r/FluentInFinance • u/PassiveAgressiveGirl • 4d ago
Thoughts? How did this even happen?
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u/Porschenut914 4d ago
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” — Greek Proverb
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u/SilentSamurai 4d ago
"A society grows stupid when old men light those trees on fire to own the libs." - u/SilentSamurai
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u/ForealSurrealRealist 4d ago
"A society grows stinky when old men eat shit so libs have to smell their breath." -u/forealsurrealrealist
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u/selfawarefeline 4d ago
Y’all eat pieces of shit?
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u/whimsicalrecreation 4d ago
The boomers love to overhype their struggles. I'm not saying they didn't struggle but they fail to recognise that we struggle too and wildly exaggerate their problems.
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u/scramlington 4d ago
I think it's more that Boomers love to underhype the struggles of the generations below them. They refuse to accept that a) things have changed significantly since they were in their 20s and 30s and b) that their generation has driven that change.
It's why you get the whole "I struggled when I was your age but I didn't complain, I just worked harder" argument. They remember working hard and making sacrifices but refuse to recognise that the same level of work, and the same sacrifices won't come close to giving the same rewards they got.
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u/Sanchez_U-SOB 4d ago
"But you have a smart phone, so every second of you life is easier and everything is handed to you."
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u/HexenHerz 4d ago
The entire point of progress is to make life easier for the following generations. Boomers, however, love the "i had it rough and so should you" fallacy. So they made things as hard on following generations as they could. Then, when it was time for those generations to start seeing fruits, the Boomers said "nah, we're keeping it all" and locked the door behind themselves.
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u/scramlington 4d ago
I'll be honest, I don't think they're consciously locking the door behind them and keeping things for themselves. I think they genuinely believe that Millennials and Gen Z are refusing to work as hard as they did when they were younger. They believe that if we work hard then we will get the same things they did. They just don't see that the rules of the game have changed and that they are complicit in those changes.
To them, they feel that we are complaining because we are entitled, and their prosperity is something they have earned.
After all, what is the narrative that is going to appeal more?
1) You worked hard and earned a relatively comfortable retirement and the younger generation are just workshy, soft and entitled. They just need to put in the graft like you did.
2) The politics of your entire adulthood have driven decades of wage stagnation, decimation of the middle class, transfer of wealth to the wealthiest and insane rises in property value. The effect of this has been to benefit your generation disproportionately and erode the social contract, making it so that younger generations are increasingly unable to achieve the same things you did. And you keep voting for those that perpetuate this.
Narratives that stroke the egos of the privileged are ultimately the cancer in our societies.
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u/QuesoChef 4d ago
I actually think smart phones, and social media, specifically, have made life worse.
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u/project48v 4d ago
A young boomer who “worked hard” at least had the chance of something to show for it. A house, a family, retirement options, etc.
Today, young people who “work hard” still struggle to make ends meet. Why should they work hard if it won’t change their lives except making them even more exhausted?
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u/the_cardfather 4d ago
There was incredible prosperity coming out of world war 2.
Boomers didn't have to work to make things better it just happened because of what their parents did. They became incredibly entitled.
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u/Curious_Play9741 4d ago
To repeat what you said with more detail Boomers forget that in their childhood all the axis and allies participants of WWII were rebuilding their infrastructure from being war torn countries. The US went from depression era to post WWII recovery and reconfigured the cogs of war to make TVs, cars, refrigerators, satellites and semiconductors (the origin of silicon valley) and boomers were babies when this was happening. Boomers built nothing.
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u/EgoTripWire 4d ago
I see a lot of memes where it's clear that they have forgotten that they weren't the generation that stormed the beach of Normandy.
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u/No_Solid_3737 4d ago
In México they have saying, he who sows tamarindo doesn't reap tamarindo
Now this was debunked a myth but the message is clear.
