Ayn Rand

    On Thursday, February 27, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told the Senate's Special Committee on Aging that we should tackle Social Security sooner rather than later, so as to avoid "abrupt and painful" revisions of the program when the baby boomers start retiring. Congress should, he said, consider things like raising the retirement age and changing the annual benefit Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), before raising the payroll tax, because a payroll tax hike discourages hiring.
    "Early initiatives to address the economic effects of baby-boom retirements could smooth the transition to a new balance between workers and retirees. If we delay, the adjustments could be abrupt and painful," Greenspan said. He added that Congress should consider switching to a lower inflation rate for the annual COLA, which could save billions in benefit outlays.
    Greenspan's words should set off alarm bells in well-informed minds. Almost exactly ten years ago, a National Commission on Social Security Reform headed by Greenspan proposed a package of benefit cuts and tax increases, which Congress enacted with little change, and which turned out to be one of the most oppressive—and underhanded—things Congress ever did to younger Americans over Social Security. It also failed to solve Social Security's long-term problems.
    Background to the Greenspan Commission

    The 1972 amendments to the Social Security Act not only greatly increased benefits, and created the annual COLA to increase benefits to compensate for inflation, but included an overly generous formula for the COLA which in effect adjusted benefits twice. This plus the inflationary stagnation of the 1970s created Social Security's first funding crisis. To cure it, Congress passed in December 1977, and President Jimmy Carter signed into law, amendments which both undid the overadjustment of benefits and mandated the largest tax increase in American history up till then. Supposedly this would solve the problem permanently.
    It didn't. The long-term actuarial deficit fell from a frightening -8.20 percent of taxable payroll to a still-troubling -1.46 percent. Moreover, thanks to inflationary recession, the short-term outlook was calamitous; in 1980, Social Security's Board of Trustees reported a deficit of almost $2 billion in 1979, that by 1982 at the latest, Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) would be unable to pay benefits on time, and that by calendar 1985 Social Security's trust fund would be exhausted.

    So in May 1981, Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Richard Schweiker, sent Congress Reagan's proposals for restoring Social Security's solvency.

    Instead of another tax hike, Reagan proposed benefit cuts—most importantly, cutting early retirement benefits from 80 percent of the full benefit to 55 percent, and increasing the dollar "bend points" in the Average Indexed Monthly Wage formula, which break up income into intervals upon which benefit calculations are based), by 50 percent of the average annual wage increase, not 100 percent.
    Reagan walked into a buzz saw. Congressional Democrats, seniors' groups, Social Security architects such as Wilbur Cohen, unions, and others blasted him for "breaking the social contract," and he suffered his first defeat in Congress. In December 1981, he recommended creation of a bipartisan commission to study Social Security and recommend reforms. Reagan picked five members, including economist Greenspan as chairman; House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill picked five; and Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker picked five more. The Greenspan Commission quarreled bitterly over what to do, missing its December 1982 deadline, and did not issue its report until January 15, 1983.
    The 1983 Social Security Rescue
    It was just in time. Exhaustion of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund was now projected for July 1983, meaning benefit checks wouldn't go out on time. Reagan and Congress moved fast. The Commission's proposals were introduced on January 26; both houses of Congress passed the final version of the rescue legislation on March 25; and Reagan signed it into law on April 20, 1983.
    Supposedly, the Greenspan Commission gave politicians a political cover enabling them to bite the bullet on Social Security and even do the unthinkable: cut benefits. Supposedly, the Greenspan Commission's reforms were a compromise between the Republicans, who wanted to cut benefits, and the Democrats, who wanted to raise taxes instead. Supposedly, they therefore spread the pain widely, cutting current benefits, raising current and future taxes, cutting future benefits, and dragging previously exempted persons into Social Security's revenue pool.
    Superficially considered, they did. Current beneficiaries had their July 1983 COLA delayed six months, until January 1984, and all beneficiaries would have COLAs paid in January thereafter. For the first time, Social Security benefits were subject to taxation. Beginning in 1984, up to 50 percent of Social Security benefits would be included in taxable income for persons whose sum of adjusted gross income plus taxable interest income plus one-half of Social Security benefits exceeded $25,000 for single beneficiaries and $32,000 for married beneficiaries.

    The future tax increases mandated in 1977 were accelerated; the payroll tax rate increase scheduled for 1985 kicked in in 1984 instead, and part of the 1990 increase went into effect in 1988. In addition, the self-employment tax rate, which the 1977 law would have increased to 75 percent of the sum of the employer and employee shares of the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax, was raised to 100 percent of this sum.

    Many additional categories of employees were brought under Social Security, including the President, members of Congress, federal judges, federal employees newly hired on or after January 1, 1984, and present and future employees of tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. State and local government employees, who previously were able to opt out of Social Security, no longer could as of April 20, 1983.

    The retirement age (the age at which one could qualify for full Social Security benefits) was gradually raised, to reach sixty-six in 2009 and sixty-seven in 2027. One could still retire early and start collecting early retirement benefits at age sixty-two, but the early retirement benefit would be trimmed from 80 percent of the full benefit in 1983, to 75 percent in 2009 and 70 percent in 2027.
    The 1983 Rescue Unmasked
    But although the pain was indeed spread widely, it was certainly not spread evenly. The distribution of sacrifice was incredibly lopsided, falling least heavily on current beneficiaries and most heavily on current taxpayers, future taxpayers, and future beneficiaries. In other words, the elderly of 1983 were spared any real hardship, and the bulk of the burden was put on those who were young in 1983 and on Americans yet unborn.
    In the short-run period of 1983–1989, the majority of the pain was borne by taxpayers, not current beneficiaries. Using its intermediate actuarial assumptions, the Office of the Actuary estimated that the amendments would raise an additional $39.4 billion in this period from the higher FICA tax rates, $18.5 billion from the higher self-employment tax rate, and $21.8 billion from extending Social Security coverage to those not then in the system. Total estimated additional revenues from current and newly-created taxpayers: $79.7 billion.

    The new benefit taxation, which would affect only a minority of the current beneficiaries—only the richest ten percent, according to Phillip Longman's 1987 book Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America—would bring in another $26.6 billion. The only major hit taken by all the current beneficiaries, the delay in COLAs, would cut benefits by $39.4 billion over this six-year period, for total current beneficiary losses of $66.0 billion.
    The inequity was even worse in the long run. In 1983, Social Security's actuaries put the long-range actuarial deficit at -2.09 percent of taxable payroll under intermediate assumptions. Raising the retirement age made the largest single contribution to eliminating this deficit, wiping out about a third of it, 0.71 percent of taxable payroll; and this fell entirely upon future beneficiaries.

    Benefit taxation increased the long-term income rate by 0.61 percent of taxable payroll—the second-largest contribution to erasing the deficit; it fell somewhat on the (richest) current beneficiaries, but mostly on future ones. These two measures accounted for 1.32 percent of taxable payroll, or almost two-thirds of the long-term actuarial deficit. Most of the rest was eliminated by bringing new people (who would initially participate as taxpayers) under Social Security (0.38 percent of taxable payroll), and accelerating the phasing-in of the 1977 tax increase and increasing the self-employment tax rate (0.22 percent).
    It turns out, then, that the allegedly broad sharing of sacrifice was in fact engineered to injure, and provoke, the politically powerful current beneficiaries, who with their allies had routed the Reagan Administration in 1981, the least, and put the lion's share of the hurt on the young, including those not even born yet.
    Moreover, when we examine how the sacrifice broke down between benefit cuts and tax increases, we see that the broad-based rescue was, in reality, disproportionately based on tax increases. The measures to increase revenues—benefit taxation, accelerated tax increases, the higher self-employment tax rate, and augmenting the revenue base with new participants—reduced the long-term actuarial deficit by 1.21 percent of taxable payroll, or almost 58 percent of the total.
    Not only that, the Greenspan Commission's reforms were shot through with serpentine underhandedness. For one thing, the gradual ramping up of the retirement age and cutting of the early retirement benefit were scheduled so as to bite worst in 2027, 44 years after enactment—in other words long after the politicians who had enacted them had left Congress and were safe from retaliation by angry baby boomers on Election Day.
    For another, the benefit taxation will hit future generations far harder than it hit the current beneficiaries of the 1980s, because the income thresholds which trigger the taxation, $25,000 and $32,000, were not adjusted for inflation (and still aren't). This means that over time, thanks to inflation, more and more beneficiaries will hit these tax tripwires, just as inflation shoved Americans into higher tax brackets before income tax indexing was enacted in 1981.

    Phillip Longman maintained that of all the features of the 1981 rescue, benefit taxation "most reduces the benefits promised to baby boomers and their children." While benefit taxation hit only the richest beneficiaries when enacted, Longman noted, even with the modest rates of inflation which the Social Security actuaries' intermediate analysis assumed, a $25,000 income in 2030 would have less purchasing power than an income of $4,000 in the mid-1980s! "So by the time the baby boomers qualify for Social Security pensions, the program will be effectively means tested, if it survives at all. Under current law, i.e., including the 1983 amendments, only the poorest baby boomers are even promised a fair return on their contributions to the system."

    How's that for a piece of Byzantine cunning?
    Yet for all its heavy burdens, which it imposed with such inequity and insidiousness, the 1983 rescue of Social Security turned out to be only temporarily effective. The 1983 Annual Report of Social Security's Board of Trustees projected long-term actuarial balance for Social Security.

    Just five years later, the long-term balance was in deficit again, -0.58 percent of taxable payroll. In 1993, ten years after the great rescue legislation, the long-term actuarial deficit was -1.46 percent. In 1994, thanks to various changes in actuarial assumptions, the Board of Trustees reported a deficit of -2.13 percent—worse than the deficit which the 1983 rescue had erased. The long-term actuarial deficit continued to grow, hitting -2.23 percent of taxable payroll in the 1997 Annual Report.

    An improved economic outlook due to the late-1990s prosperity and productivity growth led to optimistic revision of various economic assumptions, and the long-term actuarial deficit began dropping as a result, to -1.87 percent of taxable payroll in the 2002 Annual Report. Nevertheless, the trustees continue to point out that Social Security is not in long-term close actuarial balance and that corrective action is necessary.
    To sum up, the 1983 rescue legislation embodying the recommendations of Greenspan's Commission substantially injured the baby boomers and their younger siblings on the sly—and it didn't help.

    Another Stealth "Rescue"?
    The lurking menace in Greenspan's recent remarks is that he may be floating a trial balloon for another stealth "rescue" of Social Security which pushes the bulk of the pain into the future and doesn't really accomplish much. It is almost certain that any trimming of benefits by the measures Greenspan advocates—raising the retirement age or shifting to a lower inflation rate for the COLA—would scrupulously avoid arousing the politically formidable current elderly, who are not only organized into pressure groups such as the American Association of Retired Persons and the Seniors Coalition, but, as is well known, participate in voting much more heavily than do the young.
    Notice that Greenspan wants "[e]arly initiatives to address the economic effects of baby-boom retirements." What's significant here is that he says nothing about cutting current costs, which have exploded to extremely high levels. Benefit outlays were $141 billion ($386 million a day) in calendar 1981 and $268.2 billion ($735 million a day) in calendar 1991, almost double the 1981 figure. In calendar 2001, Social Security paid $431.9 billion in benefits ($1.18 billion a day), over three times the 1981 cost.

    Moreover, this mushroom growth will continue even before the baby boomers swamp Social Security. Under intermediate actuarial assumptions, benefit outlays are projected at $546.7 billion ($1.5 billion a day) for calendar 2006, before any baby boomers retire, and $746.7 billion ($2.05 billion a day), an increase of 72.9 percent over 2001's figure, for calendar 2011, when boomer retirements have just begun.
    Then, too, just as the Greenspan Commission's 1983 benefit taxation with trigger income levels unadjusted for inflation is a stealth means test, tinkering with the price index for the COLA is itself an intrinsically insidious way to cut benefits. Rather than cut them directly, it finagles the arithmetic on which their adjustment for inflation is based.
    Finally, fiddling with the inflation rate for the COLA may in fact not make all that much difference. Buried toward the end of the February 28 Washington Post piece on Greenspan's remarks was the interesting news that whereas a 1996 commission found that the Consumer Price Index overstated inflation by 1.1 percentage points a year, another study done in 2000 found that improvements in the index made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics had whittled the overstatement down to 0.6 percentage points a year, an improvement of almost 50 percent.

    Now, the Social Security actuaries have already factored in the improvements in the Consumer Price Index. Both the improvement in the long-term actuarial deficit in recent years and the projected explosion in outlays by 2011 already take the more-accurate index into account. Which leads one to wonder just how much we'd really gain by tinkering with the CPI some more.
    So while Greenspan's recent testimony seems like a courageous and tough-minded warning about Social Security, under close scrutiny it looks like the makings of another serpentine but ineffectual attempt to fend off disaster.

    John Attarian is an independent scholar and writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His outstanding book Social Security: False Consciousness and Crisis, which treats the myths and realities of Social Security in detail, has just been published by Transaction Publishers. He is also author of the Mises Institute study The Roots of the Social Security Myth. Send him MAIL.

    John Attarian, Social Security: False Consciousness and Crisis (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002).
    "Greenspan Warns of Social Security Delay," Washington Post, February 28, 2003.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    the baby boomers had to buy property from the ww2 generation -victors in ww2 who thought they could plunder their own people. the ww2 farts all manned the banks, the Chamber of Comerce, the welfare offices, the congress, the senate, the Supreme Court, WALL STREET when the boomers applied for loans, or admisison to colleges. . Everybody from WW2 out to make money on their kids, be it Vietnam, war on poverty , fake busing in Boston, fake job creation, export of jobs, fake foreign aid, on and on. WW2 generation were UGLY AMERICANS. AND THE WORST PARENTS IN THE WORLD

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    Hi Ryan,
    Keep writing!
    Boomer listening!

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    Here is my upvote.

