President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Full disclosure, my hatred of Baby Boomers is personal... well, professional, not truly personal.

 

I know Baby Boomers in their 70s who are still working.
"Why would I retire? I'm making money."

"Why, because you are devouring opportunities for young people who want to start their lives but can't. Why, because you maxed out your retirement benefits 10 years ago. Why, because people who'd like to better their lives can't because you have bottlenecked advancement opportunities for the last decade. Why, go fishing; go play golf; go see things; go spend time with your grandchildren because God knows you ignored your kids; you don't get an extra gold star in heaven by being a workaholic."

 

I'd argue the Boomers resent Gen X even more than they do Millennials.
They hired Gen X, and then a lot of them got pushed out because they weren't as resourceful, as efficient or as flame-tested as X.
X came of age during a 1990s recession and reached its prime during a global recession (also created by the Boomers, not to mention the war created by Boomers).
And so the Boomers take a lot of it out on Millennials, because they figure everyone also dislikes those assholes.

 

I don't mean to insult anyone here... but I think anyone who has spent a good deal of time in newspapers has seen the shortsightedness and intractability of Boomers first-hand.
And maybe even had their careers hurt, or at least dinged a bit, by the actions of Boomers running newsrooms.
So, yes, the criticism is professionally based, and utterly legitimate.
Many of these people needed to take a hike 10 years ago.

 

Look at the Dems in Congress, and until recently the sports TV field was dominated by older pxp guys and hosts. It's one of the things that really irritates me, a lot of Boomers got early "breaks" in their careers Not disputing their talent, but those same execs seem a lot less willing to give those same breaks to following generations.

 

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That's why I got off the Titanic six years ago. I honestly shouldn't be bitter. My life is measurably better now on every level, but there is still a little resentment there.

 

Yeah - Mary Junck and others collecting bonuses while laying off thousands needs a mention here. Unconscionable. The kind of think newspapers would slap all over their front pages if another company or industry did it. And actually did when the bailout companies were spending federal dollars on bonuses.

 

Many demographers consider Boomer people who were born up to 1964. I think that is a little much. To me, the Baby Boom is like I said earlier, post WWII to about the mid 50s. My brother-in-law just turned 60. He was born in 1958. He's nowhere near a Baby Boomer. He is still working, and justifiably so. He is contributing, not draining.

My mother is the younger of my parents. She was born in Nov. 1945. I don't consider her a Boomer. She was already in the womb before the war was over.

 

I have tried to understand why these people are so angry.
For so long Boomers were the darlings of the culture.
Now they are no longer being used to sell shit, or more importantly not being used to sell ideas.
They have their money and we all have the technology to extend their lives, and they don't seem to want to step aside- Thank you, that will be all- and get with the program.

 

Here's a Boomer story:
I left the newspaper business in 2012 after having been assistant sports editor for 15 years. The sitting sports editor held the job from 1991 when his predecessor moved on.
Flash forward to 2017. I am happily a high school teacher. I was selected to be part of the committee who recommended we build a new school. The Boomers lost their minds because taxes would have to pay for it. At the county commission meeting where funding was to be decided, a recent high school grad now in college got up and spoke. He discussed how he would love to have had a new school, how it would have better prepared him for the future. This was a young man who wouldn't have received any benefit from a new school and who would have been paying for it for the next 30 years. A Boomer beside me in the crowd, a man who maybe graduated high school 50+ years ago and will be dead within 10 years, said, "Huhmmph ... he's just a kid. He don't know what he's talking about."