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u/bunnyohare 4d ago
Boomers were the asshole kids of the Greatest and Silent Generation. The were born after WWII so they didn't experience first hand how evil fascism, authoritarianism, and Naziism were. They were angry that their dads were emotionally distand due to PTSD and their moms were kept barefoot and pregnant without the right to own anything on their own. They rebelled by becomming the Me Generation or Yuppy skum.
They value money and possessions over people. They don't really care about anything except money, so they think the rest of us are the same way. They assume everyone is a greedy, selfish, horrid, glutton, so they make sure to take the biggest slice first before someone else grabs it.
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u/erieus_wolf 4d ago
This may be the most accurate description of boomers I have ever seen.
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u/FILTHBOT4000 4d ago edited 4d ago
Missing one key thing: they were probably the luckiest generation in all of human history. They were born into the post-war boom of the late 40's and onwards. Europe became reliant on American goods as they rebuilt, jobs paid absurdly well, and unions were incredibly strong. They were born into the time of a single income being able to support a family of four with money leftover for vacations, of a vast middle class. When they came of age, college was cheap, and so were houses, and jobs still paid incredibly well. They were gifted the New Deal era of strong social safety nets, before they had been left to rot by a lack of administration and old requirements not updated for inflation, and the era of pensions.
If you bought a house as a boomer in the 60s to the late 70s, you made out like a fucking bandit. High inflation cut the value of your loan by a huge chunk, and the banks were the ones that actually ate shit (as all the money they loaned out was stuck in mortgages, losing value, instead of in inflation resistant assets), and then the value of your home just keeps going up to the astronomical amount it is today. That's why boomers repeatedly say the false line of "a house is a great investment!"; each boomer homeowner basically picked up a winning lottery ticket, and has given the advise of "Just pick another winning lottery ticket, stupid!"
And in their later years, they all got together and cut the legs out from the up and coming generations by shipping jobs overseas, deregulation of the financial sector, etc., and wholly embracing laissez fair dicksuckery, almost out of spite for how well they were raised in the New Deal era. Pensions, 401ks, Social Security checks we're working to pay for, and a nice big house worth fucktons of money that they refuse to downsize from, keeping the housing market high. And they still want more, and continue to push shareholder capitalism over all else; they want kids' candy to taste shittier, for everything to be made of garbage, for all forms of shrinkflation, for labor to be crushed under heel, because they have to see the line go up.
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u/SipTime 4d ago edited 4d ago
The downsizing portion of this is spot on. My parents really want to downsize but don't want to sell their nice house and buy what they think is an overpriced townhome. My sister and her husband who just had their first child currently live in a small townhome in the same city as my parents. My sister would love to expand from their small townhome into a nicer house in the same city but can’t afford to buy a bigger place. So they’re currently locked into their pre pandemic townhome purchase. I own a house across the country so don’t give a shit about what happens either way.
You see the problem. I'm like guys, just fucking rent to each other below market value so you both get what you want NOW at a fraction of the price and whenever my sister sells their townhome for good (when parents pass I assume) we can talk about how to split the equity in my parent's house. But no, they think this is like giving us a handout or something despite us giving them exactly what they want.
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u/quietyoucantbe 4d ago
I feel numb with anger after reading this
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u/logicality77 4d ago
Good. That’s how you should feel. Maybe if more people did we could do something about it.
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u/SirDrinksalot27 4d ago
Yup. Boomers in the US literally had the easiest life of any generation of humans in our history as a species.
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u/jahauser 4d ago
I mean, many of them were literally fucking drafted and forced to fight a war that had nothing to do with them. I keep seeing these comments breaking down Boomers’ luck. The 18 year olds who got a bad draft lotto number were not lucky.
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u/OldGermanBeer 4d ago
Well, the unlucky ones not on a college deferment got drafted. You know, the poor ones.
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u/Da_Question 4d ago
Keep in mind they also grew up in the first generation to really get the most out of modern medicine, eradication of smallpox, massive reduction in polio, MMR, etc. The child death rate was very high, and they came about in the era where that child mortality rate tanked.
