# How the baby boomers destroyed everything **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 26, 2017, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878 "2017-02-26T21:30:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/41 "2017-03-01T22:25:34Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > \*\*Shit, dude, we liberals kept **trying** to tax ourselves in a responsible manner, all the way back to the Reagan years. It was the non-liberals who went on this anti-government anti-taxation spree. The culprits here are not so much generational as ideological. Even leaving side the questionable premise of your post, who specifically is stopping you from sending the government money? ---
**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/42 "2017-03-02T00:18:06Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > **Non-Republican** boomers have done that more than once. As I pointed out and you steadfastly ignored, over the past several decades the people who have been stubbornly resistant to all suggestions of **any** tax increase **ever** have been Republicans of **all** generations. > > It’s truly amazing to see how suddenly the taxation conversation has flipped from the constant Republican chant of _“Taxes bad! Tax cuts good!”_ to resentful whining because those **other** people back then didn’t tax themselves enough. > > Shit, dude, we liberals kept **trying** to tax ourselves in a responsible manner, all the way back to the Reagan years. It was the non-liberals who went on this anti-government anti-taxation spree. The culprits here are not so much generational as ideological. Yes, I have steadfastly ignored you attempts to frame this as a republican democrat issue when we are talking about baby boomers as a generation. When you say we liberals did this that those republicans did that you are ignoring 70% of the population. The middle is what wins elections, and they are the one susceptible to being swayed one way or the other based on who is offering the better deal. From my perspective outside of the boomer generation it doesn’t matter what you call yourselves, what matters is what actually happened. From my perspective it looks like a large voting block was able to use their power to get the benefits of high taxes on their parents, when their parents were at their highest earning potential. Then when the boomers moved into the period where they were at their highest earning potential, taxes on the highest earners went down dramatically. Then when the boomers began retiring and pulling money out of retirement accounts and selling off family homes, capital gains taxes went down dramatically. It looks like evidence is showing that when it comes to taxes the boomers have used their large voting block to get more for less from both their parents and their kids. ---
**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:** [March 2, 2017, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/43 "2017-03-02T00:44:06Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Even leaving side the questionable premise of your post, who specifically is stopping you from sending the government money? Gosh, why don’t we? What could possibly be against this? The answer is very much like everything else about government good or bad. If one single person does it, they gain nothing and have a tangible loss. If tens of millions of people were to do this, however, then positive gains could be seen (if the money were spent properly). Actual governance leverages this. A tax gets tens of millions of households to each contribute for the public good, which governments at all levels use in a huge variety of designated ways. The difficulty is always how much or how little to tax and how to spend the money. This used to be called civics. Apparently it’s no longer taught. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/44 "2017-03-02T00:58:51Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > I think it means “uppity wimmenfolks no longer make sammitches”. > > Yeah, that’s it. That’s what this Millennial said. Y’know, like we’re known for saying. :rolleyes: There are indeed quite a few reactionary misogynist Millennials habitually grousing about the erosion of rigidly defined gender roles and the alleged consequent deterioration of society. I may not have accurately represented their accent, but I interpreted their meaning just fine. > [@smiling bandit](#): > > who specifically is stopping you from sending the government money? :dubious: Are you under the impression that I could fix the budget deficit all by my lonesome if only I bothered to write a check? That kind of suggestion is as idiotic as snarking that individuals shouldn’t push for carbon-tax legislation but should just cut down on their own use of fossil fuels. In both cases, it completely misses the point that the problem is orders of magnitude too big to be dealt with by the volunteer efforts of ordinary individuals: the only thing that will be effective is national legislation. Which is why the liberals who actually want the problems solved keep pushing for such legislation, and the conservatives who just want a scapegoat to blame for the problems keep resisting it. > [@sitchensis](#): > > Yes, I have steadfastly ignored you attempts to frame this as a republican democrat issue when we are talking about baby boomers as a generation. But what you are ignoring is the reality of the situation, in favor of your speculative-bullshit hypothesis about generational trends. In the real world, **support for irresponsible unrealistic anti-tax policies correlates with political affiliation much more than with generational identity.