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    In reply to Ryan Strasser:


  • In reply to millers15:

    What is your definition of a communist?
    What is you definition of a generation; Is it a generation the parents, sons and daughters of modest income; or the sons and daughter of the suburbs. Are we speaking of the boomer in congess born in the sixties, the fifties, or the one retiring in the present.

  • In reply to Laura60:

    Thank you Laura60.
    Communist in this discussion is an individual or governmental system that mandates that a working person be financially over-burdened to give a disproportionate amount of money to those that refuse to work. I have no problem with helping those in legitimate hardship in cases where it is impossible for them to earn enough to fund their particular case of misfortune.
    Notice I said impossible. You and I are not born entitled to live in an expensive area of the country, be given money for an iphone, two blue-ray players, or whatever a person perceives as a "right" because we live in America, just because our mother gave birth to us. If you would like, read my other posts about this whole point.

    Not sure about your question on what is my definition of a generation. I don't care that much at the moment about what generation did what in the past, except that I wanted to take responsibility (I am about to turn 55) for my part in being asleep at the wheel and letting the crooked politicians spend money we don't have, for their own selfish interests. Why have we not put them in jail ? If you did what they did, except in the public sector, you would be put in jail.

    We are here where we are now. So let us learn from the mistakes of the boomers and other generations but let us move on. Let's get busy fixing it, through education about the actual facts, math and logic of the real world, and re-emphasizing the constitution. And most of all accountability.
    If you are comparing a generation of lower income and higher income folks in your question, I will briefly try and address that. Please see my other posts if you like.
    Yes, some folks are born into more advantageous situations than others. If you were born in this country, you were already ahead of the game compared to most of the world.
    And yes, sticking to this country, in general, folks born into an urban situation meant, more than likely, on average, that your parent(s) made less money than the kids born in the burbs. So yes, almost everything is more challenging. Having your parents be married and both living in your house would be a good start. I am not a hater, just sticking to facts. Study after study demonstrates clearly that kids raised in one home environment vs the other are more likely to finish high school, develop a career, get married and stay married, not wind up in prison, etc etc. Don't get mad at me, these are just the facts.
    I never said differently, and I am not sure what you are asking me. I do not care about race, color, gender, place of birth, vocation, etc in terms of the fact that we now have a "government gone wild"
    Even most extremely liberal (or progressive or whatever term is more acceptable) will admit they have no idea as to how we can conceivably pay for the way-out-of-control spending that continues to spiral ridiculously out of sight. Every society in history that has followed this course of action has devastated itself. I fear by the time that enough people realize this, it will be far too late. It may be too late now.

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    What was said that wasn't true? Your generation is responsible for the current communist in office, your lucky we don't feed you dog food.

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    In reply to 4zen:

    I suppose my my generation is also responsible for your abysmal grammar.

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    I forgave your amateur prose, 'punk'. This piece still has merits you're too angry to address, which means it has shadow for you.

    They say 'old men grow trees', what have left, but scorched earth, and your bill.

    Please mind my reticulating gerunds and spiraling infinitives.

  • In reply to 4zen:


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    In reply to 4zen:

    There are classes you can take out there called "English as a second language". Please sign up for one today for everyone's sake.

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:


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    In reply to 4zen:

    Even though it has nothing to do with the dialogue and you obviously do not understand the basic concepts of language, at least you spelled that word correctly, which is a start. Keep up the good work, Skippy!

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    In reply to Deke Rivers:

    There is a saying an old person once told me - maybe it was a friend of yours, "Don't throw rocks if you live in a glass house."

    You need a lesson or two in English Grammar. The internet has sites that can assist you - for free. Or you can go to an overpriced university and listen to some old windbag.

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    I created this account just so I could leave this message, even though you might be dead from being so fucking old. First off who gives a fuck about grammar? Also if you want to complain about the fact that the English language has become dumbed down who the fuck do you think you fucking are doing any criticizing? Your generation is the reason why kids are so goddamn stupid these days. Your generation started the hippie movement and treated your kids like they were Kings and Queens and they turned out to be monsters because of it. Then they had kids of their own and made even bigger jack asses. Now everyone has some sort of disorder that causes them to be a giant fucking dick head these days and it can all be traced back to your dumb asses. You should know. You started the counter culture bull shit and were completely brainwashed by communists. But yeah someone has a fair point to make and instead of addressing them you just use deflect tactics to give non responses. I'm 22 by the way and I'll admit my generation is fucked but we were doomed the day we were all born and it can ALL be traced back to your dumb ass generation. Trump is the only one who can save us and yet you dumb asses just want to keep communism the way it is. Keep brainwashing our generation in schools and universities like you have been ever since you were handed the keys to the castle and keep wondering why everything has gone to shit. I always found it interesting how boomers like to sit there with their macho man persona when you fuckers were the ones who wore dresses and grew your hair our long like a fucking faggot when you were in your 20s. It will only get worse from here until it inevitably implodes from within.

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    In reply to Deke Rivers:

    Irony is that your generation is responsible for the decent of educational standards. Regardless, your generation is responsible for turning the inability to accept blame into an art-form. The disgusting plasticity of culture is a Baby Boomer invention - crystallized into the form od latch key kids concerned for their Facebook accounts.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    Agree that most boomers do not accept the fact that boomers crapped all over the current and future Americans by being selfish and disengaged while selfish politicians have gone 98% of the way in destroying all of us. I am 53, I accept responsibility, and am trying to affect drastic change immediately.

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    In reply to 4zen:

    When I contemplate my parents retirement living - let me add, they chose purchasing more property over helping with my education expenses - dog food is not as of yet ruled out.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    We chose helping our kids with college rather than buying more property, thus their debt is minimal.
    On a related subject, as I said in other posts, the cost of college in general is downright criminal. And more and more businesses care more about hiring the person for their ideas and attitude etc than the stupid piece of paper from some high-priced college.

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    OK, great. We can assign exact percentages on who it to blame for what. I will accept my blame (I am a boomer) for allowing a lot of this to go on.

    More importantly, who is willing to become politically active, run in primaries or at least support real true conservative constitutionalists in primaries and fix this ?

    I just supported Seth Grossman who ran against Chris Christie in the governor's primary in New Jersey. I am now supporting Steve Lonegan who will hopefully become the Republican (but he is a true conservative, aka Ted Cruz) nominee in August to run in a special election in October to determine who will fill Frank Lautenberg's now empty US Senate seat.

    What will you do ?

    Please read my two comments near the end of these other comments and please respond with agreement or state where my facts and logic are wrong. Thank you.

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    In reply to millers15:

    Again. It's not up to you to accept. Your generation squandered the wealth created by the generation immediately preceding it. The mechanization of this is an entirely different conversation. At stake here, is the placement of Baby Boomer retirees as they now want to lean on children they forgot.

    You could have a great relationship with your children.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    Not sure what you mean, "it is not up to me accept." I sincerely believe it is my fault for allowing the crooked politicians to bury the boomers and at least the next 4-5 generations and I want to own up to it. I am being very sincere. Ask the people around me.
    Most younger people listen and agree to me, and most people my age and older think I am a nut because I want to cut back on entitlements, including to the elderly. Anyone should be willing to do the math; whether it is medicaid, medicare, social security, or a tax-payer funded job with all the entitlements that those of us in the public sector are not privy to, the answer is the same. The dollars coming in do not come close to covering the dollars needed to fund all this. Greed and more greed. That is the reality. Nothing will get better until we get an ax and kill it.

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    In reply to millers15:

    Social Security is not an entitlement! We paid in to it for 45 years, and it's ours to come back to us! The entitlements are the welfare and girls and women that keep having kid after kid! That is an entitlement!
    Yet look at the bigger picture! Is it the kids fault that they had a messed up mother and baby daddy? Heck no! Are they going to have the drive to make it in the workforce or just become baby machines or baby daddy's all over again? What happened to pride in oneself and pride in a good days work?

  • The average social security recipient receives more in social security checks than they paid in. How about slowly doing away with social security (payroll deductions as well as the checks that you receive on the other end) and let people be responsible and save for their own retirement. By the way, why don't people stop crying that their social security checks are not enough to live on- they were never intended to FULLY fund a lavish retirement.
    Yes, welfare is a ridiculously out of control entitlement. Read my other posts.
    As far as your second paragraph, it is sad when one has a messed up mother and baby daddy, but at some point one should put on their grown-up pants and do something with themselves instead of continuing the legacy of being a third or fourth generation bum
    Dr. Ben Carson grew up in a very poor home raised by a single mom who couldn't read.
    If you choose to apply yourself, there is virtually unlimited opportunity and college loans for any one who wants to achieve.
    So sick of the excuses -and we keep enabling by increasing the entitlements and increasing the taxation on the already over-burdened taxpayer

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    OPINION: Arguably it is the newest members of Congress who have created the worst gridlock in modern times.

    FACT: 56% of new House members of the 112th Congress were born after 1960. 69% of new House Members of the 113th Congress were born after 1960.

    SUGGESTION: Your criticism, in fact, would be more appropriately directed in this instance at that snarkiest of segments.....Generation X.

  • In reply to duckalley:


    My comments were actually directed to the author of the article.

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    In reply to duckalley:

    Not true.

    The assumption you make overlooks the role of generational power in a representative congress. At present - it is the government of the Baby Boomer generation.

    1. Average age in the House is 55years, in the Senate 60years.

    2. Power in both is determined primarily by seniority.

    3. By your own method, a Generation X government CAN appear in just under 10 years, and no sooner than 5.

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    In reply to Deke Rivers:

    This is an old article but it is also full of inaccuracies. No. 1. The Greatest Generation did not raise the Baby Boomers. They were the Baby Boomers' grandparents. The Silent Generation raised the baby boomers. They were the spoiled, overindulged children of the greatest generation. They ignored the huge families they produced in the baby boom. They were after the almighty buck. Men were the worst. Still trying to hang on to a patriarchal society, they suppressed women into the television roles on tv at the time. This caused the baby boomers to break out and away from the societal norms of that era when they finally came into their generational apex. So, this article, based on that one statement, totally discredits the writer.

  • Well, Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon, but he was long gone when it actually happened. Minor quibble.

  • In reply to Mark McDermott:

    You are right, and I probably should not have attributed that solely to JFK. I knew the sentence was long so I thought a brief attribution would help the sentence flow better. Thank you for pointing that out.

  • In reply to Mark McDermott:

    ...But it was done within the 10 year goal he set and the only reason he was "long gone" was because some put a bullet through his head. Maybe we can give him a break...

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    In reply to gobears3:

    Someone from "The Greatest Generation in the History of Generations" put a bullet in JFK's head. Wasn't that great?

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    In reply to Deke Rivers:

    No, that wasn't great. I assume you are attempting sarcasm... but just in case... Kennedy was a good man. You should watch your mouth.

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    In reply to Mark McDermott:

    Incredibly minor. At least he made a promise & it was kept. "Camelot" was the best of times. Why shoot JFK & leave "O" alive to lie to us & reap only disaster?

  • nicely done! LOVE the "hey, thanks for coming" in the intro. And you're spot on about exorbitant executive pay, income inequality and baseball cards. exactly my experience collecting sports cards

  • In reply to Paul M. Banks:

    Thanks man. The straw that broke my back was when Topps Finest hit $10 a pack- 20 years later that's what a pack of cigarettes cost.

  • I LOVE IT! It's all so true.

  • Hey, I'm a baby boomer and I think we're pretty darn cool. We fixed things that my Dad's generation did not. He won WWII, we got equal rights for women and civil rights. My dad's generation was pretty cool, yes, but most especially if you were white and male. So each generation has its highs and lows. Oh, and we had the absolute best music. And the peace sign? Yep, that was us also. Tie dye? Got rid of girdles!
    Give this boomer some love!

  • In reply to Kathy Mathews:

    You know I've got love for you, Kathy! But you raise a good point, in fact, I emailed my parents telling them they were exempt from my criticism as I painted with a VERY broad brush. My father was the only adult to tell me (when I was a kid) that my baseball cards would never be worth what his generation's cards were and he taught me the saying about "...3 fingers point back at you". And for the record yes, there are plenty of things to like about your generation.

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    In reply to Kathy Mathews:

    Well said Kathy. The trouble with kids today is that they blog thoughtlessly on the internet while thinking of themselves as "writers". Mommy and Daddy TRSlyder did baby boy a huge disservice by constantly telling him how special he was. TRSlyder is just happy that it's meatloaf night in the Slyder household and mommy got him a new TV tray.

  • In reply to Deke Rivers:

    As someone who has known the Slyder family for decades I take exception to this ignorant, thoughtless comment...no one in that house was ever happy about meatloaf night. Also there were no TV trays. (they ate as a family at the table. Every night. After grace. No kidding.)

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    In reply to Kathy Mathews:

    To say you "fixed" things is a little ridiculous. Its like being proud of breaking something, because you had good intentions.

    And the "free love" movement was ridiculous. Your peace sign is a rip-off of an inverted Norse rune used in a campaign against nuclear disarmament - that was after freely used for all kinds of ridiculousness. And unless you are are Jesus or at the poll - wearing sandals is a tad bit disrespectful. I can tell you your old hairy feet are not welcome in my house.

  • In reply to Kathy Mathews:

    I don't think it's fair to take credit for things that happened when most baby boomers were children and teenagers. How could they possibly have been the force behind the civil rights movement in the 60s at that age? The Lucky Few were wholly responsible for that social change.

    Yes tie dye and peace signs were groovy but it's too bad that you traded them in for corporate greed, credit cards and expensive things.

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    In reply to Kathy Mathews:

    You are right on Kathy! I'm proud of many things boomers accomplished, but they really failed on three basic American traditions! Prayer in schools, the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, and the Biblical verse, "spare the rod, spoil the child!" When it comes to my 60's music, you bet! That was music! Today, it's either gibberish, or sounding like screaming idiots!

  • See why I love you?
    And as a teacher, I had some of the same complaints about my generation's little darlings. I think it is because we were raised so strictly and certain members of my generation vowed they would take their kid's side. And they did, to the child's detriment.