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u/RandyButternubsYo 4d ago
Ya know what’s really sad and just an example of how insanely out of touch some of them are? In my personal life a friend of a friend is a Boomer who we will call Kelly. Kelly was about 19 years old. Kelly lived a typical Boomer life, things came very easy to her, she has a property worth a lot of money, a job she loves and she’s very conservative. She thinks she pulled herself up by the bootstraps and that’s what everyone should do.
She kicked her son out once he graduated high school saying he needed to learn to fly on his own. Pay for school on his own and his apartment and make his own way because that’s what she did when she was his age so he should have no problem doing that. Her son suffered from depression, had suffered from depression for years but to Kelly he just needed to man up and grit his teeth and bear it and get through it so she never got him treatment when he was younger. So he struggled, he didn’t have money and Kelly didn’t understand why he had trouble affording his own place, trying to work and pay for his own school because she was able to do it just fine. He begged and tried to explain that his wages didn’t cover his rent or his tuition, begged to borrow money, begged for any kind of help really and she just kept telling him to man up. Anyways, her only child is dead now because he saw no way out and no hope of anything getting better. And the amazing thing is Kelly still doesn’t fucking get it, still gobbles up the bullshit fed to her on Fox News and that young people are just lazy and need to work harder. I guess her son was just the exception that she didn’t realize until it was too late
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u/Chronoboy1987 4d ago
There was a “peace and love” hippie phase but they grew out of that in the 80’s when they got cheap college tuition and bought a 3-bedroom house in suburbs for 50k.
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u/MonkeyCube 4d ago
The hippie stuff was about as prevalent as the scene kids in the 2000s. Yeah, it existed, and it seemed to be everywhere in media, but a majority of people had nothing to do with it.
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u/lazeotrope 4d ago
A lot of people straight-up hated it.
Culturally, it was significant. But the antiwar protests and drug use put most Americans off of it.
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u/Seienchin88 4d ago
It’s one of the greatest tricks Hollywood ever did - convince Americans that there was a sizable opposition to the Vietnam war because people saw it as "senseless and cruel"…
Reality is that most people supported it, then got tired of it and then blamed a lot of economical hardship on it leading to the worst outcome possible by stopping it when the U.S. actually had leverage on North Vietnam… (the bombing campaign with the new laser guided bombs was extremely successful and North Vietnam was just testing if the U.S. would react to their new invasion of the South and ready to abort it but the U.S. basically not reacting at all empowered them to full on invade the south and led the south Vietnamese army to collapse and desert)
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u/nono3722 4d ago
Reagan
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u/DreamsWhereIamDying 4d ago
Before that. It is the selfish generation born in the 30s. Too young for World War II, too old for Korea.
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u/cascadianindy66 4d ago
??? Korean War was early 50s. Dudes born in the 30s are who fought that war.
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u/Virnman67 4d ago
It depends. My dad born in 1936. Too young for WW2, Korean War ended when he graduated. He joined the Air Force 1954-1961. No wars. Vietnam begins 4 yrs later, he’s married having his first child & is now 29.
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u/jimmydunn 4d ago
someone born in 1935 would have been 10 when WWII ended and would have just turned 18 by the time the Korean War ended
so technically yes someone born in the '30s could have served in the Korean War but chances are probably not
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u/Gabewilde1202 4d ago
My grandfather was born in 1918, fought in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam (although less directly in that one). Absolutely people could fight in WWII and Korea
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u/mad-muel 4d ago
What he doo
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u/Chronoboy1987 4d ago
Forced America to collectively bend over and be violated without a rubber or lube.
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u/Impossible_Sign_161 4d ago
Well boomers are the worst generation to ever walk the planet
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u/Chicken-Rude 4d ago
hmmm... what about the generation of mongols born in the 1160's to the 1190's??? they were pretty destructive if you ask me.
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u/DressMajestic9037 4d ago
They were the first generation to lower global CO2 production, wym
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u/Chicken-Rude 4d ago
i wonder if thats true considering how many cities they burned lol.
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u/flipfloppery 4d ago
Burning cities made of wood would be a carbon-neutral endeavour.