** > [@sitchensis](#): > > When you say we liberals did this that those republicans did that you are ignoring 70% of the population. The middle is what wins elections And that 70% of the population is **not** all baby boomers, and certainly hasn’t been over the course of the last several decades. No one generation is responsible for the economic delusions of the recent past, but one side of the political spectrum overwhelmingly is. [Democrats and liberals decisively rejected the Reaganomics snake-oil in the 1980 election, while Republicans and conservatives enthusiastically embraced it](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-1980/). ---
**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:** [March 2, 2017, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/45 "2017-03-02T01:11:51Z")
y’know, I’m kind of tired of this whole thing. “Generations” don’t inherently do this, that or the other thing. every generation is a product of the preceding one, and views the world through the lenses their parents (and grandparents) gave them. As **Amateur Barbarian** correctly points out, the Boomers are a product of being raised in America’s post-WWII boom. We got out of WWII relatively unscathed; aside from Pearl Harbor nobody was bombing us into rubble. We had nothing to rebuild. We had thousands of returning servicemen who would need jobs. We had pent-up demand for consumer goods like appliances, cars, etc. and houses since so much of industry had been re-purposed to make military hardware. In contrast, Europe and Japan were in shambles. they had to spend so much of their resources rebuilding. We were so successful from 1945-1960s because we didn’t have much competition. Post-WWII America was an anomaly. anyone promising to return us to that is selling you a bill of goods. ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/46 "2017-03-02T01:30:06Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > I getting tired of taking the blame for my parent’s greed. Those of us who were born in the 40s and 50s were not making policy decisions then. It was our parents, the so called ‘Greatest generation’ who awarded themselves with social security and Medicare and passed the bill along to their children. Now, after a lifetime of paying into the systems to support that generation, we find ourselves at the point where we would like to get something back. Instead we find the old folks have consumed most of what we gave them and left a note in the empty cupboard that says: ‘Off to our afternoon golf match. Send more money and put it on your children’s tab.’ > > Our kids have good reason to not want to pay into that system. Boomers will never have the retirements and medical care that our parents enjoy now and our children even less so unless we take more serious cuts. I am a baby boomer and my dad wasn’t allowed on the golf course b/c he was Jewish ! ---
**Author:** ![Skypist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skypist/32/169_2.png) [@Skypist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skypist)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/47 "2017-03-02T02:31:38Z")
Boy, it’s like Generation X doesn’t even exist! “Boomers did this so now Millenials are suffering!” Uh…there’s a generation in between those two!!! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/48 "2017-03-02T03:12:08Z")
> [@sitchensis](#): > > That just supports what I’m saying. If you look at **E-DUB** ’s initial post he says boomers raised taxes on themselves to pay for their future SS benefits. It’s your contention that they didn’t because they didn’t have enough power. That makes sense because a boomer would never raise taxes on themselves. > What I’m saying is that from 1983 on they have been continuingly lowering taxes on themselves. All raising their SS payments did was funnel a larger amount of the taxes they were paying back to them specifically, instead of the larger public. No fact supports what you are saying. What you claimed was that Boomers lowered the taxes that they would pay. To “prove” your point, you cited the creation of a law in which Boomers could not have been significant participants. Living in the Trump universe, where one says whatever makes one feel good is a recipe for disaster. ---
**Author:** ![pohjonen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pohjonen/32/423_2.png) [@pohjonen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pohjonen)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/49 "2017-03-02T03:28:51Z")
Boomers had no more control over what the politicians did yesterday than you younger folks do today. Government made all of those decisions and steered the narrative, not the people, just like always. It is amusing to me that anyone would seriously believe otherwise. ---
**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:** [March 2, 2017, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/50 "2017-03-02T13:29:53Z")
Assuming that boomers vote as a bloc on almost any issue is a major mistake. Republican boomers welcomed Reagan’s tax-slashing. In any event, the constant cries for tax cuts is indeed a conservative position, not a generational one. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/51 "2017-03-02T13:41:30Z")
