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Dear Boomers: Here's Why Millennials Hate You


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2016 Sep 9, 9:48pm   4,941 views  14 comments

by Indiana Jones   ➕follow (0)   💰tip   ignore  

Time for another Boomer-Diatribe. Why not? The most narcissistic generation in history certainly deserves it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/3/1533912/-Dear-Boomers-Here-s-Why-Millennials-Hate-You

Dear Baby Boomers,

I’d love to tell you I’m writing this in a storm of angry passion, hellbent on changing the world. But the truth is, I’m 27 years old. I’m a Millennial, one of those folks your media loves to hate so much, and I am tired. I’m less than 30 years old and the thought of another 50 years living the way I live is enough to make me hope I die young. And so very often, I hear “Not all Baby Boomers!” And here’s the harsh truth: we don’t care. We don’t care about “not all Baby Boomers” in the same way we don’t care about “not all cops” or “not all men.” I am writing this in a moment of “not that anybody will listen.” In a moment of “maybe, if I write it out, I’ll stop suffocating.” There’s no passion here. After less than three decades, there is only defeat.

So let me explain why, yes, it is all Baby Boomers, and why Millennials hate you.

We hate you because of our wages. I’m in a training-management position, in management, and making $8.20 an hour. When I get my fancy new shirt, it’ll go up to $8.70. That’s $18,096 a year. Except that’s not really what I make, because I work up to 50 hours a week, so it’s more like $19000 when all is said and done—if I get paid. My employer is a fast food chain that routinely engages in wage theft and requires a forced-arbitration agreement, something your generation came up with.

Your generation tells me to “get a better job,” when there are no “better jobs” hiring within walking distance and I can’t afford a car. Your generation tells me to “get a second job,” when I am exhausted working six days a week, while walking to work in 110-degree weather, ten to twelve hours every day. And while I’m there, it’s predominantly your generation that gets rude and entitled and up in my face and calls me names and tells me my generation has no manners and tries to flirt with my 16-year-old trainee. It’s mostly your generation that demands a manager when I say I can’t take a coupon that expired six months ago and drives my teenage coworkers to tears, because bullying a powerless child is fun or something.

We hate you because of our college debt. Every single person in my family over the age of 45 who’s gone to college (except my mom, who went in the 1990s and feels my same pain) has told me if I wasn’t so lazy in college I could have paid off my education with a summer job. Well gosh golly gee, I’m earning a buck more now per hour than I did at my college summer job, and still only making $19k per year, so yeah, explain how three months in the summer would pay off my $30k in debt! And Baby Boomers who claim they hate the debt inequality of colleges very often conveniently ignore that they prop it up themselves—by running free “internships” and supporting college sports. Many college football coaches make upward of 16x the money earned by the college president. Know where that money comes from? Yeah, it’s not from rich alumni.

Your generation tells us “gosh, we’re sorry” and does nothing. Your generation, in fact, remains complicit.

We hate you because we can’t afford kids, and you berate us for it.

We hate you because you say we are destroying the economy with our refusal to buy cars and houses, when if you talk to any one of us we’ll say “god, a car and an apartment . . . that’s the dream. If only. If only.” It’s not refusal, it’s inability.

We hate you because you yell at us to get better jobs, but won’t fucking retire so we can have better jobs . . . assuming we can get them without a college degree, internship, and forty years’ experience.

We hate you because when we say we have no money, you tell us to stop drinking and doing drugs. We look at you with your “wine moms” and your cigarette habits, and we think about all the nights we’ve sat and watched Netflix because it was the only thing we could afford to do, and we hate you a little more for your hypocrisy and your assumption that “no money” = “blowing everything on poor life decisions.” Choosing to eat real food twice a week instead of ramen is not a poor life decision.

We hate you because far too many of us know how to stitch our own wounds, splint our own broken fingers, and treat our own yeast infections, because insurance doesn’t equal affordable and in spite of Obamacare doctors and medical treatment are still primarily for rich people. Meanwhile, you trumpet about what awesome progress has been made.

We hate you because you invented the anti-vax movement, and really? What the fuck? Do I even have to explain how I don’t want my nieces to die of measles because of you assholes?

We hate you because we are tired. We commit suicide in record numbers and the Boomers go “golly, why?” Nobody asks about the trauma impact of the 24-hour news cycle or the devastating after-effects of being the participation-medal generation. It’s easier to blame video games and cell phones than stagnant wages and abusive parents. Nobody asks what it’s like to be part of a generation that went to school taking it for granted every single day that we might come home in a pine box, riddled with bullet holes. Boomers are all too eager to talk patriotism and tragedy over 9/11, but they’re all mysteriously silent about the impact of being twelve years old and watching the world you knew end on network TV; of hearing your DC-dwelling sister screaming into the phone that she’d just witnessed a terrorist attack.