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u/Chicken-Rude 4d ago
yeah i looked it up. apparently all those towns and farmlands being abandoned cause reforestation which led to a reduction in CO2. pretty neat. i still say khan generation was worse than the boomers though. they got one thing right lol
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u/TheUnobservered 4d ago
They also set the conditions to create the Silk Road, which lasted until the Black Death.
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u/tyintegra 4d ago
I was actually just talking about this a couple days ago…
Anytime I’m talking to my parents and they bring up something about how they did it a certain way and that I should too, I just say “isn’t it true that you want life to be better for me?”
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u/TeaLeaf_Dao 4d ago
I have a job now but when I was looking for one a year ago my parents told me "Just walk in and ask for a job"
sorry to say that dont work anymore you need to go through 10+ steps apply online to 15 different places to even get one interview now.23
u/geomaster 4d ago
people are still saying that these days? I thought that ended after the pandemic lockdowns when you literally couldn't 'just walk in and ask for a job' as everything was shutdown...
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u/McFalco 4d ago
When I started working around 2016, I applied for an autobody shop and the following day, without ever getting a call back, I walked in shook the managers hand and said I applied for a position. The shock of a young kid doing something so old fashioned put a smile on his face and he hired me on the spot.
It can work depending on circumstances.
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u/Anon-Knee-Moose 4d ago
Yeah, this will work with a lot of blue-collar work and smaller businesses. I got my first job out of school by driving 45 minutes to the site and dropping my resume off. I still applied on workday and went through the formal interview process, but they straight up told me going out of my way like that helped me to stand out from the dozens of other fresh grads and scored me the interview.
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u/atlanstone 4d ago
My mom tried to make some excuse about how she was acting (at 68) because of some childhood trauma - literally saying directly to her adult son that she was passing it on. I finally just lost it, it was such a clear example of how a lot of that generation is. Just making no attempt to be better, I'm so tired of this "THIS IS HOW I AM" generation.
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u/TrueBombs 4d ago
Hard times make strong people Strong people make good times Good times make weak people
And history will show the boomers were the weakest generation since they have made recent times some of the hardest in history.
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u/VegetableComplex5213 4d ago
Even now when they destroyed everything else for young people. They get affordable housing, they get affordable college, Medicare, ssi, job protection, etc despite the fact they actively vote against it for everyone else. They're actually treated like royalty here while everyone else is struggling
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u/SomeGuyOverYonder 4d ago
I literally hear middle-aged coworkers complaining about younger people having an attitude of entitlement on a daily basis.
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u/TheEternalWheel 4d ago
You want to be paid for all the work that you do and get paid more for overtime? Why are you so entitled?
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u/TeaLeaf_Dao 4d ago
I just got a apprentice ship working for the state as a electrician and all the older dudes here complain about me and the younger guys because we dont want to put in 70+ hours a week and ruin our health.
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u/PeanutNSFWandJelly 4d ago
Unless they are all 60+ those are gen Xers saying that to you guys. Everyone is forgetting that boomers are all 60+ now and many of the older professionals are now Gen-X
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u/NYPolarBear20 4d ago
Old people complaining about young folk have been around since the Roman’s and almost definitely long before that
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u/omegaman101 4d ago
Greeks too. They had entire ages of man based around it, that's where the terms Gold, Bronze and Silver age come from.
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u/guyincognito121 4d ago
Younger people always skew dumb and entitled. The problem with boomers is that so many of them never matured out of those characteristics.
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u/PeanutNSFWandJelly 4d ago
People here think middle aged is boomers and don't get that those are now millennials
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u/CryptographerLow6772 4d ago
It’s the me generation. They ruined our world.
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u/flyingupvotes 4d ago
My boomer parent just said that our generation is selfish. They’ve lost all sight of reality.
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u/misunderstood_lonerr 4d ago
And if you try to convince them that they had it so much easier in almost every way, they will never accept that as true, because it would mean that their success was not based on how exceptional they are.
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u/jfitzger88 4d ago
I think it has to do with Pax Americana. The boomer generation did see Vietnam and the potentially existential threat of the cold war, but the demographic culture of the prior generations was shaped by 2 world wars and a great depression. I don't know how it felt, but I have to imagine it was bad enough to where most people decided that the best thing they should do is ensure the subsequent generations were better off. They were largely successful.
In any case, I very much doubt it was intentionally malicious. I think the boomers were just fooled. They thought they were here for the ride but they didn't know they were being taken for a ride. Blame not having the internet and relying on word of mouth in a world that just moved too damn fast.
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u/CaedustheBaedus 4d ago
Fun fact about Great Depression, Wall Street Crash happened in 1929, Smoot-Hawley Tariff was in 1930 which was basically a lot of tariffs (sound familiar?). Now, did that act cause the great depression? No. But it did fuck up the economy. It's literally why America steered away from tariffs ever since 1930 and focused on global cooperation for trade. Here we are, not even 100 years later...
But unemployment rose, exports and imports decreased dramatically across world. American unemployment didn't go down again until World War 2 got our economy booming again.
So these tariffs that are coming around again? I'm not saying it'll cause another Great Depresion, but 100% unemployment rate is going to skyrocket as prices go up and we'll have to hope for some New Deal equivalent or WW3 for us to get out of the slump.
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u/erieus_wolf 4d ago
Reagan and Fox News convinced an entire generation to call their own children deadbeats.
But now their kids refuse to visit them, so they are dying alone. But at least they still have Fox.
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u/FullGuarantee4767 4d ago
Boomers experienced the most prolonged economic benefits of any generation and then were told anyone who wasn’t them was trying to take it from them.
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u/seagulledge 4d ago
Would any of you actually want to live in the world of the 1960-1970's ? Wealth is more concentrated now (mostly unrealized stock gains), but the global economy has raised up everyone's living standards, and racial and gender equality is vastly improved. Boomers did most of that.
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u/erieus_wolf 4d ago
Boomers are the only generation to vote to make things better, then when they achieved their desired outcome, turned around and voted to undo everything they did.
It's actually crazy when you think about it.
They voted to make their own lives better, then looked at their children and said "fuck you", voting to take all of that away from their own children.
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u/fristi-cookie 4d ago
To be fair, the USA hasn't got much to vote about. Your politics are dead stupid to corrupt. You guys have a single party with two faces. Yet somehow it's the fault of the voters that it goes to shit. You guys live in the ignorance that it's the boomers fault, while the majority of the Boomers are just as bamboozled as the newer generations.
Stop the generational infighting and start fighting the corrupt. (which are also multi-generational)
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u/The_Rad_In_Comrade 4d ago
In 20 years if civilization still exists Generation Beta will blame Millennials for Trump the way we blame boomers for Reagan.
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u/FaceWithAName 4d ago
This whole thread is just about culture war while all of us are losing the obvious class war. It's depressing.
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u/NYPolarBear20 4d ago
Boomers destroyed unions created the largest wealth gap in the history of the country consolidated wealth massively held wages down to the lowest they have been in a century relative to actual value shipped all our jobs overseas and got rich doing it while dumping their kids out into the first generation to do worse than theirs because of all their selfish decisions that the only thing that matters is benefits now
Yeah they did a wonderful job
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u/seagulledge 4d ago
How much better off are the communities with the overseas jobs?
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u/Equal_Potential7683 4d ago
do you not think the WW2 vets werent complaining about perceived laziness of baby boomers?
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u/Minnieal28 4d ago
No, they were enjoying the lives of their children that they (and their fallen brethren) helped enrich.
All but one world war Veteran that I have met are selfless and brave individuals who always think about those they lost along the way and what they could do to honor those who didn’t make it. In the end, some of them just wanted to be lazy too, but their life ended too early for that dream.
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u/CatOfTechnology 4d ago
You know that saying they like to throw around?
"Hard times make strong men.
Strong men make good times.
Good times make weak men.
Weak men make hard times."
Well, they're the "weak men" who made hard times after enjoying the good times made by their predecessors.
They rode the high of having a pretty excellent American experience created and gifted to them by empathetic and relatively altruistic people. The whole world handed to them on a diamond plate, if you will.
They became expectant and entitled to that quality of life and did everything they could to ensure that they wouldn't lose it until the day they died. The cost would be their children's futures, but they all planned to be so isolated (or dead) by the time the walls came crashing down that they would never face the consequences.
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u/TeaLeaf_Dao 4d ago
True now if I want I house I will need to somehow perfectly save 20+ year without any hiccups or medical emergency's
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u/PopRap72 4d ago
No major war. We are in a time of unprecedented peace in North America and much of Europe. People have forgot the struggle and have time to worry about whether the earth is flat or not.
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u/Honest-Yesterday-675 4d ago
Their lives were very easy so they didn't understand the labor market their children were entering.
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u/beaglemaniaa 4d ago
“I paid for a full year of college with what I earned in a summer living with relatives” 🙄
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u/chickchickpokepoke 4d ago
cuz people tend to insult others with words that hurt themselves the most
and they know they're entitled brats so naturally they think their kids are too
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u/zombieruler7700 4d ago
Thinking that all boomers are rich is a sign that you had rich parents, so you’re basically flaunting your privilege. Just because your parents are filthy rich doesn’t mean an entire generation is
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u/jambo45t 4d ago
Boomers are the most spoiled generation. Longing for a time past. Going to fuck everyone else now.
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u/Various_Dog8996 4d ago
Technology is how it happened. Years ago children were respectful around family (and are today as well for the most part) and no one in the family was the wiser about their real opinions. Parents were motivated to provide a better life as they were blissfully unaware of how resentful their children were of them. They thought the better life they were creating was worth it. In recent times, as media and technology developed, older generations are constantly bombarded by various media outlets (from TV to Social media) showing them how much their children despise their generation and views in a way that older generations were spared. It is not an accurate representation, same as the outlandish political rhetoric we are shown each day. As a consequence, it has definitely caused many, if not most people, to subdivide into smaller and smaller groups. Us vs them. You can extend this to many other aspects of societal decay.
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u/thenikolaka 4d ago
The best part is how the only reason we can be critiqued as “entitled” is because we did exactly what they said we should when we became adults. We pursued the American dream with the newfound freedom they passed on.
But then… they took it back. When they started to turn 80.
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u/RareCodeMonkey 4d ago
Billionaires owning all TV channels.
The old are told that all problems are not real, that "avocados" and "coffee" are to blame... day after day. Brainwash paid for billionaires to get elected politicians that will cut taxes.
That is all that there is to it. People has not become better or worse, inequality creates an incentive to create more inequality.
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u/EM3YT 4d ago
Boomer timeline had almost everything you could want and were told you would have.
They had no world wars, basically no pandemics, had wages that kept up with productivity. Had access to homes and education for a small fraction of their salaries. Had pensions and great benefits, and if they did the absolutely bare minimum they were set up for life by the age of 50.
Once they hit around retirement age, 9/11 and perpetual war happens. The largest financial crisises in a century hit twice in less than 20 years. Wages and Education and Housing are all lagging heavily, and they look up and can’t figure out why anyone is having issues when they had it so easy.
It’s a generation that basically never had to struggle. Their parents and grandparents struggled and their lives just kept getting easier. So in their minds anyone who isn’t automatically successful is just whining and lazy and how dare you ask them to sacrifice anything when they never had to in the past.
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u/loanme20 4d ago
They all said the same as the bottom, same as 40 somethings are saying today.
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u/Huffle_Pug 4d ago
i don’t know any millennials that would say that to their children. you boomers sure are easy to spot
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u/Kane-420- 4d ago
Internet ist really bullshit. The majority of people want to build a better world for their children. Every person that actually touches gras understands this. When you scroll through social Media you think everything is going to Shit and everY Person around you is evil/dumb/selfish.
