So, to be reasonable, sure, the younger kids these days have high aspirations and great hopes. And yeah, they lack discipline and are used to having frequent feedback, having just finished their schooling. And it's probably a bit worse this time because they've never had to go through a serious recession. But this has been true of "kids these days" for hundreds of years, whether they're listening to that damn rock and roll music or moving into the cities to take part in the industrial revolution. The names and technologies change, but come on.
Having gotten the reasonable response out of the way, and in the spirit of inflammatory emails, let's get right into it!
Fuck the baby boomers and all of their hypocritical asshattery. They are the worst generation.
First off, these complaints about younger kids being self-absorbed and undisciplined. The data behind the Economist article are a series of surveys and studies asking managers and executives about their opinions, and these business leaders trashing the younger generation. Who are these folks? These are baby boomers, who spent all that money and time and all that shit raising these kids to be self-absorbed and think they're special snowflakes, despite being told time and again that they were raising a generation of poofters. Now the kids are grown up, the baby boomers are older and in executive management, and it's all,
Second, you want to talk about unable to handle economic hardship? Now that we've got a real recession, the boomers are all spending government money as fast as they can, flailing about trying to avoid taking their medicine. If a young kid were spending wildly on his credit card, the boomers would all give him the admonishing "tut tut" crap about how he's being incredibly irresponsible and frivolous. But when you're a senator spending a trillion dollars that you don't have, assuming that someone later will repay it (i.e. mailing the bill to the younger generation via the debt), that's demonstrating wisdom and reserve in the face of economic hardship?
Fuck that. I know I'm going to spend the rest of my life getting reamed on taxes to pay back the hilarious sums of money being thrown around by the boomer government, bailing out every useless fuck who thought it was perfectly reasonable to buy a $500k house on a $30k paycheck (or who was schemed by some mortgage salesman in an organization created and motivated by one of these executive assholes). But the least they can do is say "hey, thanks for paying my bills" - I don't need to hear about how I'm an undisciplined primadonna as well.
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Yeah, I know I'm overstating the case. Factual inaccuracies, blah blah blah. But seriously, there's some real generational warfare going on here, and they're doing a hell of a lot better job of it than we are.
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rant, continued....
you're absolutely right that these kids are the products of their upbringing, but why wouldn't we then blame their grandparents for raising the boomers to be self involved hippies who would invariably raise their kids to be brats, too? their parents were products of the depression who had nothing and wanted their kids to have it better than themselves. or, should we blame the generation who caused the last great depression? ah, capitalists, greedy capitalists who didn't want to work, they just invested money into a market that looked like an overly ripe boil and thought it would grow and grow and never pop sending puss oozing out, spoiling everything.
if i had a kid, oh yeah, i do have a kid, i tell him if he wants to buy something, you need to have money in hand. everyone in this society, especially the capitalists, have convinced you and your kids that you deserve the olympic sized pool and the 3500 sq. foot house.
if you haven't noticed, the govt. is not bailing these people out. they're going to lose it all. who are they bailing out? the capitalists that convinced these fools that they deserved all the shit they'd seen on 'the lifestyles of the rich and famous'. they're getting bailed out, not the homeowners! and, on top of that, the repubs who created this greedfest are the ones who don't want to collect more money to bail these guys out but they just want to hand it out without raising revenue through taxes. in fact, they want to pay LESS taxes! now, that goes against what i taught my son.
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True, true - thanks for writing guys! Well, to be fair, we of the class of 2002 are kind of on the cusp between Gen X and Y. Not that Gen X is thought of any better by the stodgy management. And you two are completely correct about the capitalist Boomers and the current bailout. He who burnt his house down can't criticize his kids for not cleaning their rooms. The younger Gens are a product of their predecessors, and we learned our flaws and vices from them. As I will elaborate on, I think the Boomers have endangered the planet and prospects for human survival more than even Hitler and Stalin's generation.
It's only 2009, but I can already predict that Gen Y will do more to help the the environment, start fewer wars/genocides, and have the most diverse, socially-conscious corporate-political leaders than any other American generation. Some of this is due to timing and world events of course, but it's also due to young people's heightened awareness and responsibility (yes, RESPONSIBILITY). Gens X and Y have a lot of potential, but I hope we haven't become so indoctrinated into the Boomer culture of "me first" and "never enough" to realize it.
In contrast, the Boomers have filled their bellies at the world's and the future's expense. They got cheap college education through the GI Bill and other plentiful scholarships (plus even Harvard tuition back in 1970 was just $2.6k). Middle-class life was almost a foregone conclusion for many of them, and they ascended the job ranks. They benefited from a quadrupling of the Dow and a tripling of housing values in hot metro areas like SF. Even better, those booms occurred when the Boomers were late in their careers, with a lot of "play money" to invest or speculate with. They did survive the Carter and Bush Sr. recessions, but unemployment benefits were better and the cost of living was much cheaper (plus wages actually kept up with inflation). Of course a lot of Boomer paper wealth evaporated in the Dot-Bomb and housing bust too, but many still have equity in their homes and IRAs to fall back on (and for now, functional Soc. Sec. & Medicare too, which we youngsters can't really count on). The Boomers racked up huge debt in the 1970s-80s (deregulation, Cold War arms race), paid it off under Clinton by gutting the social contract, then racked up even larger debt under Bush (pork, tax cuts, War on Terror). And in the meantime, they made a killing off John Q. Public during S&L, Enron energy trading, no-bid contracts, and other scandals. I am sure Gen Y will have its share of corporate criminals and brazen scams as well, but no one can touch the Boomers' record. They're the Barry Bonds.