We hate you because you treat us as though we’re somehow reprehensible because most of us suffer low-grade PTSD after decades of school shootings (and Boomer inaction) and fiscal depression (and Boomer inaction) and police brutality (and Boomer inaction) and war (and Boomer escalation). Gen Z has it even worse, having grown up never knowing a world even remotely at peace, and yet thousands of suicides per year are treated as a “mysterious epidemic” instead of “maybe we should stop treating our children like shit.”

We hate you because you call us lazy, entitled, spoiled, childish, and never realize you’re looking in a mirror.

We hate you because you offer no solutions, only pity, and when we bring our solutions to the table you shoot them down faster than a cop chasing an innocent black kid.

We hate you because you were the “me” generation, and you still are the “me” generation, and you’ll probably die being the “me” generation. But the truth is, it’s no longer about you. It’s about us, and the world we live in, and the wasteland you want us to bring children into. We hate you because we are terrified, and because you have left us no choice.

So save your cries of “not all Baby Boomers!” because yes . . . yes, it is.

#babyboomer

Comments 1 - 14 of 14        Search these comments

1   turtledove   2016 Sep 9, 10:26pm  

Well, I'm not a boomer. But this is a serious whiner. Give me a break. Shootings? A terrorist attack? I'm sure that's almost as bad as being forced to participate in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam. Does this man-child realize that those draftees actually had to see people blown to bits right next to them and find ways to reconcile the killing of other human beings by their own hands? No PTSD there. I'm sure that's almost the same as seeing the aftermath of a shooting on TV. I could barely stand to watch the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, and as bad as that was, I'm fairly certain it was worse for those getting off those actual boats on Omaha Beach in 1944.

As for jobs, I also know plenty of young people who do have good jobs. Food and shelter have definitely gone up faster than wages, but that hasn't been easy on anyone who isn't wealthy. I don't think the rise in those costs pick and choose which generations to affect. There are plenty of boomers who live check to check, too. Just like there are millennials who've made the big time.

We live in a time that favors the rich and is trying to drive everyone else, including those professions long thought to be to be immune, toward the poverty line. The rich just don't care whether you are a millennial or a boomer, or anything in between. A millennial's money is just as green as a boomer's, and their pockets are just as easily picked.

2   Ceffer   2016 Sep 9, 11:10pm  

KILL THE BOOMFUCKS! KILL THEM ALL!

Hey, MillXYs, learn to suck bankster cock. If your President can do it, you can too!

3   Shaman   2016 Sep 10, 5:13am  

I just sent my boomer parents $800 because their furnace went out and they neglected to plan for retirement.
But they did give me lots of crap about needing to buy property and get rich (round about 2006).

4   Y   2016 Sep 10, 7:04am  

Iwop's eating at McDonalds?
Proof he doesn't own shit...

Indiana Jones says

And while I’m there, it’s predominantly your generation that gets rude and entitled and up in my face and calls me names and tells me my generation has no manners and tries to flirt with my 16-year-old trainee.

Indiana Jones says

My employer is a fast food chain that routinely engages in wage theft and requires a forced-arbitration agreement, something your generation came up with.

5   Blurtman   2016 Sep 10, 7:54am  

I Dunno. I graduated from college with student loan debt. No job. In fact employers looked at my grades and did not believe I was not going to grad school, go figure. I moved across country with no job offer, no car, no plans. Didn't know anybody. Finally got a job. Worked for seven plus years, saved, returned to school to get an MBA. Took on more debt. Ultimately paid it off. Figured out how to make more money. Own a nice home. Live in a nice area. Realize your health is the most important asset.

Life isn't fair, but it beats the alternative. You can whine and complain, or you can realize how things are and work with it.

6   Ceffer   2016 Sep 10, 9:08am  

Why would you want to ruin a perfectly good, spoiled brat rant with facts.

7   Strategist   2016 Sep 10, 9:28am  

Indiana Jones says

We hate you because of our wages. I’m in a training-management position, in management, and making $8.20 an hour.

A 27 year old still making minimum wages. What a loser.
Dear loser,
I could give a rat's ass for your predicament. If others can make it, why can't you? Stop blaming boomers for your situation. Only you can change your situation.
By the way, I want my burger well done, and hurry up.

8   marcus   2016 Sep 10, 10:54am  

Indiana Jones says

We don’t care about “not all Baby Boomers” in the same way we don’t care about “not all cops” or “not all men.”

In the same way you apparently want me to not care about whether all millennials are "all" stupid asshole crybabies ?

I know what let's do. LEt's all be divided and hating on each other. Just as our rich slave holding asshole founding fathers intended. (am I doing it right ?)

marcus says

Indiana Jones says

We don’t care about “not all Baby Boomers” in the same way we don’t care about “not all cops” or “not all men.”

In the same way you apparently want me to not care about whether all millennials are stupid assholes ?