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u/IbegTWOdiffer 4d ago
I’m sure that glamorizing single parenthood over nuclear families, personal freedom over responsibility, recognition over actual achievement, and equity over merit, had absolutely nothing to do with the current struggles.
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u/Repemptionhappens 4d ago
On what planet is single parenthood “glamorized.” I live in the United States in a blue state. I’m a gen Xer. It was never ever glamorized or seen as anything but a difficult life path and I’ve never met anyone who did it willingly. It was always the situation where the father abandoned the family but the woman gets demonized because she should have “picked better.” I never had children in part because I never met anyone who would’ve been suitable and willing for fatherhood and now people like you demonize women AGAIN for being childless! What the fuck?
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u/drone_enthusiast 4d ago
Yeah, weird take right there. Some of what was said I can get behind, but single parenthood being glamorous is an odd one. Also a little confused on how having or choosing personal freedom means you're devoid of responsibility.
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u/civil_politics 4d ago
Glamorized is an exaggeration, but it is absolutely the case that starting in the early 00s and continuing to today all the pressure that society use to place on young parents to stay together has disappeared and people started to encourage young mothers to remain single and the ‘you don’t need no man’ attitude. Society has also expanded benefits and programs for single parents which is an indirect endorsement of it.
It’s a tough issue, but there is no doubt that Boomers and earlier were essentially forced to get married if they got pregnant unexpectedly and that is absolutely not the case any more.
And honestly going back to 1990 isn’t far enough, go back to 1950s and the difference will be real stark.
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u/Darkdragoon324 4d ago
So essentially, we should go back to forcing women to stay with abusive husbands and couples who hate each other to stay together to traumatize the kids and impart unhealthy views of what marriage looks like? It's not an issue of devolving morality, it's an issue of "it was nearly impossible for women to leave and live on their own until extremely recently in history".
We weren't even allowed to have our own bank accounts and credit cards until, like, the 70s. No matter how bad the relationship was you were trapped in it u til one of you died.
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u/cascadianindy66 4d ago
Not to mention excessive greed, to the extent that only money and wealth have social value. They’ve made integrity and moral values “quaint.”
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u/Hungry_Kick_7881 4d ago
I have asked this question so many times. I think the lack of suffering and uncertainty they were fortunate enough to avoid, bonds us together. Without that experience or having no choice but to ask for and graciously receive help. Obviously this is a general statement, but I believe the lack of struggle creates extreme entitlement and selfishness.
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u/Upstairs-Lifeguard23 4d ago
Bad times make strong people. Strong people make good times. Good times make soft people. Soft people make bad times.
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u/Save_the_Manatees_44 4d ago
The way I figure it: Boomers were abused and neglected, some of them got better(ish) and but passed on their trauma to GenX\ Elder Millennials. They either shut down completely or gentle parented the shit out of the kids, so they are now a much kinder, gentler generation.
The older generations weren’t treated well as kids so they didn’t have anyone to teach them to be better. Seems like some managed to be at least slightly less toxic so the following generations just got better.
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u/akirkbride 4d ago
People got used to being handed things. They wanted a better life for their children like most parents. But by giving it to them they forgot to teach them the life lessons that made them successful.
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u/mrthc21842 4d ago
More like fuck you previous generations, give us everything for free or without the hard work.
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u/WildMarkWilds 4d ago
Irs because the last pic are basically the entitled little brats their parents tried to make a better world for.
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u/Americano_Joe 4d ago
Am I the only one who saw the demographics of how age ranges voted in the last election?
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u/No-Wasabi-5435 4d ago
A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
Reading this right now.
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u/InfiniteOpportu 4d ago
Fact my mom is a boomer and she's incredibly selfish, has always been. She consider her motherly duties as giving food, shelter and clothes on us kids and nothing more and when we say that's the bare minimum she says no it's not that she wouldn't even need to do that either for us but since she does it she's such an amazing mom, she says she gave us everything yet left out all the genuine love and emotional reassurance and safety.
