# Are Baby Boomers ever going to quit ruining the country? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 26, 2019, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075 "2019-06-26T00:34:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/61 "2019-06-27T21:16:06Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Maybe I’m not. I thought we were talking about American Boomers, who racked up huge govt debt and failed to save for retirement. This was very much a bipartisan movement. I’m a Boomer. How did I rack up huge government debt? And Btw, I have a nice retirement fund. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/62 "2019-06-27T21:17:45Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > I thought we were talking about American Boomers, who racked up huge govt debt and failed to save for retirement. This was very much a bipartisan movement. Yeah, like the three major tax cuts (2001, 2003, 2017) so far this century. Bipartisan! Or spending trillions on a totally unnecessary war in Iraq. Bipartisan! Sure, too many Dems went along with the Iraq war, and with the huge defense budget increases in the past few years. But the **push** came from the GOP, all you can really say about the Dems is that they had (and continue to have) no backbones. They didn’t make those things happen; the Republicans did. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/63 "2019-06-28T01:36:48Z")
The World War II generation ran the country beginning with the Congressional elections in 1946 and Eisenhower in 1952, right up until George H.W. Bush left office in 1993. That’s more than 40 years. Baby boomers haven’t even run the country for 30 years yet. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/64 "2019-06-28T02:02:15Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > Lucky for you, I got enough fuel in the hate tank for the both of you. Cognitive dissonance on the part of US conservatives has apparently reached the breaking point. Their only way out of continuing to avoid the realization of what shitty things their ideology has done to this country is to try to reframe the problems as generational instead of ideological. > [@Chessic Sense](#): > > I’m the Millennial. I’m the one who knows it won’t even exist when I’m retired. 😃 Wow, there’s a blast from the past for you: I remember the conservative ad campaigns pitching exactly that same “Social Security won’t be there for you when you retire” spiel to younger Boomers around 1995 and to Gen-Xers around 2005. Kiddo, the influential wealthy conservatives behind these ad campaigns **want** you to believe that Social Security won’t exist when you’re retired, because they want you to vote for Social Security privatization, which will move hundreds of billions of dollars into private investment, which will massively increase the value of their own assets, which will make them lots of money. They do not give one rat’s ass about whether your non-guaranteed-benefit privatized retirement plan will destroy your savings in a market downturn, or about what happens to you in case of such a catastrophe. Don’t like the massive hollowing out of the economy and environmental destruction engineered by conservatives over the last fifty years or so? Well then, vote for a Democrat, or a Democratic Socialist. Or, if you don’t want to face up to the damage that your ideology has caused, just keep on whining about old people in general. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/65 "2019-06-28T04:16:25Z")
I’m getting the feeling that the ‘solution’ for Baby Boomer retirement is going to involve ice floes. CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/66 "2019-06-28T05:06:42Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > I’m getting the feeling that the ‘solution’ for Baby Boomer retirement is going to involve ice floes. Nah, it’s just part of the increasingly desperate efforts by American conservatives to avoid facing up to their responsibility for decades of shitty policies and irresponsible leadership. _“It’s all the fault of the old people, let’s kill all the old people!”_ is just the latest attempt at political deflection. Look at the craven weaseling all through [the OP’s linked article](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/?utm_source=pocket-newtab): > [@](#): > > the incredible rise in incarceration rates Largely due to “law and order” conservatives ostentatiously getting “tough on crime” with harsh (and expensive) sentencing for nonviolent offenders. > [@](#): > > Even young Americans today who are free from prison are nonetheless in bondage to debt—sometimes their own debt, in the form of rapidly growing student loans or personal and credit-card loans. Largely due to anti-tax conservatives whittling away at education spending, and the conservative tilt of economic benefits towards the wealthy. > [@](#): > > Making these payments will require fiscal austerity, through either higher taxes or lower alternative spending. Largely because conservatives refused to raise taxes on the wealthy and beat the drum for some hideously expensive unnecessary wars. > [@](#): > > For virtually the entire period of Boomer political dominance, it has been obvious that long-term obligations needed to be fixed. And yet, the problem has not been fixed. Largely because, again, conservatives were vehemently opposed to raising taxes on the wealthy, even as the wealthy constantly increased their disproportionate amounts of income and wealth. What’s more interesting than this dishonest litany of conservative whining is the question of exactly what they’re trying to sell the public this time. ISTM that Republicans are finally recognizing that their Trump/Pence/McConnell-era establishment is rapidly losing all credibility, and that some serious economic/environmental austerity measures are inevitable, despite their decades of insouciantly assuring their constituents that all the concerns are just Democratic “fearmongering” and “socialism”. Their best hope, as the elderly Republican establishment collapses under its own weight of petty obstructionism and greed, is to try to take the elderly Democratic establishment down with it. Solution: point the finger at **all** the old people together, and never never mention any specific conservative as being to blame for something. But what do they expect to get out of it in the long run? Are there any particular younger-generation Republicans, or maybe Post-Republicans, whom they expect to win the voters over once they’ve persuaded them that all the conservative folly and stupidity was just a generic geriatric thing? ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/67 "2019-06-28T12:08:52Z")
The next generations can right this ship but they won’t do it by voting Republican. GOP governance is why we’re here in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/68 "2019-06-28T12:44:03Z")
I’ve been on this board for almost twenty years and cannot recall an OP with as assinine a proposition that has generated so many well-intentioned responses. To continue to respond to it gives its premise - that ‘baby boomers’ have somehow ruined the country - a credibility that is not just undeserved but bizarre. It’s the old ‘have you stopped beating your wife’. Hey **Will** , have you stopped beating your wife? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2019, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/69 "2019-06-28T14:45:09Z")
Regardless of how you view the participation of baby boomers in national / social politics over the decades, I think I can reasonably promise you that we will not be messing things up any further after 2079. So the answer to your question is “yes”. ---
**Author:** ![drivekiller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@drivekiller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drivekiller)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2019, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/70 "2019-06-29T07:15:25Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > It’s pretty clearly laid out [here](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/?utm_source=pocket-newtab) that Baby Boomers are the worst thing to happen to America since…well, maybe ever. When they’re not being racist and protectionist, they’re raiding the public treasury for themselves and providing nothing of value in return. > > And the worst sin of them all is their intransigence toward fixing absolutely anything at all. We know the climate is doomed, and we could’ve stopped it, but Baby Boomers refused to do so. They’ll be dead by the time it matters (hopefully). We all know social programs are unsustainable at current levels, but it’s been decades of silence from the Worst Generation. They’ve elected Trump, and with it, a fiscal disaster of a tax cut and a doomed Supreme Court composition that will entrench their terrible life philosophies until long after they’ve done the right thing and keeled over. > > So my question is whether the Baby Boomers will ever look in the mirror, see what a miserable group they collectively are, and try to right the ship, or will rigor mortis set in with them still flipping off the rest of us who have to clean up their financial, moral, and ecological disasters? No. The answer is no. Not until we die. (well not me personally, I’m an economic under-achiever who basically just tries to get along) but my generation— pretty much isn’t going to let go of the shit show we created until we’ve extracted every cancerous, heavy-metal-laden dollar. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2019, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/71 "2019-06-30T03:13:14Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Don’t like the massive hollowing out of the economy and environmental destruction engineered by conservatives over the last fifty years or so? Well then, vote for a Democrat, or a Democratic Socialist. Or, if you don’t want to face up to the damage that your ideology has caused, ::record scratch:: My what? > [@Me](#): > > We know the climate is doomed, and we could’ve stopped it, but Baby Boomers refused to do so. They’ll be dead by the time it matters (hopefully). We all know social programs are unsustainable at current levels, but it’s been decades of silence from the Worst Generation. They’ve elected Trump, and with it, a fiscal disaster of a tax cut and a doomed Supreme Court composition that will entrench their terrible life philosophies until long after they’ve done the right thing and keeled over. ---
**Author:** ![road\_lobo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d78d45/32.png) [@road\_lobo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/road_lobo)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2019, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/72 "2019-06-30T04:28:22Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > It’s pretty clearly laid out [here](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/?utm_source=pocket-newtab) that Baby Boomers are the worst thing to happen to America since…well, maybe ever. When they’re not being racist and protectionist, they’re raiding the public treasury for themselves and providing nothing of value in return. > > And the worst sin of them all is their intransigence toward fixing absolutely anything at all. We know the climate is doomed, and we could’ve stopped it, but Baby Boomers refused to do so. They’ll be dead by the time it matters (hopefully). We all know social programs are unsustainable at current levels, but it’s been decades of silence from the Worst Generation. They’ve elected Trump, and with it, a fiscal disaster of a tax cut and a doomed Supreme Court composition that will entrench their terrible life philosophies until long after they’ve done the right thing and keeled over. > > So my question is whether the Baby Boomers will ever look in the mirror, see what a miserable group they collectively are, and try to right the ship, or will rigor mortis set in with them still flipping off the rest of us who have to clean up their financial, moral, and ecological disasters? You seem to be very America-centric, and have whole-heartedly bought into marketing based demographic ideas like “baby boomers.” Maybe read this: [Strauss–Howe generational theory - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theory) and ask yourself why “Strauss-Howe generational theory has been described by some historians and journalists as a “pseudoscience”[9][10][11] and “an elaborate historical horoscope that will never withstand scholarly scrutiny.”[12][13][14]” No single person has much control of the world. People often can’t control themselves, much less their children, their neighbors, their political party, their country. Life is frustrating, and it will always be so. > **[Illusion of control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control)** > > The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. It was named by U.S. psychologist Ellen Langer and is thought to influence gambling behavior and belief in the paranormal. Along with illusory superiority and optimism bias, the illusion of control is one of the positive illusions. > The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events, for example, when someone feels a sense of control over outcomes tha... ---
**Author:** ![Haldurson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/51bf81/32.png) [@Haldurson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haldurson)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2019, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/73 "2019-06-30T20:55:51Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > It’s pretty clearly laid out [here](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/?utm_source=pocket-newtab) that Baby Boomers are the worst thing to happen to America since…well, maybe ever. I told them at the last secret meeting that they were on to us! OK, here’s the deal. All you Baby Boomers have to immediately go underground – burn your birth certificates, get facial reconstruction surgery (I mean from our secret GOOD plastic surgeons, only available to members of our secret society). Oh and that secret conspiracy to ruin America – put it on hold until we can purge all the databases of our true birthdates. No really, I’m definitely not a baby boomer. Look, you can tell because that grey hair is clearly artificial. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2019, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/74 "2019-07-01T00:52:47Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I think you’re confusing “Baby Boomers” with “Republicans.” > > Are you a Millennial? here’s another irritating thing Boomers do, complain about their Millennial kids. Hey, maybe if you don’t like the way your kids turned out, look in a mirror to get an idea why that might be. but that would mean admitting you made a mistake; much easier to shift blame. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2019, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/75 "2019-07-01T01:07:24Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > I think that **Chronos** is trying to get at something I’ve noticed as well - I’ve been in more than one conversation with adults who are nostalgic for the Christmases and other holidays of their childhood. They’ll go on and on about how all the aunts and uncles and cousins gathered at grandma’s for Christmas or at Uncle Joe’s for the big July 4th BBQ. And then they sadly say " “But now it’s only me, my parents ,my siblings and our kids.” Or “Our kids, our grandchildren and us”. And they don’t even realize that the only thing that changed was that they grew up and are now in the position that their parents/grandparents were in when they were kids. All the aunts and uncles and cousins- to Grandma, that was her kids and grandchildren. Uncle Joe used to have the BBQ- now it’s time for someone younger to take over. I don’t know if Boomers do it more, or if I was just too young to hear the previous generations making the same complaints. that’s one thing that truly has changed, families in general seem to be a lot smaller. I’m late Gen X (42) and anecdotally looking through stuff from both sides of my families’ histories, it seems like: - my great-grandparents generation: families had 5-7 kids - my grandparents generation: families had 3-5 kids - my parents generation: families had 2-3 kids - my generation: families have 1-2 kids - the next (millennials): 0-1 kids Christmas used to mean going to Grandma and Grandpa’s where my 4-5 aunts/uncles and their spouses were their with my 5-6 cousins or so. Christmas now is at my parents’, where it’s just a handful of us because we don’t have any kids. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2019, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/76 "2019-07-01T01:52:27Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > Christmas used to mean going to Grandma and Grandpa’s where my 4-5 aunts/uncles and their spouses were their with my 5-6 cousins or so. Christmas now is at my parents’, where it’s just a handful of us because we don’t have any kids. American mobility vaporized the family unit, and that started in the 1920s. I never had a big family Christmas, because one set of grandparents was in Chicago, the other set was in the Ozarks. My father and his three siblings lived from Florida to California, my mother’s siblings lived a little closer together, but six of them had moved away from my grandparents because they had worked they were old enough to walk, and wanted no more of that as adults. And the only time my grandparents left their little farm that they had lost and bought back more times than my mother could remember was to go to the big city for doctors’ appointments. Now, two of my three kids live 300 miles away, with their own friends and their own obligations. The only time all five of us are together is either a wedding or a funeral. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2019, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/77 "2019-07-01T01:58:45Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Yeah, like the three major tax cuts (2001, 2003, 2017) so far this century. Bipartisan! Or spending trillions on a totally unnecessary war in Iraq. Bipartisan! > > Sure, too many Dems went along with the Iraq war, and with the huge defense budget increases in the past few years. But the **push** came from the GOP, all you can really say about the Dems is that they had (and continue to have) no backbones. They didn’t make those things happen; the Republicans did. Taxes will hover around 18% in perpetuity. Taxes are a red herring. It is spending that is increasing at an unsustainable pace and yes big spending is bipartisan. The Dems show no interest in cutting anything. They threw a fit when Romney wanted to cancel Sesame Street. There is no federal spending that the Dems will lay a finger on, including military spending. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2019, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/78 "2019-07-01T02:51:55Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Taxes will hover around 18% in perpetuity. Taxes are a red herring. It is spending that is increasing at an unsustainable pace and yes big spending is bipartisan. The Dems show no interest in cutting anything. They threw a fit when Romney wanted to cancel Sesame Street. There is no federal spending that the Dems will lay a finger on, including military spending. yet it’s the Republicans who think we need a military equipped to fight WWII all over again by ourselves… they decry “socialism” but have turned the military into the biggest jobs program imaginable. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2019, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/79 "2019-07-01T02:55:38Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > here’s another irritating thing Boomers do, complain about their Millennial kids. Hey, maybe if you don’t like the way your kids turned out, look in a mirror to get an idea why that might be. but that would mean admitting you made a mistake; much easier to shift blame. My response was obviously a joke, reflecting back on the OP the same idiotic generalization about generations. How could you not have gotten that? Are you a Millennial? ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2019, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075/80 "2019-07-01T11:30:41Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > yet it’s the Republicans who think we need a military equipped to fight WWII all over again by ourselves… > > they decry “socialism” but have turned the military into the biggest jobs program imaginable. Sounds like you are trying to make yourself feel better. To suggest Democrats do not favor high military spending is to deny 90 years of history. I’ll leave you to it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-baby-boomers-ever-going-to-quit-ruining-the-country/836075.md?page=5)