Political Discussion

I'm going to present this comment/question as a stupid middle aged-ish Baby Boomer. I keep reading posts about how Boomers sucked up all the wealth, were better off that everyone else, had it easier and so on. But I gotta be honest, and maybe I, and my circle of boomers I grew up with, worked our asses off.

I'm 55 and have never made more than $48k a year in my life, I didn't finish college because my immigrant parents couldn't afford it and the right opportunity, job wise, presented itself and I chose the money over education.........not a wise choice. I worked in and around my field of interest over the years and saved, took advantage of employer 401K's and whatever presented itself to make a little more. My wife and I bought a small house while she was working her way through college.

We made about 50K on that home to buy our current home, which we'll finally have paid off in another 18 months, praise the lord, in that time we've had 3 kids, raised them, put one through college, one is 3 years into college and I'm sure we'll make it happen for the third some how.

We had both my in-laws living with us when they couldn't afford their home anymore and physically couldn't work anymore. My mother-in-law still lives with us, we care for her, my father-in-law passed away a few years ago.

We've pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck as long as I can remember, it hasn't been easy by any means, but we do the things we have to do to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and do better for our children.

I have no complaints about my life, I've made good and bad decisions, but people need to stop assuming what any given generation had or didn't have handed to them based completely on numbers on a spread sheet. We're all in this together and the blame game gets us nowhere, the sad truth of it is that inevitably we end up worrying about our own little corner of the sand box, our own little world because we, I, don't see anyone in government really giving a damn about me and my family.

So I work to make that little space a happy place for them for as long as I can and my concerns in life aren't about me anymore, but about my children and my childrens children and so on.

A bit of a rant and I do apologize, but reading over and over again how "I" had it easier is a little annoying.
I agree with this a great deal, really. I think it's very difficult for us to square what aggregate data tells us against the lived experiences of ourselves and those around us. I actually encounter this a lot with the posts about how difficult it is for millennials, which I belong to as an '84 baby. Coming from a single income family in a semi-rural midwestern home as the second of four children, I managed to get a good, private college education with only $15k in loans, very little out of pocket expense, and a part-time campus job. 6 months after graduation I landed a job at a help desk making just north of $30k a year, got married, and bought a house at age 24 right as the recession was hitting in the summer of 2008. I held on to my job, got a couple of promotions, and managed to shift it into a professional career with a good salary and benefits. My modest home has appreciated in value, my loans are almost paid, and I'm trying to catch up to 401k savings goals. When I hear about how difficult my generation has it, I trust that the data I'm seeing is correct, but it's not the experience I lived here in central Indiana, or the experience my friends lived, or either of my younger siblings. I trust it exists, but it wasn't mine. Whether that's a testament to my luck, the diversity of experience within each generation, or a function of my specific geography, or all of the above, I don't know.
All I know is the for decades we've separated people by race and religion.....apparently that segmentation is running out of juice, so now we're going to add a generational split.
One thing I will say about the experience I detailed above is that I was, for a long time, highly unusual in terms of my age at the company I work for. My company made a significant effort to sustain its employees as much as it could through the recession (which also coincided with some very fraught patent-related timing for us), but with the net result that lots of the older employees got to full retirement age with an intact pension, but there were very few younger employees in the ranks. Now my company is experiencing major growing pains as the older generation starts to exit the workforce and is replaced by a younger set that lacks the institutional knowledge they would have learned through that experience.

In other words, I think a lot of the generational "split" isn't, at its core, about disputes as much as it's about a delayed handoff of the reins that would have occurred more gradually/organically had the financial crisis not happened.
 
From what I gather of libertarianism (it’s not so big over here) it seems to be in favour of extremes in terms of small state and a laissez-fair economic policy. How do you square that with the dems who, whilst centre right to me, are probably the only real advocates for any sizeable government and state intervention in the economy, particularly if Bernie is picked? Or is an anything but tangerine vote?

Libertarians very much disagree with each other on how much government should be involved with the economy. I consider myself as more of an economically left-libertarian, in that I support government intervention where appropriate (housing/rent control, healthcare, etc), and believe they should stay out of the economy elsewhere.

