As Boomers Age, Legacy Doubts Surface

worth the read.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051210/ap_on_re_us/boomer_legacy;_ylt=AmkMBz5.ormIx7ywQlcXgkus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-
As Boomers Age, Legacy Doubts Surface

By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer Sat Dec 10,12:28 PM ET

NEW YORK - They partied and protested, then grew up to dominate America with their chutzpah and sheer numbers. Yet now, as the oldest of the baby boomers prepare to turn 60, there are glimmers of doubt within this "have it all" generation about how they will be judged by those who come next.

The ferment of the '60s and '70s — when boomers changed the world, or thought they did — faded long ago. Nostalgic pride in the achievements of that era now mixes with skepticism: Have the boomers collectively betrayed their youthful idealism? Have they been self-centered to the point of shortchanging their children?


........The boomers — 78 million of them born from 1946 to 1964 — are wealthier and more numerous than any generation before or since. They have controlled political power long enough to stack the financial deck in their favor.


......"The boomers have set up institutions that will continue to benefit them, at the expense of other groups, as they grow old and live longer than any other generation," Gillon said. "It's spend what you want, cut your own taxes — the ultimate baby boom philosophy of 'We want to have it all.' We're not a generation that's had to deal with the reality of sacrifice."

has generalized beyond reason. I'm a boomer and it's bs, imho. It has to be talking about the small minority of very wealthy republican boomers.

...boomers will more than likely be judged as the most self-indulgent generation that America has seen. Instead of learning the shared values that has been a hallmark of America - and which have guided the American people through some of the darkest periods of our history - the boomers have always asked, "what's in it for me?" It's as if this generation - my generation - had their psychological development stunted during adolescence.

Mandatory ChimpSuck comment: if my view is wrong, how could the White House be occupied by a brain-dead, alcoholic, coke snorting cowboy whose only claim to fame is his ability to master Donkey Kong?

have come through life asking what's in it for me. We are however regular folks who have values. It's bs to generalize to that extreme but I guess if rove and bush can use those tactics it's ok for everyone else as well.:( :sarcasm: Some people are selfish in all generations.

The WWII generation (my parents) took far better care of themselves than my peers ever bothered too.
My parents retired with full medical and nice pensions. Now we are "wondering" whether we can afford to pay me and my age peers the SSI benefits I've been paying for all my life.

:smoke:

Our standard of living and income have been declining in real terms since 1974.

We will never have the pensions or financial security that the WWII generation enjoyed. We've been ripped off and penalized by the tax system our entire lives. We got the head start of a country racked by war and inflation, followed by several serious recessions.

Now headed into retirement years, we've had the benefit of a stock market crash, a country racked by war and inflation.

We've got the same group of peckerhead blue blood criminals in power, profiteering off of war. They have successfully transferred virtually their entire tax burden and that of the corporations they own onto our backs.

Many baby boomers if they are lucky enough to be employed, have had their pensions stolen, and earn less than they did in the early eighties.

Yeah, it's the have it all generation. Who writes this shit? The Rendon group?

have worked more and more for less and less money, and will have to forget about being able to live on our SS money. It ain't gonna happen. The people who truly lucked out are our parents, who were able to retire in a fair amount of security for their old age. Not so now. I've worked since I was 15 goddamn years old, and it looks like I'll be working until I'm 66. And then, who the fuck knows what will happen? My co has pensions, but will they dump them 3 yrs before I retire? Same with health coverage. And don't get me started on the rape of SS.

I know who writes this shit -- it's all those assholes who call the boomers "spoiled" because:
1) they had the nerve to protest the Vietnam War
2) didn't think that sex outside of marriage was the end of the world,
3) thought that women and blacks were regular citizens and should be treated as such,
4) challenged the idea that people with tons of money were Gods.

So, fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

in school so i could have gotten a degree so i could get a job writing this kind of crap.there`s millions of us out here that have a really bleak future thank`s to the neo-liberal/con raping of america..

"we`re not a generation that`s had to deal with the reality of sacrfice" what fucking planet does this fuck head live on? planet bush?

I am a boomer and I never left (no pun intended) my activist roots, which were inspired by the '60s and '70s. But then I also had left leaning family members who were WOBBLYs, so perhaps this helped. However, this often made me the 'enemy', not the ally of these people mentioned in the above article.

At any rate, those so-called boomers sold out IMO. All their sit ins and marching activities was shallow and insincere. They were merely following what was "in" at the moment. It had little to do with real social justice. Beginning with Jerry Rubin, who joined Wall Street, and then with the first women's rights advocates, who forgot about poor women in their pursuit of a career that now mandate that poor women to work in dead end jobs for the rest of their lives, while bringing down real wages for men and thus for everyone. They denigrated the work of women IMO by disdaining the important work of parenting and community building in exchange for working for some corporate welfare queen. Never once have I heard an apology or even a regret from these bourgeois group who got theirs and left the rest of their generation behind ~ making it worse for most.

My 2 cents

Cat In Seattle

talking about.

You cannot make gross generalizations about an group of people -- so vast in number.

Just like taking averages of huge numbers and coming up with one number to show the "average".

This idiot writer is a dumb assed idiot.

Bushie is of boomer generation -- and he is a spoiled rich boy who would have drugged up and gone on drunk binges simply because he was rich and his ass is ALWAYS covered.

I doubt that he even was sober long enough to watch the Vietnam war news coverage.

The older generation managed to get a whole lot of the Boomers killed off in Vietnam (or even more died from bad abortions) --

Woodstock, Berkeley free speech movement, Haight/Ashberry -- only a tiny fraction of Boomers were involved in these.

Gross generalizations always miss their target.

Send this jerk to Afghanistan -- put him in jail with the other writer -- then we'll see what he can write about.

Here it is, you are too selfish, you have always had your own way, you don't deserve social
security. BS, I am a booner, I have had worked my entire life in public service. George
Bush is in the White House, because people built a Republican machine to establish 1 party rule in this country. They picked GWB because he could be isolated and would be easy to manipulate.

We then discussed that you can't paint a whole generation with such a broad brush. But we did agree that the boomers have proved to be some of the shitiest poiticians and leaders of the last century. Donkey and elephant. I don't think that's a broad brush stroke. I think that's factual. If you want to get into why, then the whole boomer angle is just one part of a larger story. .... My kids are teens and very smart, and they see what's going on. I think their generation will have better leaders.

But to say "you can't paint a whole generation with such a broad brush" and then to say "the boomers have proved to be some of the shitiest poiticians and leaders of the last century" seems a bit inconsistent. And in all fairness I have to say "shitiest poiticians and leaders of the last century" is a very competitive field: R. M. Nixon, Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover come right to mind, and then there is Spiro T. Agnew, A Mitchell Palmer, and Harry Anslinger, and that's just skimming a few from the top. Bush is the only Boomer I can think of that appears to be in the same class as those. Hmm, was John Ashcroft a boomer? He would work, and a bunch of the Neocons I would bet.