    And boomers, we do feel we are pretty darn special and I bet that's annoying! Peace!

  • Awesome!! I'm applauding this thought out piece, since you didn't vote, I'll give a half star for at least not voting in the current administration.

    But, if you buy into the current administration diatribe, you'll be the biggest hypocrite at the dance, and your generation will deserve everything in reaps.

  • In reply to 4zen:

    And BTW, the drones are Obama's play toy not Boehner's.

  • Last September I attended the my father's 62nd class reunion. The room was filled with the generation ahead of us baby boomers, of which I am one and I get exactly what you're saying. However, there are some of us who have raised our kids with respect and some old fashioned family values. Not every baby boomer has failed :)

  • Serious passion here young man. Just wish you could have mentioned that there are quite a few of the Boomers who fell into that group of "Non-725% raise CEOs" and honestly work for a living ... still.

    So I'm listening now ... what is YOUR solution to the mess you say I've created?

    And don't say you just like whining about it cause I coined the use of that word first ... nah, nah, nah, nah.

  • In reply to Jetwhine:

    I'm against endless wars and pay discrepancies worse than that of ancient Rome. I also believe in living debt-free and maintaining infrastructure. I'd also like to see all of our military outposts closed that are currently in sovereign nations.

  • In reply to Jetwhine:

    I propose Zyklon B. This will save remaining Americans the cost of footing the medical bills for an aging population, free up dollars currently spent on social security and improve efficiency by decreasing the amount of time wasted waiting for old people to get out of the way. As baby boomers also tend to fall into the category of obese, we can remove the fat from their dead bodies to use as an alternative fuel source similar to how whale fat was used. The extra cash can be used to pay off the national debt

  • Great list! But I can't blame baby boomers for the baseball card thing ... that is just what happens.

    I would replace it with the Boomer's influence on healthcare: turning doctors into drug pushers, creating the current pill culture, and driving healthcare/insurance prices through the roof. And trying to avoid death they are having surgeries (plastic and otherwise) more and more often.

    And of course, Texas is the reason that the president's dead.

  • This is like the rage that raged after the recent NYTimes "Poor Chicago" book review. Anybody can make similar points about any generation ever -- and who gets to decide the years that make up a generation?? Some "boomers" were already having kids by 1965, so are those boomers' kids boomers, too? I guess it's all just entertainment, like arguing Cubs/Sox.

  • In reply to Floyd Sullivan:

    You're right, this was written in Chicago and expresses negativity, so it's the same as that one other negative thing you remember from Chicago. "anybody can make similar points about any generation" but you didn't make any.

  • You nailed it @TRSlyder, especially the steak analogy. Bravo.

  • In reply to jpops37:

    Thank you

  • What a ridiculous article. I am not a boomer.
    Nice bunch of lies you're serving up there.
    Now go back to stealing music and porn off the internet.

  • The mistake here is the assumption that those born in the late 40's and those born in the early 60's grew up "the same". It's not even close. We older ones remember Sputnik, Castro, JFK. Then, we lost friends and classmates in Viet Nam, were in Grant Park for the '68 convention and watched women emerge into the work place. Working moms were an anomaly and interest rates were 9% in 1980. Most of our children are not narcissistic and grew up disciplined. My highly educated parents left Europe in 1939 on a cargo ship for Central America where they spent the war. The youngest boomers didn't grow up with WWII memories looming behind them since their parents were quite young in the 40's. They had it a lot easier. We were almost 50 when "our generation" came to the presidency and had a say in government. Talk to those of different decades about laziness and entitlement. All done for now.

  • In reply to Claire Golan:

    I think you made an excellent point. I was part of the Early Boomers as I saw us described once, born in 1946. There is a definite difference between the way I was raised and values I was taught and those of others who are supposed to be of the same generation, but my parents were also older than those of my friends because it was a second marriage for both of them and that also had an impact. I relate more to their generation that to those of the later part of mine,

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    In reply to Claire Golan:

    My boyfriends from kindergarten to high school - were pounced upon as they received their diplomas. Nothing was ever as personal as the Viet Nam war. The draft took some, drove others to Canada. I joined marches when I wasn't busy being a hippie... I was born in '47 - one of zillions who came into being because horny husbands got home from the war & VA benefits. A house in the suburbs - $10,000. Familys had 3 kids. Didn't manage a college education - therefore menial jobs. From 1965 to 2007 - my last job paid $10 an hr. Didn't end up a "Yuppie" & couldn't afford kids, let alone fat ones. Still want to have lived in "Camelot"...

  • Agree with TRSlyder. I felt that way back in 2009. See my Chicago Tribune/ChicagoNow column: http://www.chicagonow.com/dennis-byrnes-barbershop/2009/07/this-is-the-worst-generation/

  • Great post. With factual evidence and charts, your case makes perfect sense. I can't help but see how especially right you are about the middle class getting screwed.

  • Things were much better before the Baby Boomers were "handed the keys"? Really? Before the civil rights movement? Before feminism? When homosexuality was the love that dared not be named? Before the decoding of DNA? Before anyone cared that priests were molesting choirboys? The "greatest generation" deserves full props for winning World War II and ushering in a period of great economic prosperity in the U.S., but they also presided over a culture filled with discrimination, anti-communist hysteria (Joe McCarthy, anyone?), back-alley abortions and the suppression of virtually everyone who wasn't a white male. For all the ills of today, we've made HUGE strides as a society.

  • In reply to Daneel Olivaw:

    Yes, the baby boomers definitely started the civil rights movement in the 60s, even though most of them would be in their teens during that decade. Yes, they were precocious little things, going to rallies and demonstrations after preschool. Typical baby boomer, taking credit for the accomplishments of others and deflecting blame.

    The Silent Generation are responsible for the civil rights movement.

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    They ruined comic books even more than they ruined baseball cards, because at the very least Topps, Bowman, Donruss and Fleer didn't make eighteen monthly Ken Griffey, Jr. cards to be collected. Comic book publishers - especially in the 90s, by which point Boomers had taken the reins - instead created content crafted entirely for the purpose of "collectability" over creative value. Why develop a thoughtful story when instead you can rush something through and sell a ton of it because it has a lenticular/chromium/3D/die-cut cover?


    There is one more point to be made, though, and that's that it really is unfair to attack the entire Boomer generation. Its selfish, greedy side is to blame for all of our present collective woes but its nobler, "big idea" side is also to credit with a lot of the advancements we've made culturally. It's hard to imagine the Greatest Generation being the power behind the marriage equality movement that's been building momentum the last twenty years.

    I'll tell you this much: No Boomer has the right to scoff at the work ethic of Gens X, Y or Millennials. After growing up watching our Boomer parents put in their honest day's work only to get screwed out of an honest day's pay and then later, out of an honest job entirely, we would be criminally negligent to have learned any lesson except that we're all 100% disposable. The Greatest Generation retired with gold watches, and Boomers decided they'd rather not only not provide the watches, but ditch other Boomers long before they ever had to pay out a dollar in pensions. We grew up in those homes, where our parents scrambled in their 30s and 40s to deal with something the Greatest Generation didn't face: systemic job loss.

    We took note and you're only getting as much out of us as we trust you with, Boomers, because we all know you'll replace each and every one of us tomorrow regardless of what we've done for you if it suits your portfolio's projections.

  • In reply to Travis McClain:

    It wasn't my generation who ruined comics. I was collecting the m when they were worth collecting for story and art. It was the next generation who changed that. I like what you had to say about how we were screwed, but it was the younger generation coming into the work force who did that to us. It is something to think about though that job insecurity is what your generation grew up with and is why you seldom stay on a job very long. It is easier to quit than be fired.

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    In reply to ccassello:

    My generation (born 1978) were merely readers/pressured buyers in the 90s when all the gimmicks dominated comic books...gimmicks pioneered and implemented by the generation ahead of ours who then ran the Big Two publishers. That'd be Boomers.

    As for the work situation, it wasn't up and coming kids who were the real threat to Boomers' jobs. It was Greedy Boomer employers who pitted Boomer workers against Gen X, Gen Y and Millennial workers. We needed jobs, too, you know. We Gen X/Y/Millennials didn't have the authority to can you Boomers or to outsource your jobs. (Outsourcing: Another great Greedy Boomer contribution to the economy.)

    Your resentment is well earned, but it's misdirected. We were too young to have any power over anything - whether what kinds of comic book variants were circulated or whether Boomers were screwed out of their gold watches by other Boomers.

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    In reply to Travis McClain:

    Spot on. Someone tell that to my partners (much older). They aren't getting more than I can afford to lose.

  • Hafta agree with you on the work ethic comment, Travis.

    I suppose I'm a Gen Y'er, being born in 1979 to Boomers. One grandfather fought in WWII, the other served in Korea. My parents worked very hard and are self-made, which I respect deeply. They instilled a very strong work ethic in me from a young age, which I appreciate. But about that work stuff...I can still recall the conversation I had with my dad when I got my first paycheck (I was 15, and had been working at one job for a month before I got another two, over summer). I asked him about all the taxes and FICA and Social Security and everything else which had chomped into my pay. He explained everything, even ruefully so. He told me it was very, very likely that I would not see ANY of the thousands of dollars I would contribute to Social Security when I retire, if for no other reason - and there are many, as I would later learn - than the Boomers are an inverted triangle in proportion to my generation's population. He told me in earnest to not depend upon Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, or really anything designed to assist me when I'm too old or infirm to work. I told him I thought it was a load of crap; how could this be? Surely such a system can't REALLY exist - in the US, certainly not! - to starve out the future generation after forcing them to pay through the nose for the previous generation! Of course, this was 1994 and jobs were plentiful, gas was cheap, and nothing seemed too terrible from my eyes at that point (read: naivité), so I couldn't really comprehend it...but because my dad, a hard worker who raised me the same way, was telling me this, I believed him. Over time he was proven right, again and again.

    I kinda don't think most of the snark nowadays about "young people" applies to my generation anymore, but it still sticks in my craw when Boomers cry foul that their kids aren't helping them, or we don't work hard, we're too involved with technology, etc...and it makes me laugh, because we ARE the ones who certainly help out financially, if nothing more than our paychecks alone; we get told we work too much, or there aren't any jobs for older workers; and technology...hello?! It is the future! I don't even understand all of it, but you can bet I was the first call when someone didn't understand something happening on the computer! lol

    So, yeah. Broad brush and all that. Just felt the need to stand up for us older kids from Boomers and say some of us DID learn some pretty great stuff from Boomers (and some pretty terrible stuff, too, but you covered that nicely). ;)

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    In reply to cinco:

    Hi There
    As a baby boomer, I started working at the age of 14 to help my parents. I think all generations can learn from each other. The biggest change that I see is that you can no longer leave your doors unlocked, because we now live in such a drug ridden country. If parents were allowed to use a belt or whip their kids with a switch or to just simply discipline their kids ,like I was raised this may have made a different world. As a baby boomer my siblings and myself all had assigned chores. We were tough responsibility and respect at a young age. Many young kids today have no sense of responsibility. These reasons also lie on the changing world we live in, all this technology and drugs on the streets. This certainly was not in the baby boomers time!

  • In reply to Vicki Johnson:

    There weren't any drugs in the 60s (the days of Woodstock, hippies and the Beatles)? That's news to me!

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    I'd definitely encourage you or anyone else to check out the "Memoirs of Gluckel of Hamelin". I read that in college and it absolutely cracked me up to read these two hundred year old remarks from a Jewish woman complaining about her kids and their whole selfish, ungrateful, lazy generation. It actually comforted me in some odd way.

    I think what really irks me about the Boomers in general is that they reaped the benefits of the Greatest Generation's work and sacrifice in their youth and now expect Gen X, Gen Y and Millennials to work and sacrifice for their benefit in their old age. And all so that what? 1% of America could wind up with almost all the marbles? How did that help anyone?

    My grandmother likes to complain about how "young people" "throw away" all their money because they "have" to have the newest of everything, whereas her generation bought things once and used them for decades. I asked her just why and when we stopped making things that lasted for decades and instead started producing things that rarely lasted for a few years. It happened sometime between those years of self-righteous austerity she recalls and the economy my generation grew up in - led by a medley of her generation and my parents'. Don't blame my generation because we can't rely on the shoddy workmanship that goes into things because your generation lowered the standards!

  • In reply to Travis McClain:

    Awesome comment, thank you for taking the time, and that book sounds outstanding.

  • In reply to Travis McClain:

    You are right about things not lasting now the way they did because if things were still that durable there would be even fewer jobs than there are now. During the war that was not a problem because so many people worked producing weapons, ammunition, planes, tanks, etc. That was when women first began working outside of the home to replace men who were on the battle field. When the war ended and women did not want to go back to being homemakers more jobs had to be created, so items were made to self destruct to keep people buying. That was okay until they began shipping jobs overseas.

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    In reply to ccassello:

    But that argument amounts to, "We have to make shoddy things or otherwise, they'll fire half of us tomorrow!" It's hostage-taking and it doesn't track. Even before World War II consumed our economy, generations of Americans had put skill and craftsmanship into their work. Stroll through any antique mall in the country and you'll find relics of the past that could very likely still be used today for the purpose for which they were intended. They may need some maintenance and maybe they don't perform as efficiently as some of the things that have replaced them, but they've endured.

    Beyond that, it should *never* have been okay to make substandard products. Period. The Greatest Generation would never have agreed to such practices, but the Boomers couldn't be bothered to speak up because they were too busy enjoying the benefits of peddling shoddy products to other Boomers who had to keep re-buying them.

    I'm reminded of the Dr. Seuss story, "The Sneeches". It's an allegory for racism, but in this context I think of the guy who sold and removed stars. That guy made an absolute killing on the beaches simply by stoking the pettiness of the Sneeches. No one could even keep up with whether stars were in vogue or not, but they had to either have or remove them no matter what. So they ran themselves into the ground competing with one another and at the end of the story, the star-machinist walked off filthy rich because the Sneeches were so busy trying to one-up and undermine one another they didn't bother to see the big picture. That's what happened with our economy: Greedy Boomers dangled stars in front of star-less Boomers and offered to remove stars from Boomers with stars, and the price for either adding or removing a star was to be complicit in creating an economy of disposability - from razors all the way up to human beings.

