Matt Bracken pointed out that Baby Boomers are being auditioned as the scapegoats for upcoming events. I was totally unaware.
Why do Millennials and Gen-X hate on Baby Boomers?
"...economic disadvantages, environmental neglect, and a sense that boomers have not taken responsibility for the challenges younger generations face, such as climate change and economic instability..." (AI generated answer). I underlined the last part of the quote because it is an interesting turn-of-phrase.
More than half of them went to college and soaked in the toxic consequences of the tournament pay/benefit structure of Tenured Full Professor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Post-Doc, T/A. It is positively medieval.
A Post-Doc (in the worthless, made-up fields of study that dominate) cannot get on the tenure track until a Tenured Full Professor dies or fully retires somewhere in the United States. Then 200 Assistant Professors apply for his job and one wins it. Then 200 Associate Professors apply for the open Assistant Professor position. Then 1000 Post-Docs apply for the open Assistant Professor job.
Stressful, wasteful and needless. It also creates a great deal of anger in the great, thundering herd of deeply indebted, gullible, perpetual students who swell the ranks of overly-educated. That is the septic tank that the modern college student is swimming in.
And while the guidance counselors for those students might have been Baby Boomers, selling the students on the idea of going in debt so they didn't have to work while going to college and the idea that somebody would PAY them for what their credentials without them actually having to do anything was like selling heroin to an addict.
Part II
In the name of saving the environment, home-owners in highly desirable locations crush the construction of additional housing. The assessed value of THEIR house rises to astronomical levels which effectively slams the door on younger people obtaining affordable housing within reasonable commuting distance of where the jobs are. Many people who work menial jobs in the D.C. Metro area live in West Virginia and commute in the "off" hours when I-270 is not a parking lot.
Of course, the stated reason "saving the environment" is BS. The real reason is that the artificial famine of new housing inflates the value of their home, making them millionaires.
I agree with the Millennials: The Baby-Boomers screwed them by enacting zoning requirements that restrict the number of units. We elected Governors whose agencies aggressively police construction sites and hammer crews who violate standards in even the most casual or incidental ways, inflating the cost of new construction by $100k per unit.
One solution
One solution Bracken proposed was to invite struggling, younger family members back into the house when things get spicy.
That solution can be workable but the devil is in the details. Do you have any family members who are hopelessly poisoned with anger? Are their buddies/girlfriends trustworthy? You aren't just inviting another sentry into your castle. You are potentially inviting all of their friends and their friend's families.
Now is the time to be hiring them to work around the place to see if they are punctual and trustworthy. Some will be. Others will not be. Some will have personalities that are easy to mesh with. Others will not.
My 14 year old grandson called me a boomer. The tone wasn't respectful. I wasn't angry, I was curious. I asked him why he thought my generation was somehow guilty of something. He blames the chaos of society on us. " We didn't pay attention and vote right".. I see how that would be easy to believe. I explained what We got handed. How things like NAFTA were passed, while the majority opposed it. I explained that the media lies. Politicians betray. And that the direction of the country does not get decided by the voters. I'll be dead and gone before he figures out that he is holding my generation responsible for things that we didn't agree with and had no control over.
ReplyDeleteMao roused the children to tell on their parents. You've surely seen the photos of struggle sessions, and know that tale from history?
ReplyDeletePol Pot did it, Castro did it, Che Guavajuice did it too. Children are malleable, impressionable, easy-to-control, they're irresponsible children! Tell them whatever they want to hear, and they do your bidding unquestionably.
Our area is experiencing a boom in large apartment complexes (300 units +) to capitalize on gaining income on small land footprint of land. Owning your own home that is close to daily needs is becoming difficult.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was growing up in the 70's, our area was a winter garden crops area. The population has swelled at least five times that population in the past 50 years and nearly all of the land that grew crops grows strip malls and neighborhoods.
We should not have allowed this to happen. Two hard freezes in the 1980's created this. Farmers did not want to re-build the frozen orchards because of the time needed to establish. Sell the land was their expedient.
I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK mass immigration (more than 10% increase in population in the space of a decade) is a major unacknowledged factor in astronomical house prices. Also, most of the Net Zero fantasy originates with the younger cohorts, the boomers largely want to preserve the use of fossil fuels. The deindustrialization currently beings experienced in the UK is a direct consequence of the Net Zero cult, and the consequent sky-high electricity prices.