Globally, the Boomers were indifferent to, or even facilitated, several Third World genocides, and the most egregious of them was AIDS. They didn't care until it was too late, with 36M+ gay and poor people already dead. They preferred to spend on military research than medical research. Heck, research wasn't even the bottleneck - it was "economic factors" like intellectual property. Actually the "silent killers" of starvation and respiratory diseases are much worse (again, preventable with minor commitments from the G8). Companies led by Boomers have shipped arms, pollution, injustice, and general misery all over the globe for profit. Globalization (when properly regulated) is a positive tool for humanity, but not in the hands of assholes. The Boomers have perfected colonialism lite, and plundered the most desperate corners of the globe (because they can get away with it easier). But these actions have produced serious blowback, as manifested in terrorist attacks in the US, UK, India, and elsewhere. While we have emerged from the spectre of Cold War Apocalypse, we've created or exacerbated a whole new set of micro-conflicts and ideological struggles to the death. The Middle East is a basket case, and many African nations were better off in 1940. And in their thirst for profit, the Boomers also contributed to water contamination/shortages, deforestation, toxic accidents, species endangerment, epidemics, and global warming more than any other generation. Politically, they ushered in a new era of big money corruption. Politics has always been a dirty game, but under the Boomers, we've seen $1B campaigns (more money, more stupid), an explosion of inappropriate earmarks/executive orders, a total lack of accountability, the red-blue ideological divide that doesn't really exist (but is easy to manipulate), and the lobbyist-Congress revolving door.
The Boomers all got their house, cars, and 2.5 kids. They lived the dream and mastered the game. They are certainly proud of themselves and feel that they deserved every last morsel (what I hate MOST about the Boomers). But at what cost? Their lust for possessions set a new consumption and quality of life precedent that is utterly unsustainable. But the younger generations are certainly trying, especially in growth areas like China and India. If half the world consumed as the average American does, we would need 6-12 Earths worth of resources to support humanity. We just can't possibly expect people to buy a new PC/TV every 2 years, a new car ever 5, home remodeling/accessorizing, and properties to flip and make a quick buck. But the Boomers tried, and now we wonder why companies have to lay off thousands when demand is drying up. Not really drying up, but returning to normal - actually it's not even normal but outrageously decadent and profligate! They defined a new type of success, and a new meaning of life. But if we follow their lead, there will be no life left at all, literally. Or at best we will have the top 10% bunkered in their gated communities, clininging to their luxurious lifestyles at the expense of the rest, in the mother-of-all class struggles. That is why I wish Obama would stop talking about making the American Dream a reality for more people, but instead redefining an American Dream that works.
The iconic Bill Clinton is the poster-child of the Boomers' mark on history. And even if Clinton wants to BS the press that he shares "no blame" for the current economic crisis, he and his Boomer ilk can't hide from the facts:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877322,00.html
I know a lot of that Time article was sensationalizing, blame-game journalism, but the bit on Clinton was right on. As a previous email explained, under heavy lobbying from Sandy Weil and the rest of Wall Street, Clinton and the Gingrich Congress destroyed the last vestiges of Depression-era financial safeguards: the Glass-Steagall Act that tried to prevent greedy banks-brokers from going to the casino with our money (and losing their shirt, which they will always do eventually). During the Clinton years, they wrote laws exempting the now-infamous credit-default swaps from federal regulation. CD swaps are not necessarily evil, and may in fact be necessary to our financial system, but refusing to study and regulate them is inexplicable. The Community Reinvestment Act was noble in its intention, but opened the floodgates for predatory lenders to exploit lower-income, less-financially-savvy communities. And now we know that a large fraction of victims of the housing bust fit that demographic, which trickled up to topple the fat cats.
Clinton also betrayed every liberal and compassionate bone left in his body on 1996's welfare/entitlement "reform", just to deprive Bob Dole and the GOP of a talking point during his reelection run. This move shifted the responsibility of caring for those who can't break out of the cycle of poverty from DC to the states, which is inefficient, less robust, and contributed in a major way to the fact that most states are in debt today (and would still be in debt even in a decent economy, because the burden of even a minimal social services network with today's living costs is just too ponderous). Any welfare program will be flawed, and better solutions do exist, but this was not the answer. The "reform" showed progress until 2001, while the economy was good. But in the last 5 years, it has been a clear failure. What is the point of a safety net that only protects people in times of plenty? If the reform was never implemented, there is a good chance that America would be better equipped to handle the droves of needy people today (many of them needy through no fault of their own I might add). And it would have cost the taxpayer much less than Bush's ugly Iraq War or dysfuctional Medicare drug subsidy.
So if Bush is a 12" piece of shit, Clinton is at least a 5" dookie.
http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=184
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