Blame Baby Boomers for over-priced education.
On the Retirement of the First Baby Boomers: Gotcha…
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Don't Trust a Baby Boomer - Comments Page 2
Blame Baby Boomers for over-priced education.
On the Retirement of the First Baby Boomers: Gotcha…
Article comments
26 - Willa
Just think of how much energy it must take every day to hate every last boomer! Phenomenal!
27 - BB
I agree in concept but, I am a boomer. I started working hard labor when I was 13 and have worked ever since. I think I earned the SS taken out of my checks for the past 40 plus years.
But I still agree with your article. I've watched this happen and to my general dismay. What was that trip all about?
28 - Shemp
Boomers are so sensitive...
I also love the whining about being painted with a broad brush and then continue words later to speak on behalf of their entire generation
So let me speak in terms of generations, not because this is how I speak but because this how you hear, I would have been nice for generation to have helped out but if your generation can not do that then at least do us the courtesy of staying the fuck out of way. We'll give you the social security money...it was never about the money anyway.
29 - LL
I'm 22, not married, and don't have kids, but I resent the fact that I have to both open an IRA now for my retirement and then pay Social Security for other people's retirement because they were either too irresponsible to save for their own retirement or they need a public subsidy for their Mercedes payment. I have nothing against helping people who need it, but I do oppose people who act like they're entitled to more than they put in for the act of breathing. They too should have been saving for retirement in their twenties instead of acting as though they'd be entitled to take out more than they put in, as the vast majority of current SS recipients do.
I would not resent the above anywhere near as much if not for the fact that collectively, this generation benefited from subsidized higher education and then cut financial aid and funding for the next generation.
That said, I'm not angry at individual boomers. I'm angry at the politicians that the majority of them elect, such as Dubya. And yes, I voted against him in '04. Gen y's best recourse is to vote his ilk out of office, as the boomers already proved that they won't.
30 - johnd
If people are worried about social security holding up as baby boomers retire, just wait until they all start tapping into Medicare. As medical technology continues to advance, life expenctancies go up, and costs continue to rise, the situation only worsens. I know a man who has already had 10+ stents inserted into his arteries and has already burned through $1.5MM+ in medical expenses by age 60. Now that he has exceeded the lifetime maximum of his retirement medical plan, Medicare will start to foot the bill. More and more this will become the norm. Medicare will make social security look like a drop in the bucket.
31 - Jeff
Overpriced education and no health care!!! Thanks Boomers!
32 - john
It's a pity the vietnam war didnt wipe out more baby boomers.
33 - Silver Surfer
John: "It's a pity the vietnam war didnt wipe out more baby boomers."
Yeah, imagine that.
Then all you Gen Y and late Gen Xers could have started at the top, where most of you (bizarrely) think you have a God-given right to be without doing anything to earn it.
Most of you are just spoiled brats.
Rebels without a clue.
That's one of the biggest crimes of the baby boomer generation - pandering to their kids.
The last Gen Y-er I encountered with that attitude recently lost his job after throwing a hissy fit one year into his new career over an outrageous demand for a payrise of the kind most people wait at least five years to get.
He threatened to quit unless he got one, and was told to come back when he'd actually done something.
More to the point, when he actually knew something.
Bluff called, and more employers should do it.
The problem is, it's not an isolated attitude and it's not generally accompanied by any willingness to work harder - or at the very least as hard as anyone else.
My favourite bit of Gen Y foot stomping aimed at baby boomers: Ryan Heath's "Please just F*** off it's our turn now".
I'm still waiting for the baby boomer version in reply to Gen Y, which should be called: "If you don't like it, please just F*** off and come back when you actually know some s***".
34 - deemacgee
Hey SilverSurfer - it's typical of you elderly* types to assume you know everything about a world which has changed, fundamentally, far more rapidly in the last ten years than at any other point in human history - the world we Gen-Yers need to fix up before it completely self-destructs. Maybe you lot should just f*** off and stop your collective toothless bitching until you've learned a little about the reality your generation thinks they so graciously bequeathed unto us.
*and you don't have to be old to be elderly.
35 - Dr Dreadful
Dee: I was born in 1966, so I'm kind of both a baby boomer and a Gen X-er. On the cusp, so to speak.
I flatter myself that my attitude embodies both points of view. I'm impatient both with youngsters who disrespect their elders and think they know everything, and with those of the older generation who make no attempt to adapt to the modern age.