ReplyDeleteOrchards are prime building locations for mansions. They often have views of a lake or ocean. They have elevation. They have good drainage and few mosquitoes. Orchards are being pushed into sub-optimal locations and greater crop losses are inevitable.
ReplyDeleteIf you lived in San Francisco and owned a home where you could see even the tiniest sliver of water from the highest window, it essentially doubled the asking price of the dwelling. A $2M home became a $4M home and you were technically a millionaire.
If you took out a home equity loan so you could live like a millionaire, then the assessed value of your home was the collateral and the interest rates were low because it was a "secured" loan.
If somebody built a 10 story apartment building and blocked your view of the bay, then the value of your house crashed and your loan was no longer secured. If you had to roll the loan over, you would have to pay credit-card interest rates.
The NIMBY Boomers painted themselves into a corner. If the housing shortage in places like Frisco were rationally addressed, then many millionaires will be forced into bankruptcy when the can't kick the can down the road because the can-kicking was enabled by the astronomical assessment of their home's value.
I know housing is limited and prices are sky high. But I would not want to see multiple houses going up. Places like my town are small; emergency services are on a volunteer basis. We don’t have public water or sewer. Roads are mostly dirt. It hurts me to see farmland in other towns being stripped for housing, mostly McMansions on 1/2 to 1 acre lots.
ReplyDeleteYes I’m a Boomer. I like being away from people. Let the bigger towns build if they can find the space.
I think a big problem is the huge houses they build now. Look at houses in the 1950s or so. Most were less than 2000 sf, kids shared bedrooms. No office space, dining room, rec room, no giant TVs.
Smaller houses would be cheaper to build and more affordable to buyers.
Southern NH
According to one source (https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/how-much-did-a-3-bedroom-house-cost-in-1950-and-1960/) the median 3-bedroom new-built house in 1950 cost $7400 ($95k in today's dollars) and $12k in 1960.
DeleteBloat in square-footage and lot size is part of the reason for the increases in cost. So are "engineered drain fields" in areas where conventional drainfields are iffy. Recently in Michigan, basement walls must be insulated which complicates running wire up outside walls and the electrical service must have outside emergency cut-offs (there goes your electrical security system) and surge protection (https://www.icc-nta.org/code-update/michigan-electrical-code-part-8-rules-2023/).
Mandatory increases in the fixed-cost to build a house makes it impossible to profitably build a small stick-build a house. The solution is to only build BIG houses or apartments.
A Gordan Knot indeed. Between NIMBY, political correctness and straight up Marxism where anybody who is doing better than you are the "evil ones" to blame for everything.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem odd to me that the "correct thing" is to give all YOUR Wealth (Power ad nauseum) to ME" in their viewpoint.
BTW AI isn't all that great. It's replies come from the biases of the programmers (I doubt Boomers, eh?) the "Fact Checkers" politically biases and that old computer geek rule still applies:
Garbage IN, Garbage OUT.
Bringing inside your home "Trusted youngsters" for the spicy times seem pretty optimistic. As you pointed out Joe, it's not just them, it's their "Friends" and Family that will be demanded to be "included" into your "Safe Zone".
Any of them may find you the bad person in the Marxist viewpoint. A sharp knife or even a sharp tongue in private may find you an outsider from your own established "Farnham's Freehold".
Trusted family, trusted friends and a strong faith in God will get you through times of troubles. Trusting folks you don't know well to work together and follow the leadership of the group seems unwise.
This is not inherently a Boomer vs Mill conflict. Supervising/directing people is incredibly difficult and it defaults to the Boomer as the property owner (in this scenario).
DeleteThe difficulty in supervising in this scenario is compounded by the rapidly shifting kaleidscope of urgent tasks. It is compounded by many people's (extreme) resistance to "being told what to do, how to do it, when to do it and how fast to do it". For some reason, they think arguing or malicious compliance is an appropriate response for those tasks.
And every generation has an abundance of those people.
As a boomer by birth, I came along in the middle of the cycle and have seen the progression to the end:
ReplyDeleteHard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
We certainly saw the evidence of the 'weak men' - demanding tampons in the mens room (while they demanded to use the ladies rooms) . I believe we may be back to the start again, as this generation of youngins is said to be more conservative than their parents. I hope this is the case. My 3 month emergency food supply and a few boxes of ammo wouldn't last long if this thing unravels.
I think the problem is that there are actually two generations of boomers. The leading edge of the boomer demographic are disconnected geriatrics on their last legs. The trailing edge are guys like me…in their very early 60s, many of whom got the same treatment that Gen X did.
ReplyDeleteThat leading edge demographic caught an economic wave and surf red it to prosperity. Life was easy, plenty of opportunities and if you fell, it was always upward. My mother is in that group and she’ll tell anyone that will listen that the kids today are strapped because they’re lazy and stupid. Of course she worked hard for everything she has and the kid’s just have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps like she supposedly did. The other thing going on with that demographic is that they’re old and stupid now. It happens to most of us as we age. Old seniors are often selfish and thoughtless, they get frustrated with the world they lost touch with and the people running it. You have to expect some of that when people get that old.
Bingo. I'm more of a GenX than Boomer. The 80's were hard times to find work or money. It was 1989 before I earned into five digits. I was married for seven years by that time, with two kids and finished college the next year. Money went a lot farther then, and we squeezed every nickel.
DeleteI've met a few people that took care of an elderly and were gifted the home and land. Not even family, but a good provider. That is notable to me in the context of castle needs defenders. One other thing is the idea that Col. Cooper wrote about. Give the guards a single shot. They can expend it towards the enemy, or, if they turn on you, towards you, but the reload is slow and you can, hopefully, neutralize before they do. If you HAVE to have help, section off their part of the sandbox to contain the potential poop-fest of passive-aggressive crapola. "Here's is a storage shed, make it a comfortable home for yourself. Breakfast at 0600, work detail starts at 0700. Don't make me regret giving you a place here."
ReplyDeleteTheoretically, being born in 1963, that makes me the last of the boomers. I do not understand why we get such a bad name.
ReplyDeleteLet us say that the first boomers were born in 1945 to make the math easy. I would suggest that nobody is making important decisions before the age of around 40, again, to keep the math simple.
So, the first of the major boomer decisions came in 1985, and that was just the beginning of the first wave when there were many others in the decision making process. After that there were more and more of the boomers making decisions until 2010 when the last of the previous generation retired.
So, anything that happened before 1985 cannot honestly be blamed on the boomers, and from then to 2010 partially but increasing in a roughly linear fashion.
I genuinely feel that this ship started sinking way before 1985. I will admit that we probably did not do much to stop the rot, but I do not feel that we started it.
Perhaps. Simon. I wonder if we aren't losing perspective in this generational feud too, though. The millenials and zoomers curse us out, rightly or wrongly, maybe we curse our own parents out... but - be my grand dad, born in 1898: got shredded in WW1 and gassed. Came to Canada to eke out a living on the Albertan frontier and rode on the roofs of trains with the other bums in the 30's looking for work. He would have died in poverty were it not for his affluent kids. I totally get the frustration of kids living in the basement smoking grass and playing video games... but things, as they say, could always be worse.
DeleteI don't hear this anymore except in the bible and in church the odd time: don't compare yourself or your life to others. Do not covet the belongings of others.
Like Michael above... we really hobbled ourselves by throwing God and faith out. As a result we look at things the wrong way and lose ourselves in the reeds.
Boomers were the first generation raised with television and were born into a high trust society. They were immersed in propaganda in a way that no previous generation experienced, and were naive enough to swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
ReplyDeleteERJ - A thought on the following paragraph:
ReplyDelete"I agree with the Millennials: The Baby-Boomers screwed them by enacting zoning requirements that restrict the number of units. We elected Governors whose agencies aggressively police construction sites and hammer crews who violate standards in even the most casual or incidental ways, inflating the cost of new construction by $100k per unit."
It is not just zoning requirements. Once local officials got used to the inflow of annual property taxes, they had no more interest in changing the system than anyone else. The reality is that these local authorities could drop the property tax rate at any time (they could change the zoning laws too, really). But there is no reason for anyone in power, "Boomer" or "Millennial", to do either.
I am, apparently, on the bleeding edge of Gen X - far enough in to be in that generation but close enough to the "Boomers" that likely I would be factored in. The reality is that the generations following us will decide no differently than the people they blame, because the human heart (or human condition, if you are not particularly religious) has not changed.