That said, I'm a Democrat as a protest of the Republican Party and the Trump administration. The candidate who I actually support right now is Bill Weld, who is primarying Trump. Sadly, Weld has zero chance. So, I will vote for the Democrat who I believe is fit to defeat Trump and lead this country.
 
In other words, I think a lot of the generational "split" isn't, at its core, about disputes as much as it's about a delayed handoff of the reins that would have occurred more gradually/organically had the financial crisis not happened.

I feel similarly.

It's the Thanksgiving table analogy. You sit at the kiddie table until someone dies.

That's a gross over-simplification, but I worry about the loss of institutional knowledge in my field. The particular world I work in has almost no system for transferring knowledge, and it's often times up to individuals to seek out that learning.

Experience remains vital and the most sucessful places of business have a synergistic relationship between experience and the new skills that are often brought by younger folks.
 
I feel similarly.

It's the Thanksgiving table analogy. You sit at the kiddie table until someone dies.

That's a gross over-simplification, but I worry about the loss of institutional knowledge in my field. The particular world I work in has almost no system for transferring knowledge, and it's often times up to individuals to seek out that learning.

Experience remains vital and the most sucessful places of business have a synergistic relationship between experience and the new skills that are often brought by younger folks.
100%. I'm 35, and all of my co-workers are in their mid-50s. We were just talking yesterday about how our team would function better if we could hire, not just a couple of new people, but a couple of new people that already have 5 years of experience in this fairly narrowly specialized line of work. And that sort of employee just doesn't exist...not here, anyway. Instead we'll probably plug along like this for a few more years until the most senior guys call it a day, and then we'll start all over again with a new crop of totally green new people, and it'll be on *me* to pass down that information the best I can. Once that cycle has been started it's tough to revert to a more natural rate of turnover to keep the right mix.
 
100%. I'm 35, and all of my co-workers are in their mid-50s. We were just talking yesterday about how our team would function better if we could hire, not just a couple of new people, but a couple of new people that already have 5 years of experience in this fairly narrowly specialized line of work. And that sort of employee just doesn't exist...not here, anyway. Instead we'll probably plug along like this for a few more years until the most senior guys call it a day, and then we'll start all over again with a new crop of totally green new people, and it'll be on *me* to pass down that information the best I can. Once that cycle has been started it's tough to revert to a more natural rate of turnover to keep the right mix.


That type of situation is more common than you think in this country as well.

That's why you often hear on the job reports there are a lot of places hiring. And they simply can not find the skilled workers for the position.

They often like to through that first part of the stat around to say look how good the economy is, the job market. There are good jobs out there and companies can't seem to fill them. Learn a highly specialized skill and you will be all set.

But like you said, experience comes into play and inside knowledge. It's not that easy.
 
100%. I'm 35, and all of my co-workers are in their mid-50s. We were just talking yesterday about how our team would function better if we could hire, not just a couple of new people, but a couple of new people that already have 5 years of experience in this fairly narrowly specialized line of work. And that sort of employee just doesn't exist...not here, anyway. Instead we'll probably plug along like this for a few more years until the most senior guys call it a day, and then we'll start all over again with a new crop of totally green new people, and it'll be on *me* to pass down that information the best I can. Once that cycle has been started it's tough to revert to a more natural rate of turnover to keep the right mix.

Edited so that my terrible sentences make some sense

When the "business of business is business" the longer-term planning that is needed to maintain success is usually ignored. That longer term thinking requires a willingness to fail, to spend some money, to make more later. I'm pretty sure that's how to innovate, creating a more sustainable business, but it's often discarded with this or that quarterly earnings statement. That's the inflexible, short-sighted thinking that leads to capitalistic protectionism... and why middle-management often has an impossible job... and why so many people feel their professional lives are not worthwhile.

I so desperately want to work with people that haven't quit on life. who want to be creative, and who are willing to fail to achieve something greater. Mixing institutional knowledge, years of experience, new energy and skill sets is the synergism I personally seek.
 
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There was a story on the Nightly News how the student loan debit crisis is impacting our country from a different angle you don't think about.

There is a massive shortage of doctors in rural America. And we are not talking about really rural areas such as Wyoming or Montana. By land mass, most of California qualifies as rural and facing this issue.

Doctors go into to the field to help people. But they simply can't afford to help people in rural America.

The average student loan debt for becoming a doctor is $207,000. And that's just a general practicer. Want to be highly specialized? yup, you can easily rack up more than $300,000 in student loan debt going to a good medial school and specializing in something like Cardiologist. Treat cancers, the brain?

The reality of it is the new doctors graduating with their degree have to much student debt to be able to afford a lower wage job in a rural community. Most of the pediatrician, general practitioners and specialized doctors such as Cardiologists working in rural areas are from the Baby Boomers generations. Their student loans are paid off. As they are now starting to retire, a huge shortage of replacements is forming.

Those graduating today with 200+ k in student loan debt can not afford to take a job that does not pay enough to afford both the costs of living and paying off their student loans. Which is common for most rural areas now.

I remember reading about the only hospital in 4 hours drive by ambulance radius in Montana did not have a Cardiologist. Why? They can only afford to pay 55k a year. They simply can not afford to be competitive with with hospitals in high population density areas. They are hoping to hire someone who wants to work to help people out of the goodness of their heart and not for the money. But with the younger generations that person does not exist. They simply can not afford to be that person.
 

Remember that mass shooting that involved the police chase in Okalahoma that ended at a mall/movie theater where the person they were chasing was activity shooting and killing bystanders?

A grand jury has indicted the police lieutenant who fatal shot the active shooter on second degree murder charges. They found that he wasn't justified in firing about 60 shots at the suspect that fatally wounded him.

WTF.
 
I know it was yesterday, but if I might throw two cents into the “OK Boomer” conversation, I’d like to.

As a Millennial, I’ve spent the last decade looked down upon. We’ve been blamed for “destroying” various businesses and industries, sometimes due simply to the march of progress (it’s not our fault internet commerce is replacing brick-and-mortar, for example; that was a tide that started in the early 00s, and even before that), other times because we can’t afford to support such industries anymore. We’re told we’ve been coddled. That we’re lazy. That we’re in a state of eternal childhood and can’t settle down.

In the workplace, we’re called entitled. We’re called disloyal for job-hopping, when in reality most jobs don’t offer any sort of career prospects or support, and the only way to find a wage increase that even attempts to catch up to annual cost-of-living increases is to jump ship for a place that’ll start you at a higher amount. The gig economy encourages “side hustles,” which really means taking multiple menial jobs just to make ends meet; we’re doing other people’s grocery shopping, lining the pockets of app developers and then getting the chop when we try to unionize for fair wages. We turn our cars into taxis so that we can afford gas money to get to our other job. We rent our spare rooms as hotel rooms so we can buy a ticket home for Thanksgiving.

Minimum wage hasn’t changed in ages. College is a must for most employers, thus greedy loan companies have most of us under their thumbs. I considered myself *lucky* to finally reach a 50k/year job by my 30s, yet I don’t enjoy it because most of my paycheck goes towards paying my student loans and the credit cards I’ve racked up to keep myself above water since 2008, when I graduated college and entered the workforce as the economy was tanking.

I probably will never own a house. I don’t expect to be able to retire at 65, and the social services which would ensure my health and safety have been gutted. Most people I know are one health crisis away from homelessness. I’m eschewing parenthood because our schools are both underfunded and dangerous. The environment is destabilizing fast, and the breakdown of civilization as a result is a very real prospect within my lifetime (and global warming has become politicized by the complacent ruling class to such an extent that any attempt to address it is deadlocked by lawmakers and private interests who will be dead and gone well before that happens).

All of this, and we’re told we’re the problem. That we’re complaining. That we should suck it up. We didn’t make this mess, and yes, it feels like a lot of the older generation is holding onto their wealth and riding it out because they don’t have to deal with the aftermath. Many of the problems we face were caused by the shortsightedness of voters and businesses before us, and the systems in place prevent us from evincing any sort of change that’ll improve things for the next generation.