You should pause for a minute and realize that Silver Surfer, simply by his presence on this blog, is not one of the latter. Furthermore, he is right, as you will discover in due course.
In the meantime, you would do well to bear in mind that the world in the last ten years has changed infinitesimally compared to the way it has changed in the last ten thousand.
36 - carmine
Let's get back to reality. I am a baby boomer. I paid almost nothing for my college education. I lived during a time when most children, even in the rare event of a divorce, were actually allowed to see their fathers. And I anticipate receiving my social security. My students on the other hand will have accumulated more debt than I owe on my house by the time they receive their degrees. Most were raised in a Mom's house Dad's house world and many had their fathers virtually eliminated from their lives altogether, and NONE of them expect to receive social security while they all know they will nevertheless be paying for ours. And yet we pretend they need to be less selfish and fabricate the additional expense of a "service learning" hoop to jump through before they are allowed to receive their over-priced over-moralized degrees.
37 - Dr Dreadful
Yeah, but really, Dr Carmine, what do you expect?
It all comes down to who is better represented in Washington. The AARP lobby is extremely powerful, and since most of Congress are also baby boomers, it's not surprising that they lend their own generation a very friendly ear. They know that seniors, to a greater degree than any other demographic group, VOTE.
Generation Y-ers, on the other hand, are far less politically engaged. I socialize with a lot of people in their twenties and thirties and most of them have no interest in politics whatsoever. I would venture so far as to say that very few of them are even aware that they will not be getting any social security money when they retire.
38 - STM
Deemacgee,
You prove my point perfectly.
That is exactly the kind of attitude for which your generation is becoming notorious, and one of the reasons why so many GenYers are destroying their careers before they even get started.
You might also pause for a moment and think about most of the technology you're enjoying today.
Much of it was pioneered by MY generation, not by yours. Much of it was then refined and developed by baby boomers and the early Gen-Xers - who really do have a work ethic.
Your generation's contribution to all this: you just got to use it, and to whinge about what a bad deal your getting.
You poor luvs.
39 - carmine
Look, I just don't buy the nonsense that Gen-Y has no work ethic. In fact I think it is simply bogus bs perpetrated by our baby boomer arrogance. My students ALL work real jobs, most full time, while they go to college.
Sure if you read Theodore Dalrymple our culture is in a terrible state, but WE boomers -- the really lazy crowd -- the intellectually lazy generation, did that. We decided there were no really important cultural absolutes, and that nonsense, via neo-liberal academic propaganda led to the bizarre notion that pop-culture is now as good as the Sistine Chapel. Brittany's vagina is as significant as the Mona Lisa.
40 - Randy Moser
You would think an old Gen X fart like me would have useful advice for Millennials dealing with Boomer arrogance.
But Boomers are slippery critters. If you attack them head-on, they say you’re stupid, crass and ignorant. If you complain about the world they’ve created " and let’s face it, they’ve held the shinny ball since many of us were born " they say you’re whining.
At their core there is no core, and I think that’s essentially the problem. They are utterly protean. This is why they can believe they were right in the 1960s, when they attacked a liberal government for not being left enough; right in the 1970s and 80s, when they became Reagan Democrats almost overnight; and right in the 1990s, when they balanced the budget by cutting aid to unwed mothers, among other things.
They gave us more mass murders than any generation before or since; more junkies and obese people; more poverty. They gave us crooks like Ken Lay and arrogant jerks like Michael Moore. And the mass hypnosis this country has lived under for the past half century is due mostly to the fact that they’re great consumers, so businesses listen to them.
Let’s see how that works out for them when their wheezing away on their death beds trying to remember how many American dreams they destroyed on their way out. You kids have it lucky. You’re coming into this show when it’s almost over. We’ve had to spend our lives watching these pricks dismantle this country piece by piece.
VM
41 - STM
Carmine: "WE boomers -- the really lazy crowd -- the intellectually lazy generation".
As you often do Carmine, you are confusing YOU with others.
I respect your right to have a point of view, but please, speak for yourself old boy.
Boomers are intellectually lazy? Where on Earth did you get that notion??
42 - carmine
Ah stm one of my own. In perfect boomer fashion whip out the ad hominem when ever the going gets tough. Oh yes it's just me that went for the notion that identity is truth. In boomer fantasy land we really did think that race and gender and identity politics always trumped truth. Oh yes stm I am a doody, and in light of your comment, fellow boomer, hold on...hey where did my reading glasses get off to... I'll get right back to you mst.... HONEY where ARE my glasses, really.....
