Defining "normal" based on what your parents had. Reasonable or overly entitled?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Just read this article:

In Pa., boomers see the American Dream slip away

Synopsis: Boomers in a small town reminisce about the good ole days they had back in the 1970s, when you could get a good factory job right out of high school. But compared to their parents, who were able to work for 25 years at those jobs and then retire with nice pensions, they are struggling to make ends meet because the factories aren’t there anymore. They point their fingers at the government for all of this. Most of the people interviewed seem to think Trump will save them.

The first thing I thought when I read this piece (Trumpism aside) was, “Man, they sure sound like Millennials!” You will often hear 20-somethings grousing about how good the Boomers had it compared to what they are going through (e.g., high student debt, devalued college degrees, hyper-competitive job market, etc.) In this stereotypical Millennial’s mind, their generation has been robbed of their chances of a normal middle-class existence.

The Boomers in that article are expressing the same complaint. They feel robbed of a “normal” middle class existence, and they are defining normal as “what my parents have”. Like, the couple bemoaning the fact that they can’t afford to retire down in Florida. For them, living in a nice retirement community with tennis courts and golf courses is normal for middle-class folks. Because they can’t afford this, they feel screwed. Just like the Millennial who can’t afford to buy a house like his parents did when they were his age.

On one hand, I think such bitterness is understandable. Especially because there’s this expectation ingrained in Americans that children should always do as well or better than their parents, and if this doesn’t happen, then the kid must be a some kind of loser who made bad choices. You grow up living life a certain way, and it is seems reasonable to expect that certain way to continue for you as long as you do what you’re told to do. So why wouldn’t you feel “robbed” when things don’t work out? And why wouldn’t you feel anger when your parents (or others in their age demographic) blame you for the major disappointments you’re dealing with?

But on the other hand, it is just plain fool-hardy to define “normal” based on what your parents had. That’s just a sadder version of keeping up with the Jones’s, IMHO. Yes, it’s jarring that your parents were able to retire at 50 while you’ll be working well into your 70s. But is it a travesty? I don’t know. For me to know whether it is a travesty, I’d need to look at what the “norm” is for people with no college degree or vocational training everywhere else on this planet. I can say that working past retirement age is an unenviable position to be in–one that I hope I don’t find myself in. But it is difficult for me to see how a person in this position has been necessarily wronged or “screwed over”. I guess a Boomer without a college degree complaining about working past retirement age registers the same response in me as the complaint of a Millennial who is upset he or she can’t find work with their esoteric humanities degree: Somebody must have told you wrong if you thought you were doing everything right.

So this is my long-winded way of saying I’m ambivalent about the viewpoints in that article. The liberal in me wants to sympathize with the downtrodden victims of capitalism, but the conservative in me wants to shout “We all make choices.”

What’s your take?

2

I think “normal” needs to be defined as what the average person in one’s country or region has. Otherwise a billionaire’s kids might claim that a posh lifestyle is “normal” and feel cheated if deprived of it.

3

Average over what timespan?

The big deal driving Trump and lots of other similar whining around the world is that:

A) Worldwide, the period from ~1850 (that’s eighteen fifty) to ~1990 was unprecedented in all of human history in terms of technological growth. And economic growth except when and where devastated by war.

B) Specifically in the US, the period from ~1945 (that’s nineteen forty five) to ~1990 was unprecedented in all of US in terms of economic growth and prosperity for the common man.
There is no guarantee these events will never be repeated. But it’s not the way to bet. Regression to the mean is more likely.

As with your billionaire’s son: If your experience isn’t typical, neither will be your ideas of what “normal” is.

4

I think, and this may be going off in a different direction, or maybe not.

Young people start out wanting to have what their parents have now. They forget, or ignore, that their parents didn’t start with everything they have now.

I’m a boomer. When my parents first got married they didn’t have a car, they used public transportation. They lived in a tiny apartment in a private home. Then they moved to a row house and had only one car for years. Cooking was done from scratch, eating out was a rare treat. Then they moved to a rancher in the burbs, still one car, still cooking from scratch, meals at home, no AC, B&W TV, clothes hung out on the line as there was no dryer.
By the time I was leaving home there were two cars, AC, meals out a few times a week, color TV, microwave - all the modern conveniences.
So of course when I moved out, I wanted to live at the same level that I was used to. I didn’t want to live like they had to, I wanted to live like they do now. I wanted appliances that matched, two cars, central AC and to eat out several nights a week.

As the bar gets raised, each generation wants to live in the style they are used to, and they want to live that way NOW!
They don’t want to start at a low paying job and work their way up. They don’t want to start in a modest house without AC and have to hang the clothes outside. They don’t want to eat at home every night.

I’m not going to deny that the opportunities are not the same as they were. Then again, how many of today’s youth would want to work in a factory, or on an assembly line. It’s hot, hard, backbreaking work.
My grandfather was determined that none of his sons would work in the steel mill or in a coal mine. My parents were determined that I would never work in a factory or on an assembly line. The bar gets raised with each generation, and it’s not enough to achieve more than your parents, people want to start out higher than their parents.

Sometimes, life just doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you have to take the job that is beneath you, and buy the house that is too small, and share a car. Sometimes you have to wait for the things you want and just concentrate on getting the things you need.