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    In reply to Travis McClain:


    The most frightening thing I find today, is the numbers of men and women contending with "traditional" expectations imposed by their narcissistic parents, who also implanted "modern" expectations (especially women). The next social ground swell will occur because of the inability of Baby Boomers to both communicate reality to their children - and thereafter - properly socialize.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    Agreed. "Traditional expectations" are wiping us out; financially, emotionally, relationally, as a society, etc. And most boomers are narcissistic. Yes, it is an issue with every generation, but it has been particularly bad with us boomers. And yes, most of us boomers are in denial and do not communicate reality and truth to ourselves, each other, and our children. I, for one, am trying my best to make up for lost time and bang the drum of truth to anyone who will listen, and sometimes even to those who don't want to face the truth

  • Sorry fellow boomers. Mr. Slyder is mostly correct, if not virtually completely correct. I am a 53-year-old boomer and facts are facts.

    If you are willing to read about a gentleman who agrees with you, is very intelligent, is 64 years old, and just ran against Gov Christie in the New Jersey primary yesterday with less than 0.2% of Christie's campaign budget, go to grossman4nj.com. By the way, why does Christie have so much money ? Simple. Can you say pay-offs ? He is much worse than a out-front liberal. He is a liberal who pretends to be a conservative. Just read the facts on the website I just mentioned if you don't believe it.

    Yes, as one person commented to Mr. Slyder's post, a couple of things got better in the last 40 years, but not much. Most got worse. Consider the facts. While there are many exceptions, we have raised a lot of overweight, narcissistic, tuned-out video players. That is on us.

    Really no surprise. First of all, we have been too concerned with being their buddy and being many times overweight, narcissistic, tuned-out video players ourselves. Instead of being a mature parent.

    How else can you explain the obesity rate of boomers ? And the entitlement mentality of the boomers ? Yes, the younger generation is rampant with entitlement thinking, but what do you expect when many boomers have it also ? 60% of the country gets more from fellow taxpayers than they pay in taxes (including those that work for some level of government). A majority of these are boomers. Wake up ! The math doesn't work. Please focus on facts, math and logic. By the way, most unions, the 47% (really 60%) who are supported by everybody else, and most who work in a taxpayer-funded job believe they are fully entitled to working only 20-25 years with many days off, paid sick days, paid personal days, excellent health insurance, and then early retirement with a pension that is a high percentage of their highest salary made in their working years. That pension is often paid for 10-40 years or more ! The math doesn't work !

    And they still want all this, even though they know that it is not possible financially (math doesn't work). Can you say "selfish?" Many have said, "I deserve it." I say, "why ?"

    Those of us in the public sector spend less than we earn and save for our retirement. Or retire broke and ask taxpayers to fund our retirement, which is also dead wrong. Pensions and/or tenure are ridiculous counter-productive concepts. Anybody who is willing to be remotely honest/factual/logical will admit that.

    I know some elderly folks who complain about having no money, yet they spent everything they earned and then some, then had to go through bankruptcy or foreclosure due to their own greed (which both cost the taxpayer, and are still costing the taxpayer). Then, on top of that, they go to the casinos or buy lottery tickets. And I have to keep giving them money. Hello ?

    Mr. Slyder mentioned selling/moving our businesses overseas. Well, that is free market and I would never change that. But what I will say is that workers, unions and employees have demanded too much money. So business owners got less expensive labor; who can blame them ?Again, the boomers and now the next generation in turn has such a incredibly high expectation of a wealthy lifestyle that yes, you need to make a lot of money to support that. But whoever said that each of us entitled to not having to save for anything first, have expensive cars, phones, tvs, dvd/blue ray players, etc, etc ?

    By the way, if unions and public employees did not receive such high pay, benefits and pensions, the law of supply and demand (here I go with facts and logic again) dictate that everything would cost less, like homes, rent, groceries, cars, property taxes, etc. So you would not need to make so much money. And businesses would not feel the need to move their company overseas due to our greed.

    War. My feelings have changed. I have previously always supported whatever foreign conflict that we were involved id. While I am torn when some disgusting creep is brutalizing people in another country, I am not sure we should keep on sending our troops overseas all the time. Not only does it cost money we don't have, it costs too many American lives. I believe in a big military, but let's mostly keep them at home. By the way, if you believe in a small military, you haven't thought it through. Two seconds after we reduce our military, many countries around the world will compete to invade us and take us over. (logic again, sorry)

    Baseball cards ? Sorry Mr. Slyder, I am not sure how important the lack of value in baseball cards are, or the whole subject for that matter.

    Your "cook and the steak" analogy ? Agree 100%. We are the cooks who created the problems we have now. Most of us either directly contributed to the problem or at least fell asleep in our self-absorbed lives and allowed the crooked politicians to sell ourselves down the river. Can you say 17 trillion dollars ? And some actually say it is not a problem, and our leaders refuse to do anything about it. Wow.

    College tuition ? Yes, I am ashamed that my generation has allowed colleges to charge ridiculous amounts of money. I encourage anyone to find the least expensive way to educate yourself to the level that you need to become what you need to become.

    I understand that some "need" the Harvard track to get certain connections in certain careers. My response to that is, "be happy about huge debt, or maybe choose the millions of careers that you don't need Harvard for." Your choice, just don't complain about it. If less people would choose these insane schools, tuition would go down. Supply and demand. Facts and logic. Deal with it, or stay in denial.

    By the way, you can be a teacher, doctor, lawyer, etc by starting out at the community college or the cheapest state school where you live. Can't get in an expensive medical school ? Attend out of the country, then come back and get licensed. Many have done it. If you are willing to put the work in, you can be a brain surgeon and/or land a position at any hospital or practice in the country. By the way, this would drive down the cost of tuition in this country.

    Yes, we created huge debt, and are continuing to increase it at an alarming rate.
    And fund it by handing our country to China and devaluing our dollar by printing money indiscriminately. I am ashamed. Anyone in my generation should be too. And we still allow it !

    We should all go to Washington, plant ourselves in front of the White House and Congress, and refuse to leave until all the crooked politicians go home. And at least 85% are crooked, meaning they continue to do, or allow, what is so obviously detrimental to our country to continue. Facts, math, logic.

    CEO's salaries have increased by 725% since the 70's ? Sounds accurate. But that is free market. Be a CEO yourself. Or don't support that company or buy stock/mutual funds in that company. Or work harder and smarter than the next guy if you work for that company and get a promotion. But don't expect to be just ""given" a high pay "just because." Can you say entitlement ?
    As I mentioned earlier, scale down your lifestyle, and then you won't have to make so much money. Don't want to scale down your lifestyle? Then look in the mirror and see a greedy person who has no right to complain about money.

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    In reply to millers15:

    As representative of Generation X/Y, I release you from Baby Boomerdom. Congratulations.

    If you are free, I'd like to have you beat some sense into my father.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    I would be glad to "speak" to your father. Most people your dad's age I talk to don't like what I have to say, especially since it is coming from someone the same age as them.

  • Mr. Slyder, I just read for the first time your comment about the worst Congress in history. I will agree that our current politicians are the worst in history, witnessed by their approximately 12% approval rating.

    One point I would like to clarify. If you are talking about the Senate, the 56 Democrats who control the Senate, virtually without exception, want to increase our debt. That is just plain stupid. And most of the Republican senators are not serious enough about it either. If you are talking about the House of Representatives, then there are some different dynamics. While I will say that the majority of Republicans often do more harm than good, most are not as bad as the out-of-control tax and spend Democrats. If the House was not controlled by the Republicans, yes many of the things that the anointed one wants to do would be in place by now and we would be much worse off than we already are. The damage that he has in fact been allowed to do (6 trillion in new debt for starters) will take generations to undo, if in fact it can be undone. And that is just one issue. After he was elected, I hoped and prayed that he would be awesome. He has been a nightmare. One of his many lies was that he would be all about transparency. Just look at what has gone with the Benghazi scandal, the illegal scrutiny of the AP, the IRS scandal, etc. He and his administration have blocked every attempt at honesty, research, investigation, disclosure and transparency. There are only 2 possibilities. Either he is completely incompetent or a liar.

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    So bitter for one so young.

    Granted, the Boomers have managed to foul up the works in many ways (including many of the generation they raised).

    Yet you gave teh "Greatest" generation a pass on raising the boomers, as well as our whole Southeast Asian adventure, the cold war, and Liberace.

    Stick to the newspaper gig -- it's pretty clear your skill lies in pointing out the errors of others, rather than attempting to fix anything.

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    In reply to rosberg:

    I like the Liberace thing. You should have ended there. The whole "pretty clear" thing is a partial (unfair) estimation and really destroys your post.

    Pointing out an error is the first step in fixing 'anything'. If you try to fix something that isn't broken - you can only break it. Kinda Baby Boomerish of you.

  • In reply to rosberg:

    Ha, wow, apparently this is "criticism" these days.

    This should explain why the Greatest generation is given a pass:

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    So bitter for one so young.

    It is a bit odd that you happily slag the Boomers for sins large and small (including helping to raise the next generation) while giving the greatest generation a pass on the Cold War, the Southeast Asian advneture you lament, and Liberace.

    Your perspective makes me think you've found the ideal gig for you -- it's pretty clear that pointing out the failures of others is far more drawing to you than actually trying to help fix anything.

    Well done!

  • I call bullshit on the whole thing. Oh yes this is all MY fault. Facts are, I spent my youth scuffling for jobs much as my parents did, a lot of people remember the 70's. Vietnam wound down, unemployment skyrocketed, Inflation was kicking everyone's ass. I'm a boomer, was I in charge, no, I was 18 fricking years old. All of those budget deficits run up by Congress, that's both houses both parties, was I in charge, hell no. I was 30. I think the average age of a congressman is close to 60, its a job for LIFE unless you get caught having sex with a congressional page. So which generations ruined government? Lets talk about goverment spending. Which generation created Medicare and Medicade? I guess it would be that 'great generation' who also put cost of living into social security. For those of the young generation currently pissing on me, that was during Johnson's administration when they created all of those great entitlements and then, forgot to collect taxes to pay for it, as a result, Retirement age will creep up higher and higher for me and I won't be able to collect social security because there is NOTHING THERE. Just like my pension which is also worthless as government let them steal that as well by siding with companies that allowed them to convert pension plans into 'portable pension plans' which means they take your money and walk away with it.

    We are told we are whiners, the most TAXED generation of americans in HISTORY, because our 30% tax rate and our 10% sales taxes and fees for this and fees for that and the addional 10% uncle sam takes out for medicare and SS, which means half of what we earn goes to ... not us. And then you wonder why we are unhappy when this president decides its OK for you to keep going to school, don't worry, your parents still have to provide insurance for you. This administration was not elected by boomers, it was elected by morons and young people who have decided that it is OK to vote yourself free stuff with other peoples money. The great generation paid under 10% of their incomes for taxes. I raised two children, they are college educated, I've got no money for that reason and I'm happy to have done it. They have good jobs, know the value of work. I did my job, school did its job on them and has indoctrinated them into the Conservative equals evil equation. I'm a registered Democrat, I disagree with 90% of the policies of hte Republican party and damn near 100% of the current democratic party, because its not a democratic party, its the communist party. WE are a hell of a lot closer to Tianammen Square then any of you realize. This is the party of sit down and shut the hell up or we take everything from you. Not my fault, I voted for the other guy, like pissing into the wind. Facts are simple. If government cuts spending by 2% a year for 5 years we go black. But its not about applying logic to a problem its about changing the country by destroying it. YOu think that is the fault of boomers, why not everything else that goes wrong is our fault. So. Fuck you.

  • In reply to BillF:

    I know you're real smart and all, BillF, but you should be more careful about saying "fuck you" to people when your email address for that account is your work email and contains your full name.

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    In reply to TRSlyder:

    So, have you gotten Bill fired yet?

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    In reply to BillF:

    Calm down old man.

    You can be an iconoclast. As for government, it's not important in regards to the issue at hand - the shitty Baby Boomers.

    Through history, democratic governments have very short life spans... 300-400 years. And they have the habit of always turning into empires. In comparison, theocratic governments have life spans of thousands of years. Not saying a theocratic government is even half as good as one that is democratic - its just - I don't blame you - its not in your hands, however narcissistic you may or may not be.

    What we are talking about is society. If you don't fit the mold - cool - but a lot of Baby Boomers fit the mold. And they did do a lot of needless damage to this society.

    Whether it is their 'fault' or they are the generation that by coincidence is at the historical time and place when things fall apart is unimportant here. It happened with you. And even though I love bacon, a pig is a dirty animal.

  • In reply to BillF:

    The U.S. government (what I assume you are referring to) has been screwed up for a while. How can you blame young people? Most young people these days weren't even 10 when people like Clinton and Bush were voted in. The problems didn't just begin when the young people started voting. That kind of thinking is much too convenient.

  • This is just another piece of divisive crap from someone pretending to be a writer. Fact? Hah! You aren't even close to identifying fact you mean little, foolish monster.

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    In reply to Edward:

    Calm down Eddie.
    Don't think it was done to serve as a historical document.

  • In reply to Edward:

    I can smell the butthurt a mile away. By the way, he had plenty of evidence. Or did you read it?

  • First of all, Tom Brokaw was fucking wrong: My parents generation fought a war That enabled America to become the greatest oppressor in the modern world. That is the same generation that created, fostered and enabled Jim Crow, sexism and other negative isms that the Boomers saw fit to try to destroy. Ronald Regan was the architect of everything now wrong with the GOP; it is not the Boomers fault that members of our generation bought into that mess and continue it today (Yes, I blame the GOP for many US ills)...Reagan was part of that "Greatest Generation"...way to go guys. If anything, many Boomers were on the forefront of protesting against and trying to dismantle much of the mess that other generation created and embraced. Many of our social ills are dying out with that same generation. By the way, Boomers created so much art and culture that it still can't be catalogued, so many positive movements that many younger folks are embracing because they intuitively know it is the right way to go...If anything that "Greatest" generation was the most awful because they were happy with the status quo and really hated free thinkers...a group embraced by Boomers. If not for the Boomers, many freedoms we take for granted, civil rights, gay rights, patient rights, et al, wouldn't even exist. So, yes, fuck you punk!

  • Revisiting a classic: I see you scrubbed my comment right out, unless there is some kind of glitch here.

    Fact is, the "Greatest Generation" is the greediest generation and is responsible for the greatest transfer of wealth in human history -- from their children and grandchildren and now great-grandchildren (you, I guess). They were the generation that approved legalized intergenerational theft.

    Also, I believe I was the first to point out the difference between Boomers, those born from 1946 to 1954 and those born between 1955 and 1964. Not even the same generation, my friend.

    The attitude of most Boomers is they want somebody else to pay for "it", and that will be you. However, your generation is even more strident about beggaring thy neighbor.

    Sorry if these ancient eyes did not see my previous comment, but I believe it was shortly after Jimmy's.

    What's your thoughts on censorship, I guess I should ask rhetorically?

  • In reply to Richard Davis:

    That was your comment? That's funny, I remember I deleted one, and I never delete comments but I made an exception for yours because you just called me a name and didn't bother to argue a point.

    That's cool you are almost all the way over a blog comment from a nearly a month ago.

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    In reply to TRSlyder:

    I am offended only by the comment by the person who would kill Boomers off like Hitler did the Jews. Leaving that comment on this post is unkind at best.

    We all have resentments and things to groan about. However, if I posted that I wanted to kill off a generation of people, whom aren't my own, there would be a firestorm!

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    In reply to Reena Sapecai:

    Eh... I don't want to kill my parents... but they need to know they are lucky to be living at this point.

    There will never be a firestorm occurring from anything you might say.

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    Hello there
    I too am a baby boomer. You dummies keep blaming us for the social security funds going broke. Hah! Let me tell you a thing or to. My generations worked their butts off to raise a family, and we done our share of paying into social security and retirement funds. It does not matter how many of us are retiring at once!!! What does matter is that you can blame our government for using our Social Security Funds for a bank. Our country needs to stop sending billions of dollars to Egypt and Israel and start paying back all of the I.O.U's to the Social Security funds. Oh and one more thing... We did not create the generation of kids and young adults that live on video games. Shit, we all walked to friends house and most of us never had a phone or a tv. Place your blame on our government. If you will notice, most of the baby boomers still work and pay in just like you!!!!!

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    In reply to Vicki Johnson:

    You miss the point.

    Think of this not as the reason why you shouldn't be alive, but as a reason for Baby Boomer funerals not being popularly attended. And you are a weight on the system (as a generation). Though you are not personally to blame - the fraud of your generation has made you the last (probably) to have access to social security - even if it is to fight for it. The bitter pill, is that your generation seems concerned only for itself (as always) and not your children's retirement.

    I believe you were tricked by other Boomers. The whole housing fraud being #1. Regardless, it happened with you. And in light of my lessened opportunities - think its fair for me to be a little disappointed in you. Unfortunately I can't ground you.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    You should be disappointed in us boomers. I am greatly disappointed in myself and other boomers. And what is greatly frustrating to me is that now the evidence is so painfully obvious as to what we have allowed to happen, and I still can not get people to get active, vote for change, etc and admit the mistakes we have made. Still! Still can not get people out of denial !! AAAAGGGHH !!!!

  • In reply to Vicki Johnson:

    Found the classic baby boomer.

  • Thanks Vicki.

    It is probably evident that I am a boomer as well. My Greatest Generation parents were good people who did struggle through the Great Depression and sacrificed through WWII. However, as pointed out they too are with sin in terms of subsequent wars. Regarding entitlements, they have extracted FAR more out of social security and medicare than they ever contributed.

    On the other hand, in preparation for our retirement my wife and I have just had our social security benefits calculated and as it turns out we will have to live well beyond our life expectancy in order to get more back from the system than what we paid into it. So, thanks for simply giving us our money back.

    Medicare is another matter. Though I believe in it, that is where Boomers join the WWII Vets in truly getting an entitlement that hasn't been paid for by them (maybe 30 or 40 cents on the dollar). However, that is because our Healthcare System is still the most expensive and among the least effective (in terms of coverage, cost and outcomes) in the world. Of course, with Health Insurance companies making over 30 billion a year in profits and their CEOs among the highest paid of any industry, one has one (of many) answers why. For my two cents, free market capitalism works pretty well. Two big exceptions: health and education where taking such an approach weakens our society while whoring out our values.

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    Honestly, its strange to me that so many baby boomers are so eager to criticize and vilify millennials through articles such as this one but they're not willing to hear some criticism back. We are raised to take responsibility for our actions and our contributions, but somehow the baby boomer generation is exempt? Looking through here I see people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of their elderly parents or their children who are still in highschool and college. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and must face the consequences. It proves the point that the author is trying to make. Millenials are not taken seriously when they try to act as adults, are treated as children and then are lampooned in the media for taking so long to grow up. Though the millenials range from ages 12-28, most too young to vote and move out of the house, are considered a menace to society by the people who have mostly built it or perpetuated it. Do what you taught your children to do and take responsibility for the part you have played.

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    In reply to Victoria Bannon:

    And a younger generation, will at least have an ability to respond to mixed and often incorrect messages of youth - those perpetrated by Boomers.

    For a younger generation to thrive, it must put off the failure of parents and this is in itself an irony. As Boomers are the counter-culture 60s, whose ideas descended into the hedonism at core of our consumerist society. And as they resisted the structure of their parents, so too, our younger generation should resist the fatuousness of theirs.

  • In reply to Ryan Strasser:

    I'm an x-er and I loved my grandparents (the greatest generation), and even through all if the adversity they dealt with, they came out to be amazing people. I just want to know, how can such an amazing generation create such horrible children? It's as if the boomer generation didn't even grow up in the same household as the greatest, and I figured you might have an answer why my parent's generation (boomer) sucks so hard.

  • In reply to farrahnomicon:

    The answer is simple.
    Selfishness which produces greed.

    I am a boomer and am horrified by boomers' (in general) greed. I have made some mistakes, some of them greedy, and am fighting tooth and nail to educate myself and others about what has to be done to reverse the current situation so that the younger generation and later generations are not so desperately buried from our greed. (please see my numerous posts in this blog).

    The former mayor of our town, who resigned recently when he was elected in November to become a state assemblyman, wrote a letter to the editor in the paper this week. His initial point is good: he said it is time to do something about the property taxes. (average property taxes for a middle class household is about $6,000-$9,000/year)
    Who can afford that ? Well, very few. And this is not my opinion. My middle class neighborhood has scores of empty houses, so the proof is right in front of your eyes.
    More people leave New Jersey than move in, a trend that only started a few years ago, when property taxes and other expenses rose out of site. And this is despite the fact that New Jersey offers extremely high entitlements, which draws many people to New Jersey.
    So guess what: most of the people who are leaving New Jersey are business owners, hard-working wage earners who do not have taxpayer-funded jobs, etc. So the state deficit/financial imbalance (and the "need" to raise taxes even more) worsens. By the way, a recent report lists New Jersey as the worst of the 50 states in terms of being able to afford all of its long-term liabilities, (tax-payer funded jobs) pensions, etc
    Back to the ex-mayor's letter to the editor:
    he suggests "shared services" which include towns that are located closely together sharing a chief of police and other cost-saving measures like that.
    I couldn't agree more. But it only scratches the surface and will do almost nothing to actually stop the tax increases, let alone ever lower them.
    If you really get into the truth and math of our local, state and federal budgets, it will take decreasing entitlements such as medicaid, medicare, social security payments, salaries, medical benefits, and pensions of folks who have tax-payer funded jobs.
    Decrease them for the individual right now. And if the town hall clerk or the school teacher goes on strike, then replace them. There are hundreds of people who would gratefully work for 30-70% of the salaries and pensions that are currently paid for any single one of these jobs.
    These are not my opinions, they are just truth, facts, math and logic. Do not take my word for it, do your own research if you doubt my facts. And very few people talk about this stuff. And there is even less effort to do anything about it.
    But this is what has to happen in order to save our country.
    Get involved politically, educate yourself and every one around you, listen to the nationally syndicated "Mark Levin Show" and read the book he wrote called "The Liberty Amendments."
    If you can not find his show on your AM radio dial (which airs Monday-Friday (6-9pm) on 770AM in the New York area) you can get the "Mark Levin app" on your smart phone or listen at marklevinshow.com
    Only if you want truth and want to help save the country.
    Let's get busy.
    Let's use this blog to report back on what we are doing or not doing to bring the necessary changes about, and let the revolution/repair/reversal of this disgrace gain some momentum.

  • In reply to Victoria Bannon:

    Exactly. I think it's because they'd like to have the blame shifted anywhere but on them. They were given everything and they refuse to apologize for anything.

  • I have always believed the Boomers took the road less trodden and wore it out. I express this in my music video “Oh Those Baby B’s” Please listen if you get a chance.
    Does anyone say anything good about flapper generation, these day?

  • Maybe someone has mentioned this, but a baby boomer was responsible for our personal computers. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates were all born in the '50s.
    It is unfortunate that any baby boomer paints the Millennials with a broad brush, claiming there is something flawed about all of them.
    There is something wrong when an author is so snide and vicious and sits as judge and jury of people he does not fully understand. He may respond snidely and with whatever he deems is an intellectually superior posture. That will make it all the more clear that he is insecure and must defend against suspicion that he has made some gross errors in his analyses of historical events.
    Any thoughtful junior in high school could have written his list, and if asked, could have come up with equally sophomoric arguments in defense of each item on the list.
    It does not take Freud to understand the author’s caustic opinions. In addition, it is important not to be too hard on the callowness of youth.
    I do think that many people of all generations, including the Millennial & Baby Boomer, lack knowledge, analytic skills, compassion and humility. It could be reasonable in some analyses to suspect that those people raise children that are similar to them. Maybe you two, Mssrs. Slyder and Strasser, can break the cycle.
    There will always be human folly, disgraceful behavior and other unholy things contributing to history. Simply to blame your situation on your parents or your parents’ generation will get you… I do not know where it will get you. Maybe you can tell us.

  • I agree there is a lack of compassion, humility, compassion and analytical skills.
    Analytical skills like 3rd grade math. Can you say 17 trillion and climbing ?

    There are 2 types of Americans. Those that are actually ignorant to the fact that most of us are in some way part of the problem. Taking more from tax-payers than we are contributing. Voting and re-voting for selfish idiots that have the worst at heart for us. For example Obamacare most likely would not have passed if the politicians would not have placed an 11th hour provision that Congress themselves must live with Obamacare. Did you notice what just happened ? Despite that aforementioned requirement, congress just voted themselves and their staff exempt from Obamacare because they know how bad it is. Example number two: Politicians keep on spending money we don't have, because this is how they keep their jobs, and they could care less that they are burying current and future generations. First type of person is somehow ignorant to these (obvious if you pay a little attention) things. Second type of person knows these things, but is too selfish to fight for change. I, for one, want severe social security payment cuts, even though that will hurt me personally a lot. But I know it needs done to save the country. Oh, what's the matter, you will not have enough money ? My response is, why did you spend as much or more than you earned ? Social security perhaps never should have been started, or at least should have only been for widows, or folks stricken with severe hardship or disease, etc. It was never and should have ever been designed as a 5-40 year tax-payer funded "full retirement pension" as people expect it to be.
    We need severe spending cuts everywhere.
    Which type of American are you ?

  • In reply to millers15:

    I am not sure if your final question is for me in particular or, rather, a rhetorical question.
    Seventeen trillion! I'm a baby-boomer (decades past 3rd grade) and the concept, although I can say the words, is certainly one I have difficulty comprehending.
    "Which type of American are you?" is a question I will try to answer as best I’m able in this context.
    Shockingly, I have no debt. It is not easy, but I live within a relatively tight budget. I am not wealthy, but I have means. I vote for political candidates that are humane and, at least, have the ability to learn from the best minds in finance and economics that are available to them.
    For the benefit of our society, I would be fine receiving less in social security than is planned.
    I will finance my retirement, except the social security I will receive. I don't know if I will have enough to live reasonably well for the rest of my life. For many years, I have been paying my own health insurance premiums. I have not been as fortunate with my health as I have been with other things. I decided to work on my own seven years ago. With pre-existing conditions, health insurance costs made it almost impossible without the financial help of a family member. I struggle to stay afloat, but I am doing okay.
    Entitlement is not a word I like. Entitlement for the rich, the poor and everyone in between gives people the idea that there is no one to whom they should answer and no reason for gratitude. I would rather we had a system that provided specific subsidies to people who are in positions that make it impossible for them to provide the necessities for themselves. We, as a society, likely will discuss continually just who these persons are and what the necessities are.
    There are many problems in our society, but the notion that it is wrong for any adult to be required to restrict their behavior and consumption, is crazy.
    I was fortunate to have parents that made sacrifices for me, for my siblings, and for each other. Parents, regardless of the generation, who know sacrifice comes with the job, can raise children who become adults who understand the value of it.
    As you point out, most members of the Senate and the House do not have any concept of making sacrifices for the public, especially if those sacrifices are avoidable by the use of the public’s money.
    As far as Congress being exempt from Obamacare, I have a slightly different view based on what I have been able to read. Congress members will have to go into the health insurance exchanges to find health insurance, but they and their staffs will keep their employer contributions and apply that money towards the cost of whatever insurance they buy in the exchanges. Therefore, technically, they are not exempt from Obamacare, but they have huge employer contributions paid for by taxpayers. Some Republican senators believe they (Congress and Congressional staff) should bear the full cost of their health coverage. A vote will be held in the Senate on a plan that removes the employer contributions. Harry Reid's brilliant retort: …"they can, without any change in the law, decline the federal government's employer contribution and pay their own way." In other words, ‘Why should I sacrifice?’
    A post by someone else: "like millions of other Americans that had health insurance through their employment, cut their (Congress and staff) hours and pay to 26-29 hours a week. They can go to the Exchange and buy the same health insurance as regular Americans. If they are eligible for subsidies, they can get them there. ObamaCare is turning the U.S. in to a nation of part-timers. They wrote the law and need to live with the unintended consequences of ObamaCare like the rest of America."


