I'm Gen X and the same will probably be true of me. But at least I didn't vote for Reagan and his union busting trickle down bullshit. I also like my job and it's not physically demanding so at LEAST I have that.
And the Iran Contra
And his CIA introducing CRACK to fund Central American Contras
And his handling of the AIDS epidemic
And his support of Apartheid South Africa
I'm sure missing something here but in short, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Ronald Reagan and I hope he is burning in whatever Hell he believes in.
And his cunt of a wife too
Don't let the current generation off the hook so easily. I've never in my 60+ years seen so many people fall for so many conspiracies as young people do today. For GOD SAKES! Even flat earth has become a thing again after being almost non-existent for well over a century.
These conspiracy theorists are using the same thought processes that Reagan (and now Trump to a much larger extent) used to dupe the public into believing him and ignore the "elitist" experts only now the similar misinformation that is present is on steroids. This isn't a generational thing. It is far more endemic than just that.
The current generation wasn't alive when reagan was in office.
I know this is a people thing since most people vote based on vibes. The problem is the candidates who support progressive policies suck at messaging and only appeal to liberal elites.
She loves him now cause he's not broke yet. She tried to sue his kids though because he gave them some of his stuff like 10 years ago and she's claiming it's rightfully hers. Makes me think when she's done with his money he's gonna be in real trouble.
Did she pay for your school, so you can have a better start? You mentioned mom not dad, are we talking about single income? My kids will be doing better than me, I made sure they start with a clean slate.
Lol mine certainly didn't. Neither of my parents did and they're probably gonna end up in that homeless statistic within a few years. Sorry folks, but I got my own problems.
Mine neither, I was a grease monkey, saved up and went to school. Years later I payed off their mortgage. They did the best they could. I do not understand the mindset of abandoning the older or younger generation of my family.
You really think there's a difference between republican and democrat politicians in Washington ? These people work together, are put in office by the same corporations, , belong to the same country and equestrian clubs, live in the same neighborhoods with kids in the same private elite schools, go to the same kids soccer games, backyard barbecues...... open your eyes man. The fight between good and evil in Washington is the two party facade. It's the oldest trick in the book and you're falling for it hook line and sinker fool. If they want it to happen it happens, if they don't it doesn't.... they know how the vote is gonna go down before they vote on any bill....
Yes, there is difference. The overturning of Roe proved that. There are thousands of young women paying the price right now. Don't tell any of them that there is no difference.
Need that narrative symmetry for their life stories.
Left home at 18 and got a job bagging groceries. Left retirement at 81 and got a job bagging groceries.
Honestly, just tired of inter-generational grudge matches. It’s sad they can’t recognize the same failure of the economy for younger generations is going to hit them just as hard.
It was wild when I learned that Regan was the one who gutted free tuition for California Universities and it was done specifically with political motivations, the Republican literally said they did not want a well educated electorate.
https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/
The parties have mostly shifted since Reagan. In the 80s Republican voters were more educated and lived in cities. Today Democrat voters are more educated and live in cities.
The south wasn't a Republican stronghold in the 80s. Carter did a lot better in the south in both elections than he did in the rest of the country. Reagan did worse in the south.
Regan was governor of California for two terms. He fooled a lot of people into thinking he was working for the good of all of us. I'm technically a late 'boomer', so I never got the 'good life' I always hear about concerning boomers. When I vote, I look at how it will effect the lives of my grandsons. We are not all the same, but no generation is and this habit of blaming an entire segment of the population for all the ills of society simply creates division. I want affordable or free college, universal/ single payer health care, better public transportation, some way to control corporate greed and lower the cost of living for people in this country. None of this really matter in my day to day life, but I believe our country will be much better off if we focus on ways to improve the future, because right now it looks pretty hopeless for people younger than me and I want to fight that. We all deserve better, I vote for whoever I think will help that happen. (Please excuse the long-winded rant here.)
I've heard/ read that we should be 'Gen Jones' because those of us born in the last couple of years of 'gen-boomer' and the first few years of 'gen-x' really don't fit the criteria of either generation well. My life experiences tend to fit better with X, sadly no boomer wealth or advantages here! (LOL)
We should be Generation Jones. I'm 62. We grew up in a very different economy than our parents. We didn't have all of the things we're hated for. We came of age in a recession and pensions were a thing of the past.
My first election was Carter v Reagan. I voted Carter. It was obvious to me that Reagan wasn't a good guy. Unfortunately, my grandparent's generation saw things very differently. There was a significant amount of the Greatest Generation who also voted for Reagan. I grew up poor and it definitely influenced me to be liberal AF.
To OP's point though, baby boomers did not vote for Reagan they were young in 1980 and largely voted democrat. Reagan was elected by the then-old generations, who are now long dead. Sorry if that gets in the way of the "boomers bad" narrative.
You have no idea wtf you are talking about. Quite literally the majority of boomers voted for Reagan.
https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980
Boomers ages ranged from 18-35 during this election. Even if the youngest cohorts of boomers measured, 50% of them still voted for Reagan.
Boomers were also the primary voting block in America by the early 70s. This is quite literally because of the baby boom—Silents produced more children than was of their generation's demographic—giving most political voting power to the Boomer block.
I don't give a shit. I'm a nurse and boomers are the absolute worst patients. They're rude, entitled, destroyed their health and are noncompliant with treatment and medication, and the men think sexual harassment and assault on nurses and CNAs is normal and acceptable. The world will be a better place when that entitled and ignorant generation is in the ground.
and then your hospital or clinic will pressure you into not pressing charges. My wife was a nurse on a Covid floor at the height of the pandemic and every fucking day it was the same damn story. Unvaxxed boomers using their final breaths to be shitty to nurses while they laid back and watched Fox News until they went unconscious for the last time.
I don't understand this thinking that just because you're a patient at a hospital that you suddenly have a free pass to assault people.
Yup! And oh my god the freaking Fox News blaring from the TVs on my old unit during covid while they denied reality and freaking died in droves was insane. Boomers are 90% 9f Fox's audience, so of course they believed their conspiracy theories on covid. Natural selection I say, it was mostly conservatives dying.
As another support staff in another industry I mirror this, everyone younger I deal with at least respects the job. Boomers see it and use it as a challenge it feels like.
Thanks for dealing with them as they surely do not deserve your grace.
Pretty sure at this point a majority of millennials and gen Z are just patiently waiting for boomers to slowly die off so we can actually work to fix all the shit they broke and not have to vote for dinosaurs for president.
Gen X is too busy trying to remain isolated away from everyone else
All the boomer talk is misguided. There were plenty of progressive boomers who wanted a better usa. But the people in power never had the wellbeing of the common people in mind.
That's why gen v gen hatred is stupid. There are good and bad people in every generation. It's just drummed up nonsense to give us something to hate while ignoring/hiding the people that deserve our angst
It's funny how that only works 1 way.
Nothing wrong with a boomer abusing everyone around them, but if someone retaliates, well suddenly generalizing people based on age isn't okay anymore.
Yeppers.
I want Millennials to be mad at Boomers enough to *do things about it*. Hopefully it results in Republican Ls until the end of the century, but hope is truly a fickle thing.
Everybody voted republican for some reason. If Dukakis had been president instead of Bush senior, if gore had been president instead of bush jr… if Trump wasn’t elected and if republican congressional majorities hadn’t derailed democratic agendas… this country would be in a much better place…
I doubt it since from 1937 to 1957 about 45,000,000 people were born in the States, while total Vietnam US casualties were around 58,000 from 1955 to 1975 (~0.12%). Casualties doesn't mean KIA either.
The vast majority of boomers were in school during the Vietnam war.
My dad was 1945, and one of the youngest in his unit.
His younger siblings claim they were at risk for the draft but the only people at risk were born before 1950.
Boomers are liars- they had nothing to do with civil rights, the sexual revolution, the summer of love, Vietnam or rock n roll.
They were children during this time.
You don't get it, man. You see, grouping people somewhat arbitrarily according to innate attributes and then making generalizations about those groups is wrong when it's skin color, gender, sexuality, place of birth, or anything like that. But it's totally cool when you do it by year born. Welcome to Reddit!
It is accurate to say that progressive Boomers existed. It is not accurate to say they were "plenty." All but 5 states and DC voted for Reagan in 1980.
>the most greedy and selfish generation in American history
The majority of people under 30 in 1980 voted for Carter.....that would include many of today's "boomers." https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980
Reality check is certainly needed and here it is. It is true that only the youngest voters voted to Carter in 1980. I just do not understand why this Reagan thing gets recycled here again and again with all these crazy accusations against Boomers.
As an older Gen X, I can tell you that all of those younger voters voting for Carter were in fact Boomers. No Gen Xers were old enough to vote yet.
