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How the baby boomers destroyed everything


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2017 Mar 3, 5:04pm   3,696 views  19 comments

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https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/02/26/how-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/lVB9eG5mATw3wxo6XmDZFL/story.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170303&utm_campaign=ritholtz#comments

"Even before the election, Americans were asking just how we got here — to this sullen moment of national reckoning....

...Surely, by 2016, it was time for a thorough reconsideration of the dogmas that caused so much harm, but the last election hardly featured real policy discussion. So what if Social Security faces partial insolvency after 2034, or that climate change has scientists and generals fretting for the world circa 2040? By then, the median boomer will be dead. The only germane issue for the aging, unempathetic sociopath was blocking reform of senior entitlements. Youths like Paul Ryan, with his irksome calculations and future focus, couldn’t be trusted on this issue. But boomers Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, whatever their other infirmities, pledged loyalty on this crucial item.

I don’t imply that Clinton and Trump were otherwise equivalent. They weren’t. Nor do I assert that all of their co-generationalists are sociopaths. They aren’t. But I don’t shrink from arguing that an unusually large fraction of boomers behaves sociopathically, with the power to realize their agenda. The Koch brothers can’t carry all the blame: The 1 percent is, by definition, just 1 percent, unable to dictate national policy on its own. A giant generation of boomers can and does, and their overriding imperative is to consume at someone else’s expense. To say they succeeded is to understate.

The simplicity of the boomer agenda amplified the considerable power of boomer votes, while clarifying otherwise complex issues, especially of benefits and taxes. Benefits, at least for the boomer middle class, were to be expanded — period. Taxes, for the same group, would be cut or reallocated. This dynamic illuminates otherwise inexplicable deviations from orthodoxy practiced by a machine supposedly seized by ideological gridlock. It explains why Reagan lowered taxes on income while raising them on capital gains (when boomers had salaries but not portfolios), why Bill Clinton lowered taxes on houses and stocks (when boomers owned those in quantity), and why Bush II cut taxes with unseemly attention lavished on the “death tax” (just as the boomers’ parents neared expiration) while embracing the largest expansion in welfare since the 1960s (Medicare Part D, in time to benefit aging boomers). The machine works, at least from the boomer perspective.

All these giveaways had consequences. The rich got richer, as we know, but the rich are old. That is, they’re boomers. The patterns of general boomer gains mirrored those of the very wealthy. From 1989 to 2013, wealth gaps between older and younger households grew in the same way as those between the top 5 percent and the bottom 95 percent. Today’s seniors (boomers) are much wealthier relative to the present young than the seniors of the 1980s were to then-young boomers. All those tax breaks, bailouts, easy money, deregulation, and the bubbles they spawned supported that boomer wealth accumulation while shifting the true costs to the future, to the young..."

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2   Ceffer   2017 Mar 3, 7:30pm  

KILL THE BOOMFUCKS! KILL THEM ALL!

PLUNDER THEM, PILLAGE THEM, STEAL THEIR ASSETS!

GUILT WHAMMY THEM UNTIL THEY CRAWL IN A HOLE AND DIE!

DIE, BOOMFUCKS, FUCKING DIE!

3   Shaman   2017 Mar 3, 7:47pm  

Yah my boomer parents managed to do everything wrong (despite advantages)and will need massive bail outs down the road. FML

5   Dan8267   2017 Mar 3, 9:35pm  

www.youtube.com/embed/ygBfwgnijlk

Kelly is a writer, blogger, reporter, and agency creative living in Portland. She is the author of the bestselling "Adulting: How to Become A Grown-Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps" which has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and on the Today Show, among others. After a seven-year career in daily newspaper reporting, including Salem's Statesman Journal, Brown now splits her time between writing for magazines like Brides, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour with work as a copywriter and lead creative for Leopold Ketel, a boutique Portland advertising agency. In her free time, Kelly likes to craft, read, dance,...

7   Ceffer   2019 Feb 11, 1:27pm  

The BoomFucks are still alive? Shows that the MillXYers have absolutely no initiative.
8   🎂 Tenpoundbass   2019 Feb 11, 1:33pm  

When I was in my 20's people in their 20's ran the world. We dominated Corporations and squeezed the dinosaur Boomers out if we thought they were weak and pathetic.
We were the Rhinoceros generation the corporate raiders. We were young and full of piss and vinegar, we pointed our fingers and called the useless fucks a Dinosaur and replaced them with new blood at the snap of a finger.