  • Thank you for your reply.

    Was a question not for just you, but for me and for every American.

    I should have said there are 3 types.

    1. Ignorant.
    2. Knowledgable about the facts but too selfish too demand the changes neccesary.
    3. A few handful like you and me willing to demand change, even though it will hurt us personally

    I admire you greatly that you have been unselfish enough to have no debt. You are unfortunately rare.

    You vote for people who are humane. I desire to have people leading us who are humane also. I am only speculating here, please clarify. I fear that when you say humane, that you might mean helping with dollars all the people who want dollars and/or takes advantage of our screwed-up entitlement system. Again, 47% of the country receives more then they pay in, and when you add in tax-payer funded jobs, the number is over 60%. The math doesn't work, so entitlements HAVE to be cut, regardless of "compassion/being humane" or philosophy. By the way, far too much abuse. Did you see the recent stories on the abuse in all the fraudulent disability cases ?

    If the politicians that we have voted for have been listening to the best minds in finances and economics, then why don't they do what is painfully obvious to a 3rd grade mathematician and severely cut spending (and taxation) ?

    Admire you greatly for being willing to take less of a social security payment. That and other sacrifices will be what it is going to take, if we can actually get our leader to implement these changes.

    Entitlement is not a word I like either but the truth is that literally over 100 million Americans receive some form of entitlement and if you told them that their check will be reduced and talked to them long enough, they would eventually "let it spill" and say something like "I deserve it"

    That is entitlement.

    I recently heard a retired school teacher say something all too common. She and her husband are wealthy from their careers and piling on to their net worth with their retirement benefits, etc. When a friend questioned the large size of her pension, the retired teacher said, "I deserve it. After all, I paid in all those years." The friend was honest enough to respond, "You didn't pay in a dime."

    The retired teacher didn't know what to say, because it was the truth.

    No matter what someone's opinion is, there is not nearly enough money to pay for all this. So why aren't our leaders doing something drastic right this second ? Because they are selfish and feel entitled themselves.

    By the way, people who know me will tell you that I am far from cold-hearted. You will see in another of my posts that I said that social security should exist for widows, those that have experienced true hardship, etc. But not an inflated amount, and not for people who just lived selfishly and expect current and future tax-payers to fund their greed and/or laziness.

    I am truly sorry that you have not been fortunate with your health. There does need to be a way for us to be humane with each other without creating a huge swarm of selfish folks and a government and entitlement system so large that it will cripple us for generations, if not permanently.

    Since I wrote that post I realized that you are correct. Congress and their staff are not technically exempt from Obamacare. But as you said, they are receiving big subsidies that I am paying for, so again, they make one set of circumstances for themselves to live under, and another set for the rest of us.

    I am glad to see that you are not pleased with most of our leaders. Most are a disgrace. For starters, they don't even put out a budget, which is one of their main jobs, and then instead of giving themselves a pay cut for not doing their job, which is what happens to us when we don't do our job, they actually have the gall to vote themselves a raise.


    Sarah Palin (actually follows logic and the Constitution) is coming to support long-shot Steve Lonegan (actually follows logic, math and the Constitution) in the special election Oct 16th in New Jersey to replace deceased US Senator Frank Lautenberg. His opponent Cory "the crook" Booker will probably win and New Jersey will send another "tax and spend and kill the country" liberal to Washington, but I am educating everyone I can about the truth.

    By the way, Booker received millions to invest in Newark, NJ schools and his own staff admits the money did not go to the classrooms. He spent it on consultants and polls, etc to further his political careers. Please explain why we don't put him and any other thieves remotely like him in jail. He further wrecked Newark. He will further wreck the country next.

  • By the way, Gov Christie is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It was his decision when to have the vacant senate seat election. He is bed with the liberals, and he is paying them off by have the special senate seat election Oct 16th instead of at the regular election time the first Tuesday in November. If it was in November, he and Lonegan would be slated together and Lonegan would probably win. But Christie is deferring to his liberal buddies that he has all the back-room deals with so that New Jersey and our country remains in the death grip of the liberals/anti-constitutionalists

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    People keep using the term "liberal" as an insult. Doing that is a tacit admission of:

    1) getting all one's ideas from right-wing mainstream media (which is the one and only source of ideas demonizing the word "liberal")
    2) being mentally lazy and self-complacent: you like it when things go your way, it's wrong when it doesn't, and the world is by default the way you like it.

    Obviously, this isn't the case; things have gotten better over the years because of...liberals.

    Boomers point out they "paid into the system". No, they didn't. The quality of life and life opportunities that Boomers enjoy is the direct result of the spending that they won't pay forward: education, roads, the military, and yes, welfare.

    What, you're not a welfare recipient so you don't benefit from welfare? Bollocks. If it wasn't for welfare programs, we'd have riots, gangs of bandits and the country would probably fall to Communism. That's how things worked before there was welfare. That's why it exists. The welfare you pay for others allows you sleep reasonably soundly at night, and perhaps more importantly, allows you to continue to be mentally lazy and self-indulgent, rather than understanding how the world really works.

    It is a FACT that any Boomer, of any economic class (except the very rich) would be far worse off if he were a Millennial. It's also a FACT that the overwhelming majority of Boomers squander their relative good fortune, living way past their means and being generally dense and self-indulgent.

    The Boomers had nothing to do with the Civil Rights movement. They showed up to protests because they were bored and had nothing else to do, but refused to make any real sacrifices in their lifestyle, such as equalizing taxation and spending so that all neighborhoods get equally good school and police coverage, and the legacy of that is social and economic problems the Millenials must now solve.

    Bill Gates is a Boomer? Irrelevant. Gates is an anomaly for many reasons (his relative asceticism, tireless efforts for the poor, and corporate culture). Most of the people he hires are Xers and Millenials, and Boomers resent his products.

    Landing on the Moon...was expensive...and Boomers refused to pay the taxes to support continued efforts. So much for that.

    Then you look at the Millenials who spend untold hours editing Wikipedia or crowdfunding or volunteering or voluntarily accepting cutbacks in their quality of life (walk into a thrift shop and you'll see what I mean) because...they think it's the right thing to do.

    And by the way, you Boomers aren't the most taxed generation in history. Taxes have steadily gone down during the Boomer era. The Greatest were far more taxed, and before that, standards of living in the US were so low (contrary to rose-colored glasses) that taxation was irrelevant.

    The most taxed generation are and will be the Millenials, who pay taxes on everything they do, get no deductions, get fewer public services (e.g., Social Security, 'anti-discrimination' for the elderly, education, etc) and will of course spend our lives paying down the Boomers' debt.

    Once the Boomers die the healing can begin. That simple.

  • In reply to Ethan Farber:

    Sorry, I will attempt to refrain from using the word liberal. Actually, I do not vote for democrat or republican or conservative or liberal. I vote for who will do right by our country. But I will remind you that the vast majority of the time, the folks who keep asking for more and more spending and more and more taxing happily identify themselves as the "L" word.

    I am simply trying to discuss logic, facts and math. Our country this very day is the exact same as a family that has an income of $25,000 per year, is spending $36,000 per year, and has $170,000 in credit card debt. And wants a increase on their credit card limit.


    No, you are wrong, I do not get all my info from conservative media. I listen to a variety of sources, including NBC which is about as anti-conservative as you can get.

    By the way, conservative also means a constitutionalist. Are you one one of the folks who believes that they are smarter than our founders and that we should further destroy and ignore our constitution ?

    Sure, to some degree I am guilty of not being happy when things do not go my way. Who isn't ? But I am willing to listen to any logical discussions of fact.

    Here is another fact. In July 2008 Mr Obama ripped George Bush (someone who made his share of mistakes, I will be the first to say) for allowing the debt to climb to 9 trillion. Obama also at that time said raising the debt limit was totally irresponsible. You know the rest. The debt has increased far more under Obama than any other president in history. Most likely, if the House was not under Republican control, the debt would be considerably higher than 17 trillion. And Obama now says NOT raising the debt limit is totally irresponsible. What a hypocrite ! By the way, the "L" people kept saying in "horror" the last few weeks, "The crazy tea party people want to destroy us by having us default !"

    The truth is, it costs us about $230 billion a year to pay interest on the debt. About $3 trillion goes into washington from tax payers. So we had plenty of money to not default. Another outright lie to the American people !

    Things have gotten better because of liberals ? Well, I am sure that liberals have done good things. I never said that they never did.

    What is the definition of "good things ?" Not all "good things" are truly good.

    50 million on food stamps ? Obama claims he has engineered all this wonderful "hope and change" - we have had change all right- the biggest increase in the numbers of folks on food stamps in history

    Here is another fact. Regarding the past and current abuse of African-Americans. Democrats and the "L" folks love to pretend to be the champion of African Americans. Let's review history, shall we ?

    Back in the 1800's democrats in the south fought giving up slavery tooth and nail and the republicans in the north, led by republican Abraham Lincoln, fought and died so that African Americans would be free. And then came along years later, a great champion and leader of African Americans- Martin Luther King. Guess what ? A conservative Repubican ! Don't take my word for it, look it up.

    By the way, the tax and spend entitlement crowd have not been "helping" African Americans or other minorities. That is just what they sell you. They have the system set up and have most of the media manipulated so that much of their base gets just enough help/money so that they continue to vote for them, but at that same time they keep them oppressed and dependent on government.

    If you are willing to look around a little, there are plenty of enlightened, educated minorities who are echoing the same facts I have laid out above.

    Not sure which of my posts you have read, but I have said repeatedly that myself and other boomers are guilty of much of our problems, first and foremost by letting our leaders spend money we don't have. So if you must lecture me on that, go right ahead, but I have already said repeatedly that we boomers have allowed the leadership in this country to be horrendous. And I am working as hard as I can to reverse it. I just spent a lot of effort backing a true conservative in the New Jersey election for the US Senate seat. Unfortunately, as I feared, Cory "the crook " Booker won by a 10 percent margin over someone (Steve Lonegan) who is actually responsible and wants to stop the madness so that you and future generations will not be so buried in debt. Why did Booker win ? Mostly because his Hollywood buddies helped him, and he has a huge campaign war chest due to in no small part to ripping off tax payers, and because many minorities in New Jersey believe the bill of goods that they have been sold that the "government" has their best interest at heart. As I said, the government wants to keep them right where lot of them are- dependent and re-electing the same folks so that they can stay dependent and keep on re-electing the same "tax more and spend more and kill the country" maniacs........ Back to Booker for a moment- He received $100 million to fix the pathetic Newark, NJ school system. A top Booker aide admitted that the money never made it to the classrooms and that he used the money for consultants, polling and to fund his political career. He stabbed the people of Newark in the back, and in the election 5 days ago, he still won at least 80% of the vote in Newark. This is what I am talking about when I say a lot of folks, minorities in particular being sold a bill of goods. All I want is the light to be shined on the actual truths in this country, and then we actually have a shot at things getting straightened out. I am talking about crooks-whether they be democrat or republican or whatever. I don't want to talk about my opinion or your opinion or anyone's opinion- We should talk about facts, math and logic.

    You say it is a fact that most boomers spend beyond their means. I agree-please read my posts. And I agree- a boomer (or anyone of any generation) would be behind the eight ball if they were young right now- I agree- please read my posts, so you are preaching to the choir. As I said, I am willing to sacrifice so that we can start correcting this, so that you are under less of a burden.

    You mention thrift shops- I know all about them. My wife and I continue to sacrifice so that we live below our means and can continue to give to others.

    Bill Gates ? I didn't bring him up, and I don't think he is tremendously relevant to the discussion. Going to the moon ? Not something I brought up, but trust me, if the "Tax more and spend more" crowd wanted a space program, there would be one, because as you know, they are in control of the government.

    Please just look at math, at least. Yes Boomers paid in "x" dollars to social security, then the crooks in washington stole the money in the social security fund, and then many boomers will in fact receive more in checks than they paid in. I agree ! And that is why I said that social security payments should be cut ! Even though that will hurt me personally ! I am fighting here to do what is best for our country and for you ! and your kids and my grandkids !

    Whether you admit it or not, welfare needs to be reigned in. Many on welfare are able-bodied people. Many are not in good financial condition due to their choices. I did not say all, but there are many that fall into these categories. And is one of your points that we have to have a humongous welfare system, otherwise we will have massive crime ?

    Not true. Many countries have no welfare and very little crime. Also, here in the states, Texas for one has plenty of welfare beneficiaries and a very low crime rate.

    By the way, if we had less taxing and spending, we could hire more people and get more people off welfare.

    Your comment about boomers not being the most taxed generation: I did not say that, but I will say that we are ALL taxed too much. Fraud, corruption, waste and abuse is rampant, just do a little of your own research. By the way, a little logic here: if you keep increasing taxation enough, the job providers move out of states like New Jersey, which is experiencing a flood of this problem. Do this from a federal level, and people take themselves and their businesses and their money overseas.

    Our founders made it clear that government should be very limited in size, scope and intrusion into our lives. Turns out, they were pretty smart. This worked pretty well for about 175 years. Then came social security (and a flood of ever-increasing entitlements including tax payer funded jobs that pay out high retirement pensions for 1-40 years), and while it is true what you said about the boomers, social security was paid out to the very first recipient an an amount that way exceeded what that person put in. So the system was flawed from the beginning. It should in fact exist (see my posts), but only for widows, those that experienced true tragedy etc, but should not be an inflated amount, and not for the lazy, or those who overspent, etc

    By the way, check your history books. Every society in history that became socialist sooner rather than later imploded upon itself.