I don’t think “OK Boomer” is meant to create dividing lines; it’s a response to a dividing line which was drawn against us a while ago. It’s not a blanket insult to all baby boomers. It’s an exhausted hand-wave to members of a generation who tell us we should be happy with what we’ve got, that we’re not trying hard enough, or that we’re not doing things the way they would. “Ok Boomer” means “you don’t understand, and we’re tired of trying to explain it to you.” I think the phrase is jumping the shark at present, but it resonated with me when it first landed: we’re fucking tired. We work so damn hard, we’re exhausted, and we’re tired of trying to prove or explain ourselves to the people who put us in this spot.

Anyway, you’re 55, so you barely get in under the wire. Consider yourself an honorary Gen X-er. :)
 
I know it was yesterday, but if I might throw two cents into the “OK Boomer” conversation, I’d like to.

As a Millennial, I’ve spent the last decade looked down upon. We’ve been blamed for “destroying” various businesses and industries, sometimes due simply to the march of progress (it’s not our fault internet commerce is replacing brick-and-mortar, for example; that was a tide that started in the early 00s, and even before that), other times because we can’t afford to support such industries anymore. We’re told we’ve been coddled. That we’re lazy. That we’re in a state of eternal childhood and can’t settle down.

In the workplace, we’re called entitled. We’re called disloyal for job-hopping, when in reality most jobs don’t offer any sort of career prospects or support, and the only way to find a wage increase that even attempts to catch up to annual cost-of-living increases is to jump ship for a place that’ll start you at a higher amount. The gig economy encourages “side hustles,” which really means taking multiple menial jobs just to make ends meet; we’re doing other people’s grocery shopping, lining the pockets of app developers and then getting the chop when we try to unionize for fair wages. We turn our cars into taxis so that we can afford gas money to get to our other job. We rent our spare rooms as hotel rooms so we can buy a ticket home for Thanksgiving.

Minimum wage hasn’t changed in ages. College is a must for most employers, thus greedy loan companies have most of us under their thumbs. I considered myself *lucky* to finally reach a 50k/year job by my 30s, yet I don’t enjoy it because most of my paycheck goes towards paying my student loans and the credit cards I’ve racked up to keep myself above water since 2008, when I graduated college and entered the workforce as the economy was tanking.

I probably will never own a house. I don’t expect to be able to retire at 65, and the social services which would ensure my health and safety have been gutted. Most people I know are one health crisis away from homelessness. I’m eschewing parenthood because our schools are both underfunded and dangerous. The environment is destabilizing fast, and the breakdown of civilization as a result is a very real prospect within my lifetime (and global warming has become politicized by the complacent ruling class to such an extent that any attempt to address it is deadlocked by lawmakers and private interests who will be dead and gone well before that happens).

All of this, and we’re told we’re the problem. That we’re complaining. That we should suck it up. We didn’t make this mess, and yes, it feels like a lot of the older generation is holding onto their wealth and riding it out because they don’t have to deal with the aftermath. Many of the problems we face were caused by the shortsightedness of voters and businesses before us, and the systems in place prevent us from evincing any sort of change that’ll improve things for the next generation.

I don’t think “OK Boomer” is meant to create dividing lines; it’s a response to a dividing line which was drawn against us a while ago. It’s not a blanket insult to all baby boomers. It’s an exhausted hand-wave to members of a generation who tell us we should be happy with what we’ve got, that we’re not trying hard enough, or that we’re not doing things the way they would. “Ok Boomer” means “you don’t understand, and we’re tired of trying to explain it to you.” I think the phrase is jumping the shark at present, but it resonated with me when it first landed: we’re fucking tired. We work so damn hard, we’re exhausted, and we’re tired of trying to prove or explain ourselves to the people who put us in this spot.