You sniveling pathetic little pissants will never be no match for those that straddled the Boomer and GenX generation.

You keep bitching about the Boomers, You pathetic little sniveling Pissbirds will never get past us. We still run the fucking world now. Because Marcus taught you all to Whine and Piss and Moan about your feelz you have no gumption or drive. I'll be in your way, way into my 70's.

Get comfortable waiting for your time you pathetic Snot Whistles.
9   MrMagic   2019 Feb 11, 1:39pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Now they "age in place" refuse to sell large homes...:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/as-more--americans-age-in-place-millennials-struggle-to-buy.html


Ahhh, yes. It's the boomers fault they aren't selling their houses so broke Millennials can buy them.

...."The reasons more seniors are choosing to stay in the homes where they raised their families are manifold.

"They love their homes, it's their chief investment, they love their neighborhoods and their communities, and they love the control they get in their own house," said 64 year-old Louis Tenenbaum, a housing advocate in Kensington, Maryland. "They decide when to get up, when to go to sleep, what to eat, who to have as visitors."


Can you believe how evil those Boomers are.

......."Today's housing market is incredibly pricey, and some can't afford to move into another home, even a smaller one. For others, the math just doesn't make moving that attractive. "If they have to spend another million dollars to get one-quarter of the space, that house starts to look reasonable and the maintenance on it looks reasonable," Fairweather said."

How dare the Boomers do that. After paying for little Johnnie's college, his car, his cell phones, his rent, his food, how can the Boomers be so mean that they won't take on ADDITIONAL debt in retirement. So unfair of them.
10   Ceffer   2019 Feb 11, 1:46pm  

Yeah, just throw your crumpled caffeine booster can up the cellar stairs at Mom and see how far that gets you!
11   HeadSet   2019 Feb 11, 1:51pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Now they "age in place" refuse to sell large homes...:

Got to. If they move to a smaller place with no basement, where will their grown millennial kids live?
12   SunnyvaleCA   2019 Feb 11, 2:10pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Now they "age in place" refuse to sell large homes...:

Here is silicon valley, there are additional features above other parts of the country that make aging in place a reasonable alternative...
• Nobody seems to do their own yard or house work — even the young owners (except me). So getting old isn't a problem if you just retain the hired help.
• Single-story houses (I call them "shacks") are easily accessible to wheelchairs and people who don't want to navigate stairs.
• Prop-13; if they move to a house of even a quarter the value, their taxes will go up!
• Large loss capital gain loss to Uncle Sam if you sell your $2 million shack.
• Large loss (and opportunity for scam) with the real-estate agents and the whole buying/selling/moving thing.
• If you don't have a job, you can skew your about-town hours to avoid the worst of silicon valley congestion.
14   kt1652   2019 Feb 11, 2:32pm  

If I move, it'd be out of Calif.
Not sure if I can get butt-fuck ed for another 10 years. This was such a beautiful state to live.
15   MrMagic   2019 Feb 11, 3:57pm  

HeadSet says
Got to. If they move to a smaller place with no basement, where will their grown millennial kids live?


Exactly..

If the boomers move, the kids will have to live in refrigerator boxes under the bridge.
16   🎂 Tenpoundbass   2019 Feb 11, 4:11pm  

The Caliberals convinced everyone that they have to live in a snow globe above the Starbucks in the most urban areas. Sell your farm and move to the City.
Now many took them up on the offer. Well mostly the illegal Aliens, the homeless and freeloaders. They can't afford to live anywhere. The solution is simple build new areas.
But NO They are holding put and giving each other stink eye, waiting for the occupants of the current occupied house to expire so they can call dibs on it.

I'm going to buy as much land as I can since this generation thinks it's so useless and wont buy it. My friend at work bought a 10 acre farm in Central Florida with a farmhouse and Orange Orchard. For $147K last year. Un freaking believable!

They don't see any solutions they only look for things to whine about. The Boomer's fault indeed!
18   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Feb 11, 4:12pm  

Identity politics strikes again.

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