Medicare and Social Security wasn’t the result of “greed.” It was a response to the pervasive problem of elder poverty. And to the extent there are issues to be dealt with, it’s not because they were ponzi schemes that would never last. It’s the result of a series of false crises created by people with a political interest in making people think that it’s all about to fall apart and they will never benefit from it. ---
**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/52 "2017-03-02T17:59:56Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > No fact supports what you are saying. > What you claimed was that Boomers lowered the taxes that they would pay. To “prove” your point, you cited the creation of a law in which Boomers could not have been significant participants. > Living in the Trump universe, where one says whatever makes one feel good is a recipe for disaster. Can you at least try and follow along. 1. E-DUB claimed the 1983 law which\*\* raised \*\*SS contributions had something to do with boomers. 2. My claim was that even if that were true, taxes have been going down dramatically after that law was passed. I then provided actual numbers. I didn’t cite the SS deal, to support anything. I used 1983 as a base year for my numbers because it was already on the table. 3. You stumbled in to say boomers had nothing to do with the law. 4. Okay, the one law anybody was using in this thread supporting boomers being responsible had nothing to do with boomers. That’s great for my argument. 5)You once again stumble in with no clue and yell Trump ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/53 "2017-03-02T19:10:16Z")
> [@Skypist](#): > > Boy, it’s like Generation X doesn’t even exist! “Boomers did this so now Millenials are suffering!” Uh…there’s a generation in between those two!!! :mad: Generation X is now largely ignored because it doesn’t have the numbers of either the Baby Boomers or the Millennials. They also had the reputation for being skeptical and cynical about trends which is why marketeers gladly stopped paying attention to them once the more-pliable Millennials came of age. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/54 "2017-03-03T05:15:39Z")
> [@sitchensis](#): > > Can you at least try and follow along. > > 1. E-DUB claimed the 1983 law which\*\* raised \*\*SS contributions had something to do with boomers. > 2. My claim was that even if that were true, taxes have been going down dramatically after that law was passed. I then provided actual numbers. I didn’t cite the SS deal, to support anything. I used 1983 as a base year for my numbers because it was already on the table. > 3. You stumbled in to say boomers had nothing to do with the law. > 4. Okay, the one law anybody was using in this thread supporting boomers being responsible had nothing to do with boomers. That’s great for my argument. > 5)You once again stumble in with no clue and yell Trump This is a thread attempting to claim Boomers are responsible for the destruction of all good things. You wandered in with one irrelevant (as regard Boomers) claim about an action that you deem terrible. You now want to stand back and say that you were only talking about a general path of destruction, but that you were not really talking about Boomers. So, basically, you had nothing to contribute to the thread and now you are upset that that has been pointed out. _meh_ ---
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/55 "2017-03-03T12:40:33Z")
One has to look at what happened during March 1999 to understand why the world is where it’s at today. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/56 "2017-03-03T13:17:20Z")
A lot of things happened in March 1999. Could you possibly be more specific? Spell it out for us, no need to be so coy! ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/57 "2017-03-03T13:20:21Z")
The first Dopers appeared? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/58 "2017-03-03T20:18:52Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > A lot of things happened in March 1999. [Sure did.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/March_1999) I’m guessing **SeniorCitizen007** is referring to the EC resignation or the NATO airstrikes, though I’m kind of hoping s/he actually meant the first hot-air balloon circumnavigation or the cinematic release of _The Matrix_. ---
**Author:** ![sinjin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@sinjin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/59 "2017-03-04T01:13:28Z")
Can we just stop it with the boomers being a 20 year Phenom??? Originally the Boomers were just after WWII babies. 1945-1950ish. Late boomers like me had it sucky. All the early boomers had all the jobs, the schooling etc. Born in the late fifties/early 60’s we were screwed. Soooo many kids, so few jobs. All of my late boomer friends are liberal. We are the ones who lived thru duck and cover drills in grammar school. We are the ones who experienced integrated schools and our parents angst. We are the ones who lived thru Viet Nam. The 40’s-early 50’s boomers are the ones who had pearls to clutch. There were no pearls for us going to high school in the 70’s. ---
**Author:** ![sinjin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@sinjin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878/60 "2017-03-04T01:23:58Z")
On another note, it was a well known Republican mantra in the 70’s that SS would not be there for us when we retired. And yet here I am getting a SS check every month. My father was positive there would be no SS for him or my Mom, and yet Mom still gets a check every month. It’s not much but it keeps her out of poverty. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/780878.md?page=4)