As you say none of those are technically boomers though Keating is close at '44. But the kids participating in the argument were certainly of the view that boomer means “older people” so it wasn’t a relevant distinction at the time.
Being part of Gen-X, I kind of feel like we are more of a neglected transition between the Baby Boomers and Millenials / Gen Zs. Boomers and the earlier generation (Silent?) largely got to tap into a typical “go to college, get a job at a big corporation for 40 years, buy a house, retire a millionaire” life path.
As Gen-X, we were sort of latch-key, middle-children of history. Sort of directionless, glib, adult-children with no purpose in life. Just look at our films - Office Space, Fight Club, Clerks, Singles, Reality Bites, Gross Point Blank.
I don’t think we were particularly racist or homophobic. We just didn’t take offence every time someone got called a “homo” or used the “N-word” in an Eddie Murphy film.
This is true and only pedantry on my part.
But you need to have a degree of sympathy for this mob, they probably don’t know the “Apart from all of this, what did this Roman ever do for us?” reference
I think “generations” is a meaningless concept, expect when actually referring to the years people were born.
Maybe that’s why “boomer” doesn’t offend me. It’s like calling me an apple cart, it has no meaning.
My children are better brought up than that. They understand Monty Python and Airplane (Flying High) references. Well, mostly.
When I was a kid, some old guy yelled at me to get off his yard. Today I yell at some kid to do the same. It’s the circle of life or something. However, now I’ve become the man who’s getting it stuck to. I think.
Ha! Well, don’t feel bad; someday you’ll enjoy your turn as the target of derision and loathing too.
And of course, if someone calls you a boomer, you can always go Oklahoman and say you’re a Sooner.
The phrase “Boomer Sooner” refers to the Land Run of 1889, in which the land around the modern university was settled.[5] Boomers were people who campaigned for the lands to be opened (or tried to enter the lands) before passage of the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889. Sooners were land thieves who settled before the lands were officially opened, giving them an unfair advantage on finding, fencing, and claiming farm land. If the charge of early entry was proven, they would lose their claimed land.[ citation needed ]
It does have meaning, IMO.
People born at roughly the same time have some interests that are going to be common to them all at the same time: child care and education, retirement, senior care, etc. The commonality exists despite differences in language or geography or culture or hobbies because of their age. The majority of people born in Year X are going to reproduce in Years X+16-32 (or w/e; I’m illustrating a point). So during those years, they all have a common interest in child-rearing-related things. That means they will use their economic and political influence to affect those things during those years in particular. In the case of the Boomers, that’s a lot of influence, relative to other generations.
I think you missed my point, which was that maybe some boomers voted badly, but others did not, and therefore agreeing with this:
I’m so sorry I missed this before, because it encapsulates the problem so well. The answer is that you can’t make meaningful statements about the actions of groups as large as generations (or races or genders or pick your hated group), only about individuals. You can state that statistically a group is bad in some way, if you can prove it (you can’t in this case) but so what?
I ask this not only of you, but of everyone who complains about boomers: what practical solution is there to your dilemma? All you can do is hope that enough of us die off fast enough so that you smart young people can make the world a better place. I’m quite serious, by the way, because as far as I can see, there isn’t any solution except time.
Why? Bear in mind that the baby boom was a boom in births not population. I haven’t done the research but I suspect the extent to which there was a population bulge due to the baby boom will by now have been overtaken by population growth, to the point where their supposed undue influence is not much.
My generation will never have the political or economic power of the Boomers. That means there won’t be a whole lot of “move it, old timer” from the next generations: we won’t be a large or powerful enough demographic, ever.
Check the links I provided earlier.
If you were born in 46 it would be 1975 till you experienced the first global recession, being born in 1660 I’ve seen five recessions, I’ve never seen it as being as easy as latter generation suggest.
No your argument, you provide cites. Not vague references to allegedly relevant cites. Your whole attitude to this subject is IMHO one of gross generalisation, lack of consideration of detail, wallowing in self pity and scapegoating.
The starting point on any “the older generation are oppressing me, man” debate is to recall that the boomers, the very people you are currently blaming for all your problems, said exactly the same thing about “The Man” in the sixties. Unless you take a great big gulp of self-awareness and try to bring some objectivity to bear, you aren’t going to get a handle on this.
Yep, that recession when Charles II was on the throne as a real bugger and totally avoidable with good old fashioned Keynesian economics.
There’s the nub of the problem … it’s sour grapes.
Hang in there snookums, your turn to be an impediment to the rise of civilisation is yet to come.
Geez, Discourse, cut a guy a break, can’t you? When you’re 361 years old you’ll need a few months to rest up between SDMB posts too.
To your earlier point, there were ~78M people born in the baby boom; then, from 1965-1990 (picking more mature ages), there were about 93M people born…if you want to extend that to 2000, you get ~133M. Given boomers are way more likely to be dead, that’s a pretty big preponderance of non-boomers alive today (more specifically: boomers make up about 21% of the population).
So boomers are outnumbered, but have two things that swing the scale back toward them - they hold more wealth, and they vote in much higher concentrations. Not much that can be done about the former, but lots can be done about the latter, like, say, getting off their asses and voting.
Well, to be fair, he does have to wait an entire 2 years until his generation is as old as the one he’s complaining about.
Over the next couple of decades boomers (a) are going to die in droves (b) are going to spend down their wealth on healthcare and/or their children will inherit. Which means both their voting power and their wealth disparity are going to fall off a cliff.
Give me break it’s the eyes that are first to go, other than I’m doing OK, another seven years I’ll be on the pension in my million dollar house, watching sky news.