    Unless we turn to logic, math, facts, logic and fiscal sanity, we are doomed as well. Let's stick to the facts, and let the education of our nation continue, and stand against the lies we keep hearing.

  • In reply to Ethan Farber:

    Awesome points.

  • Maybe I addressed it well enough already, but one more comment regarding a specific comment by you:


    We have welfare to prevent gangs of bandits and communism ? The facts are that we did not have a huge problem with gangs of bandits prior to a welfare system and secondly, we were never remotely close to Communism, until the last few years when our welfare system became huge, and now we are approaching communism.

    Please. Facts, math and logic.

    Did you know that in some states that the welfare expenditures have climbed to about 30-35% of the entire state budget ? How long does any reasonable person think that this is sustainable ?

    Even formerly "tax more and spend more" governors are now fighting for all they are worth to make spending cuts, because they have to. They can't just print money, like Berneke (sp?) -fed reserve chairman-and the other crooks in Washington, merrily ruining you and me and future generations.

    By the way: many, many welfare recipients have admitted on camera that while there are jobs available where they live, that they receive so much from the government that they have very little incentive to actually work.

    Case closed as to whether or not the welfare program needs a major overhaul

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    This article hit it on the nail. I was feeling exactly this way this morning when I text my local radio station moaning about what they call E-tolls in Johannesburg, South Africa. I actually thought that this baby boomer generation has got to be the most selfish, most entitled generation ever to walk the planet. They actually don't care what they will bequeath to future generations.

    In our case, they are hell bent on tolling of inner city highways. Imagine that. A developing nation with a 2% growth rate, no real option of public commuting, and they want to kill the goose that lays the only egg. They see the middle classes as this endless access to filling holes in the budget, regardless of the fact that we have some of the lowest hourly rates in the world, and probably the worst Gene co-efficient in the world. The scary thing is these people see anything wrong with the idea of enslaving future generations even before they were sperm in my nut sack.

    It then made sense to me why in some ancient African cultures' old people would be frog marched out of the village and left to their own devices in the forest, to be eaten by wild animals.

    Sounds like its like that all over the world. Not sure whether to feel better about that, or pull my hair. One things for sure thought, its time we stood up to them. Bullys!!!

  • Amen. It can all be summed up in two words: corruption and greed. Yes, let's please ask the hard questions, demand answers, start holding the crooks accountable and stand up to all these creeps.

  • A very selfish generation indeed. My dad (born 1951) has done nothing but collect little model cars (and he owns 5 real cars, 2 of which are classics, and he has gotten a new car almost every two years since I was born). There are shelves and shelves of model cars in the basement of his house (both assembled and unopened in the box). He also has two large glass cabinets in his living room full of EXPENSIVE diecast 1:18 and 1:24 scale cars that he claims will be mine and my siblings' "inheritance" one day because they will be worth so much money. Newsflash dad: once your generation dies out there will be no one who left who wastes their money on that crap. In other words, you just spent our inheritance on more car junk for yourself. Boomers....smh....

  • In reply to DZ313:

    I am truly sorry that your dad chose to "invest" in a ton of toy cars. That has got to hurt.

    I have made my share of mistakes, some of them selfish. See my other posts; I am desperately trying to do the right things now and stand up for our kids and grandkids and for the future of this nation.

    What is the most important thing any of us can do to right the ship ?

    Education, education, education.

    I am not talking about "book-larning" but becoming as educated as possible about what exactly is going on with our leaders; from local school boards and town councils right on up to our extremely corrupt president. Then educate others with facts.

    Read Mark Levin's "The Liberty Amendments."

    Listen to his show on your local radio affiliate (he is on 770AM New York 6-9pm M-F). Or listen via marklevinshow.com or get the app on your mobile device at marklevinshow.com or at the apple store and listen whenever it suits you.

    Only if you want actual facts and not lies.

    It will be a long, hard fight but one well worth fighting. Our country and our children are depending on us.

    Our fathers and grandfathers forced themselves to save the world during the 40's. The least we can do is force ourselves and our leaders to stop being so incredibly corrupt and selfish.

    Go to board and council meetings, join grassroots movements, talk to family, friends and neighbors, discuss facts/logic and the constitution only and call out liars and people trying to duck the truth or change the subject.

    Together we will get there, whatever it takes

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    I agree with this article in that there is a generation just after the WWII "greatest generation" that are complete morons. I will also contend that most people who reply to articles like this (including those who reply to this article) are complete idiots who cannot put a few words together to create an intelligible sentence, let alone convey their thoughts in an intelligible manner. It's a shame that our education system has let us down so dramatically.

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    In reply to Derik Wilson:

    I was a bit harsh and I apologize for that, calling folks who reply to these articles morons. I was very angry at many of the answers that I have been reading to many of these articles about the older generation (baby boomers) and this one just got the venting from me. Not all baby boomers are greedy, selfish, and generally uninformed. Many are, not all. As a result of the ones who are though, they have created an even worse generation after them because they have passed many of their principles, beliefs, and way of life to us. And now we have created another, even worse, generation after us.

  • In reply to Derik Wilson:

    Derik, no need to apologize. If you read some of my posts, you will see that I (as a 53-year-old boomer) am ashamed that I have been asleep at the wheel and allowed the leaders of our country ruin us boomers, ruin generation x/y, ruin the millenials (sp?) and probably throw at least the next 4-5 generations into an abyss. We must educate ourselves and those around us NOW and pull out all stops to do a 180 immediately.

    As we know, the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over expect different results.

    We keep (in most cases) re-electing the same criminals in political positions. And they keep over-spending our money and the money of our kids, grandkids and great-grandkids and beyond. Don't let them do it anymore ! Vote in new people/constitutionalists in the primaries ! Talk to your families and friends ! Write letters to the editors ! Let's go !

    Check out libertyandprosperity.org ! Check out "The Mark Levin Show !"

    Read "The Liberty Amendments !"

    By the way, the only problem I have with our education system is that we have allowed them to rob us blind financially.

    Do NOT go to over-priced colleges. Find the cheapest option, including on-line options or even look at options out of the country. Supply and demand will bring down tuition closer to where it should be. Do not reward over-priced colleges by going there, even if they set you up with big student loans.

    Kill the NEA and the state education associations (aka union extortionists of your wallet and mine) by convincing the local school boards to hire new teachers (from the hundreds of thousands able-bodied, trained teachers who would gladly work for less money) when the current teachers inevitably go on strike when we come to our senses and lower teacher salaries, benefits and pensions. I don't know what your property taxes are like, but 80% of ridiculously high taxes (new jersey) are due to public school extreme and unnecessary waste/inflated salaries and benefits/pensions. By the way, not just teachers, but tax-payer funded jobs in general, as well as entitlements in general (over 60% of the country takes more from the taxpayer than they pay in).

    Doesn't take a math genius to realize the math doesn't work and we are throwing the younger generation under the bus.

    Are you willing to do something about it ?

    How soon ?

    What are you waiting for ?

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    My parents were pre-boomer and post-Greatest Generation. I have just learned that generation is called the Silent Generation or the "Lucky Few."

    "Lucky Few became the first American generation smaller than the one before them, and the luckiest generation of Americans ever. As children they experienced the most stable intact parental families in the nation’s history. Lucky Few women married earlier than any other generation of the century and helped give birth to the Baby Boom, yet also gained in education compared to earlier generations. Lucky Few men made the greatest gains of the century in schooling, earned veterans benefits like the Greatest Generation but served mostly in peacetime with only a fraction of the casualties, came closest to full employment, and spearheaded the trend toward earlier retirement. More than any other generation, Lucky Few men advanced into professional and white-collar jobs while Lucky Few women concentrated in mostly pink collar work. Even in retirement and old age the Lucky Few remain in the right place at the right time".

    I have three older sisters - two boomers and one in the boomer/gen-x overlap.

    As a Gen-X'er raised by members of the Silent Generation or Lucky Few, I have seen the nation's prosperity and its opportunities stripped like a carcass by a pack of hyenas.

    Around the time I was born, my cousin, another Boomer, purchased a home for around $20k. I would be lucky if I can ever buy a home for less than 10 times that while wages have only enjoyed half that increase in as many years.

    I'm a Gen X'er, father of a Millennial and we're BOTH pissed at the Boomers.

  • Great article/list. Well argued. :)

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    We, Baby Boomers, made a lot of mistakes but please don't be simplistic. Don't forget all the obstacles we found in our way (Vietnam, the drug culture, Nixon & Watergate, etc.) and all the good things we did (the space program, a class A high schools and universities, the civil right act, etc.). And don't forget either that the now that the Baby Boomers are retiring, older millennials are already 34 years old and the X gens even older, so the current financial and political crisis should be shared with the newer generations. Nobody is a saint and nobody is a devil, there is good and bad on all of all. But denial, arrogance, narcissism, and entitlement are not going to solve any of our problems.

  • In reply to Domingo Soria:

    Thanks for your thoughts.
    Agree that some boomers made contributions and that just beating each other up is not the answer. Also agree that denial, arrogance, narcissism and entitlement will only worsen things.

    So let's go ! Let's do something !

    Start by keeping this blog going. Start by reading the constitution and starting discussions about actually going back to following it.

    Start by writing letters to the editor. Start by reading Mark Levin's "The Liberty Amendments," since on the federal level, we refuse to follow the constitution, forcing our own demise. The states have constitutional power to take control of the runaway, arrogant, do-as-they-please federal government.

    Start by sticking to facts, math, logic and the constitution. Start by insisting on transparency by our political leaders, and demanding impeachment and/or removal of them when they lie, contradict their own promises, or otherwise act in a manner contradictory to the general good of our country. (not to the benefit of a few of their contributors who ensure their re-election-can you say corruption ?)

    Corruption also occurs when political leaders keep spending money we don't have by giving more and more and more and more money to people via taxpayer funds (again, so that these political crooks who have destroyed are country get rewarded for their disgraceful behavior by being re-elected.)

    Let's go !

    Write in this blog about what you are doing to correct things. At least talk to your family and friends ! What, are you afraid that you will offend some because their entitlements would decrease (or not continue to increase) if we do what is necessary for the survival of this nation ?

    What is the alternative ?

    Look in the mirror. Do you care about your kids and grand-kids, or are you just extremely spineless and selfish ?

    I am not just asking Domingo. I am asking every single American, starting with myself.

  • Keenly aware here that the Internet was around before we knew it as the Internet it is today, used mostly by Defense/Military/Govt ... as us Silicon Valley techies hated it so much with it's aggravating limitations that we took it to the next level... BUT... the Baby-Boomers gave us the Internet (and other technologies) with the browser as we know it today, ironically the very medium other generations use to bash and trash us.

    How do I know this? Because I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley, CA for the past 29 years. I am retiring very soon... finally at age 64. The people who developed the technology you all use to bash us, are, well, the Baby-Boomers.

    Those born in the mid-1930's to mid-1940's just before the Baby-Boomer's (who are now in their late 60's - late 70's) were about to retire and not interested in getting involved (hey, I was there, okay, and there was a severe talent shortage, alright) and the Baby-Boomer's parents were already retired in the late 1980's to mid-90's when we were designing and developing the Internet as we know it today --- and the Baby-Boomer's kids were somewhere between K-12... and yet they use the Internet to bash an entire generation who gave them the Internet, the very technology they use to insult us.

    Thank you for using the technology we gave you to trash us.

    The point is that we really need to stop with the bashing... there are screwed up people in every generation --- every generation has it's share/percentage of messed up entitlement morons.

    The Baby-Boomers kids miniaturized, upgraded and re-packaged what we, the Baby-Boomers already created... that they use to belittle and insult us. The majority of them are tech-dependent, not tech-savvy.

    Every generation has good and bad, contributors and takers. The generation bashing has to STOP. It is incredibly childish and counterproductive and alienates and divides us as a society.

  • Let’s say we took a look at all the bread that was baked today around the world, and found that American processed white bread was the majority. Then, looking at its low nutritional value, we determine that all the bread made today was generally not healthy, and therefore it sucked. We ignored all the whole grain, highly nutritious bread made all over the world(wheat, artisan, ad infinitum), and focused on Wonder bread.
    That’s what classifying and qualifying people by their generation basically does. Yes, it has its place, but to say pay discrepancies, for example, are “worse than ancient Rome” is simply not factual. A casual look at the average wages of a (highest earning)male factory worker in England before the time of unionized labor, and child labor laws, puts a top earner at about 30 shillings per week; about 30 cents or so in the USA. Adjusted for inflation, we’re talking less than 20 bucks a week. This is why entire families would work in the same factory 12+ hours per day, 6 to 7 days per week, and live in a basement, and barely have enough to pay rent, and eat.
    Now, is the pay discrepancy worsened by boomer greed? Absolutely.
    But, to use generations to pinpoint the real problem is like handling nuclear waste with an oven mitt. One example of how this is true is to try and say one 20th century generation is somehow “great”, yet another is somehow “X”. Come on now; isn’t this just a bit ridiculous..? One generation gets an accolade, the other gets a label? This form of classification is barely a step above the racist statement of “Some people are rich and beautiful, some working class and average, others are n**gers”. How stupid. Ignorant, and worst of all, absolutely ineffectual and only good for causing argument, bias, anger, hence the horse manure I’ve read in this forum. No wait, this is worse. Horse manure is actually a valuable commodity.
    A much better way of looking at humanity in the 20th, 21st, and previous centuries is to simply observe human nature, specifically where it pertains to prosperity. Throughout history, from long before ancient Rome to today, once a person is given things; either having worked hard and earned them, but much more by having these things handed to them, comes a sense of entitlement, and avarice. As prosperity grows, so does the nature of humanity; which is this:
    Give me little, and, having nothing, I am deeply grateful. Give me something more(or the chance to work hard and earn more), and already having little, I might very well be satisfied(this is the working class). Give me more, and, having the tools to survive, and even thrive already, I might be even more grateful, but then, I might become suspicious, and start to look at you with contempt, because, why didn’t you give me more..?(welcome to the middle class). Finally, give me everything you possibly can, and, I, having more than enough already; indeed more than I could ever possibly ever need or want, and off comes your head for your impudence before my glory.(welcome to the elite, royal, upper class; titles may change through the ages, but the pride never does).
    A brief look at many lottery winners and their destroyed lives will show you things that usually take centuries can occur within a few years. This is the only REAL difference between “old money”, and “new money”. Human nature strikes again.
    So, we see the difference between earned riches and bestowed riches: Time of destruction; Kardashian vs. Livingston, perhaps; or whatever. Point made.
    The USA is not unique in how prosperity brings bondage, and trust me, bondage is coming to the USA. The borrower is SERVANT to the lender. Period. BTW- regardless of how “tough” that borrower might be. Repo men are some tough guys, knowing they might be met with some resistance. The USA has become the tough guy on the block who now owes by the trillions, and no matter how tough you try to be, their just always seems to be someone who pops up ready to take you on and prove… *cough* Sorry, that’s another discussion.
    Back to the point at hand: Here is the vicious circle of all humanity concerning prosperity; regardless of generational horse crap: Bondage leads to Faith which leads to Courage which leads to Liberty which leads to Abundance which leads to Selfishness which leads to Complacency which leads to Apathy which leads to Bondage which leads to…
    Yay! Now we see our great link from the past, to today, and the future! How exciting yes?
    You are a bunch of fools squabbling amongst yourselves over who is to blame. The answer is in your nearest mirror.