Anyway, you’re 55, so you barely get in under the wire. Consider yourself an honorary Gen X-er. :)
I agree with this guy. I live in a deeply red state surrounded by a majority of baby boomers who more often than not have very inhumane, callous, and very intolerant and racist views. "OK Boomer" is just dismissing their bullshit attitudes and talking points, because that shit is outdated and completely fucked. Being told that just because I'm in my 20's I can have an opinion that isn't in lockstep with Vivian and Clarence (tried to think of Boomer name's not knocking anyone who actually has this name) is bullshit.

I'm not going to respect someone just because their older than me, if their views are uninformed at best and outright disgusting at worst. And for the record "Boomer" isn't necessarily a generational thing, it's a mind set.

A mindset that exhibits an outdated and completely irrelevant line of thinking that not only has no place in modernity but is also fucking clueless to issues faced by PoC and younger people.
That's what's meant by most when they say "Ok Boomer"
 
I know it was yesterday, but if I might throw two cents into the “OK Boomer” conversation, I’d like to.

As a Millennial, I’ve spent the last decade looked down upon. We’ve been blamed for “destroying” various businesses and industries, sometimes due simply to the march of progress (it’s not our fault internet commerce is replacing brick-and-mortar, for example; that was a tide that started in the early 00s, and even before that), other times because we can’t afford to support such industries anymore. We’re told we’ve been coddled. That we’re lazy. That we’re in a state of eternal childhood and can’t settle down.

In the workplace, we’re called entitled. We’re called disloyal for job-hopping, when in reality most jobs don’t offer any sort of career prospects or support, and the only way to find a wage increase that even attempts to catch up to annual cost-of-living increases is to jump ship for a place that’ll start you at a higher amount. The gig economy encourages “side hustles,” which really means taking multiple menial jobs just to make ends meet; we’re doing other people’s grocery shopping, lining the pockets of app developers and then getting the chop when we try to unionize for fair wages. We turn our cars into taxis so that we can afford gas money to get to our other job. We rent our spare rooms as hotel rooms so we can buy a ticket home for Thanksgiving.

Minimum wage hasn’t changed in ages. College is a must for most employers, thus greedy loan companies have most of us under their thumbs. I considered myself *lucky* to finally reach a 50k/year job by my 30s, yet I don’t enjoy it because most of my paycheck goes towards paying my student loans and the credit cards I’ve racked up to keep myself above water since 2008, when I graduated college and entered the workforce as the economy was tanking.

I probably will never own a house. I don’t expect to be able to retire at 65, and the social services which would ensure my health and safety have been gutted. Most people I know are one health crisis away from homelessness. I’m eschewing parenthood because our schools are both underfunded and dangerous. The environment is destabilizing fast, and the breakdown of civilization as a result is a very real prospect within my lifetime (and global warming has become politicized by the complacent ruling class to such an extent that any attempt to address it is deadlocked by lawmakers and private interests who will be dead and gone well before that happens).

All of this, and we’re told we’re the problem. That we’re complaining. That we should suck it up. We didn’t make this mess, and yes, it feels like a lot of the older generation is holding onto their wealth and riding it out because they don’t have to deal with the aftermath. Many of the problems we face were caused by the shortsightedness of voters and businesses before us, and the systems in place prevent us from evincing any sort of change that’ll improve things for the next generation.

I don’t think “OK Boomer” is meant to create dividing lines; it’s a response to a dividing line which was drawn against us a while ago. It’s not a blanket insult to all baby boomers. It’s an exhausted hand-wave to members of a generation who tell us we should be happy with what we’ve got, that we’re not trying hard enough, or that we’re not doing things the way they would. “Ok Boomer” means “you don’t understand, and we’re tired of trying to explain it to you.” I think the phrase is jumping the shark at present, but it resonated with me when it first landed: we’re fucking tired. We work so damn hard, we’re exhausted, and we’re tired of trying to prove or explain ourselves to the people who put us in this spot.

Anyway, you’re 55, so you barely get in under the wire. Consider yourself an honorary Gen X-er. :)
I agree with this guy. I live in a deeply red state surrounded by a majority of baby boomers who more often than not have very inhumane, callous, and very intolerant and racist views. "OK Boomer" is just dismissing their bullshit attitudes and talking points, because that shit is outdated and completely fucked. Being told that just because I'm in my 20's I can have an opinion that isn't in lockstep with Vivian and Clarence (tried to think of Boomer name's not knocking anyone who actually has this name) is bullshit.

I'm not going to respect someone just because their older than me, if their views are uninformed at best and outright disgusting at worst. And for the record "Boomer" isn't necessarily a generational thing, it's a mind set.

A mindset that exhibits an outdated and completely irrelevant line of thinking that not only has no place in modernity but is also fucking clueless to issues faced by PoC and younger people.
That's what's meant by most when they say "Ok Boomer"

That's all great and true, BUT the word "Boomer" actually has a definition both academically and culturally. The term "OK Boomer" is creating a new cultural definition that isn't clear to the people it's meant to chastise, which is one of the reasons it's ineffectual. It's great that younger folks are banding together under the banner of "we're fucked" and dismissing the authority of older people who expect genuflection just because they're older. It shows a willingness to think for one's self. BUT "OK Boomer" is being used as a way to simply disagree with someone else and dismiss people's opinions just because they're older, and that's fucking stupid and does nothing to help the cause. It only makes the people who aren't ignorant, but want to undersand the perspective of people of different age than them less willing to do so. I'm not suggesting not standing up for yourself or not accepting smeone else's bullshit. I am suggesting that "OK Boomer" is a meme that is a dumb way to do the thing that does more harm than good. Dismissing the opinions of people of any age because they're young or old or in whatever group they are being classified as is fundamentally a way to make your own opinion less informed and your goals harder to reach.
 
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I wonder how many people who are pointing out how hard it is for them now are white males
I wonder how many of them understand the tailwind their race and gender gives them.
I wonder how many have actually taken the time to talk with people who are older or different than them about their experience.
I wonder how many people who live in cities on the coasts understand the economic advantages they have.
I wonder how many people who keep identifying the important issues as their economic vitality also understand how ironic that is
I wonder if people who are talking about equality actually know what that means
I wonder if people who say they want to vote for equality actually mean it
I wonder if people who keep blaming past generations for the reality of the present understand that these narratives are about the wrong enemy
I wonder if people who want a better world actually understand who the people are that make their lives more difficult.
 
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I was just reading someones gripe about auto loans on an other forum.

Yet again this proves that those who are affluent and can afford to pay up front have the advantage over the average middle class American.

A growing new trend in auto loans is a penalty for early payments. Got a raise or a new job and can afford to pay off your loan early to save money on interest? Think again. The bank still get's there money. With these early payment penalties the financial institution / bank still get's there money to equal value of the interest if you paid the minimum payment overtime.

You may be able pay off that loan faster. But you aren't saving yourself any money by doing so.
 
I was just reading someones gripe about auto loans on an other forum.

Yet again this proves that those who are affluent and can afford to pay up front have the advantage over the average middle class American.

A growing new trend in auto loans is a penalty for early payments. Got a raise or a new job and can afford to pay off your loan early to save money on interest? Think again. The bank still get's there money. With these early payment penalties the financial institution / bank still get's there money to equal value of the interest if you paid the minimum payment overtime.

You may be able pay off that loan faster. But you aren't saving yourself any money by doing so.
Prepayment penalties on auto loans? Whoa. I didn't know that was a thing. Prepayment penalties all but disappeared on mortgages for the last several years. This is a gross way to take advantage of people.
 
I was just reading someones gripe about auto loans on an other forum.

Yet again this proves that those who are affluent and can afford to pay up front have the advantage over the average middle class American.

A growing new trend in auto loans is a penalty for early payments. Got a raise or a new job and can afford to pay off your loan early to save money on interest? Think again. The bank still get's there money. With these early payment penalties the financial institution / bank still get's there money to equal value of the interest if you paid the minimum payment overtime.

You may be able pay off that loan faster. But you aren't saving yourself any money by doing so.


I've survived the majority of my life on vehicles that are over 100K miles. I just spent 4K on a car that has 120K miles on it. People should be more realistic about the cars they purchase. Buying a new car is a waste of money.
 
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