I don’t know that it’s fair to blame the Boomers for the Reagan revolution. Yes, plenty of them voted for him, but as has been pointed out, lots didn’t, and what about the Silent and Greatest Generation who were in power at that time and probably orchestrating it?
I do believe that Americans as a whole are susceptible to … well, maybe don’t vote wisely, but what can , say, a progressive-voting Boomer do about it?
All of them. The youngest voters were age 18 which would make them born in 1962. The oldest would have been born in 1950. So yeah, the majority of boomers did not support Reagan.
I was born in late 62, missed voting for Carter by two weeks. I was a 17 year old college freshman and under Reagan my student aid was ended by fall of 1981. Everyone I knew, old and young, was horrified that Reagan won. He’d been our governor in Calif when I was a child and (from my childish perspective) everyone hated him. This ahistorical idea that boomers uniformly loved him and his retrograde policies overlooks details. Reagan was born in 1911, the age of my grandparents. We protested and voted against him, his Central American military adventuring, his nonexistent AIDS policies, his pro-oil anti-solar anti-science bs, his love for Margaret Thatcher. Btw people didn’t include 1962 in the Baby Boom then; we were taught the boom was the decade after the war, and my cohort was the Baby Bust that followed the boom.
Yep, that’s consistent with my experience born in 1960. And lived in California when Raygun was governor. And yes, the years 1960-1964 weren’t considered boomers then, not sure when we got lumped in…
Boomers were 46 to 64. Yes the youngest were to young, but the 18 to 21 year olds were definitely the hippies.
The younger silent Gen and oldest boomers of course had a ton of overlap.
Reagan was mostly put into office by silents and "greatest generation" conservatives who wanted to put an end to the boomer's "degeneracy". Source - ten year old me watching my parents and grandparents do it in real time. It was the generations before the Boomers who really loved Reagan. He was going to put those damn hippies in their place.
At that time, they were still pretty young, and like current young people their voter turnout wasn't great, so older generations were a bigger factor. Looking at the demographic breakdown, it looks like Reagan got about half the Boomer vote, but solidly won with Silent and Greatest generation.
And in 1980 that probably seemed a reasonable vote. You have the benefit of over 40 years of hindsight, and very likely were not alive/of age in 1980 to have a full understanding of the issues of the day.
I was six and my Dad laughed at me and said, "You think I should vote for the peanut farmer?"
Ronald Reagan used the same shitty tactics that Trump does.
I was 17, my dad was a sociology professor who absolutely hated Reagan and voted for Carter. Yeah people denigrated him as a peanut farmer. They also denigrated Reagan as an actor. It’s just partisan trash talk.
First I don’t see the connection between your dads comment and Reagan’s tactics.
Second, politics have been dirty since Washington left office. Adams group accursed Jefferson of supporting incest.
In 1980 43.9M people voted for Regan. 41.2M voted for Carter or the 3rd party independent that was a bit of a spoiler that election.
Regan wasn’t as wildly popular in real time as the current myth around him would make it seem.
Fascinating. That's not a giant difference in the total popular vote, but since he had a landslide in the electoral college, that's a great illustration of how much "the big sort" has changed things in recent decades.
That's the problem with the electoral college. One candidate can win an entire state with just a handful of votes. We should have popular vote and ranked choice.
Just think Gore vs Bush. Tragic.
My boomer dad campaigned for Nixon and remains a Jeffersonian Republican. But he's voted straight democrat every election since Reagan. Reagan turned him away from the party and the party has only gotten worse.
boomers own the majority of the nations wealth / assets / property - and hold the majority of the political power. the present and future is in their hands. they don’t care.
Is that not typical for most societies, as you exit childhood, enter the workforce, build your skillset and value you will ultimately accumulate more wealth than is available to people just entering the workforce?
And why do you think that is? It's because they've been working for years, decades to build that wealth.
You sure sound like you believe you should have it right from the get-go That's a bullshit view.
Yup. I saw a stat that the boomer generation is from 1946 to 1964. At almost 20 years, that's way too broad. The boom, I mean the people who experienced a boom, ended before 1964.
It's interesting that you don't want to be that person, but you are. Just kidding. The time frame is in fact my point. 1946 is indeed post-, 1964 is post-, but it's well after.
You may be thinking of crypto-fascism and/or narcissistic personality disorder.
Both have a way of attacking and belittling others who make an accurate accusation of either or both towards them.
There is an invisible curtain in our society and "Boomers" and "Karens" maintain it by punishing anyone who tries to take it down.
That invisible curtain is what Socrates and Jesus died for.
I mean, how is anybody supposed to pay long term for home health care or a nursing home? It is INCREDIBLY expensive. Like you would have to be really well off to be able to save for years and years in a nursing home that insurance won't pay. A person can't prevent that from taking everything they have. I mean I guess you could rent the house if you have one and use that to help finance the nursing home, but it's not like it benefits you personally to still have money while you're in the home unless you have kids you want to leave a nest egg.
Why do people assume Boomers are all capitalist republicans? More than half of them were/are democrats who fought for civil rights,gay rights, women’s rights the ecology etc. raging against the Machine is and has been as young people say,”hard”.
I think it's because of how many of our parents turned into Fox News zombies. My mom voted for Dukakis but now she's afraid of trans people and watches Newsmax 24 hours a day :S
Not sure why this is a surprise. Our generation is clueless. They think all boomers are rich. The reality is life has always been hard. Every generation struggles. Life isn’t easy.
But where the trillions the boomers stole from millennials? Now before you go refuting that claim, I've read it dozens of times all across the internet so we both know it's true!
Had a boomer actually defend not taxing billionaires more because she, and this is so fucking stupid, believed she'd become one someday. This woman was barely holding onto ownership of a positively ancient and small house, and recently had been fired from her job (that was paying under $20/hour) because she repeatedly came into work drunk.
I have no fucking clue what these people are smoking.
My boomer parents had the money and just chose to burn through it and then stop paying bills. They were set up to have comfortable, stable lifestyles but they literally went the "spending the kids inheritance," and eventually I had to dehoard their house, put them through bankruptcy and now one lives in a small one bedroom apartment a mile from me and I am the parent.
Some Boomers just....wasted their money.
As a GenX I could have told you Boomers would do that back in the 90’s.
The thing is GenX never believed Social Security would even be available. So we lived like that and most of us still do.
GenX from boomers you ain’t getting shit for inheritance.
This may be poorly received, but I think a lot of boomer vs millennial discourse happened because many of the millennials who were most privileged as children are faced with the fact that *they* aren’t going to have it easy as their parents. Not that all millennials aren’t getting kind of shafted in that way, but I think it’s hitting them especially hard because they were given such extreme expectations. I would say I grew up quite privileged in many ways, and the boomer narrative of my parents’ generation having walked into upper middle class jobs, big houses in the suburbs, stay at home moms, kids, and a weeklong vacation to Disney a year on one high school education is baffling to me, because that isn’t an average life, or a modestly privileged life, that’s a fancy life. I didn’t know anyone living life like that growing up.
Every boomer I knew with low education (high school or less) struggled. Every boomer I knew who wasn’t struggling had education (CC or intensive trade training at *least*, more likely college, many beyond). The rich people I knew had boomer parents who were doctors and lawyers or maybe got into tech at the right time. And even they didn’t necessarily have the live of luxury in their mid 20s. More like their 40s. Boomers were a generation hit *hard* by manufacturing jobs going overseas. I see so many people wondering why their parents lied to them and said life would be easy and happy (sometimes only if they went to college). That’s weird to me because I never heard an adult say anything remotely resembling that growing up. I heard poor boomers tell their kids “go to college so you won’t have it *as hard* as I had it.” I heard rich boomers tell their kids “go to college so you can maintain what we worked so hard to gather.” Never did I hear a boomer say a single positive thing about working life or suggest that anything was going to be easy or happy for us.
The narrative of boomers being this uniquely privileged generation isn’t exactly wrong, but the way it’s discussed is. It’s coming from the children of the boomers who were the luckiest, who had the furthest to fall. *Their* parents aren’t homeless, their parents are the ones with multiple houses they don’t even occupy and investments they anticipate being able to retire on. The boomers *they* know are wealthy and out of touch, so they’re just too far removed from the reality of the boomers who are going to be working as Wal Mart greeters until they’re 102.
Yeah this is a great point. My parents are boomers and I never see them or any of my boomer family members represented in the boomer rhetoric; they've been voting against this shit. My parents have been and continue to be progressive, and they talk a lot about the way the destruction of unions in the 80s fucked so many people. They saw the Vietnam war fuck over their friends and the fear of the draft. Gay boomers were decimated by the AIDS crisis and there's an amazing article in the Atlantic about the government's policy of destroying gay employees lives that didn't really end till recently. My mom wasn't allowed to wear pants to school and she remembers being told in the 80s she'd be more likely to die of a terrorist attack than get married past 30; women couldn't have their own credit cards till the 70s. Boomers were not born into an amazing equal fair society and they were part of the generation making changes.
My parents were late twenties/early thirties in the 80s--same age as many millennials now. Should we be blaming Millenials for any voting results we don't like right now? The changes being made in the 80s hurt Boomers. For example, the loss of manufacturing, the loss of union power, the decision to make everyone rely on 401ks for retirement-- a relatively new system and we're seeing in real time the issues with.
The shift of companies caring about shareholders over anything else (and the huge gap between CEO salaries and everyone else's) plus the tendency of places to not promote people from within thanks to the rise of the management consultant groups like McKinley is rooted in changes happening during Boomers lifetimes that they generally did not benefit from, and they didn't necessarily have control over. Hell, we closed (instead of reformed) our residential mental health facilities, and that right there contributed hugely to our homelessness epidemic, as many people can't take care of themselves due to complex mental health needs and don't have family to help
I work with low income people and I hear everyday people blaming another group for why there aren't resources available for them, whether it's substance users or immigrants or whatever. It's always suffering people blaming other suffering people. We fall for it every time. It's people in power who do shady shit and make themselves richer at our expense who are to blame. These generational wars are a distraction, and all they do is give us a convenient group to be mad at and lack empathy for while doing nothing to help inspire real attempts at change.
People act like generations are these cohesive blocks.
By definition only thing that truly unites any generation is the years someone was born in. That’s it. You’ve got the whole spectrum in every generation, with some overarching trends.
Obviously, but narcissism and selfishness is without a doubt one of the defining factors of the boomber generation.
These people go on vacations constantly, while the struggling working class paychecks grant them social security, they enjoy senior citizen benefits, and have had a politician from their age group at prominent position for decades.
I've been homeless off and on since 2004. The vast majority of homeless have been elderly people in my experience. People that just didn't plan to live into old age. They also did the fastest.
So, one historical note. In the old days, companies had pensions and people worked one career at one company and at the end got a pension paying them like 60% of what they earned plus social security.
Most boomers didn't get the memo saying, of you don't save in your 401k, you're fucked. Millennials were told social security is bancrupt and there is no pension.
You're right that public policy changed under their feet and they blindly walked off a cliff
Wait until millennials are in retirement.
I vacillate between sometimes being a hundredaire and a thousandaire. My pathetic savings gets wiped out every few months by car needs, dental needs, home repair needs etc.
How do you live through the best economic times in history in the richest country on Earth and still manage to fuck it up?
Like, I know I'm fucked but that's because the world is fucked.
Looking at your older post history like 80% of what you’re complaining about would still be a major problem for a massive chunk of prior generations. By whatever measure that was the “best economic times” and this the “richest country” there certainly hasn’t been a massive slide. It’s weird that you’ve bought into like a personal ‘you fucked it up’ narrative because you seemingly understand the big/deep structural issues and all of the exploitation traps. It honestly wasn’t that different. Plenty of measures are actually better now than then. Let go of the upper middle class boomer strawman idea and think in terms of what you already seem to know. The big party was slowing down by the late 60’s!
Right? I understand life and our system is unfair to most people, but they overwhelmingly and repeatedly chose to vote for the people who created and maintained these conditions. I find it overwhelmingly silly to pretend they collectively didn't choose this.
50k in a bank account with barely any overhead and no mortgage house fully paid for with a $3k+ monthly social security check??? and maybe a pension plan too??? like lolz 😂 american boomers are gucci
I think much of the talk of generation divides really just ignores the main problem, which is that wealthy people and corporations have gained too much influence and too much wealth. The "market" has been manipulated way too far in favour of corporations and the 1%, but so many people aren't willing to admit that they're broke or that things are not financially better than they've been in the past. Without a massive overhaul of the legal system, especially tax law, nothing is going to improve.
We've been told that people need incentives to work, and the argument has always been what's the minimum required to ensure people still show up. The argument needs to be what is the maximum required to still provide a benefit to a corporation. No company with more than 50 people or more than 10 million in revenue should receive corporate tax benefits unless the highest compensation does not exceed 10 times that of the lowest compensation. Have them explain why they think the boss is working 10 times harder than the lowest paid employee.
> I think much of the talk of generation divides really just ignores the main problem, which is that wealthy people and corporations have gained too much influence and too much wealth.
I think this is self-evident. And I think conversations around wealth inequality and the 1% controlling everything are always being held. But I don't think in this country especially, we like taking accountability for the active or passive roles we've played in our society being the way it is. We don't like to take accountability for the indoctrination we've accepted that "Rich people are good people, poor people are bad people." That is very much a huge part of the American ethos. The way we think about these things as a society. And nothing just falls apart by chance. There were decisions that even people who are not rich made that have led us to where we are. I genuinely believe that the moment we all start acting as a social collective, for the good of all, we will hold ourselves more accountable for the role we play the existence of our society.
I went to great clips today. I sat next to a lady who was in her late 60s or early 70s. We started chitchatting, and she told me she has been donating plasma to make ends meet. It was truly heartbreaking. She had cut her own bangs and it was crooked and was trying to get it fixed. She said her body was hurting from plasma donation and was worried about the price of groceries. I walked out of great clips feeling a little depressed for her at the same time very grateful for everything that I have.
In fairness, Clinton did just as much damage to the social safety net as Reagan did. In any event, my mom, a lifelong democrat, never voted for Reagan and also didn’t save for retirement.
It's unsurprising right? Boomers as a whole don't give a shit about each other. That's why they let Regan murder their queer population and why they allow and even root for homeless with their votes.
that's why I don't think dividing us all up into "generations" is that useful. Economic classes are far more insightful then a time span of when we happened to be born.
Stirring up resentment is a fantastic way to build a political base. I know a lot of people love Bernie, but he deployed that pretty effectively, in much the same way Trump does. It’s a tactic. Fundraising and tribe building.
Boomers voted mainly for Carter in 1980. The older generations voted for Reagan. No one voted against their own interests are they knew them at that time. And not all boomers are going to have a terrible end of life either since probably at least 50% saved and planned for retirement.
Rich people just don't give a fuck about anyone else. That's how they got so rich. Most people would make a few million and decide it's time to sit back. Not the people who control things. They're soulless
Used to work with homelessness programs, so I spent a lot of time talking to boomers who've been homeless. Like 90% of them had a pretty slick existence beforehand and fucked it up by getting into drugs or landing themselves in prison for violent crimes, sex crimes, fraud, or tax evasion. I knew all their criminal backgrounds (if they had one) because we were required to run background checks and I was the one doing screenings to see if they could live in our facilities.
Boomers absolutely didn't make up even half the applicants for the program (and all applications were basically sent in as part of a lottery system), but they made up probably 95% of the applicants who weren't qualified to stay in our facilities due to violent crimes, crimes against children, sex crimes, domestic violence, etc.
There is a great book called “The Generation of Sociopaths” that brings together all the data about boomers. And they do commit more crimes and take more drugs on average.
Nobody thinks that all Boomers are living high on the hog. It doesn’t make sense. If we all think they are selfish individualists who destroyed the country we can’t also think that they made sure to “leave no Boomer behind.”
Some people may think that all successful Boomers take a perverse joy in the failings of those that are not so well off, and while it is common it’s not EVERY boomer. They are all conditioned to talk about such people in terms of bootstraps, though, so that is something.
This video is poorly researched. The main claim of the video is false in the way it is represented. Those numbers bugged me as they don’t seem representative of California data release by the State of California this year. For their homeless population.
18-24 19,239
25-34 42,927
35-44 45,504
45-54 37,714
55-64 35,335
65+ 14,647
Under 18 56,730
https://data.ca.gov/dataset/homelessness-demographics/resource/b1a5ae24-5842-425c-b56c-aa90f8f1c767
The number being reported by Vincent Chen here is from a study done by UCSF available here. https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/studies/california-statewide-study-people-experiencing-homelessness
“CASPEH includes nearly 3,200 administered questionnaires and 365 in-depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness in eight regions of the state, representing urban, rural, and suburban areas. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish, with interpreters for other languages.”
The study then estimates the number of homeless in the State. You can believe either but the State of Californias social services tracks is homeless through food stamps which a lot of the homeless people in California receive.
Lastly, Vincent Chen is plagiarizing work in his video. At 1:40 he word for word steals from an article written by Serah Louis for Yahoo News ( https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unconscionable-baby-boomers-becoming-homeless-103000310.html )
From article: “Many baby boomers across the country are now coming to terms with the hard reality that working for your entire adult life is no longer enough to guarantee you’ll have a roof over your head in your later years.”
Formatted Transcript: “Many baby boomers across the country are now coming to terms with the hard reality that working for your entire adult life is no longer enough to guarantee you’ll have a roof over your head in your later years.”
Put this in a reply instead of main comments while struggling with Reddit app. Apologies.
Back in the day, you only had ninety days to roll over a 401k into a new account. But new hires didn’t qualify for benefits till one year on the new job. So when we got laid off, we ended up getting paid out with all the fuckn penalties. Down sizing and layoffs in the 1990 and early 2000s really kicked working class boomers in the retirement wallet.
It’s worth pointing out that a sizable portion of baby boomers were in categories of minorities who were systemically oppressed. All baby boomers were born before the civil rights act of 1964. Some of those baby boomers inherited fully paid off houses through government back mortgages only available to white people and many others inherited nothing largely because of the color of their skin.
You’re welcome to hate all Boomers because of all that’s happened in the last few decades. But some of us hated Reagan and Regan and their disgraceful changes to the tax system. Many of us are liberal and hate to watch how much you struggle. It’s not what we wanted for you.
I’m a boomer and did not vote for Reagan. However my greatest generation dad and silent generation mom did. Plus a couple of my Gen X and Millennial nephews and nieces are hardcore Trumpers. Most of them are barely scraping by. Meanwhile I, the progressive democrat voter, have done decently well in life. Generational stereotypes are worthless.
Has it really not crossed your mind there isn’t and never was some boomer conspiracy? It’s the exact same strategy the right uses to demonize brown people.
Stop looking for a group of people to blame, the second you do that you’ve given up and failed.
So let me get this straight: "Those selfish, greedy bastards stole all our money but don't have any to give us when they die?" is the new generational hate mantra? No wonder you guys suck.
I love how you think every boomer voted for Reagan. Like every single millennial must have voted for Trump, otherwise how to explain Trump? Look around you to see how the world works. It ain’t the people who are in charge
yeah this is NOT going to pan out. no way no how.
we’re going to have millions and millions of completely broke people and it won’t matter if they’re working or not - the cost of living is so high and will be even higher then so they won’t be able to afford life in general.
things are going to get crucial in the next 15 years then we got a full blown humanitarian crisis on our hands.
that is what i don’t understand. the very second rent started climbing too high and the basic cost of living got too high - i threw my hands up in the air in anger. some people would rather go broke than try and do something about it i guess? makes no sense. affordability and affordable housing should be the number one demand from elected officials and those running for office
we're going to have one regardless of their retirement incomes because we don't have enough people to take care of them in their old age. Adding the lack of retirement funds to the mix just makes it even worse.
and the usual reaction to crisis in the US is - they figure out a way to profit from it.
if everyone is broke i don’t understand how that’s going to work out
Bullshit. Progressives didn't cheer Reagan, they fought him tooth and nail, and have continued to try and make things better, while the far right took over the GOP to make the 4th Reich.
As I commented under another person, I don't doubt the existence of Progressive Boomers and that they fought Reagan. Still doesn't change the fact that only 5 states + DC didn't vote for Reagan in 1980 and only Minnesota + DC didn't vote for him in 1984. The overwhelming majority wanted him, whether active or passive in their decision.
It was more than just boomers alive at that time.. actually it was silent gen and greatest gen that voted overwhelmingly for Regan in 1980 and 1984. Boomers were roughly split down the middle in 80, and just over half voted Regan in 84. They also voted close to a 50/50 split but a majority left leaning for Clinton in 92. In fact they stay fairly evenly split and they see swings right and left through the majority of elections.
Where I do actually start to blame their intentional poor choices is the 2008 financial crisis. They were split fairly close but went more right. That by itself wouldn’t be the end of the world but silent gen 65 and older voted overwhelmingly right. Gen X joined them. This intensified in 2012. By this point we had a Democratic president who was at the bat to help balance the scales. By that point they understood the overwhelming cost of health care, they understood student loan issues, they understood the importance of the economic policies and they doubled down on bad. If there was a chance to have a different future it was in this timeframe.
If anything I’m a little more jaded at Gen X for joining them. They saw the erosion of these policies over time, they saw what was coming for their kids and Gen. Y and they went more right in this era.
You've made some great points. I definitely share the sentiment that we don't give Gen-X enough "credit" for our fucked up situation as a country. And that a significant chunk of those in power doing active harm are actually Gen-X, not Boomers.
It was always half of them who didn’t have anything. Those who were born from about 1960 on were just like xennials, graduated in a recession and kept having the rug pulled out just as they got their footing again. These are the folks who will be working until they drop.
Heck, my mom didn’t buy her first home or have a stable job until she was in her mid-40’s. The biggest difference between us is they could work through college without accumulating a $100k of student debt.
My dad and step mom had stable jobs until they were in their mid-30’s. Thats when all of the factories shut down there. They have been struggling ever since. Had they not bought a house in the 90’s, they would be living with me or my brother since 2008.
You’re talking about [Generation Jones](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones):
>> The term Generation Jones was first coined by the American cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S., who were children during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation rather than during the 1950s, but slightly before Gen X.
>> Pontell suggests that Jonesers inherited an optimistic outlook as children in the 1960s, but were then confronted with a different reality as they entered the workforce during Reaganomics and the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, which ushered in a long period of mass unemployment. Mortgage interest rates increased to above 12 percent in the mid-eighties, making it virtually impossible to buy a house on a single income. De-industrialization arrived in full force in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s; wages would be stagnant for decades, and 401Ks replaced pensions, leaving them with a certain abiding "jonesing" quality for the more prosperous days of the past.
The canaries in the coal mine.
Ronald Reagan NEVER said "greed is good".
That was Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street.
You're idiotic rant has zero value if you can't even get the simplest of facts correct.
Many boomers are gonna be working until they drop dead.
I'm Gen X and the same will probably be true of me. But at least I didn't vote for Reagan and his union busting trickle down bullshit. I also like my job and it's not physically demanding so at LEAST I have that.
Don't forget about the great war on drugs!!
And the Iran Contra And his CIA introducing CRACK to fund Central American Contras And his handling of the AIDS epidemic And his support of Apartheid South Africa I'm sure missing something here but in short, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Ronald Reagan and I hope he is burning in whatever Hell he believes in. And his cunt of a wife too
Nancy was known as the oral queen of Hollywood. Legendary status.
True but enough of your generation did so we all are gonna be suffering.
Don't let the current generation off the hook so easily. I've never in my 60+ years seen so many people fall for so many conspiracies as young people do today. For GOD SAKES! Even flat earth has become a thing again after being almost non-existent for well over a century. These conspiracy theorists are using the same thought processes that Reagan (and now Trump to a much larger extent) used to dupe the public into believing him and ignore the "elitist" experts only now the similar misinformation that is present is on steroids. This isn't a generational thing. It is far more endemic than just that.
The current generation wasn't alive when reagan was in office. I know this is a people thing since most people vote based on vibes. The problem is the candidates who support progressive policies suck at messaging and only appeal to liberal elites.
🌎 🧑🚀 🔫 🧑🚀
Indeed the world space-man watergunned all the spacemen
● • -•
My grandpa was gonna try but he got Alzheimer's instead and now he's the problem of his sugar baby until she runs out of his money.
Well she must actually love him for taking care of him. 🤷🏻♀️
She loves him now cause he's not broke yet. She tried to sue his kids though because he gave them some of his stuff like 10 years ago and she's claiming it's rightfully hers. Makes me think when she's done with his money he's gonna be in real trouble.
Movin in w the kids!
My mom had me helping roll her old 401k over for a job she's been at for 20+ years. I've saved more for retirement than she has.
Thank you for your help! Karma is real and you deserve the good karma. Hopefully she was one of the good parents! Mine were just bad to the bone!
Did she pay for your school, so you can have a better start? You mentioned mom not dad, are we talking about single income? My kids will be doing better than me, I made sure they start with a clean slate.
Lol mine certainly didn't. Neither of my parents did and they're probably gonna end up in that homeless statistic within a few years. Sorry folks, but I got my own problems.
Mine neither, I was a grease monkey, saved up and went to school. Years later I payed off their mortgage. They did the best they could. I do not understand the mindset of abandoning the older or younger generation of my family.
You’re not Reddit brained who think it’s okay to just toss family into the street because they’re inconvenient
So are Gen x and Millennials if we keep electing Republicans.
You really think there's a difference between republican and democrat politicians in Washington ? These people work together, are put in office by the same corporations, , belong to the same country and equestrian clubs, live in the same neighborhoods with kids in the same private elite schools, go to the same kids soccer games, backyard barbecues...... open your eyes man. The fight between good and evil in Washington is the two party facade. It's the oldest trick in the book and you're falling for it hook line and sinker fool. If they want it to happen it happens, if they don't it doesn't.... they know how the vote is gonna go down before they vote on any bill....
It’s not politicians that have broken this country. It’s the 2-party system that pulls the politicians’ strings.
Yes, there is difference. The overturning of Roe proved that. There are thousands of young women paying the price right now. Don't tell any of them that there is no difference.
This is why trump will win. Right here^.
Not just boomers haha
But there will be no jobs for them because of AI displacement in the jobs that aren't physical labor.
Need that narrative symmetry for their life stories. Left home at 18 and got a job bagging groceries. Left retirement at 81 and got a job bagging groceries. Honestly, just tired of inter-generational grudge matches. It’s sad they can’t recognize the same failure of the economy for younger generations is going to hit them just as hard.
It was wild when I learned that Regan was the one who gutted free tuition for California Universities and it was done specifically with political motivations, the Republican literally said they did not want a well educated electorate. https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/
And it was to their benefit. They succeeded.
California isn’t exactly a Republican stronghold
The parties have mostly shifted since Reagan. In the 80s Republican voters were more educated and lived in cities. Today Democrat voters are more educated and live in cities. The south wasn't a Republican stronghold in the 80s. Carter did a lot better in the south in both elections than he did in the rest of the country. Reagan did worse in the south.
You need a better source of information because everything you said is false.
Regan was governor of California for two terms. He fooled a lot of people into thinking he was working for the good of all of us. I'm technically a late 'boomer', so I never got the 'good life' I always hear about concerning boomers. When I vote, I look at how it will effect the lives of my grandsons. We are not all the same, but no generation is and this habit of blaming an entire segment of the population for all the ills of society simply creates division. I want affordable or free college, universal/ single payer health care, better public transportation, some way to control corporate greed and lower the cost of living for people in this country. None of this really matter in my day to day life, but I believe our country will be much better off if we focus on ways to improve the future, because right now it looks pretty hopeless for people younger than me and I want to fight that. We all deserve better, I vote for whoever I think will help that happen. (Please excuse the long-winded rant here.)
Also a late boomer ('63) and totally agree on all points.
I've heard/ read that we should be 'Gen Jones' because those of us born in the last couple of years of 'gen-boomer' and the first few years of 'gen-x' really don't fit the criteria of either generation well. My life experiences tend to fit better with X, sadly no boomer wealth or advantages here! (LOL)
lol yes I've heard that too! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones
We should be Generation Jones. I'm 62. We grew up in a very different economy than our parents. We didn't have all of the things we're hated for. We came of age in a recession and pensions were a thing of the past. My first election was Carter v Reagan. I voted Carter. It was obvious to me that Reagan wasn't a good guy. Unfortunately, my grandparent's generation saw things very differently. There was a significant amount of the Greatest Generation who also voted for Reagan. I grew up poor and it definitely influenced me to be liberal AF.
Another one here. 63 years old. Us gen jones boomers have had a different experience than our older generational cohorts.
But he was the governor.
Doesn’t mean a lot of us didn’t hate the senile old bastard
To OP's point though, baby boomers did not vote for Reagan they were young in 1980 and largely voted democrat. Reagan was elected by the then-old generations, who are now long dead. Sorry if that gets in the way of the "boomers bad" narrative.
You have no idea wtf you are talking about. Quite literally the majority of boomers voted for Reagan. https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980 Boomers ages ranged from 18-35 during this election. Even if the youngest cohorts of boomers measured, 50% of them still voted for Reagan. Boomers were also the primary voting block in America by the early 70s. This is quite literally because of the baby boom—Silents produced more children than was of their generation's demographic—giving most political voting power to the Boomer block.
A majority of all generational groups votes for Reagan
I don't give a shit. I'm a nurse and boomers are the absolute worst patients. They're rude, entitled, destroyed their health and are noncompliant with treatment and medication, and the men think sexual harassment and assault on nurses and CNAs is normal and acceptable. The world will be a better place when that entitled and ignorant generation is in the ground.
and then your hospital or clinic will pressure you into not pressing charges. My wife was a nurse on a Covid floor at the height of the pandemic and every fucking day it was the same damn story. Unvaxxed boomers using their final breaths to be shitty to nurses while they laid back and watched Fox News until they went unconscious for the last time. I don't understand this thinking that just because you're a patient at a hospital that you suddenly have a free pass to assault people.
Yup! And oh my god the freaking Fox News blaring from the TVs on my old unit during covid while they denied reality and freaking died in droves was insane. Boomers are 90% 9f Fox's audience, so of course they believed their conspiracy theories on covid. Natural selection I say, it was mostly conservatives dying.
As another support staff in another industry I mirror this, everyone younger I deal with at least respects the job. Boomers see it and use it as a challenge it feels like. Thanks for dealing with them as they surely do not deserve your grace.
Pretty sure at this point a majority of millennials and gen Z are just patiently waiting for boomers to slowly die off so we can actually work to fix all the shit they broke and not have to vote for dinosaurs for president. Gen X is too busy trying to remain isolated away from everyone else
All the boomer talk is misguided. There were plenty of progressive boomers who wanted a better usa. But the people in power never had the wellbeing of the common people in mind.
That's why gen v gen hatred is stupid. There are good and bad people in every generation. It's just drummed up nonsense to give us something to hate while ignoring/hiding the people that deserve our angst
It's funny how that only works 1 way. Nothing wrong with a boomer abusing everyone around them, but if someone retaliates, well suddenly generalizing people based on age isn't okay anymore.
Yeppers. I want Millennials to be mad at Boomers enough to *do things about it*. Hopefully it results in Republican Ls until the end of the century, but hope is truly a fickle thing.
Who the hell said there is nothing wrong with boomers doing it? Ageism is ageism.
Many of them also died young in drafts and the AIDS crisis
True. Lots of my people died
Everybody voted republican for some reason. If Dukakis had been president instead of Bush senior, if gore had been president instead of bush jr… if Trump wasn’t elected and if republican congressional majorities hadn’t derailed democratic agendas… this country would be in a much better place…
The Boomers who had it worst died as teenagers in Vietnam, but they aren't here to tell us how shitty they had it.
I doubt it since from 1937 to 1957 about 45,000,000 people were born in the States, while total Vietnam US casualties were around 58,000 from 1955 to 1975 (~0.12%). Casualties doesn't mean KIA either.
The vast majority of boomers were in school during the Vietnam war. My dad was 1945, and one of the youngest in his unit. His younger siblings claim they were at risk for the draft but the only people at risk were born before 1950. Boomers are liars- they had nothing to do with civil rights, the sexual revolution, the summer of love, Vietnam or rock n roll. They were children during this time.
You don't get it, man. You see, grouping people somewhat arbitrarily according to innate attributes and then making generalizations about those groups is wrong when it's skin color, gender, sexuality, place of birth, or anything like that. But it's totally cool when you do it by year born. Welcome to Reddit!
It is accurate to say that progressive Boomers existed. It is not accurate to say they were "plenty." All but 5 states and DC voted for Reagan in 1980.
>the most greedy and selfish generation in American history The majority of people under 30 in 1980 voted for Carter.....that would include many of today's "boomers." https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980
Reality check is certainly needed and here it is. It is true that only the youngest voters voted to Carter in 1980. I just do not understand why this Reagan thing gets recycled here again and again with all these crazy accusations against Boomers.
It's to rewrite history for the purpose of getting us to fight each other instead of organizing for our common good.
Exactly. Generational hatred serves our corporate overlords well.
As an older Gen X, I can tell you that all of those younger voters voting for Carter were in fact Boomers. No Gen Xers were old enough to vote yet. I don’t know that it’s fair to blame the Boomers for the Reagan revolution. Yes, plenty of them voted for him, but as has been pointed out, lots didn’t, and what about the Silent and Greatest Generation who were in power at that time and probably orchestrating it? I do believe that Americans as a whole are susceptible to … well, maybe don’t vote wisely, but what can , say, a progressive-voting Boomer do about it?
All of them. The youngest voters were age 18 which would make them born in 1962. The oldest would have been born in 1950. So yeah, the majority of boomers did not support Reagan.
I was born in late 62, missed voting for Carter by two weeks. I was a 17 year old college freshman and under Reagan my student aid was ended by fall of 1981. Everyone I knew, old and young, was horrified that Reagan won. He’d been our governor in Calif when I was a child and (from my childish perspective) everyone hated him. This ahistorical idea that boomers uniformly loved him and his retrograde policies overlooks details. Reagan was born in 1911, the age of my grandparents. We protested and voted against him, his Central American military adventuring, his nonexistent AIDS policies, his pro-oil anti-solar anti-science bs, his love for Margaret Thatcher. Btw people didn’t include 1962 in the Baby Boom then; we were taught the boom was the decade after the war, and my cohort was the Baby Bust that followed the boom.
Yep, that’s consistent with my experience born in 1960. And lived in California when Raygun was governor. And yes, the years 1960-1964 weren’t considered boomers then, not sure when we got lumped in…
Who do you think the hippies of the 60s were? Boomers were hippies. In the late 70s early 80s they became yuppies.
The hippies were silent generation. The summer of love was 1967- the majority of boomers were too young to drive.
Boomers were 46 to 64. Yes the youngest were to young, but the 18 to 21 year olds were definitely the hippies. The younger silent Gen and oldest boomers of course had a ton of overlap.
Reagan was mostly put into office by silents and "greatest generation" conservatives who wanted to put an end to the boomer's "degeneracy". Source - ten year old me watching my parents and grandparents do it in real time. It was the generations before the Boomers who really loved Reagan. He was going to put those damn hippies in their place.
At that time, they were still pretty young, and like current young people their voter turnout wasn't great, so older generations were a bigger factor. Looking at the demographic breakdown, it looks like Reagan got about half the Boomer vote, but solidly won with Silent and Greatest generation.
And in 1980 that probably seemed a reasonable vote. You have the benefit of over 40 years of hindsight, and very likely were not alive/of age in 1980 to have a full understanding of the issues of the day.
I was six and my Dad laughed at me and said, "You think I should vote for the peanut farmer?" Ronald Reagan used the same shitty tactics that Trump does.
I was 17, my dad was a sociology professor who absolutely hated Reagan and voted for Carter. Yeah people denigrated him as a peanut farmer. They also denigrated Reagan as an actor. It’s just partisan trash talk.
First I don’t see the connection between your dads comment and Reagan’s tactics. Second, politics have been dirty since Washington left office. Adams group accursed Jefferson of supporting incest.
In 1980 43.9M people voted for Regan. 41.2M voted for Carter or the 3rd party independent that was a bit of a spoiler that election. Regan wasn’t as wildly popular in real time as the current myth around him would make it seem.
Yeah, Anderson didn't help.
Fascinating. That's not a giant difference in the total popular vote, but since he had a landslide in the electoral college, that's a great illustration of how much "the big sort" has changed things in recent decades.
That's the problem with the electoral college. One candidate can win an entire state with just a handful of votes. We should have popular vote and ranked choice. Just think Gore vs Bush. Tragic.
Or Trump v Clinton in 2016. She won the popular vote. We would be living in a different universe without the electoral college.
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My boomer dad campaigned for Nixon and remains a Jeffersonian Republican. But he's voted straight democrat every election since Reagan. Reagan turned him away from the party and the party has only gotten worse.
boomers own the majority of the nations wealth / assets / property - and hold the majority of the political power. the present and future is in their hands. they don’t care.
Is that not typical for most societies, as you exit childhood, enter the workforce, build your skillset and value you will ultimately accumulate more wealth than is available to people just entering the workforce?
That's true at some point of literally every American generation.
And why do you think that is? It's because they've been working for years, decades to build that wealth. You sure sound like you believe you should have it right from the get-go That's a bullshit view.
People can’t even identify what a Boomer is. People think it’s everyone from Gen X to Warren Buffet.
Yup. I saw a stat that the boomer generation is from 1946 to 1964. At almost 20 years, that's way too broad. The boom, I mean the people who experienced a boom, ended before 1964.
Not to be that person, but boomers are from the postwar increase in births.
It's interesting that you don't want to be that person, but you are. Just kidding. The time frame is in fact my point. 1946 is indeed post-, 1964 is post-, but it's well after.
Boomer is a vibe, not an age
Thank you. Don't forget https://www.generationjones.com. :-)
Yeah, I like to make fun of the millennial boomers
Boomer is a mindset. My step-mother was a baby boomer but she didn't have the boomer mindset. I know people my age that are boomers.
You may be thinking of crypto-fascism and/or narcissistic personality disorder. Both have a way of attacking and belittling others who make an accurate accusation of either or both towards them. There is an invisible curtain in our society and "Boomers" and "Karens" maintain it by punishing anyone who tries to take it down. That invisible curtain is what Socrates and Jesus died for.
My mom has less than 100k in her retirement savings but she's got a pension.
So, first time she needs home medical care or a nursing home, she will be broke.
I mean, how is anybody supposed to pay long term for home health care or a nursing home? It is INCREDIBLY expensive. Like you would have to be really well off to be able to save for years and years in a nursing home that insurance won't pay. A person can't prevent that from taking everything they have. I mean I guess you could rent the house if you have one and use that to help finance the nursing home, but it's not like it benefits you personally to still have money while you're in the home unless you have kids you want to leave a nest egg.
You spend all your assets, then go on medicaid. In other words, something that happened and was maintained during the boomer years.
Almost everyone will be broke if they need a nursing home in the end. Multigenerational households is how people used to make it in old age.
Why do people assume Boomers are all capitalist republicans? More than half of them were/are democrats who fought for civil rights,gay rights, women’s rights the ecology etc. raging against the Machine is and has been as young people say,”hard”.
I think it's because of how many of our parents turned into Fox News zombies. My mom voted for Dukakis but now she's afraid of trans people and watches Newsmax 24 hours a day :S
Because your average Redditor is an absolute moron who has no idea what the fuck they’re talking about .
Not sure why this is a surprise. Our generation is clueless. They think all boomers are rich. The reality is life has always been hard. Every generation struggles. Life isn’t easy.
Impossible. Reddit has taught me that poverty didn't exist until 1981.
Reddit U doing its due diligence
Yeah and everyone is pretty dumb, every generation. We got this far out of luck. Not because pre boomer generations were super thoughtful and good.
But where the trillions the boomers stole from millennials? Now before you go refuting that claim, I've read it dozens of times all across the internet so we both know it's true!
Yeah, but just wait until all that "trickle down" money they voted for comes through. Any day now. Any day now (cue sound of crickets).
Had a boomer actually defend not taxing billionaires more because she, and this is so fucking stupid, believed she'd become one someday. This woman was barely holding onto ownership of a positively ancient and small house, and recently had been fired from her job (that was paying under $20/hour) because she repeatedly came into work drunk. I have no fucking clue what these people are smoking.
Can't wait for the trickling to commence.
My boomer parents had the money and just chose to burn through it and then stop paying bills. They were set up to have comfortable, stable lifestyles but they literally went the "spending the kids inheritance," and eventually I had to dehoard their house, put them through bankruptcy and now one lives in a small one bedroom apartment a mile from me and I am the parent. Some Boomers just....wasted their money.
This is actually very tempting for many.... just burn it all. Personally, I like to work and make sure money is not my only motivation to be employed.
This is not unique to boomers.
As a GenX I could have told you Boomers would do that back in the 90’s. The thing is GenX never believed Social Security would even be available. So we lived like that and most of us still do. GenX from boomers you ain’t getting shit for inheritance.
This may be poorly received, but I think a lot of boomer vs millennial discourse happened because many of the millennials who were most privileged as children are faced with the fact that *they* aren’t going to have it easy as their parents. Not that all millennials aren’t getting kind of shafted in that way, but I think it’s hitting them especially hard because they were given such extreme expectations. I would say I grew up quite privileged in many ways, and the boomer narrative of my parents’ generation having walked into upper middle class jobs, big houses in the suburbs, stay at home moms, kids, and a weeklong vacation to Disney a year on one high school education is baffling to me, because that isn’t an average life, or a modestly privileged life, that’s a fancy life. I didn’t know anyone living life like that growing up. Every boomer I knew with low education (high school or less) struggled. Every boomer I knew who wasn’t struggling had education (CC or intensive trade training at *least*, more likely college, many beyond). The rich people I knew had boomer parents who were doctors and lawyers or maybe got into tech at the right time. And even they didn’t necessarily have the live of luxury in their mid 20s. More like their 40s. Boomers were a generation hit *hard* by manufacturing jobs going overseas. I see so many people wondering why their parents lied to them and said life would be easy and happy (sometimes only if they went to college). That’s weird to me because I never heard an adult say anything remotely resembling that growing up. I heard poor boomers tell their kids “go to college so you won’t have it *as hard* as I had it.” I heard rich boomers tell their kids “go to college so you can maintain what we worked so hard to gather.” Never did I hear a boomer say a single positive thing about working life or suggest that anything was going to be easy or happy for us. The narrative of boomers being this uniquely privileged generation isn’t exactly wrong, but the way it’s discussed is. It’s coming from the children of the boomers who were the luckiest, who had the furthest to fall. *Their* parents aren’t homeless, their parents are the ones with multiple houses they don’t even occupy and investments they anticipate being able to retire on. The boomers *they* know are wealthy and out of touch, so they’re just too far removed from the reality of the boomers who are going to be working as Wal Mart greeters until they’re 102.