I spent the bulk of my career in a 'academic' setting - though I was not allowed access to the Promotion & Tenure merry-go-round, as my position was a clinical/public service appointment... which was fine with me - I just wanted to do my job and help my clients, not kiss ass or perform useless 'research' in order to get the approval of 'betters' who knew nothing of what my day-to-day work entailed.
ReplyDeleteThe hierarchy is: Professor > Associate Professor > Assistant Professor > Instructor (may be a post-doc, or just someone with a 'non-terminal' degree).
I'm a very conservative Boomer... and more than a little disheartened to see the liberal/progressive mindset that my children have been indoctrinated into... but my wife has full-blown TDS, and she encourages them. I think that if POTUS DJT condemned Jeffrey Dahmer, she would defend him as having 'just been hungry'.
A decent portion of us, especially Gen X, hate boomers for the opposite reason, you let this shit grow and fester, it could have been put down so easily when we were children (gen x) in the 80s but you told us to shut up and be nice to the stupid pinko teacher, this is entirely at the feet of boomers and they know it, they encouraged it and still do to this day, they created the worthless that infests our generation and the generations after it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. And I am not just saying that to be nice.
DeleteA blog like mine can too-easily turn into an echo-chamber.
Guilty as charged. My oldest daughter was told to take off a Tee-shirt that read "Abortion kills a beating heart" when she was in high school. She put masking tape over the letter "k" and the Assistant Principal let it slide.
Yeah, we could have pushed it. Other kids were wearing Tee-shirts with skulls and bloody bodies and Grateful Dead motifs and those were all "OK", but pushing back would have exposed not just oldest daughter but the three younger siblings because it wasn't a kid who complained but a staff member.
Yes, it is hard to push back- we are taught to "be nice", go along to get along, etc.
DeleteCOVIDIOCY burned that RTF out of me.
Boomers normalized divorce, taught their daughters and grand daughters to be narcissistic shrews, and seem to be attempting to scuttle our country's economy with the debt that has been run up. Oh, and they brought in piles of foreigners that hate us.
ReplyDeleteBoomer. Yes I have a nice house with land in the country. I worked two jobs on several occasions to keep the house and my family fed. I had trouble get 4 hours a day work from the gen X & Y engineers who worked with me before I retired. The dweebs can bitch and moan about the cost of housing but fail to realize this is the third house I have owned. Paid each one off before buying the next. My new car is 20 years old and has 270K miles on it, the F-150 is older. They trade cars when the ashtrays get dirty. Maybe there was a failure in teaching civics and basic economics but wanting everything right now is a losing hand.
ReplyDeleteBoomer. Worked my ass off for 52 years so far, still working 40-45 hours a week.
ReplyDeleteMom and dad were liberals. 20 years in the military cured that for me.
Bought a house I could afford in a place with depressed wages and values. Never bought a new car, EVER.
Paid the house off, now I'm working to secure some kind of comfortable retirement.
USA is the land of opportunity. Kwitycherbitchin, roll up your sleeves and do the work.
Thanks Markshere2
DeleteBeen working for wages since I was 10, didn't want to be tooting my unpolished horn.
A comment for those decrying the Boomers; imagine working for 50 years saving for retirement; THEN the Fed prints an extra 40% of the money supply and inflates away 20 years of your work.
ReplyDeleteMany of us don't have to "imagine".
And yeah, we were gonna " push back " in the 80's; three words, Waco. Ruby Ridge.
BG
Don't forget adjunct professors, which are basically short-term contract instructors meant to take the teaching load off those on the tenure track.
ReplyDeleteIt's always easy (and intellectually lazy) to think your current problems are worse than the ones people faced in the past, and since being a victim is the new standard, it's no surprise that later generations are blaming the earlier ones.
ReplyDeleteLayer on the fact that very few individuals have much sway or influence over national political and economic decisions, it's ridiculous to blame whole generations for anything. Someone want to say the Napoleanic wars were the fault of some poor French farmer? Whatever floats their boat, but they sound like a fool. The Bubonic Plague was the fault of some London shopkeeper? The Pelopponisian War should be blamed on some rank-and-file Athenian?
A lot of my generation got senior year trips to Vietnam. Or graduated into a recession. Or dealt with sky high mortgage rates in the early 80's. Oh, but life was so much easier? And they had any influence over those events?