I know what let's do. LEt's all be divided and hating on each other. Just as our rich slave holding asshole founding fathers intended. (am I doing it right ?)

Guess what. Most that's right MOST boomers had dues paying jobs, and rough dues paying times. Most felt exactly as you do in their late twenties, not being able to imagine the working life ahead of them. I won't even include driving a cab painting houses and other work I did (which still can be done for way better than $9/hr), because that was in my early twenties. I was in my 30s getting paid about the same as your story (adjusted down for inflation) for being a clerk on an exchange, and waiting table several nights a week at the same time. That was in the gloriously easy 80s.

Fuck you, do you have any idea how clueless you are ?

9   marcus   2016 Sep 10, 10:59am  

Indiana Jones says

We hate you because you say we are destroying the economy with our refusal to buy cars and houses, when if you talk to any one of us we’ll say “god, a car and an apartment . . . that’s the dream. If only. If only.” It’s not refusal, it’s inability.

Nobody says that.

Indiana Jones says

We hate you because we are tired. We commit suicide in record numbers and the Boomers go “golly, why?”

You are so far beyond stupid with this boomer blame.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/620136/suicides-have-reached-30year-high-led-by-baby-boomers

Indiana Jones says

So save your cries of “not all Baby Boomers!” because yes . . . yes, it is.

That's my favorite part, the implication that boomers are babies. Hahahaha. Not compared to you

10   neplusultra57   2016 Sep 10, 11:16am  

Indiana Jones says

Your generation tells me to “get a better job,” when there are no “better jobs” hiring within walking distance and I can’t afford a car. Your generation tells me to “get a second job,” when I am exhausted working six days a week, while walking to work in 110-degree weather, ten to twelve hours every day.

Kitten, you deserve so much better, but at 27 you're just too young to realize you're supposed to blame Mexicans.

11   marcus   2016 Sep 10, 11:20am  

Indiana Jones says

We hate you because you invented the anti-vax movement, and really? What the fuck? Do I even have to explain how I don’t want my nieces to die of measles because of you assholes?

Indiana Jones says

most of us suffer low-grade PTSD after decades of school shootings (and Boomer inaction) and fiscal depression (and Boomer inaction) and police brutality (and Boomer inaction) and war (and Boomer escalation).

LEt's see if I can put this together. say one boomer (maybe not even true) supposedly was the first to blame autism on vacines, and gen X and millenials ran with this, and it's the boomers fault (the whole generation) ? Maybe you could have added boomer public school teachers and administrators to your list, since you guys are all apparently so stupid (again, am I doing it right ??). (PS: expect an answer to this from CIC).

But then at the same time you blame boomers for all the worlds troubles, it's also their fault for not fixing things that went wron at any time in the last 40 years.

I don't know how to break this to you, but we are all in this together. SOmetimes a 30 year old does something more world changing in a positive or negative way than any 55 year old, and vica versa. SO how can one generation be so credited or blamed for the state of your life and your feel feels about it ?

Also, if you are going to blame boomers for everything negative in American life ? Where's the equally long list crediting them for all of our technology and positives in our world ?

I'm guessing that it's partly because when it comes to positives, you're somehow more able to notice the younger folks that have contributed bringing us those.

12   Strategist   2016 Sep 10, 11:31am  

neplusultra57 says

Kitten, you deserve so much better, but at 27 you're just too young to realize you're supposed to blame Mexicans.

marcus says

But then at the same time you blame boomers for all the worlds troubles, it's also their fault for not fixing things that went wron at any time in the last 40 years.

Spoilt rotten millennials want everything handed to them in a silver platter.

13   marcus   2016 Sep 10, 11:48am  

You should realize, that there have been ups and downs going way back. For example, it was way better to be graduating college in the late 80s, than in say, 1980. Because the economy was way better, and because a lot of talented boomers had been absorbed high enough up in to the ranks of the working world that there were much better opportunities by then. Who knows ? Maybe as the big wave of retirements of boomers are occurring, that will be a benefit to the job market ?

Maybe it is just harder now. Certainly the next couple decades are going to bring interesting changes. I personally envy being young and facing the challenges, even if it isn't easy.

Can you imagine working hard and being somewhat successful ? Maybe working your way up to having a pretty decent income (above average - but not nearly wealthy) by the time you're middle aged, and building at leas t a small amount of financial security (which a substantial % of boomers don't today have) by the time you are in your late 50s, and then having some struggling twenty something kid blame you for the struggle that they feel in their life ?

I'm pretty sure your reaction would be like mine, except not nearly as kind.

14   neplusultra57   2016 Sep 10, 3:12pm  

So many millennials could have gone to the booming Dakota oil fields and slain their college debt. So many could do what Mexican immigrants are doing right now and go to Dallas and throw in with the construction boom. Instead many will just find a safe place with Trump supporters and blame someone else. You get what you give, most of the time.

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