Young People Hate Baby Boomers

[The Barbarian]

you must live in a state with kinder people

Texas. Some of the frontier spirit still lives here, in spite of the government we have. In the west, it was a good thing to be courteous; being rude could be downright dangerous.

when younger, men did open doors for me
now I'm over 40 & men let doors slam in my face

Disgusting. I spend a lot of time in the Midwest and in Seattle. I see the same level of courtesy there as I do in Texas. But I know there are places where people just seem to be angry and selfish all the time.

I won't list those places, however.

 

[RDKirk]

That happened to my daughter, also. If you get the right internship, you can just pick up your first job that way. She attended a university with a reputation for helping students get internships, so it paid off for her.

Ah, but that whole internship thing wasn't a "thing" when Boomers were undergraduates. Now it seems to be nearly a pre-requisite for getting a job after graduation.

 

[The Barbarian]

Ah, but that whole internship thing wasn't a "thing" when Boomers were undergraduates. Now it seems to be nearly a pre-requisite for getting a job after graduation.

Yes, when I graduated, I was on Operation Bootstrap, having been drafted out of college. So I had a job of sorts anyway. And by my separation date, I had a number of possible jobs lined up. But usually, boomers just had to go out and look. Fortunately, times were better in pre-Reagan America, and the economy was doing pretty well.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Texas. Some of the frontier spirit still lives here, in spite of the government we have. In the west, it was a good thing to be courteous; being rude could be downright dangerous.

Disgusting. I spend a lot of time in the Midwest and in Seattle. I see the same level of courtesy there as I do in Texas. But I know there are places where people just seem to be angry and selfish all the time.

I won't list those places, however.

I'm always kind of amazed when folks describe experiences like this. I've lived my entire life in the northeast/mid-Atlantic - a region not exactly known for its gentility - and I never run into this. People aren't effusive in their politeness, but they're not typically rude, either.

Ah, but that whole internship thing wasn't a "thing" when Boomers were undergraduates. Now it seems to be nearly a pre-requisite for getting a job after graduation.

My line of work (audio production) has always worked off of the internship/apprenticeship model and I cringe when I see kids getting ready to graduate and asking online how they go about finding and applying for jobs. People get mad when I tell them that if they don't know the answer to that question, they should get some of their tuition refunded.

 

[The Barbarian]

I'm always kind of amazed when folks describe experiences like this. I've lived my entire life in the northeast/mid-Atlantic - a region not exactly known for its gentility - and I never run into this. People aren't effusive in their politeness, but they're not typically rude, either.

I married someone from New England. The thing that first attracted me to her was her bluntness. It's not rudeness; it's just that people from that area don't hide what they think. To me, it's an endearing trait.

And you're right. Most people there seem to have very good manners.

Once, when younger, I got mixed up in the NY bus system. A lady at the stop noticed I seemed uncertain and asked what was wrong. When I told her, she said "you really messed up", and then went with me to the right place to make sure I was O.K. Which pretty much sums up my impression of people in the city.

 

[RDKirk]

My line of work (audio production) has always worked off of the internship/apprenticeship model and I cringe when I see kids getting ready to graduate and asking online how they go about finding and applying for jobs. People get mad when I tell them that if they don't know the answer to that question, they should get some of their tuition refunded.

I would argue that any line of work that requires apprenticeship should not require a bachelor's degree.

 

[iluvatar5150]

I would argue that any line of work that requires apprenticeship should not require a bachelor's degree.

Yeah, that's a fair point and in my line of work, a lot of jobs technically don't require it, but a lot of them also aren't set up well to train people from scratch, so if you want a decent education that gives you a taste of several different sub-disciplines, school is kind of your only option. A good school can also be a pretty significant source of industry connections if you play things right.

 

[Sparagmos]

I've been hearing more recently about how the younger generations hate baby boomers. This is not a big surprise, most generations have problems with their parents, and rebel against them to some extent. But I am surprised at the intensity of this hate for some, I mean they HATE us (I'm a boomer myself). I've heard some say that they wish we would die already, and that we are "clogging up the hospitals and nursing homes".

The Baby Boomers were a large generation, leaving behind a smaller generation. So things thrived for us economically, but they feel we have used up all the resources and left nothing for the next generation. Boomers were responsible for ramping up the Counterculture, so a LOT of problems have come from that, although that doesn't seem to be what the kids are complaining about.

I can't protest that Boomers are innocent in all this, as we are sinful humans of course. But the Millennials will have their chance at controlling the money and the government. Have you been aware of this hate for elders? Are we deserving of it?

Millennials' extreme hatred for Baby Boomers is totally unjustified

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ny-gen-xers-and-millennials-hate-baby-boomers

OP, I’m interested in your thoughts on the items which have been raised here as to why Millenials are frustrated with boomers:

1). Millenials had to pay at least twice as much for college as boomers did (with inflation accounted for) and could not work their way through college and started their lives saddled with debt. Yet they did what their boomer parents and grandparents told them by going to college. Why won’t more boomers acknowledge that and vote for policies that address the issue?

2) Boomers were able, in many cases, to provide for a whole family on one income, working only 40 hours a week. That means that the primary breadwinner did not also have to do half of the housework, cooking, and childcare. They were able to go to work and come home to a hot meal and had more time for leisure than millennials who work more hours on average for even less pay. Why do boomers generally oppose increases to the minimum wage and and getting back to wages that would support a family being the norm? Now all of the money is going to the CEO’s and owners.

3) Mortgage/Rent costs have skyrocketed. They now take a much larger chunk of income and many millenials don’t know how they will buy homes. Working class boomers without college degrees were able to buy homes far easier. Yet boomers criticize millenials who have to move back home because of housing costs. What do boomers see as the solution here?

If boomers stopped voting, we would be able to pass legislation addressing these issues. When you add the climate change crisis, it’s easy to see why millennials are upset. Boomers are largely set financially but are standing in the way of younger generations having the same things.

 

[RDKirk]

Yeah, that's a fair point and in my line of work, a lot of jobs technically don't require it, but a lot of them also aren't set up well to train people from scratch, so if you want a decent education that gives you a taste of several different sub-disciplines, school is kind of your only option. A good school can also be a pretty significant source of industry connections if you play things right.

Well, if nearly all high schools were not devoted solely to college prep curricula, that would not be the case.

 

[iarwain]

OP, I’m interested in your thoughts on the items which have been raised here as to why Millenials are frustrated with boomers:

Okay, you asked for it.

1). Millenials had to pay at least twice as much for college as boomers did
<snip>
Why won’t more boomers acknowledge that and vote for policies that address the issue?

The way people vote absolutely baffles me, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. One major reason for rising college costs however, is government interference. Similar to rising health costs.

2) Boomers were able, in many cases, to provide for a whole family on one income, working only 40 hours a week.
<snip>
Why do boomers generally oppose increases to the minimum wage and and getting back to wages that would support a family being the norm?

I think one thing that is driving up the cost of living is what is considered basic necessities these days. When I was a kid, our family had one car, no air conditioning, a black and white TV, and a party line phone (when we finally got one). Now of course everybody in the family needs a phone with wifi, computer with internet, everybody in the family needs a car, a TV, new clothes, etc.

I'm not one to think that minimum wage laws would help, because they would just drive up prices even more. Business owners are just going to pass the extra cost onto consumers, and we'll have more inflation. So your $15 an hour or whatever it isn't going to do you any good because it won't buy as much. And inflation hurts everybody.

Yet boomers criticize millenials who have to move back home because of housing costs. What do boomers see as the solution here?

I'm not one to criticize kids moving back home. Many cultures have multiple generations living together in the same house, I don't see anything wrong with that. The culture needs to go back to valuing traditional families if we are to survive.

If boomers stopped voting, we would be able to pass legislation addressing these issues.

If you are trying to tell me that voting for Leftists is the answer to the problems in this country, I could not disagree more vehemently. I've seen a lot of videos where they talk to college students these days, and it seems like most of the kids that age seem to want to live in a Communist country, or are right on the verge of it. This apparently is what they are learning.

Yet there are people here who came from Cuba who see the leftist indoctrination going on, and they are emphatic that this is wrong, and they do not want to see their new country go the way Cuba did. But they see what's happening. Socialism is not what made the US the unique and successful country it is/was, but it keeps drifting further and further left, and if it continues, it will become more and more of a dump. Mark my words.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

The United States ended WWII with absolute global economic and industrial supremacy. American Boomers were born at a particularly golden period which was unprecedented for any nation in history...and will probably never be repeated.

But...we did practically nothing with it expect spend it. Practically all of the greatest technical and social advances of our time were actually done by the War Generation. In a number of ways, we've gone backward compared to our elders.

So while much of the ire of Millennials is just age-old intergenerational squabbling, I'd agree that the American Boomer generation didn't do our due diligence in making our world better. Ironically, the Millennials were a very obedient generation, compared to us. They did exactly what we told them was necessary to succeed, to get the cheese at the end of the rat race. But then someone took away the cheese...how did we let that happen? Worse, a lot of Boomers still don't recognize that it happened.

We were so cool in the 60s. Something happened to us in the late 70s into the 80s. It seems like the Challenger explosion was the harbinger of the end of our hopes and intentions.

I disagree!

The world today is pretty good and much of what we have technically, socially and in liberty, are the result of the boomers diligence.

The ingratitude we have with today's generation is the biggest problem I see in not just the current generation, but all the generations living in the West.

Things could be far worse and can turn far worse very quickly, if we don't show gratitude for what we have

 

[Paidiske]

So I'm in Australia, and looking at some of these issues from a different place. When Americans, for example, dismiss the idea of government-provided healthcare as communism or socialism, it leaves me baffled. For most developed countries, we have better, more accessible, and overall cheaper healthcare than America, because it's state-run, and yet somehow Americans keep insisting their system is better because "communism"? (Note: I'm not saying our system is perfect, but that I know which one I'd rather live with).

There are a lot of areas where things could be improved, and I think one of the frustrations felt by younger generations is the insistence by (some) more mature aged people that in fact, improvement is not possible.

 

[The Barbarian]

Boomer contributions that changed the world for the better:

1.The scanning tunneling microscope

IBM physicist Gerd Binnig was born in 1947 in Germany,...In 1981, he helped develop a device that allowed scientists for the first time to visualize individual atoms, an advance that has paved the way for the development of super-small nanotechnology.

2.DNA fingerprinting
Sir Alec Jeffreys was born in 1950 in Oxford, UK, and attended Oxford University, where he earned a doctorate in biochemistry. He went on to become a professor of genetics at the University of Leicester, where in 1984 he discovered sequences within strands of DNA that differ from one individual to the next in a way as unique as the ridge patterns on fingertips...His invention revolutionized criminal justice and the courts by making it possible to link criminal suspects to crime scenes and to absolve those falsely accused.

3.The Jarvik 7 implantable artificial heart
Dr. Robert Jarvik, born in 1946 in Michigan, was a prodigy who invented a surgical stapler and other medical devices while still a teenager. While he wasn’t the first to develop an artificial heart, Jarvik’s 1982 creation, the Jarvik 7, was the first such device that could be implanted inside a person’s body. Jarvik continues to work toward the development of a device that could serve as a permanent replacement organ.

4.Bacterial cement
Sookie Bang was born and raised in South Korea. She graduated from Seoul National University in 1974 and earned a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of California-Davis in 1981. As a professor and researcher at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, her specialty is bioremediation -- for example, using bacteria as an ingredient in a sealant to fix cracks caused by weathering and freezing water in concrete buildings’ exteriors.

5.The Apple II
Steve Wozniak, who was born in 1950, and his future partner Steve Jobs, born in 1955, both grew up in the San Francisco area and got to know each other as summer interns at electronics manufacturer Hewlett-Packard. In 1977, they created and marketed the Apple II personal computer, which included color graphics, a sound card, expansion slots, and other features that made it the earliest machine to resemble today’s PCs. It arguably did more than any other product to usher in an age in which computers would become as ubiquitous as TVs and telephones.

6.Viagra
Dr. Gill Samuels was born in 1945 in Bury, Lancashire in the UK. ...While at the company, she worked on the development of a number of drugs, including Viagra, a revolutionary treatment for male sexual dysfunction.

7.The World Wide Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, born in London in 1955, grew up around computers; his parents both were mathematicians who worked on the Ferranti Mark I, the first computer to be sold commercially. Berners-Lee also liked to tinker with electronics and built his own computer while he was an undergraduate physics student in the mid-1970s. ... Berners-Lee came up with the concept for what became the Web, which he laid out in a 1989 paper. He developed a software language to create web pages and the first web browser, which he made available to others in 1991. Since then, his invention has spread across the planet and become perhaps the most powerful means of communication ever developed.

...lots more.
Baby Boomer Inventions That Changed the World

 

[RDKirk]

Boomer contributions that changed the world for the better:

1.The scanning tunneling microscope

IBM physicist Gerd Binnig was born in 1947 in Germany,...In 1981, he helped develop a device that allowed scientists for the first time to visualize individual atoms, an advance that has paved the way for the development of super-small nanotechnology.

2.DNA fingerprinting
Sir Alec Jeffreys was born in 1950 in Oxford, UK, and attended Oxford University, where he earned a doctorate in biochemistry. He went on to become a professor of genetics at the University of Leicester, where in 1984 he discovered sequences within strands of DNA that differ from one individual to the next in a way as unique as the ridge patterns on fingertips...His invention revolutionized criminal justice and the courts by making it possible to link criminal suspects to crime scenes and to absolve those falsely accused.

3.The Jarvik 7 implantable artificial heart
Dr. Robert Jarvik, born in 1946 in Michigan, was a prodigy who invented a surgical stapler and other medical devices while still a teenager. While he wasn’t the first to develop an artificial heart, Jarvik’s 1982 creation, the Jarvik 7, was the first such device that could be implanted inside a person’s body. Jarvik continues to work toward the development of a device that could serve as a permanent replacement organ.

4.Bacterial cement
Sookie Bang was born and raised in South Korea. She graduated from Seoul National University in 1974 and earned a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of California-Davis in 1981. As a professor and researcher at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, her specialty is bioremediation -- for example, using bacteria as an ingredient in a sealant to fix cracks caused by weathering and freezing water in concrete buildings’ exteriors.

5.The Apple II
Steve Wozniak, who was born in 1950, and his future partner Steve Jobs, born in 1955, both grew up in the San Francisco area and got to know each other as summer interns at electronics manufacturer Hewlett-Packard. In 1977, they created and marketed the Apple II personal computer, which included color graphics, a sound card, expansion slots, and other features that made it the earliest machine to resemble today’s PCs. It arguably did more than any other product to usher in an age in which computers would become as ubiquitous as TVs and telephones.

6.Viagra
Dr. Gill Samuels was born in 1945 in Bury, Lancashire in the UK. ...While at the company, she worked on the development of a number of drugs, including Viagra, a revolutionary treatment for male sexual dysfunction.

7.The World Wide Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, born in London in 1955, grew up around computers; his parents both were mathematicians who worked on the Ferranti Mark I, the first computer to be sold commercially. Berners-Lee also liked to tinker with electronics and built his own computer while he was an undergraduate physics student in the mid-1970s. ... Berners-Lee came up with the concept for what became the Web, which he laid out in a 1989 paper. He developed a software language to create web pages and the first web browser, which he made available to others in 1991. Since then, his invention has spread across the planet and become perhaps the most powerful means of communication ever developed.

...lots more.
Baby Boomer Inventions That Changed the World

Developments of innovations begun by War Genners.

Moreover, what I'm really talking about are changes in national thought, direction, and will of the generation, not individual actions. As a generation, Boomers did not move forward or even sideways.

If the War Generation had been like us, there would never have been Apollo 11, there would not have been the Civil Rights Act, there would not have been the eradication of polio or smallpox, there would not be the Eisenhower Interstate System. All of those would be politically impossible for the Boomer generation.

 

[Paidiske]

As a generation, Boomers did not move forward or even sideways.

Wouldn't you say second-wave feminism was a Boomer phenomenon?

 

[RDKirk]

Wouldn't you say second-wave feminism was a Boomer phenomenon?

Begun by the War Generation women who got out of the house and into the workplace. While I'd give credit to Rosie the Riveter and her sisters for starting the second wave of feminism, history credits Betty Friedan, who was born in 1921. Her seminal book, "The Feminine Mystique" was published in 1963, while the oldest Boomers were still in high school. In the US, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 theoretically outlawed the gender pay gap, and that was a War Generation action.

 

[Paidiske]

Fair enough.

 

[iarwain]

For most developed countries, we have better, more accessible, and overall cheaper healthcare than America, because it's state-run, and yet somehow Americans keep insisting their system is better because "communism"?

Australia isn't Communist.

And they may take my Conservative card away from me for this, but I'm not really against universal healthcare. The problem we had/have with Obamacare is that it was so watered down it really isn't anything. Not that I would trust our current (or recent) administrations with the job of running healthcare, because everything in our country right now is about division and partisanship. Our two parties would rather blow up the country than cooperate or allow the other one to even marginally look good.

 

[Paidiske]

Australia isn't Communist.

No, it isn't. But state-run healthcare is one policy I often see Americans oppose as "communist."

I read a really good piece a while back (sorry, I don't have a link) that suggested that the political parties we've inherited from the twentieth century no longer accurately represent even the aspirations and ideals of the people who typically vote for them. In America that's true of the Democrats and the Republicans, and in Australia it's true of Liberal and Labor parties (our two main parties). The suggestion was that new parties were needed which would build their platforms along different lines.

If that's true - and I thought it was a suggestion with a lot of merit - perhaps that's another area where generational change is going to be really important.

 

[iarwain]

I read a really good piece a while back (sorry, I don't have a link) that suggested that the political parties we've inherited from the twentieth century no longer accurately represent even the aspirations and ideals of the people who typically vote for them.

The parties are mainly concerned with gaining more power for themselves, not with serving the people. But the Democrats are more dangerous, because they are closer to achieving all (totalitarian) power.