Considerations

Politics, business, religion, and culture by Samuel J. Scott and Jeff Guevin

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The Upcoming Generational War

September 12th, 2009 · 13 Comments · Boston, Business, Civil Liberties, Conservative Pundits, Culture, Dating, Economics, Education, Essays, Immigration, Israel, Marketing, Personal, Politics, Science, Technology, The Middle East

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baby boomers retirementSixth in a series of essays

Ruben Navarrette recently criticized young Americans who are lobbying the government for financial assistance in these tough times:

Young people usually don't have mortgages to pay off, or spouses and children to support. That gives them an enormous amount of freedom whether they realize it or not. They also have an advantage in the job market because they can travel the country and go where the jobs are. Or they can simply follow their passions and build careers of their own designs. Instead of seeing obstacles, they should see opportunities.

And yet, when young people ask government to throw them a life preserver and save them from the choppy waters of a rough economy, they've all but given up. Even if they get the short-term economic aid they're seeking, they'll lose their self-sufficiency in the process and become dependent on an unresponsive bureaucracy. That's not good. In fact, it's dangerous.

So you have to wonder where young people picked up this distasteful and destructive behavior. It's obvious. It was from watching their elders with outstretched palms, a sense of entitlement, and a tendency to see government as the solution to all sorts of problems. And to think there are people who actually believe that.

Navarrette misses the point. As he himself notes earlier in his column, young Americans are more disproportionately unemployed than other demographics. But the problem is much deeper than jobs.

Just like Generation X two decades ago, Generation Y is increasingly bitter and frustrated to the point of losing all hope that they will one day have a life at least as secure -- and not even as prosperous -- as the Baby Boomers did in their middle-aged lives. (For the record, my birth year -- 1980 -- is stuck between Generation X and Generation Y, so I can empathize with both.) It is hard to quantify the pessimism and anger that pervades the younger generation, but a writer named Squashed comes close:

The word “entitlement” has picked up a negative connotation it shouldn’t have. If you go to the bank and deposit $20, you are entitled to get your $20 from the bank. If you fulfill your half of a contract, you are entitled to the other party’s performance. Sure, its a problem when you feel you deserve something you don’t deserve—but there is nothing wrong with acknowledging a legitimate debt. So let’s ask why some people in their 20s might feel the older generation hasn’t kept its end of the bargain...

For those who just graduated, there was no job. That’s not technically true. There was a job—but somebody older has it and isn’t letting go. It turns out the whole system is rigged. Education and intelligence and everything we were told was important turn out to be worth nothing next to seniority and experience...

Take health insurance. Decades of pressure to lower wages for new hires and cut benefits means that the employer-provided system means that even if you can find a job, it probably won’t offer health insurance. Paying for insurance out of pocket is prohibitively expensive if you’re healthy and coverage is entirely unavailable if you’re not. And if you have a minimum-wage job serving coffee, you’re still getting a chunk taken out of your paycheck to finance a program that won’t be solvent by the time you’re old enough to use it. But any effort to change this system is met with seniors screaming about communists taking away their medicare. And if 20-somethings back a legislative initiative that would help them obtain coverage, they’re slackers living in their parents basements. And let’s not even get into the individual mandate in the health-reform bill that will require the healthy and young to subsidize the health-care of their older and generally wealthier parents.

Should twenty-somethings who have done everything asked of them their entire lives feel like somebody pulled one over on them? Probably—but bad things happen. And hopefully all those years of education taught us enough empathy not to be vindictive. Call us gullible—but don’t call us lazy or selfish.  If some of us push for a few reforms that could help us succeed even when our parents have dropped the ball—back them, and be thankful that we’re not talking outright revolution.

In an earlier essay, I also described the reasons that people my age are -- to put it bluntly -- pissed off. Please take a minute to read the post and its comments. Now, for the specific data from the Pew Research Center:

baby boomers work

reasons for working

delay retirement

labor force

Now, what facts can be determined from this data?

  • The percentage of workers who are approaching or older than 65 is increasing while that of younger people is declining or remaining static.
  • Most workers who remain on the job past the age of 65 do so out of desire rather than need.
  • Still, some older workers have delayed retirement due to the recession.

In a nutshell,  it is the Baby Boomers' own fault that their children are working at McDonald's or sleeping in their basements. For the most part, the older generation is refusing

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13 Comments so far ↓

  • Stewart

    Just what the Inter­net needs, more Gen-X whin­ing. “My gen­er­a­tion REALLY is dif­fer­ent. Blah, blah, blah. In 5 years you’ll be back to your young arro­gant Amer­i­can self fum­ing about taxes and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions and wel­fare for the lowlifes. With a real bank account you’ll be scream­ing for gov­ern­ment to get off your back. Gen X is so bor­ing. I’ve been there, done that! Well, except for the real bank account.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Sam Scott

    Thanks for your intel­li­gent con­tri­bu­tion to my blog.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • GTF800

    Inter­est­ing blog, but it’s miss­ing an impor­tant part of the equa­tion: Gen­er­a­tion Jones (born 1954–1965, between the Boomers and Gen­er­a­tion X). Google Gen­er­a­tion Jones, and you’ll see it’s got­ten a ton of media atten­tion, and many top com­men­ta­tors from many top pub­li­ca­tions and net­works (Wash­ing­ton Post, Time mag­a­zine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specif­i­cally use this term. In fact, the Asso­ci­ated Press’ annual Trend Report fore­cast the Rise of Gen­er­a­tion Jones as the #1 trend of 2009. Here’s a page with a good overview of recent media inter­est in Gen­Jones: http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html

    It is impor­tant to dis­tin­guish between the post-WWII demo­graphic boom in births vs. the cul­tural gen­er­a­tions born dur­ing that era. Gen­er­a­tions are a func­tion of the com­mon for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences of its mem­bers, not the fer­til­ity rates of its par­ents. Many experts now believe it breaks down more or less this way:

    DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946–1964
    Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942–1953
    Gen­er­a­tion Jones: 1954–1965
    Gen­er­a­tion X: 1966–1978

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Stewart

    You are wel­come. Always happy to point out the flimsy and fee­ble. Hey, with­out super­fi­cial­ity, this would be an inter­est­ing medium, some­thing we need to avoid at all costs, right? Then we wouldn’t be able to read about yet another gen­er­a­tion that has lost all hope.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Stewart

    I need to give the author credit for not being sucked into the incred­i­ble stu­pid “Jones Gen­er­a­tion” fal­lacy that is receiv­ing so much hype, prob­a­bly for com­mer­cial poten­tial­ity. These greedy nuts want us to believe that a gen­er­a­tion, which is based upon, roughtly, the repro­duc­tion cycle, they want us to believe kids can have babies at 12 years old on a reg­u­lar basic.

    Note this whole Jones silli­ness is an orga­nized cam­paign, one that attempts to take a media fad — hey, any­thing, espe­cially in these hard times, to sell mag­a­zines — into a big­ger lie. The Jones group is merely a cohort of the Boomers, that’s all. Gen­er­a­tions can’t be 11 or 12, which cuts it from its basis of being a gen­er­a­tion. Get real folks.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • GTF800

    Actu­ally, you are con­fus­ing famil­ial gen­er­a­tions with cul­tural gen­er­a­tions. Repro­duc­tion age is totally rel­e­vant to famil­ial gen­er­a­tions (e.g. grandma/Mom/daughter/etc.). But cul­tural gen­er­a­tions (e.g. Boomers/Jonesers/Xers/etc.) have absolutely noth­ing to do with repro­duc­tive age. A con­sen­sus has emerged among gen­er­a­tion experts that, partly because of the accel­er­a­tion of cul­ture, gen­er­a­tions are now approx­i­mately 11–15 years.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • GTF800

    And fur­ther, the evi­dence is over­whelm­ing that Jone­sers are a dis­tinct gen­er­a­tion from Boom & X. For exam­ple, Boomers are typ­i­cally the most Demo­c­ra­tic party-voting gen­er­a­tion, while Jone­sers are the most GOP-voting gen, yet they are lumped together as if they are one gen, sim­ply because both gen’s par­ents hap­pened to have a lot of kids. Ridicu­lous. Which is why so many experts buy into the Gen­Jones idea.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Stewart

    Actu­ally, you are con­fus­ing a pop­u­lar fad with social sub­stance. Gen­er­a­tions are never famil­ial or sub-groupie, but grounded on repro­duc­ing. With­out that tie “gen­er­a­tion” becomes absurd. For instance, then a gen­er­a­tion can be two years long? one year? Every day? Hey, each of us can have our very own generation!