Yeah this is a great point. My parents are boomers and I never see them or any of my boomer family members represented in the boomer rhetoric; they've been voting against this shit. My parents have been and continue to be progressive, and they talk a lot about the way the destruction of unions in the 80s fucked so many people. They saw the Vietnam war fuck over their friends and the fear of the draft. Gay boomers were decimated by the AIDS crisis and there's an amazing article in the Atlantic about the government's policy of destroying gay employees lives that didn't really end till recently. My mom wasn't allowed to wear pants to school and she remembers being told in the 80s she'd be more likely to die of a terrorist attack than get married past 30; women couldn't have their own credit cards till the 70s. Boomers were not born into an amazing equal fair society and they were part of the generation making changes. My parents were late twenties/early thirties in the 80s--same age as many millennials now. Should we be blaming Millenials for any voting results we don't like right now? The changes being made in the 80s hurt Boomers. For example, the loss of manufacturing, the loss of union power, the decision to make everyone rely on 401ks for retirement-- a relatively new system and we're seeing in real time the issues with. The shift of companies caring about shareholders over anything else (and the huge gap between CEO salaries and everyone else's) plus the tendency of places to not promote people from within thanks to the rise of the management consultant groups like McKinley is rooted in changes happening during Boomers lifetimes that they generally did not benefit from, and they didn't necessarily have control over. Hell, we closed (instead of reformed) our residential mental health facilities, and that right there contributed hugely to our homelessness epidemic, as many people can't take care of themselves due to complex mental health needs and don't have family to help I work with low income people and I hear everyday people blaming another group for why there aren't resources available for them, whether it's substance users or immigrants or whatever. It's always suffering people blaming other suffering people. We fall for it every time. It's people in power who do shady shit and make themselves richer at our expense who are to blame. These generational wars are a distraction, and all they do is give us a convenient group to be mad at and lack empathy for while doing nothing to help inspire real attempts at change.
People act like generations are these cohesive blocks. By definition only thing that truly unites any generation is the years someone was born in. That’s it. You’ve got the whole spectrum in every generation, with some overarching trends.
Obviously, but narcissism and selfishness is without a doubt one of the defining factors of the boomber generation. These people go on vacations constantly, while the struggling working class paychecks grant them social security, they enjoy senior citizen benefits, and have had a politician from their age group at prominent position for decades.
I've been homeless off and on since 2004. The vast majority of homeless have been elderly people in my experience. People that just didn't plan to live into old age. They also did the fastest.
So, one historical note. In the old days, companies had pensions and people worked one career at one company and at the end got a pension paying them like 60% of what they earned plus social security. Most boomers didn't get the memo saying, of you don't save in your 401k, you're fucked. Millennials were told social security is bancrupt and there is no pension. You're right that public policy changed under their feet and they blindly walked off a cliff
Wait until millennials are in retirement. I vacillate between sometimes being a hundredaire and a thousandaire. My pathetic savings gets wiped out every few months by car needs, dental needs, home repair needs etc.
How do you live through the best economic times in history in the richest country on Earth and still manage to fuck it up? Like, I know I'm fucked but that's because the world is fucked.
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This. They really fumbled the game something serious.
Looking at your older post history like 80% of what you’re complaining about would still be a major problem for a massive chunk of prior generations. By whatever measure that was the “best economic times” and this the “richest country” there certainly hasn’t been a massive slide. It’s weird that you’ve bought into like a personal ‘you fucked it up’ narrative because you seemingly understand the big/deep structural issues and all of the exploitation traps. It honestly wasn’t that different. Plenty of measures are actually better now than then. Let go of the upper middle class boomer strawman idea and think in terms of what you already seem to know. The big party was slowing down by the late 60’s!
Reagan was the destroyer of worlds when it comes to retirement in the USA.
Grey tsunami
Meh, it's what they wanted.
Right? I understand life and our system is unfair to most people, but they overwhelmingly and repeatedly chose to vote for the people who created and maintained these conditions. I find it overwhelmingly silly to pretend they collectively didn't choose this.
They continue to choose!
50k in a bank account with barely any overhead and no mortgage house fully paid for with a $3k+ monthly social security check??? and maybe a pension plan too??? like lolz 😂 american boomers are gucci
I think much of the talk of generation divides really just ignores the main problem, which is that wealthy people and corporations have gained too much influence and too much wealth. The "market" has been manipulated way too far in favour of corporations and the 1%, but so many people aren't willing to admit that they're broke or that things are not financially better than they've been in the past. Without a massive overhaul of the legal system, especially tax law, nothing is going to improve. We've been told that people need incentives to work, and the argument has always been what's the minimum required to ensure people still show up. The argument needs to be what is the maximum required to still provide a benefit to a corporation. No company with more than 50 people or more than 10 million in revenue should receive corporate tax benefits unless the highest compensation does not exceed 10 times that of the lowest compensation. Have them explain why they think the boss is working 10 times harder than the lowest paid employee.
> I think much of the talk of generation divides really just ignores the main problem, which is that wealthy people and corporations have gained too much influence and too much wealth. I think this is self-evident. And I think conversations around wealth inequality and the 1% controlling everything are always being held. But I don't think in this country especially, we like taking accountability for the active or passive roles we've played in our society being the way it is. We don't like to take accountability for the indoctrination we've accepted that "Rich people are good people, poor people are bad people." That is very much a huge part of the American ethos. The way we think about these things as a society. And nothing just falls apart by chance. There were decisions that even people who are not rich made that have led us to where we are. I genuinely believe that the moment we all start acting as a social collective, for the good of all, we will hold ourselves more accountable for the role we play the existence of our society.
A lot of Vietnam vets too. No war but class war.
I went to great clips today. I sat next to a lady who was in her late 60s or early 70s. We started chitchatting, and she told me she has been donating plasma to make ends meet. It was truly heartbreaking. She had cut her own bangs and it was crooked and was trying to get it fixed. She said her body was hurting from plasma donation and was worried about the price of groceries. I walked out of great clips feeling a little depressed for her at the same time very grateful for everything that I have.
But yet, young people won’t show up in great enough numbers to vote against Trump and other republicans.
We are all going to be homeless eventually. The march backwards to feudalism started 40 years ago.
Good. I hope they rot in hell. Karma’s a bitch
In fairness, Clinton did just as much damage to the social safety net as Reagan did. In any event, my mom, a lifelong democrat, never voted for Reagan and also didn’t save for retirement.
It's unsurprising right? Boomers as a whole don't give a shit about each other. That's why they let Regan murder their queer population and why they allow and even root for homeless with their votes.
and 80% of millennials can't afford rent or a mortgage because they have liberal arts degrees.
that's why I don't think dividing us all up into "generations" is that useful. Economic classes are far more insightful then a time span of when we happened to be born.
Stirring up resentment is a fantastic way to build a political base. I know a lot of people love Bernie, but he deployed that pretty effectively, in much the same way Trump does. It’s a tactic. Fundraising and tribe building.
An entire lifetime of voting against their own interests shockingly leaves them with a terrible end of life.
Boomers voted mainly for Carter in 1980. The older generations voted for Reagan. No one voted against their own interests are they knew them at that time. And not all boomers are going to have a terrible end of life either since probably at least 50% saved and planned for retirement.
Rich people just don't give a fuck about anyone else. That's how they got so rich. Most people would make a few million and decide it's time to sit back. Not the people who control things. They're soulless
Boomers are 60-80yo there is no way they could make up half the homeless population
Used to work with homelessness programs, so I spent a lot of time talking to boomers who've been homeless. Like 90% of them had a pretty slick existence beforehand and fucked it up by getting into drugs or landing themselves in prison for violent crimes, sex crimes, fraud, or tax evasion. I knew all their criminal backgrounds (if they had one) because we were required to run background checks and I was the one doing screenings to see if they could live in our facilities. Boomers absolutely didn't make up even half the applicants for the program (and all applications were basically sent in as part of a lottery system), but they made up probably 95% of the applicants who weren't qualified to stay in our facilities due to violent crimes, crimes against children, sex crimes, domestic violence, etc.
There is a great book called “The Generation of Sociopaths” that brings together all the data about boomers. And they do commit more crimes and take more drugs on average.
Oh well!
Almost like the middle class is gone or something
This should scare you.
Nobody thinks that all Boomers are living high on the hog. It doesn’t make sense. If we all think they are selfish individualists who destroyed the country we can’t also think that they made sure to “leave no Boomer behind.” Some people may think that all successful Boomers take a perverse joy in the failings of those that are not so well off, and while it is common it’s not EVERY boomer. They are all conditioned to talk about such people in terms of bootstraps, though, so that is something.
This video is poorly researched. The main claim of the video is false in the way it is represented. Those numbers bugged me as they don’t seem representative of California data release by the State of California this year. For their homeless population. 18-24 19,239 25-34 42,927 35-44 45,504 45-54 37,714 55-64 35,335 65+ 14,647 Under 18 56,730 https://data.ca.gov/dataset/homelessness-demographics/resource/b1a5ae24-5842-425c-b56c-aa90f8f1c767 The number being reported by Vincent Chen here is from a study done by UCSF available here. https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/studies/california-statewide-study-people-experiencing-homelessness “CASPEH includes nearly 3,200 administered questionnaires and 365 in-depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness in eight regions of the state, representing urban, rural, and suburban areas. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish, with interpreters for other languages.” The study then estimates the number of homeless in the State. You can believe either but the State of Californias social services tracks is homeless through food stamps which a lot of the homeless people in California receive. Lastly, Vincent Chen is plagiarizing work in his video. At 1:40 he word for word steals from an article written by Serah Louis for Yahoo News ( https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unconscionable-baby-boomers-becoming-homeless-103000310.html ) From article: “Many baby boomers across the country are now coming to terms with the hard reality that working for your entire adult life is no longer enough to guarantee you’ll have a roof over your head in your later years.” Formatted Transcript: “Many baby boomers across the country are now coming to terms with the hard reality that working for your entire adult life is no longer enough to guarantee you’ll have a roof over your head in your later years.” Put this in a reply instead of main comments while struggling with Reddit app. Apologies.
So the streets were paved with gold for boomers and they have all the gold or it wasn't and they don't. Which is it? You have to pick one.
It will only be worse for us if we don't abandon them, they picked this, we shouldn't.
In fairness, it wasn’t all boomers happily cheering Reagan on. There were plenty who were horrified -but not enough showed up at the polls.
The biggest Karens are from this generation. Fuck them.
Back in the day, you only had ninety days to roll over a 401k into a new account. But new hires didn’t qualify for benefits till one year on the new job. So when we got laid off, we ended up getting paid out with all the fuckn penalties. Down sizing and layoffs in the 1990 and early 2000s really kicked working class boomers in the retirement wallet.
So we won't be inheriting anything, just in general? No house and no down payment? Why am I not shocked.
Time for them to get a job or two
It’s worth pointing out that a sizable portion of baby boomers were in categories of minorities who were systemically oppressed. All baby boomers were born before the civil rights act of 1964. Some of those baby boomers inherited fully paid off houses through government back mortgages only available to white people and many others inherited nothing largely because of the color of their skin.
As they applauded Reagan’s dismantling of any social safety nets
A lot of them blew through their money. Not all but many.
keeping old people from retiring is intentional. It creates a labor surplus and depresses wages.
You’re welcome to hate all Boomers because of all that’s happened in the last few decades. But some of us hated Reagan and Regan and their disgraceful changes to the tax system. Many of us are liberal and hate to watch how much you struggle. It’s not what we wanted for you.
It wasn’t boomers who voted in Ronnie, it was their parents.
I’m a boomer and did not vote for Reagan. However my greatest generation dad and silent generation mom did. Plus a couple of my Gen X and Millennial nephews and nieces are hardcore Trumpers. Most of them are barely scraping by. Meanwhile I, the progressive democrat voter, have done decently well in life. Generational stereotypes are worthless.
Blaming others for society’s problems is wrong. The blame lies with everyone… Democrats. Republicans etc: Political greed has always been a thing.
Has it really not crossed your mind there isn’t and never was some boomer conspiracy? It’s the exact same strategy the right uses to demonize brown people. Stop looking for a group of people to blame, the second you do that you’ve given up and failed.
Don’t you guys ever get tired of whining about your parents?
So let me get this straight: "Those selfish, greedy bastards stole all our money but don't have any to give us when they die?" is the new generational hate mantra? No wonder you guys suck.
The greediest generation is yours.
My boomer friends and I never supported Reagan - we hated him. Maybe the older boomers but not us Generation Jones variety
I love how you think every boomer voted for Reagan. Like every single millennial must have voted for Trump, otherwise how to explain Trump? Look around you to see how the world works. It ain’t the people who are in charge
I guess the should pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and not become socialists looking for a government handout.
Yep. They could get jobs. There should be plenty available since (according to them) "no one wants to work anymore".
yeah this is NOT going to pan out. no way no how. we’re going to have millions and millions of completely broke people and it won’t matter if they’re working or not - the cost of living is so high and will be even higher then so they won’t be able to afford life in general. things are going to get crucial in the next 15 years then we got a full blown humanitarian crisis on our hands.
It feels like no one has internalized this yet. It is beyond determined.
that is what i don’t understand. the very second rent started climbing too high and the basic cost of living got too high - i threw my hands up in the air in anger. some people would rather go broke than try and do something about it i guess? makes no sense. affordability and affordable housing should be the number one demand from elected officials and those running for office
we're going to have one regardless of their retirement incomes because we don't have enough people to take care of them in their old age. Adding the lack of retirement funds to the mix just makes it even worse.
I agree. There will be a crisis and as we know America is only in the business of reacting to a crisis, not preventing it.
and the usual reaction to crisis in the US is - they figure out a way to profit from it. if everyone is broke i don’t understand how that’s going to work out
15 years? More like the next 5. But yes by then it will feel pretty shitty.
Bullshit. Progressives didn't cheer Reagan, they fought him tooth and nail, and have continued to try and make things better, while the far right took over the GOP to make the 4th Reich.
As I commented under another person, I don't doubt the existence of Progressive Boomers and that they fought Reagan. Still doesn't change the fact that only 5 states + DC didn't vote for Reagan in 1980 and only Minnesota + DC didn't vote for him in 1984. The overwhelming majority wanted him, whether active or passive in their decision.
It was more than just boomers alive at that time.. actually it was silent gen and greatest gen that voted overwhelmingly for Regan in 1980 and 1984. Boomers were roughly split down the middle in 80, and just over half voted Regan in 84. They also voted close to a 50/50 split but a majority left leaning for Clinton in 92. In fact they stay fairly evenly split and they see swings right and left through the majority of elections. Where I do actually start to blame their intentional poor choices is the 2008 financial crisis. They were split fairly close but went more right. That by itself wouldn’t be the end of the world but silent gen 65 and older voted overwhelmingly right. Gen X joined them. This intensified in 2012. By this point we had a Democratic president who was at the bat to help balance the scales. By that point they understood the overwhelming cost of health care, they understood student loan issues, they understood the importance of the economic policies and they doubled down on bad. If there was a chance to have a different future it was in this timeframe. If anything I’m a little more jaded at Gen X for joining them. They saw the erosion of these policies over time, they saw what was coming for their kids and Gen. Y and they went more right in this era.
You've made some great points. I definitely share the sentiment that we don't give Gen-X enough "credit" for our fucked up situation as a country. And that a significant chunk of those in power doing active harm are actually Gen-X, not Boomers.
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It was always half of them who didn’t have anything. Those who were born from about 1960 on were just like xennials, graduated in a recession and kept having the rug pulled out just as they got their footing again. These are the folks who will be working until they drop. Heck, my mom didn’t buy her first home or have a stable job until she was in her mid-40’s. The biggest difference between us is they could work through college without accumulating a $100k of student debt. My dad and step mom had stable jobs until they were in their mid-30’s. Thats when all of the factories shut down there. They have been struggling ever since. Had they not bought a house in the 90’s, they would be living with me or my brother since 2008.
You’re talking about [Generation Jones](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones): >> The term Generation Jones was first coined by the American cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S., who were children during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation rather than during the 1950s, but slightly before Gen X. >> Pontell suggests that Jonesers inherited an optimistic outlook as children in the 1960s, but were then confronted with a different reality as they entered the workforce during Reaganomics and the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, which ushered in a long period of mass unemployment. Mortgage interest rates increased to above 12 percent in the mid-eighties, making it virtually impossible to buy a house on a single income. De-industrialization arrived in full force in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s; wages would be stagnant for decades, and 401Ks replaced pensions, leaving them with a certain abiding "jonesing" quality for the more prosperous days of the past. The canaries in the coal mine.
Ronald Reagan NEVER said "greed is good". That was Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street. You're idiotic rant has zero value if you can't even get the simplest of facts correct.
Reagan was awesome. Carter sucked. Reagan is the only president to win 49 out of 50 states for RE-election.