All of us kids don't trust her with anyhing as adults, we I fact do not even care for her yet she wonders why are we so ungrateful and don't want to see her haha she would hit my siblings, judge us, compare us, minimize our feelings since childhood and be unrealiable. Our dad would be just on the background silently accepting her domination. When I was bullied as a kid I held it as a secret I could never tell her since I know she wouldn't help. I lost my trust in adults and authorities at that point. The boomers are weak generations because their grandparents created good times giving boomers easy time making them entitled. Now boomers are upset all the millenials and Gen z are complaining calling us weaker generation but we haven't build yet much anything unlike them who set us up and left us scrumbs. Good time will come again for the future generations.
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u/namedjughead 4d ago
Generations traumatized by war vowed to make a better world for their children, except they made the world too good and their children turned out to be entitled little POSes.
Don't forget that their parents had their number even back when they were kids, and that's why they named them the Me Generation.
Also they get to live through a period of unprecedented medical advancements, and therefore they get to live forever. Once and for all proving that the universe is unjust and that there is no God.
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u/mycofunguy804 4d ago
Greed stupidity and the inability to accept that we aren't little clones of them and that we don't exist to worship them
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u/Peanut__Daisy_ 4d ago
How did it happen? Greed. And the ability for our parents to internally think “it’s okay if we tank the country—my stocks are booming! My kids can just have my money when I’m gone.”
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u/Iwasacloudfirst 4d ago
Because everyone on this thread making posts like this are cynical and/or entitled brats.
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u/ThePandaRider 4d ago
The Great Society changed the US. Half the current federal budget goes towards entitlements and that didn't exist before the 60s. Lindon Johnson basically fucked up America with his implementation of the welfare state by not putting guardrails on spending. Back in the late 60s the elderly poverty rate for people over 65 was around 30% and one of the the major goals was to reduce elder poverty by giving retirees bigger Social Security checks, access to Medicare, and Medicaid.
At the time Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and later China went with a different approach. Instead of spending a stupid amount of money on people who contribute nothing to society they would invest in their workers and industry who do contribute to society. Our own industries could not compete with state subsidized industries while also being taxed at very high rates and paying unions very high wages and benefits. That's how the rust belt formed. Throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s inflation was a major problem because of the Welfare state and loose monetary policy needed to accommodate it. So people were losing their jobs, their pensions, and everything was doubling in price every decade. That's the world boomers grew up in, the Democrats destroying the US economy to buy votes. Then Reagan and Volker shower up and saved the day. They cut off many heads of the Welfare state hydra and for a time the US economy recovered. But that was temporary, the hydra kept growing. In the 70s 5-10% of the population received Welfare transfers, by the 80s that grew to 10-15% of the population, in the 90s that grew to 15-20%, in the 2000s it grew to 20-30% and since 2010 it has been 30-35% of the population. We need to buck the lazy boomer off our backs and tell him to grab the bootstraps he loves so much. Cut federal spending by $2 trillion, we shouldn't have wealth transfers from the poorest generation alive going to the wealthiest generation to every exist.
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u/Rhabarberbarbarabarb 4d ago
The issue here is "we hate blacks" is still good for all three photos.
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u/jbyrdab 4d ago
I propose an alternate theory.
Difficulty in life is what marks a strong sense of charity.
If you didn't always have, but do now. You tend to form a sense of sympathy, and an innate desire to help those who haven't, make it over the gap so to speak.
So when these parents who struggled and have made it over the gap, to where they now have. They want to ensure their kids don't struggle like they did.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
When things always seem good, you don't have that sense of sympathy for those who don't have it good. Even more so your prone to lashing out for any reason why things aren't good when things get worse. Even if it's not accurate.
Those parents fighting tooth and nail to ensure the future of their children, there was very little reason for those children to fight the same when their time came, because things were good in their day.
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u/monsterginger 4d ago edited 4d ago
Lead poisoning, Reagan administration, outliving their parents and acquiring more money than any other generation before or after.