    Another deep con­fu­sion on your part is all gen­er­a­tions are bro­ken down into dif­fer­ent groups that have cer­tain dif­fer­ences. This was even true for the World War II Gen­er­a­tion, which in cer­tain respects was the most recent gen­er­a­tion with a tight consensus.

    Baloney on your “experts,” which is a select group of indi­vid­u­als often with a vested inter­est to dis­tort lan­guage and per­cep­tion. At one time the experts agreed nuclear weapon were a weapon for peace. A one time the experts said Blacks were an infe­rior race. At one time so-called experts have said everything.

    Speed of cul­tural change merely means there can be more diver­sity in a cul­ture, but this is not a fore­gone con­clu­sion. Look at Gen­er­a­tion Y today.

    In the end, the facts will over­whelm you and the Jones Gen­er­a­tion will return to what it always was, late-wave Boomers. Sorry to break your bub­ble but divorc­ing gen­er­a­tions from repro­duc­tion cycle is like divorc­ing mar­riage from human beings. It has no mean­ing, which is why you need to quote the “experts,” who in this case have no credibility.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Stewart

    The added point, if Gen­er­a­tions were deter­mined by vot­ing pref­er­ences, then the entire cat­e­go­riz­ing of gen­er­a­tions would have to be ripped up. For instance, in the Silent Gen­er­a­tion there is a age-cohort that would be Boomer, another that would be WW II, still another would be the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gen­er­a­tion. Based on vot­ing pref­er­ences there would be no coher­ence to a generation.

    The more I read your pro­pa­ganda the more I think you guys might be seri­ously deranged.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Drunken Economist

    Yeah, I’m another X’er, and unlike you I’m tak­ing the low road. Hah.

    Sorry, but what I call ‘Boomer Derange­ment Syn­drome’ can be found in all par­ties. Actu­ally for me, it’s rep­e­ti­tion, because 80% of the Boomers I know are bur­dens on their fam­ily or liabilities.

    For every Nancy Pelosi I can show you some­one who I had to call BS on:

    http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/08/boomers-angriest-generation-please.html

    That’s not anger. That’s fear. From a ‘Con­ser­v­a­tive’ Boomer.

    I also agree with you, that ‘Gen Jones’ is tripe. It’s just the shirt tails see­ing the writ­ing on the wall that their gen­er­a­tion will NOT be remem­bered fondly. No Boomer will.

    I think Obama kind of under­stands this. Despite that he still sur­rounds him­self with chick­en­hawks [5 defer­ment boy Biden, just like Cheney], and Boomers like Pelosi. You know, Nancy ‘rhetoric is assas­si­na­tion so shut up all of you’ Pelosi.

    Another thing I’d like to bring to your atten­tion is Bruce Sterling’s final talk at the GenX-Y Hacker Con Reboot 11:

    http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/09/bruce-sterling-closing-talk-reboot-11.html

    The Boomers, of which Barry is the last of the last– is a great ora­tor– but he’s a cheer leader. Not a real leader. Even Ster­ling can see that.

    Where are we headed? Right where East­ern Europe was. Why? See the speech.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Stewart

    Your BDR “can be found in all par­ties,” do you mean in all peo­ple or in all drink­ing par­ties? Clar­ity is not some­thing, evi­dently, that you value. As one reads through your post one word stands out that explains just about every­thing, “con­ser­v­a­tive.” That’s suf­fi­cient to sent you into smear­ing all Boomers and to slam the Speaker. Increas­ingly Con­ser­v­a­tive is short hand for alien­ated pathetic moron, we might call it APM. In this case it appears you have slipped over the line from APM to IM, inco­her­ent moron.
    I sug­gest you stick with the drink­ing, which you’re attempt­ing to con­vince every­one, you excel in.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Drunken Economist

    ..and I think you mis­took Samuel’s ironic ‘com­ple­ment’ as encour­age­ment to pro­mul­gate your inces­sant blather.

    Are we even? My post was about the blog entry, not what you con­sider ‘discourse’.

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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  • Sam Scott

    Drunken Econ­o­mist, when you men­tion east­ern Europe, what do you mean?

    UN:F [1.8.3_1051]
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