  • In reply to earp:

    Thanks, Earp

    If you read my posts, you will see I agree with you that to find the root of the problem, most of us just need to find the mirror.

    It is about selfishness, which produces greed, which takes many forms including politicians who keep sending entitlements through the roof. (so they can get re-elected) Ones that we obviously can not afford. So wage earners/business owners leave the state or country when it becomes too painful. And the economy spiral worsens, and the middle class rapidly deteriorates and the low income earners become even more enslaved and beholden to the tax-payer.
    As I said in an earlier post, many welfare recipients have admitted on camera that there are jobs available, but they receive so much money from the government, there is very little incentive to go to work.
    Agree that (while I believe, and I think there is plenty of documentation that the explosion of these communist policies occurred while Boomers were at the helm) squabbling about which generation did the best or worst is something not to waste time on. I was just trying to own up to my responsibility in this mess, like not paying attention to this mess until about ten years ago.
    The answer, as I said, is educating ourselves each other about truths, and holding ourselves and each other accountable. We have allowed our leaders to do many things that are black and white illegal. We should be ashamed that we have not demanded they be put in jail.

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    The only "hard work" boomers ever experience was swiping their credit card.

  • In reply to Shawn Kearney:

    While not every boomer "takes" more than they "give," many boomers are way too selfish. I should be less selfish. I believe I can accurately say that my wife and I are far more generous than most and definitely give to others way more than we receive.
    However, the political thieves have done most of their damage in the last 20 years while I was in my 30's, 40's and early 50's so I should have done more to speak out against it. I have been trying to make up for lost time and fight against the corruption.

    We need to educate ourselves and each other and not allow the corruption to continue. We are absolutely heading at top speed toward a cliff, and most will not come out of denial until it is too late.

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    It was the boomers protesting in the 60s that led to the clean air act,
    without which the air would be much dirtier by now. Also, the boomers have had to work much harder to have a similar standard of living that the previous generation had. That said, the boomers have not done enough to save the environment since then and have let greed and shallowness overshadow their values from the 60s.

  • In reply to Tariq Mehdi:

    Agree that boomers did some good things like helping to bring about the clean air act. Work harder than previous generation to have a similar standard of living ? Majority of boomers have not sweated and slaved in factories in deplorable conditions to the degree than the previous generation had to, and I also disagree about standard of living. Majority of boomers have expensive cars, flat screens, dvd/blue-ray, eat food not prepared at home on a regular basis.... a pretty lofty standard of living.
    Anyway, let's not quibble about which generation did what.
    Let us educate ourselves and each other about facts, math, logic and the constitution, then hold ourselves and each other accountable.
    For starters, each one of us should ask ourselves and each other:
    Are we talking about and voting for folks that are part of the establishment (have run us off a cliff and continue to do so) ?

    - OR are we talking, promoting, and voting for non-establishment types who believe in facts, math, logic and the constitution ie. Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Mike Lee, Ron Paul (retired from office but still fighting for real truth), Rand Paul, Dr. Ben Carson (my favorite for prez in Nov 2016) ?

    FYI Dr. Martin Luther King was a conservative Republican (true Republican, not like the current RINO's)

    There are others that have integrity, but most politicians are full of bull, liars and thieves of our money and destroyers of our country, and it is way past time we wake up and jail most of them and demand that real Americans lead us

  • I have challenged all of us (including myself) to look at the facts, math and logic of where we are and what works and what doesn't work and what obviously needs to be done.

    Who is in disagreement with my facts, logic and math ? If so, why ?

    Who is in agreement ? If you are, what are you willing to place into action ?

    I am tired of inaction and the avoidance of the root causes and the lack of action in fixing the obvious.

    Can somebody say something about what fixing this looks like, and then commit to concrete action ?

    I do not have all the answers, but if we stick to the facts, math, logic and the constitution, then most of the solutions are obvious.

    Who will join me ? Let's DO something !

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    When they were under 30 they waged war against those over 30. Now that they are over 30 they wage war against those under 30.

    Generational warfare for the sake if it is just how the Boomers roll.

  • So as I have said over and over; we can trash each other all day long, but what are you actually doing about changing things ?

    Are you voting for the establishment, corrupt politicians ?

    Or are you talking about and supporting constitutional, honest politicians ?

    How about discussing the issues ?

    Do you think the "math works" with our current massive spending program that far outstrips the tax dollars coming in ?

    What are your solutions ?

    I have outlined mine (boring facts, math and logic) over and over but no one is talking about them, so I only assume that you are not implementing solutions either.

    Please inform/educate me that you are fixing things, not just pointing them out. (I would love to be wrong on this)

    Are you rooting for Hillary, or Jeb Bush or some other nightmare ?

    Or are you praying for and taking about someone who is ready, willing and able to "name names" in the corrupt and criminal Washington death machine that has almost completely destroyed America ?

    Trump: love him or hate him, at least he has my respect in one area: we finally have someone calling people out.

    Not sure which current Washington politicians are bad ?

    Here is a good hint.

    Over 90% of them (Repubs and Dems) keep on voting for (or at least refusing to vote against) more spending (money that we do not have).

    And these same crooks keep accepting bribes from lobbyists and making decisions for the benefit of the lobbyists, not for our best interest.

    They should all be put in jail, and we do not even impeach them or at least vote them out.

    What is WRONG with us ?

    I am so disgusted.

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    The term "Baby Boomers" needs to be broken up into segments. The Boomers born in the 1960s DID NOT inherit a robust industrial economy. They inherited an industrial base in a death spiral and a series of one recession after another. These corporate sell-offs were created by individuals born in the 1920s and 30s. And the only reason it was ever "robust" is because the US was the only game in the world. Every other country was crawling from the wreckage of WW2. It was these middle aged Friedman-ites that decided to plunge headfirst into a Finance-based economy and wave their middle finger at production. The 20-ish boomers had no choice but to take these finance jobs.

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    Kennedy died 6 years before thee Moon landing...

  • Typical of the generation that blames everyone else for their mistakes. Oh my mommy and daddy coddled me (yeah they were stupid) but grow the f up and start taking responsibility. You own your own narcissistic and spoiled personality. Do something about it without blaming others.

  • In reply to roadkill:

    yep !

    can we stop coddling and enabling everybody and slash the entitlements and other spending that we have no money for !

    1. vote out most incumbents every election
    2. term limits
    3. article 5 of the constitution: convention of the states to overrule the swamp in DC

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    I was born in 1957, the peak year of baby births in the post-WWII baby boomer period. (a glance at any almanac will confirm this). We were the class of '75, when more Americans were in their senior year than any other time in history. Our generation was arguably the most depressed generation in American history. Our motto at the time: "Life sucks, then you die." You have to wonder...

    You might say, we were fucked going in, and fucked coming out, in terms of being hated & manipulated. Of course the reason for this comes from the sheer numbers of an age related demographic, and how that works out for businesses which profit from centralized advertising, such as the entertainment business.

    There is also the theory, such as found among Christian Scientists, that the entire baby-boom generation was a conspiracy from the beginning. Although it's far-fetched, the reasoning does check out. Here's how it works:

    You are someone like George Bush, Sr and it's the early period following WWII. Since you destined to become the head of the CIA, this reflects your natural gift for acumen in sociology, the science of large movements of people (e.g. "en masse") and, not coincidentally, the possibly manipulation, or management of large groups of people. Or, as George Herbert is known to say: "We're gonna manage this thing." LoL

    So the idea is to promote having babies. This is done through mistreatment of women and the lack of any birth control education/medicine etc. My mother, for example, an attractive woman who married three times & had seven kids, was often maligned by my cousin, who called her a "baby maker" because that was a popular sexist joke in retrospect of the 1950s, at the time (1960s).

    But as this is a conspiracy, the idea of creating a baby boom generation is part of a plan to eventually manipulate the entire USA, such as we've seen in recent decades. This plan includes what Eisenhower called the "military industrial complex." With the ultimate goal of creating a police state by 2000. Which we have also seen: Homeland Security.

    By creating a bubble of extraordinary numbers of one generation, compared to smaller generations around it, an entire generation of people are vulnerable to becoming singled out, for one reason or another. It could be for good things, or bad things. But one thing it always gives, is sociological stresses that can be managed this way & that.

    In the beginning, when the boomers, as we are known. were still mostly children during the early to mid-1960s, product advertisers launched a blitzkrieg, selling toys and TV programs etc targeted at boomer kids. Hugely successful because of the sheer numbers of young people in America. So, in terms of managing a baby-boom conspiracy, it's easy to see why businesses would be for it beginning in the late-40s & into the '50s: future profit potential.

    But the CIA types, like Bush, were into this boomer thing for the long haul, for creating the police state in the late-20th century. That's the kind of massive profit potential we're talking about here, which makes profits had by businesses on 1960s boomer kids pale in comparison.

    And there's also another, even bigger purpose for all this manipulation of human population. That being the inevitable population bomb, also known as 'overpopulation.' Which any good professor of sociology would have been thinking about way back during the mid-20th century years, when this supposed conspiracy began to ferment. It's all about thinking ahead.

    Overpopulation is real, even though few people were thinking about it until recently, when it became unavoidable to see its affects, such as on the environment. More importantly, to the conspiracy fascists who profit on the selling and distribution of weapons, on manipulation of emerging countries by government coups and to their cohorts, the multi-national banks and corporations which set up corrupt industry in those vulnerable countries, which are located mostly in the southern hemisphere, overpopulation sets a precedence as humanity moves into the 21st century. That being how the dire situation humanity finds itself in, creates a general mood of fear and self-preservation over compassion and helpfulness. So the idea is to manage that inevitable fear and selfishness, for profit.

    But it helps to have a hated generation. This way, opinion can be skewed to advantage, one way or another. Point being, as people become aware of world overpopulation issues (environment, resources etc), everyone becomes an armchair sociologist. Opinion becomes profit, more than it ever did before. Manipulation of the press is vital, and the politics of fear is ever present and available for manipulation. The invention of the world wide web, where it appears to be a tool for education and clearer self-expression and cosmopolitan knowledge, also becomes a tool for sociological manipulation.

    In order to create a hated generation, you first have to have one that is easily singled out. Then you push the young, unusually large generation to rebellion, by military conscription for a war that is clearly decadent: protecting the French colonists at Indonesia. With plenty of not so less than obvious spy games going on during a Cold War, which you promoted with this long term goal in mind, and rising racial issues flaming into the Civil RIghts movement, with which your contributing friends in the South inadvertently helped you, boomer youth by the late-60s into the 70s, were ripe for a social revolution.

    Generational in-fighting is next. As conscription is removed and the massive numbers of boomers now of voting age by 1975, the entire USA begins to look like a place where liberal, progressive ideas could flourish. But again, this was all part of the original plan, begun in the late-40s & 50s. It would be short lived, and when it was over by the late-70s. and especially by the early-80s, the hated generation of 1960s-70s progressive liberals, known as hippies, would be complete and ready for use in the following decades. What could easily now be described, in retrospect, as the neo-conservative period.

    Funny thing, we could feel how everything sucked, even as we were supposedly having things our way during the 1970s. No wonder. The hatred of us was always there. Our songs told about it. People were arrested over it, consistently throughout all of it. And now, when the shit is hitting the fan for everyone, we are the perfect scapegoats for it.

    For there is a big difference between being spoiled decadent, as we were/are known, and being manipulated into being seen as spoiled decadent. When growing numbers of boomers began to suspect hanky-panky coming from the top, they took things into their own hands and became Yuppies. It was clear how nothing was going to change for the better, that it was all ideology and there was no talking to the government and, more importantly, to the inner circle at the top of government: the ultra-rich and the military industrial complex etc. Those people were the ones truly in charge of this ongoing sociological manipulation of the human populations. Progress was not a priority for them; only profit and self-preservation.

    The mindful observer could go on & on about this. There are many things which fit well into the conspiracy. Reaganomics, economic inflation, racketeering journalists, fear-mongering, demonizing of middle-eastern peoples, rising Zionism, Kissinger and the flooding of weapons into the middle-east, spying in Iran, coups upon coups in emerging third world nations, starving of the poor in vulnerable areas of the world for profit, and finally the culture of fear with the obvious intent of creating a police state at home in the USA. All of which can easily be blamed on boomers, Americans' perfect scapegoat for all things wrong with the world.

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