43 - STM
Well, to be fair Carmine, ad hominems where ad hominems are due ...
And the truth is, like you I don't HAVE to subscribe to anyone's views.
Which is one of the reasons I don't consider myself intellectually lazy :)
44 - deemacgee
Dr Dreadful: I'm impatient with Boomers - and increasingly, GenXers - who presume to know soooooo very much about the world that they somehow feel qualified to tell me how I should perceive it... instead of maybe doing something about its myriad ills.
Also, as I said - the world has changed radically in the last 10 years. Quoting a timeframe of 10 milennia kinda reinforces my point...
As for the politically disengaged - you'll find those in every generation, and particularly in the US where voting is not mandatory like it is here - in a voluntary electoral system, only the unhinged or obsessive bother casting a vote, which means the EXTREMISTS determine who runs the country. Our government here in Australia may not be perfect - how can any government be? - but at least it's compulsory to vote. Of course, this leaves the people wiiiiiiiiiiiide open to manipulation through greed and fear, but that's another issue. I vote, and I vote with my conscience. The same cannot be said for Boomers who, in this country at least, are more interested in keeping their investment properties and widescreen TVs than actually offering any sort of moral commentary on those in power - read: Iraq; Children Overboard; HECS, etc. There are more Boomers than anyone else, they control the vote, and they're going to be alive a while yet... I have no intention of being forced to live under their hyperconservative greed-based status-quo mediocrity until such time as the numbers shift to accommodate everyone else.
STM: You prove mine - we're destroying our careers, how? By wanting to exceed the, frankly, primitive standards set by Boomers in their post-hippie, 70s prog-rock free-love comedown? I will gladly rip the false teeth out of the next piece of Boomer Scum who tells me how best to program a computer, and I'll tell you why: the ones I know, who take a perverse power-wank out of blatantly reminding me that I'm only a few years older than *their* children and that I should, therefore, submit to their Infinite Wisdom, only started tinkering with technology in the 90s or so. I was working on/with computers (and more than simply gaming, thanks) at the age of THREE, back in the early 80s. I have seen people my age, and have myself been, brutally cut down* by these motherfuckers - not because we know too little about what we do, but because WE KNOW TOO MUCH. We have a far greater and more holistic view of the world; we know how to communicate with people; we make the same sort of sense required in this chaos theory world created by Boomers and early GenXers.... and all we get for our ability to absorb and process information at incredible speed is a knobbly, bony finger waggled at us about how we're facetious and disrespectful and need to fall in line. FUCK THE LINE. Conformity does nothing; proves nothing except a lack of creativity that GenYers do not share with their Boomer forebears. Exactly what did Boomers create that they need to be so proud of, anyway? Television? Radio? The Internet? These all came about (eg, cf. ARPANET) while most Boomers were somewhere between nappies and popping their first zits. Boomers invented marketing, which a) doesn't work anymore, and b) is not an act of creativity, but malicious, cynical psychological warfare.
I don't understand how we can be so heavily and constantly abused, undermined, stripped of the same basic entitlements as Boomers were given on a silver platter (free tertiary education, for example) and still be expected to quietly, voluntarily participate in our own cultural, economic and intellectual oppression. For some inexplicable reason, *we* are held accountable for being the products of an environment forced on us by Boomers, even before a huge number of us were born. It reeks of classic Orwellian doublethink on some levels, and Just Plain Stupidity on others.
Boomers need to get a fucking clue about the world before they start lecturing Gen Y on how exactly to live in it.
*Question my work ethic all you like, but a few months back, I was forced to quit my job of 6 years because I was TOO EFFECTIVE, and it took ten of my Boomer colleagues, my Boomer boss, and HIS Boomer boss to conspire and finally shut me down. And you know what happened after that? They tried to carry on my work without me. Even now, they still cannot find someone a) with my expertise, b) with my people skills, c) with my enthusiasm, and d) who is willing to field phonecalls 24/7 - as I was. Their entire workload has gone backwards, and last I heard they brought in an external contractor who was asking twice as much, and only willing to do half the job required, for a project that is due to be complete by June. They won't make their deadline, the poor luvs, because they thought knifing the young guy (and when I say young, I'm nearly 30) was a good way to save their collective leather. I didn't ask for extra pay, training (didn't need it) or any other perks, only a flexibility with my office hours and the respect I was due. But as it turns out, I was too much of a threat to these twelve people, so I was disposed of. I know a number of people who have been used like that, and the pattern is all the same: mid-to-late 20s; Boomer colleagues; any hint of drive, motivation and real work ethic (not that dull, self-serving complacency we've come to endure) and we end up accessorising the sharp silverware in our spines. Boomers expect us to just accept this as status quo? Fuck that! My new workplace has it right: it's heavy IT; the boss is mid GenXer and disaffected to the point where he's completely relaxed and easygoing, Boomers answer the 'phones, but it's the GenYers who actually run the systems. We overdeliver ahead of schedule; downtime is minimal; answers provided quickly and everything pretty much runs a whole fucking lot smoother than it has to - us "young" people know our shit A LOT BETTER than Boomers will admit/acknowledge/accept... and that terrifies the hell out of an entire generation who, after spending 40 years being the centre of attention, are now faced with the (oh no!) dire possibility of being rendered totally irrelevant in the not-to-distant future.
Deal with your own historical inevitabilities over a hot cup of Bonox. I've got work to do.
45 - Silver Surfer
Well, you won't be ripping out my falsies Dee ... not unless you can catch me in the surf.
Good luck with the HECS debt. You pay that, and I'll keep paying the mortgage, and the school fees and sundry living expenses - Dad, you couldn't give $50 could ya? - for my gen Y kids. Even stevens.
46 - deemacgee
You're not the only one with a mortgage, you know. Some of us are forced to balance a whole lot more debt than Boomers who get to happily frolick in the surf...
47 - john doe 3
G. Bush and his gang are baby boomers, just more of the same. Waste and self serving world view. Our generation should be ashamed of itself, at least our parents knew about living within our means.
48 - greg
typical arrogant and dumb babyboomer.Your generation got everything handed to you on a silverplatter.All you did was stuff everything up.I have meet some extremely dumb babyboomers who manage to stuff up and then get a second chance.The previous and our generation know what its like to live in tough times.You obviously know nothing about gen x or y.Did it occur to you why there asking for so much money for work.As they have to pay of things like hecs fees something you pricks never had to have.The babyboomers are a cancer on our society who need to be removed.
49 - projectalice
111
50 - projectalice
I think the boomers did do allot of great things. They were pioneers and they needed a great deal of arrogance to pull it off, they broke apart allot of old ideas.
But I am 29, have gone to school, done everything right, worked hard and I am F*&^ed. There are no jobs, lots of dept and the planet is boiling. My generation will embody the traits of the dreams you boomers had in 60's if you give us a freakin chance. Remember when you were free loving back then and wanted a better world? Well you had kids who will F*&6ing give it to you if you throw us a bone. You mishandled you children becuase you were arrogant trailblazers that didn't know how to nurture, but my generation, you children are cynical but they are amazing none the less.I see allot of angry gen xers and yers who need some help from the boomers. Lets work this out.
As far as I can tell...things are going to get pretty ugly becuase as a group, this generation had no concept of the collective, no concept of moderation and no concern for anyone but them selves. I mean anyone can be a selfish person regardless of their generation but bottom line, this economy is going into the ground becuase a bunch of arrogant greedy people saw a window open in the 60's rushed through it and now has an iron grip on the stering wheel.LET GO.
Boomers, You had your chance, you screwed up, you had game, great. But now retire and chill. If boomers are not going to partner with on how to take the lead, we will have to bust through ourselves. I hope for a smooth transition but we are running out of time.
Enough allready, boomers. You drove things into the ground and its sad, you were arrogant. We can help you fix it if you stop hating on us.
Plus I hate to break it to you fellow xers and yers we are going to have to deal with these people for a really long 30 years they are terrifed of dieing and will prolong their stays. we are going to have to work this out.
51 - ultaviolet
I agree with projectalice on some points. we should work with each other. STOP THE GENERATIONAL WARFARE.
52 - boo
I can't blame the boomers. I see nothing of what they actually did good. We're still here right. People just love to point the finger. Everyone is to blame collectively. I will say that our education system is in turmoil. This is a very serious problem. Education is key if this country wants to thrive in the global economy. Skilled workers are key and necessary. Are political system needs revamped. Leaders need to start making decisions because it is the right thing to do not because some voters want them to do it. We the people need to make it happen. Look at yourself in the mirror and make change happen. It's not all their fault!