5

I think that misses the point. The boomers aren’t so much whining about what their parents had, they’re whining about what THEY had (secure factory jobs) that they don’t have anymore. It’s not “entitlement” to be bitter about losing what you had, it’s simply human nature.

6

Paul Graham makes a similar point in his essay An Alternative Theory of Unions. During a period of heavy growth, a company or industry or economy is willing to pay more to ensure a steady supply of labor. Now that the heavy growth period you described is over, it’s unrealistic to expect basic manual-labor jobs to provide very comfortable or reliable incomes.

7

I agree. The baby boomers in the article graduated into a good economy and got good jobs. But since then the factories closed, and they lost their jobs or otherwise were affected by the economy in town getting worse. Maybe they are “entitled” but I think it’s completely understandable and reasonable why they feel upset.

8

It is normal and reasonable to expect that, in the United States, if you graduate from college, or even high school, and are willing to work reasonably hard, you should be able to afford a modest lifestyle that includes a home, car and ability to raise a couple of children. The United States is the wealthiest, most productive country in the history of the world. So if our society can’t provide a minimum standard of living for the bulk of the citizens who are willing to work for it, what is the point?
I went to college in a PA steel town over 20 years ago. It was just as depressed then as it is now. Probably more so. My wife’s extended family is also from the same stock. I have some sympathy for these people because of their economic plight, but I also kind of feel like they brought a lot of it on themselves. Or at the very least, they take very little action to mitigate or avoid it. They are stubborn, inflexible people who are resistant to change or new ideas. They are more likely to balk at suggestions for retraining and retooling and instead follow someone like Trump promising to bring the plant back (in spite of all economic evidence to the contrary). They are quick to blame Government or those Fat Cats on Wall Street, but then quickly block any actions that might improve their situation.

How long do you live in a town before you realize that the steel mill or whatever industry isn’t coming back and it’s time to make different choices?

LSLGuy - Why does your Period of Unprecedentedness stop in 1990? According to this chart, that growth shows no sign of stopping.

9

Baby Boomers comparing today to the 1950s are like Chicago Bulls fans longing for the 1990s dynasty days. That era was an anomaly; an *unusually *good Bulls era. Expecting it to last forever is unrealistic.

10

People keep saying that, but what was so special about the 1950s? The institutionalized racism? McCarthyism? The Korean War? The excitement of the first full-color television broadcast?

11

I think this is really the case- people who become accustomed to something tend to perceive it as normal, when in fact it may be stupendously extraordinary.

I think a lot of people perceive the 1940s-1970s as the “golden age” where the US seemed to be pre-eminent in literally every endeavor- science, industry, economy, militarily, etc… even though most of that was a combination of being a huge nation with untouched industrial capacity after the war, rather than anything particularly exceptional on our part. Sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, there were a series of economic shocks and a lot of unemployment, and that kind of changed the mental landscape, IMO. There were certainly some negative aspects, but for your average white person, things were good in that era, and the society was overwhelmingly white (like 80%-plus in terms of population).

So these people grew up in that age- even if their parents weren’t well off, or things were difficult, they grew up in that era, and a lot of that wore off on them. Even if they weren’t above the median for the era, they knew what that median was. It wasn’t their parents’ area of working on the farm or in the mines- it was working in a factory for good money, owning their own new home, etc…

12

The “people” saying it are attempting to equate a perceived evil of today did not exist at an earlier time. It’s political and has no basis in fact. We all long for the good old days, when in reality, our individual moments of good old days where just that, moments. The country as a whole undertook a massive change in the post-WWII time, but everyone in it moved within their own perception and their own time frame. It’s very easy to forget (deliberate or otherwise) not everyone in the immediate post-WWII time moved to the suburbs, got a new car, worked 9-5 MF, had a gazillion friends and life was good. Ask those “people” today for specifics of the time and they will conveniently not remember nor realize it was only about them, and no one else.

13

Not the government… Unions!

Union!
Union!
Union!

Not fair!

We want higher wages! (And they are making $40k a year. Employers can’t fire unproductive employees.)

Etc.

14

Well, the 1950s were a time of prosperity for Americans relative to where they were in the 30s and 40s and relative to just about everyone else in the world (turns out having bombs dropped on your country really fucks up the economy). But a lot of that prosperity was actually fueled by government spending. I wonder how many people backing Trump for his mad capitalist skillz would be just as satisfied with the kind of big government we had in the 1950s.

Fundamentally, though, I think the 1950s seem special because Boomers were children during that time. The days of childhood always seem like the “good ole days”. And classic TV perpetuates this notion. If Norman Lear had been creating shows back in the 1950s, maybe folks wouldn’t be so quick to put that time period up on a pedestal. I dunno.

15

I agree with this. It’s not a simple expectation, you can’t assume living in the same region will provide the same opportunities your parents had, you can’t assume you can have the same kind of job as your parents did, but you should expect that there are enough jobs to live a similar kind of middle class life if you are willing to work.

16

Considering that television, prior to the color era, was black and white, this comment doesn’t make any more sense than if someone in the year 2060 mocks us (here in the year 2016) for “only” having Internet, smart phones, Google, etc. :rolleyes: