Boom!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yes, I’m postponing the post on student loans, till I can write it, probably tonight. Because the weekend didn’t spiral INTO control and that post will take a while to write.

But because I’m still myself, I’m going to write about boomers, why a lot of us blame them for…. almost everything, why my generation (roughly 55 to 64) not only are not boomers, but tend to be the most vociferous in “D*mn it, I’m not a boomer.” Why I’m vaguely amused that millennials call everyone older than them “boomer.” And why I find it bizarre that my kids both hate millennials and identify as millennials, though they both are d*mn close to z and closer to z in attitudes. (And the younger one in date of birth, I think.) And why all this is unfair, because a marketing category is not an age group, and yet, perfectly fair in aggregate, because demographics is not destiny, but it sure as heck is economy. And economics shapes your life in a way you probably can’t think about too deeply without becoming enraged.

So, yeah, friends, in-betweeners, X, millenials and Zers, lend me your ears. I come not to bury the boomers and not to praise them, but to explain to everyone, including the sane boomers in the audience why the fractiousness exists, and to give — under the heading of giving perspective on the lives of others that we normally keep quiet about — an idea of how my non-generation (We certainly are not Jones. We don’t jones for anything that the boomers had. We just aren’t them) has gone through. Without blaming the boomers, because an accident of birth is not their fault.

First of all, and taking in account that I’m the one who says the population is not booming out of control, let me dismiss the idea the baby boom wasn’t real. That’s goofy. (To put it mildly.) You can argue the causes, but for about ten years — no, not the twenty five claimed. Marketing generations are not demographic generations — after World War II, families grew. Blame it on prosperity, which allowed one parent to stay home and raise the sprogs. Blame it on tax credits (it has been argued if the comparable applied today, people would have families of five or six too.) Sure, blame it on the move rural to city, which was tied to prosperity too, and the fact that the newly independent nuclear families didn’t have to put up with grandma’s critique of their child bearing or raising. Or blame it on the men having been away and the relief of the long war being over.

Blame it on whatever you want, but even without looking at the numbers, just by looking at family histories, families of five or six weren’t rare. And three was about average, I think. Four not anything to remark on.

But, you’ll say, that’s fairly normal for the past period. Sure. My mom, who was almost a boomer comes from a family of five (should be six, one lost in infancy) and dad from a family of four. And I’m almost sixty, and both dad and I were very late children. So, yeah “But that was normal before.”

Yes, it was, but now throw in prosperity, moves to the cities and… It’s not the babies who were born, you see, it’s the ones who survived. Even mom who was raised, for brevity of explanation, in a slum where going to your playfriend’s funeral, or more likely his infant sibling’s funeral was absolutely normal, had more of her friends survive than was normal for her parent’s generation.

To put it another way. Up until the late 19th century, women routinely bore 10 children and didn’t get to raise a single one to adulthood.

Even in the nineteenth century, women at the upper class level Jane Austen wrote about, routinely made two or three baby shrouds as part of their trousseau. Because that many deaths were expected. By my parent’s time that had improved — no, not medicine, sanitation. Better drains, a weekly bath, and washing your clothes more than twice a year — to the point that you would regularly raise about half of what you bore. (My family, having steel constitutions rarely lost a child. To compensate, we were always relatively low fertility.)

The improvement brought on by rudimentary sanitation and washing up was such that in the nineteenth century Europe burst at the seams with kids, which led to rapid invention, expansion, and yes, the adoption of a lot of half baked ideas. Because that’s the result of a lot of kids suddenly in a society. Baby busts… well, most of the Middle Ages, lead to slow innovation, a tendency to ossify the social structures, laws and regulations increasingly made by old men, for a world they only imagine exists. Stop me when this sounds familiar.

The baby boom happened at the intersection of the discovery of antibiotics and their popularization and also inoculation of school aged kids, both of which meant an unexpected number of children surviving childhood and surviving it in good health. And people having about the number of children their parents had. BUT — and this is very important — those children grew to adulthood and did so without any significant physical impairment.

What it caused was the same effect as if everyone alive had decided to have double or more the number of children. It was a massive demographic elephant moving through the societal snake.

To do so just as the society went mass-media and mass-selling was…. an interesting confluence, and perhaps evidence that whoever is at the switch has a heck of a sense of humor. (Kind that puts itch powder in your pressure suit.)

Because “generations” which had only been of interest to demographic nerds in the past, were suddenly a thing for marketers, who took a look at the elephantine youth-lump coming at them, and sat up and perked their ears.

I grew up, almost twenty years later, reading old magazines and comics and looking in wonder at the advertising displays of toys. Even as a kid, I could track the median age of the “boom” — the ten years of 45-55 — by what was advertised, starting with silly stuff, but ending up pushing fashions and “the hot stuff” for boys and girls of teen years. Admittedly, teenagers were invented for the boomers. In that while there had always been people 13 to 19, there had rarely been any point trying to sell to them. But now it was possible for a lot of them to have part time jobs. Or allowances. And to buy stuff from transistor radios to cheap jewelry to — were Hulla Hoops ever a thing, or was it just a fad created in retrospect?

You could read the more contemporary magazines and comics, (I did, when I had the money to buy one) and there was absolutely nothing comparable. Heck, some of them, when I was 13 or 14 were still clearly aiming their ads and marketing at people ten year older than me. Which meant that even thought hey were VERY unlikely to still be reading Disney comics, even 10% of them doing so was more profitable than 90% of people ten years younger doing so. Because you know? Elephant, moving through snake.

The unfortunate effect of that demographic elephant which really was tapering off by 56 and was approaching baby-bust by my time (partly because the older boomers married late, so that mitigated the effect. Again, prosperity and moving to cities, and breaking the pattern of marrying young to look after parents) coinciding with marketing breakthroughs, and mass media is that the boomers were the first generation for which the media created a definition and an image.

It will probably shock most people younger to find that most boomers never protested the war, never grew their hair, never engaged in bloody stupid communalism, much less communism. These boomers are justifiably enraged by the image of boomers as hippies, of boomers engaging in counter culture, of boomers being work shy till their mid thirties, etc. etc. etc.

Because it has absolutely no bearing on the life of most people who fall under the “boom” years. OTOH some of it trickled through: there was such a culture of pandering to one age group, such a belief that somehow their opinions had a disproportionate weight in the world, that a lot of them have that nostalgia of “in my time” and “my generation.” This is thoroughly unexamined.

And even the most conservative of them had some opinions and attitudes of the mass-media boomer trickle in, unnoticed. Like, the idea that there was such a generation gap between them and their parents, and that they were right in that gap, or that they had the right opinions and ideas compared to their parents and also to those who came after. That would be me and people like me, born late-fifties and early sixties. But mostly early sixties. People after the use of the pill became universal or close to, and cut the boom short.

We came of age in the eighties. (I consider myself blessed to be born with the shoulders that make quarterbacks cry. I never needed shoulder pads.) We came after. There weren’t that many of us, you see? We went to school in half-empty classrooms, often taught by boomer teachers. (Not all of them useless. My first English teacher, whose name I can’t remember, was of that generation and was excellent.) Our arrival in adulthood was unnoticed by mass media, who were then enthralled with series like “thirty something” in which the boomers discovered parenthood.

It was in fact universal, and not just media boomers that got married and had kids very late. There are a ton of reasons for that, including the first bloom of “must go to college” but also a culture that didn’t consider it quite decent for the woman NOT to have a career. Because if a woman wanted a career, she had to sacrifice early marriage and her most fertile years.

How do I know boomers actually married late, and it wasn’t just an image? Well, at 22 I went through infertility workups, and all of them were designed for affluent women ten years older than I (i.e. problems I could not/was not likely to have at my age.) And when we finally had older son, 6 years later, every year of his schooling we were the youngest parents, by about ten years.

Because demographics and when a generation comes of age matters, and the pill was widely available in 1960.

We came after. Which might be the best description of those born in the early 1960s. We came after. We were not the main show.

Yes, it’s completely insane to hold the boomers responsible for the feeling of resentment we’ve been carrying since our toddler years. (Admit it, guys.) It’s normal, and human to resent them, but it’s still not their fault. They didn’t pick when to be born.

Nor is it their fault that they were as propagandized as everyone else with the image of the “media boomer” and adopted some of that. Nor is it their fault they’re defensive. Wouldn’t you be?

It is also not their fault that the idiots in government and policy, apparently missing the effects of the pill on population, decided that from now on every generation would be a boom, and that everyone needed to cater to the youth’s ideas and opinions because they were “the future.” Nor, btw, that the USSR was propagandizing them heavily, so that a lot of the sixties culture and strange ideas that big government was the way to be free came directly from the Kremlin agit prop.

And let’s admit right now, NOT every boomer bought it. Just the ones that mass media chose to highlight and engrave in the popular consciousness and who, therefore, had a disproportionate influence on the policy and politics of the next… Uh… 40 years or more.

Part of the reason the boomers entered the job market late-ish (in general) is that the previous generation stayed vigorous and healthy longer. Not much. Maybe ten years. But it also means when the boomers came in, combined with “the youth is the future” it made for a relatively fast rise up the ladder. Particularly when combined with the diffusion of computing through business and industry and the fact that boomers were at the right age to learn new technologies.

Again, it wasn’t the same as portrayed in the media. Most 35 year olds weren’t CEOs. But demographics is economics in many ways. So, you know?

There was a boom in many businesses, because there were boomers coming of age, and a huge demographic lump coming through. So … there were jobs and money.

My generation came of age after the Carter contraction, which was worse abroad, because, well, everything is.

We went through high school and college being jeered at by older siblings and teachers and professors, because we weren’t “socially conscious”. We weren’t demonstrating. We weren’t cutting class. By and large we tried to comply with everything demanded of us, including the mouth noises about social consciousness. But mostly?

Going through school, most of my classmates didn’t do drugs (oh, there were a few dopeheads, but not as many as 10 years after us, when it was cool again.) But almost everyone had a brother, a sister, a cousin, who had been lost to drugs, to free love, to rudderless living and lack of taking up anything. Almost all of us had, in the family tree a tie-dyed hole, be it an actual death, or just someone who became a puzzling ne’er do well, of the kind the family had never seen.

And most of us learned by the negative example. To quote PJ O’Rourke, we ignored the sit ins, cut our hair, put on the the business suit and the tie, and went to work. We were the generation of Dress-for-Success. We were the generation of “preppy” being a good thing (except in movies.) We were the kids who came of age to a great dearth of jobs, and sometimes invented them JUST to get our foot in.

Through no fault of the boomers, their late coming of age and our early coming of age created a large number of educated adults with nowhere to go.

I will hold against them — but not too hard. They were propagandized within an inch of their boomy lives — that they were “generation clannish” and we were definitely not their generation.

I have related here that in my thirties, when I was trying desperately to break into writing, I read an interview with a major magazine editor, saying that no one under forty had the ability to write fiction worth a damn. Not enough life experience, you see.

And yes, ten years later they reversed themselves, and were looking for “young writers” to appeal to the “the youth” (who by then largely wasn’t writing, due to a lot of editorial stupidity and marketing idiocy, not to count the Thor power tools governmental malfeasance.) You see, by then some of their kids were in their twenties, and they wanted to help their kids. Human. But annoying as all get out, when you’re part of a demographic elephant.

It was pretty much like that. We came after. We came into jobs or professions where we were treated as kids and juvenile (though we weren’t) because we were 10 years younger than most people there. We were “the kid” and we hadn’t had the same experiences.

And thanks to even more breakthroughs in longevity and long-health, most of us were there till about give years ago when the boomers actually started retiring.

None of this is their fault. But it makes those of us ten years younger grit our teeth when we’re called boomers, and aggregated to the elephant who stomped on us growing up.

It’s not the boomers’ fault, but the marketeers. But it still pisses us off.

To explain how squeezed our generation was: my older son’s class we were BY FAR the youngest parents. The “kids” who amused the other parents. However, FOUR years later, with younger son? We were the OLD parents, ten years older than most parents with kids in his classes. (Part of this was because through no fault of our own, we had kids late, and so straddled a weird jointure. But still.)

And of course, every step of our careers, we’ve faced the beginning of a bust. A bust that was perfectly predictable by demographics, but no one predicted, because marketers aren’t demographers, and just think “this way forever.”

And demographic busts, echo in economic busts.

That means most of us are poorer, have moved more, have been hit with more insane regulation, and less resources than people ten years older than us. Our careers were distorted. We spent a ridiculous amount of time being the kids, the apprentices, the ones doing the donkey work and being ignored. And over the last ten years, suddenly, we find ourselves catapulted into the “the old man or woman” role. The ones who have institutional knowledge. The ones who know where the bodies are buried. The ones who know how things work, because we say them from the downside for so long.

We made do. By and large we’re okay, even if we have about half the wealth boomers had at our age. Not their fault, guys. Again, demographics is economics.

Dan and I were amused at figuring out recently we’re finally in our peak earning years. Which should have been 10 years ago or so. And he’s eligible for retirement in 2 years. Not that we intend to retire, not really. Which will make the current generation’s life more difficult and we know it. Fortunately there aren’t as many of us as there were boomers. Unfortunately there aren’t many of the young ones, either, much less young Atlas’s yearning to lift the world on their shoulders. And the fact demographers lie isn’t helping anyone, either.

It’s all a comedy of demographics, arranged by scientific breakthroughs at the worst or best possible time. We’re just along for the ride.

My age group, of 55 to 64 or so growls when called boomers, because that was not oure experience. That’s not who we are. We came after.

But it behooves us to realize the injuries we suffered weren’t the boomers fault. If you want to blame someone, blame mass marketeers and mass communications, and government.

And the unfortunate conjunction of the demographic elephant moving through the civilizational snake.

Now, the combination of birth control and life extension is likely to propagate this down the line. In fact, we’re seeing it with millennials not marrying and having kids, because frankly most of them can’t afford it. Student loans, sure, but also a contracting economy (whatever the demographers and the stock market says. I heard foreigners stopped buying houses in the US, so get ready for a drop in real estate value.) I think the idiots in charge opened the border to try to fix the demographic issues, not realizing that culture matters and humans aren’t widgets. And therefore further damaging the ability of younger generations to survive, let alone establish themselves.

Part of it is that there is still enough mass media, the expectations for everyone are those of media-boomers. CEO by 30. But that’s not how the world ever worked or is ever likely to work.

And birth control and life extension, even if mostly through antibiotics — not being sick all the time results in longer healthier life — and better nutrition are disruptive technologies. Even before the internet and all the other stuff are done with us.

So, hold on to the side of the boat. Exceptionally rough times ahead. And let of of resentments based on marketing generations.

Those of us who are sane and see the problems need to get our shoulders to the wheel and start helping mitigate the effects of all this disruption.

The kids — the few of them there are — are by and large all right but dealing with a world that is actively hostile to them. Let’s not add to their resentments.

They’re young, they’re not stupid. Telling them to do what you did won’t work, because between demographics, baby bust and tech, nothing is the same. And no one is catering to them, even if the culture still pretends to be youth culture. Mostly it’s catering to imaginary 50 year olds living like college students. Which makes the economy worse because there really aren’t many of them.

Let’s give the kids a hand up.

They’re young. Their target acquisition sucks, and the more everyone older than 30 yells at them, the more they’ll gun for all of us. And I hope it’s metaphorical. They have excellent sight. Let’s not encourage them to hunt us with rifles.

Because, yeah, they are the future. And right now the future is broke, lost and getting very tired of being treated like teens when they’re about 30.

Go and snatch brands from the fire. Don’t pile them on.

242 thoughts on “Boom!”

  1. I grew up seeing the Carter crash, then the early 1980s economic boom. Which was going to last for a while. Except it didn’t. I hit the second-career job market in 2003 and again in 2010. My peak earning years? Heck if I know, unless you mean the years when I get a lot of books out the door. And demographers tend to say that I don’t exist (Gen X, sort of).

    I resent the Boomers and their mimics who insist that it is still vital to Celebrate ’68 and Stick it to the Man as long as they get to decide who The Man is. The ones who are working at age 80 because what they were promised got yanked out from under their feet? I feel for you, Sister, because I’m going to be there in a few years. (Cashier at Ye Drug Shoppe and I were commiserating about trying to pay for surprise expenses, especially medical and house repair.)

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    2. I’m going to say I rather don’t give a tinker’s damn about demographers and their, “takes,” on things. I just go on and on, ever forward, because it’s rather the only option until I lie down and never rise.

      As for working to 80 and beyond…if you HONESTLY thought that people didn’t work well unto those ages, even in times past, you’re gravely mistaken. The lie, the falsehood, was the notion you could retire in your mid to late 50’s. This was fueled by the Social Security scam (And it is one. Those that claim it’s their money are fools. Ask the Government what that money you paid in was…TAXES… It was them taking more of your money with the ponzi scheme promise that you’d have it invested, etc. and it’d come back to you. Madhoff went to prison, mainly because they don’t like the competition…) and lies told about retiring, told by all to us to get us to work harder to a given time.

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      1. People generally weren’t working well into their 80s back then… but that was because they were usually dead before they got that old.

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            1. Oh, I started socking away at least 10% in a 401k as soon as they offered them. That was 1987? Of course, my employer at the time got busted by having the 401k invest 80% in his own company’s stock, but that’s another rant.

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              1. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Feds start seizing retirement accounts within ten years.

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                  1. There have been discussions of it. IIRC, the suggestion I saw several years ago was to start with Roth IRAs “since only rich people have those”.

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                    2. Our son contributes to all 3: 401(k), IRA, and ROTH. We are hoping to pass our Roths over intact to son. We couldn’t afford to rollover any of the IRA’s to Roths when that became an option. Not even staggering over multiple years.

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                  2. Agree. If they could seize retirement accounts they’d had done so instead of making the changes they did.

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                3. They may not seize them but the 2020 change to the distribution rules for inherited IRAs ensured that the Feds will get theirs pretty quickly after you die. Except for only a spouse and a couple of other exceptions, the recipient has to withdraw all within 10 years. That will likely push them into a significantly higher tax bracket on ALL their income. The Feds aren’t going to let what the Boomers accumulated get away.

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                  1. significantly higher tax bracket on ALL their income
                    ………………

                    Yes. Son essentially retires on the spot. Does what he wants to do whether he gets paid or not.

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                4. wouldn’t be surprised if the Feds start seizing retirement accounts within ten years.
                  ……………………

                  Technically there already is. RMD. Even though they keep pushing back the age required. When our son eventually inherits he is going to be forced to take whatever balance is not over his remaining lifetime as calculated by the government but forced over 10 years. Even I will have to take hubby’s (or reverse) over 10 years and not spousal inherited (my/his lifetime) if he hits RMD before I inherit (we think. Really need to get with legal financial planner.) Right now we are two years out (see pushing back). They want their dang taxes.

                  Now flat out confiscation. They want the Boom that is how they will get a huge Boom. No one else wants this. Unlike not funding the benefits cards for the various welfare programs, this Boom won’t be limited to specific burn down their own area screeching to never spread anywhere else. It’ll hit in the entire country. Nowhere to spread. It will be everywhere.

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                5. THAT would start a revolution. If you’re a Federal Civil Servant, you have a 401k equivalent (the Thrift Savings Plan) that is supposed to be your primary retirement source. Outrageously popular…so much so that people on the old retirement system (like me) and those in uniform got access (if not matching contributions) to it.

                  Touch that, and I would not trust the Secret Service or Capitol Hill Police not to play Praetorian Guard.

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                  1. What I said. I just didn’t know we’d have civil servants with everyone else. Inconvenient those that consist of the deep state? Talk about stupid … Oh. Wait. Never mind. They are that stupid to try. They won’t succeed but they can try. I guess no boom … because confiscating private savings from payroll contributions like IRA’s/401(k)/Thrift-Savings-Plan will cause a huge Boom.

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              2. socking away at least 10% in a 401k as soon as they offered them. That was 1987?
                ………………….

                We started socking away in savings before IRA’s and before we were allowed (company with pension). As soon as allowed to put into IRA that is where the savings went. Started my first 401(k) in ’90, where the matching was in matching company stock purchased. Which meant to max out matching that max percentage of my contribution was in (1) company stock. Hubby’s company didn’t have a 401(k) option until mid/late ’90s, but as soon as they did he started one too. He was also one who pushed for it being on the pension board (employee side). They didn’t have a matching option. Hubby also convinced the rest of the board that employees had to explicitly opt out, otherwise automatically signed up for the minimum.

                Of course, my employer at the time got busted by having the 401k invest 80% in his own company’s stock, but that’s another rant.
                ……………..

                (1) Did okay. Had the stock in rolled over IRA until after retirement when it finally got bought out through protected options sell. Made a lot of money over the years on it between the dividends, repeated stock option sales over the 20+ years since rollover, and final sale.

                Now the second 401(k) I had, between 1996 and 2002, at first they could force us to take stock as the matching contributions, but could not force purchase of the stock with any of our contributions. Did okay there when we got bought out, after all the basis for the matching was $0 of my money. But once the company was bought out they were prevented from using company stock for matching unless approved by employee. I declined. I declined even though they were discounting the stock for the money matched. Was a bit of a red flag for me. I did not lose money in my 401(k). Others took a bath (lost 100% of the matching, as well as they gambled outside the 401(k) on the stock employee discount).

                Third Simple IRA (401(k), by another name for small companies), was a simple 3% match of 3% salary contributed. The only problem I had with this one was rolling it out when I retired. Not the company. The investment firm. Not our first rodeo rolling out 401(k)’s. Filed the correct forms immediately. They just didn’t want to let the money go. The excuses they came up with. Rolls eyes. We eventually had to go to the target account company lawyers for a (initially) free legal letter outlying where the other company were misguided (wouldn’t have been free if we’d had go further). It worked.

                Most of the money had transferred based on the value at the day the original transfer was suppose to post. But because they’d screwed around, about 10% didn’t because of value changes. We protested and did not let it go. A little over $10k (don’t know about anyone else, but to us that is a lot of money). That amount got transferred, eventually.

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            2. Well, it was 30 years ago. When I started doing just that. When there’s writing on the wall, it’s often worth reading.
              ………………

              Heck the writing was on the wall 45 years ago when we got married. We started saving for retirement and employment gaps as soon as we had our first jobs. But then we were in the timber industry. Didn’t expect it to go as bad as it did or a career change. Oh. Regarding that career change? Yes, I loved it. In a lot of ways I’d been better off in accounting (mind numbing boring, but every company needs accountants).

              All off us in programming know that telling middle age people to “learn to code” to change jobs is laughable. Not that they couldn’t learn the new skill (some can, some can’t, past a certain level, that isn’t the point) but all of us who have been forced to look for work from mid-40s on know programming’s dirty little secret. Imagine someone fresh off a career change being told “you are too experienced, we are looking for someone we can grow” for an entry level position. Age discrimination is not a protected status.

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          2. In Victorian Britain, boys had to leave school in their teens because their income was needed. They could outearn not only their mothers but also their fathers, chiefly because their fathers had been broken down by the years of hard labor.

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        3. Good point. Though yes, many at least that reached four score, often still worked for one reason or another, sometimes the money sometimes their skills were needed.

          I remember my granddad retired from Republic steel in Youngstown, Ohio. When an extreme cold spell would hit and it was too cold to get the diesel buckets started, they’d call and ask him to please come in and fire up the old steam shovel (None of the present staff knew how.) and feed coal to the smelters.

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        4. The clever little trick that SS was based on is that most people would never get to use it, or might only get a couple years.

          But the vote buying plan happened just a few short years before life expectancy took off, and the problem with vote buying is that once you start you can’t stop or you will be worse off than before you started.

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          1. clever little trick that SS was based on is that most people would never get to use it, or might only get a couple years.
            ………………..

            Especially my grandparents, and my parents. Paternal grandfather only saw a few years of SS. But his three of the four youngest got a combination of 26 years (ages 9, 12, and 16). One got a lifetime of benefits due to grand mal seizures starting at age 3 and the accumulative effects (46 years). Paternal grandmother collected until her death 3 months before she turned 80. Maternal grandparents until they were in their 90’s, grandpa starting at age 50 due to work related injuries. Dad age 50 (stroke) until 72 1/2. Mom? Still collecting, she’ll be 89, Nov ’23 (started age 62, they knew she’d get dad’s benefits later on).

            Honestly? Hubby and I never expected to see a penny of SS. Not the way the Democrats have been screeching, since, well since either of us started working. Now if the program hadn’t been borrowed from by every congress since forever, mixed with general funds into the budget to hide that fact, SS might have been okay. It still might be okay, but there isn’t an audit devised to figure that out.

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            1. Both of my grandfathers died at 65 having been retired for about three to five years. Fifth heart attack for one, five different cancers for the other. Both smoked and drank quite a bit. My mom’s mom died at 95, so I got that going for me…

              I expect to use SS as beer money.

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              1. We are using SS, we never expected, to string out the IRA’s (with rolled in 401(k)). One sister and BIL are doing the same. I.e. we started SS at age 62. Youngest sister and her husband are not starting until they max out full SS age. He is just starting now at age 66 1/2. She has to wait until full 68. Both are fully retired. Difference is they don’t need to stretch out their IRA’s combined savings. I understand where they are coming from. That was our intent too when we were looking forward oh so many years ago (just because we didn’t expect it to be there doesn’t mean the scenarios weren’t calculated JIC). Same with the other sister and BIL. But when congress changed how it all worked and plugged some loopholes, we researched, ran the math, and chose differently. Helped considerably by the fact that hubby beats the percentage margin for the yearly SS had we waited, before and every year since. SS eventually goes away when we die. The remaining money in our IRA’s doesn’t, and can be passed on.

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    3. I resent the Boomers and their mimics who insist that it is still vital to Celebrate ’68 and Stick it to the Man as long as they get to decide who The Man is.

      –
      How can they ‘stick it to The Man’ when they ARE ‘The Man’? They have been ‘The Man’ for the last 30 years. Now they’re screeching because it’s somebody else’s turn to stick it to them.
      ———————————
      ‘Progressives’ believe everybody else is even stupider than they are. This explains a lot.

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  3. The boomers got The British Invasion and Woodstock. We got disco.

    In support of your contention that we’re not boomers, which I share ‘62 too, number of live births in the US peaked at 4.31MM in ‘57 held steady till ‘62/‘63 then collapsed.

    I have good reason to believe that the entire economic history since the war is just the playing out of the baby boom. it’s actually quite scary how much it has explained. 60% of the variation in interest rates to start with similar proportions for a host of other variables. This is why I remain hopeful about the US, unless we f it up. The rest of the world might well be beyond fixing.

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  4. Those of us on the back end of the boom had some unusual advantages. School classrooms that had been expanded for our elders were suddenly just the right size or slightly spacious. Money set aside for college assistance was going to fewer people, so we had a better chance at a piece of the pie. And now as boomers start to age out of their RV years, a great surplus of recreational vehicles… um… Kids, stop buying up all the used RVs to live in! Grandpa has enough retirement money to consider doing a little traveling now.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. It is curious how ox get assumed either MUCH younger or MUCH older then is.
    No problem. Ancient Creature is Ancient, if at times a bit Modern. Or is the other way ’round, backwards, and reverse? It’s all rather confusing, really.

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    2. Once upon a time, as I dredged up a bit of Army history that some senior folks did not know, I was asked “so, what was it like playing drum for General Wasington?”

      Lol.

      Like

      1. “so, what was it like playing drum for General Wasington?”
        …………………

        Naw. That was (5?) 6 great-grandpa. Seriously. Four older brothers parked him with General Washington as 10 year old aid/drummer boy while they fought in the revolutionary army. Parents gone. Couldn’t leave him alone on the homestead. What were they to do? ;-)

        Liked by 1 person

  6. I’m the tail end of Gen X, and we have a similar squeeze, due to that decade differential. Graduated into a recession? Oh yeah. Many of my age range were the ones who lost everything with the housing bubble crash (most of my friends were smart enough to not buy in to the bubble, but at least one lost their house in spite of not getting bad loans, simply because of the economic fallout.) Student loans hit harder than they did even ten years before—my older sisters were able to declare themselves “financially independent” and get their aid revisited after two years of college, but they’d removed that option by the time my nearest older brother and I went. (If it weren’t for scholarships, I would not have gone to college.)

    But hey, we’re older, so therefore OK Boomer and Karen. (And the use of that term does, in fact, lead to bullying of perfectly nice people with that name—the problem with turning any name into a slur.) Our views are invalid, because obviously we’re the ones who got the world into this mess, despite being overwhelmed.

    You realize that we’ve had all but one President in the last 30 years born in the 1940s? I got laughed at on a public forum for pointing that out, because apparently it’s perfectly reasonable for the folk in power from one age range to hold onto it for decades in spite of the statistical weirdness. (Haven’t even gotten into the fact that many of the names in Congress now were in the news in the 1980s. We should NOT have that level of name recognition…)

    Liked by 1 person

    3. The “karen” thing started out as a racist slur, and slightly improved from there.

      Any white female not obeying was a ‘karen’.

      Like

            2. Not while the Barbie movie, and it’s apparently accidentally anti-woke plot involving Ken, is still fresh on people’s minds.

              Like

  7. Blame it on whatever you want, but even without looking at the numbers, just by looking at family histories, families of five or six weren’t rare. And three was about average, I think. Four not anything to remark on

    A little low, actually.

    But more “I realized he was scum and now we are gone so there’s only one” families.

    (as opposed ot the same but 15 baby daddies)

    Liked by 1 person

  8. I have helpfully pointed out to several youngsters that calling members of Gen X Boomers constitutes fighting words.

    It isn’t the Boomer’s fault that they spent their lives being told that everything was all about them.
    But it sure did make a lot of them completely insufferable.

    I held that the embrace of illegal aliens under Bush II was a misguided attempt to prop up Social Security.
    But it quickly became a lot more vindictive than that.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Fighing words? Maybe not quite that, but call me a boomer and I’m going to at least advise you to slow your roll. I didn’t spend my teens and twenties getting told by actual boomers that my generation was singlehandedly ruining civilization only for some snotnosed kid to lump me in with those insufferable generational snobs.

      For what it’s worth, just about all the millenial-age and older Z’s I’ve worked with were motivated and competent (or if not, quickly became so), and many were a pleasure to work with.

      The boomers…not so much, though there are exceptions. I realized about 5-10 years too late at my last job that I’d be no more than the “junior colleague” as long as the boomers who were there when I came in kept holding on — and they could hold on longer than I could. As Sarah points out, they were “generation clannish,” and I did indeed spend “a ridiculous amount of time…doing the donkey work and being ignored.”

      Couple that with working in a university environment, in which I had the unfortunate handicap of being a white male, and you’ve got a situation where my job for years was effectively to keep things together after the millennial female star departed for sunnier climes and better money, just so I could hand all the interesting/creative projects over a few months later to yet another 20-something female. Wash, rinse, repeat. And I’m not criticizing those females; they were bright, capable people. I’m just amazed that it took me until LAST WEEK to recognize the gender pattern that was going on in addition to the generational thing.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. This:

        “Fighting words? Maybe not quite that, but call me a boomer and I’m going to at least advise you to slow your roll. I didn’t spend my teens and twenties getting told by actual boomers that my generation was singlehandedly ruining civilization only for some snotnosed kid to lump me in with those insufferable generational snobs.”

        I feel exactly the same way. I end up with the determination that they are NOT going to walk away without having some idea of who they’re effing with.

        I guess I am dead center of GenX, born in 1967. Cannot tell you how many smug Boomer teachers I encountered who were convinced they were the ones who turned me onto archaeology and anthropology, when it was my pre-WWII parents who fostered the love of history and quite solidly avoided being included in with the post-WWII mind set. I was in high school ’81 through ’85 and in college ’85 to ’89. Had lots of Boomer profs who assured me that all I needed was a warm body and a degree.

        Nope. Well, I don’t completely blame them…I DID choose an “underwater basketweaving” discipline and therefore I have become a bit defensive about it…But US News & World Report as well as a lot of the big name news organs of the ’80s were quite adamant that even those with liberal arts degrees were going to find employment. That didn’t bear out at the job fairs. Mixed messages were a constant. And boomer employers were yet again smug about how I was just the inexperienced young-un who never burned a bra nor sat in at a campus or would never know what it felt like to be at Woodstock. Had one boomer get might mad at me for taking the afternoon off to pick up my sick child from school, demanding to know why my husband didn’t “do his husbandly duty,” and I snapped back with “because he makes more money than me.” The atmosphere around her from then on was UGLY but I didnt care. I was the married one. She was the lonesome cat-lady boomer.

        Anyway, enjoying all the convo!

        Liked by 2 people

  9. I tend to think the true Boomer generation was born prior to 1955. The reason is that those born in 1955 turned 18 after the Paris peace accords, and those born 1957-1959 (like myself) didn’t even need to register for the draft. We were spared the personal destruction of the war, the need to register to posdibly go to an unpopular war, and the anti-war movement. Those born prior to 1955 were warped by fear, resentment, activism, communist movements and all the related foolishness. Born in 1957, I had no interest in the daily communist demonstrations in Sproul Plaza, I just walked past. I think the effect of the Vietnam war on those born 1953 and earlier was far more profound than truly understood by those of us born enough later to only experience the echoes.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Actually. All males do have to register with selective service at 18 even now. Son did. Nephew did (who turns 22 this August). What they did not have to worry about is actually being drafted (leaving aside that Biden’s admin is stupid crazy and someone has proposed the draft to fill short military ranks. Son still doesn’t have to worry about it, he is over 30. Nephew OTOH is only 22.) Even though the draft was still technically happening when my class graduated (’74), by the time the class of ’75 graduated the draft was eliminated. Even those in my class who volunteered the odds of being sent to Nam were small.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The “draft to be fair” thing is proposed every 40 years or so.

        They’re the same as the “women in combat wills to war” guys.

        Like

        1. Must be less than “every 40 years”, because happened at least twice since the official draft ended. Interestingly enough it is the “Peace Party” who keep bringing it up. Along with “draft women” too.

          Peace Party – Another definition for Democrat. The party that talks but doesn’t do the walk.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. Last time it happened as in 2003? 04?
              …………..

              Sounds about right. Just as our son was hitting HS but before he had to sign up for selective service (which he had to do on HS graduation at 18). What gets me is the kids like nephew. Nephew had to sign up when he turned 18, before he started his HS senor year. (August birthday. Parents held him back for kindergarten until he was 6.)

              Liked by 1 person

            3. 2004, I think. I made $5 off a student who was freaking out that he would be actually drafted and pulled out of university. It was proposed by Charlie Rangel (D-NY) as a “bet you won’t call my bluff” to Rs. They did and he backed down.

              Liked by 1 person

          2. Argh, I fat-fingered it– it’s FOUR years.

            How much public attention it gets is variable, but you can go back into stuff like the Military Times and see one of their progressive twits pushing it.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. it’s FOUR years.
              ………………

              Okay. That makes more sense. I paid attention because in ~’03 time frame, by 14 year old would be 18 soon enough. By the time it hit again, he was already doing ROTC. What I find ironic is Obama actually made it more difficult for the ROTC programs in 2011 (at least the one I know of. Presume it was across the board. Unless some exception for “his kind” sigh democrats other programs.)

              What I find ironic is that when son was starting college and ROTC program my youngest sister was “How can you allow him to do this?”. Us. “His choice.” Now? It is her son who is of age to be actually drafted. They’d not be happy. Neither would I. Forcing people into military service is wrong unless everyone is forced to serve like Israel. But unlike Israel the US does not need everyone to serve, until when our lands are directly invaded (yes, technically now with a percentage of the illegal crossings) and called on to defend family, hearth, and home. That is what Israel faces everyday. Israel has to have everyone beyond a certain age, trained to defend home. Should nephew choose to join after finishing college, I will support him in his choice. (We don’t have anyone in immediate, or close to us extended, family who has been in military to advise otherwise under current regime. I don’t expect this to happen, anyway, even with them being democratic supporters.)

              Liked by 1 person

              1. These are the same idiots that think if they control the officers, the enlisted will fall in line.

                They just flat out do not get Americans. The “little groups of pissed off paratroopers” would blow their minds.

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                1. I swear, it’s the ongoing disease of revering anything and everything “European” that has been around since at LEAST the mid 19th century. Just got done rereading the Poisoner’s Handbook (fascinating read about the birth of forensic toxicology) and half the time the American scientists were going on about “doing things super advanced like they do in Europe” as the means to get the funding/laws/whatever in place to advance their work…even though they were actually doing the most bleeding edge innovation themselves. Because the politicians and/or “public” (by that I mean the “elites” of course) didn’t want to listen unless it was “and the Europeans do it like this!”

                  And you still hear that crap to this day. Guys. Europe is a nice place to visit. But I would no more say they have the best way of doing things than I would say that any given urban center in the US is the best way of doing things. It might work for them, but it’s not gonna work for everyone. (And, a lot of the time, I am pretty sure it isn’t working for them, either, they just refuse to admit it.)

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. There are a very, very few places in Europe I would want to live. Those tend to be far away from the centers of power, and have people who have a history of saluting the PTB with a single digit. Which also means that outsiders are not entirely welcome. They like visitors and money. They don’t love tourists or “it’s so quaint! I want to move in and change everything!” (Which also applies to people from their same country.)

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. So…basically like us then, at least on that front :D (Why do I put up with nine month winters in Wyoming? Because it keeps the tourists mostly out from underfoot. Even if they DO move here, a good chunk of ’em flee to nicer climes after the first winter or two.)

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        2. This time I’m hearing it it’s because they can’t meet recruiting goals and are going to start being unable to staff things.

          From what I’m seeing, pretty much everything is staffed incredibly thin.

          But again, they’re treating people like widgets and seem to think that a conscript is going to be every bit as productive as a volunteer.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Because of the shortage people who are wanting to not re up are not being allowed to leave unless there is someone to replace them. Also rumors of some who were out to inactive duty (not in reserves), but forced back into active duty, because their skill sets were needed. True or not, either situation, rumors can’t be good for recruitment.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Most folks who exit active duty prior to retirement do so with a remaining reserve commitment. Many serve this in the “Individual Ready Reserve” (IRR). Such folk are subject to recall to duty.

              And yes, the IRR has been called on to fill gaps. “Stop Loss” is the active duty version. You do not get discharged on time. You stay busy.

              Important to read that contract one signs.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Important to read that contract one signs.
                ………………

                Which how many 18 year olds or even those with dreams of wings do? Or if they do, actually understand what that means? Some do. At the time doesn’t matter. Until it does for all of them.

                Thanks. Didn’t know what it was called. (Won’t remember when it comes up. But at least now I can say “Oh. Remember now. Read it.”)

                I know my last boss wanted to pull the “Stop Loss” version when I notified him of retirement. Difference between me and active duty personnel regardless of level is my only contract was “request two week notice” (or *dire consequences which were worthless in my case). I gave him 7 week notice. Okay good portion was earned vacation and holidays, but still more than two working weeks. All he could do was grumble. He still had the option to fire me on the spot. Would have still owed me the unused vacation hours. Would have thrilled me (already had the year end bonus, I’m not stupid). But alas no.

                (*) No references. Worthless because I was retiring. Done.

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          2. And they haven’t dropped physical standards down to what they were on 9/11, and they have added BS work, and they put in new BMI based BS that means that guys in really good physical condition fail the taping test and are not allowed to promote, so they get kicked out.

            It’s years and years of nonsense all piled up, and then they slapped folks with pointless death and/or life long disability shots.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. I’ve never understood why they implemented an “up-or-out” policy.

              That requires massive amounts of through-put to work, and unless they’re willing to have a military comprised of only the highest rank of whatever, there’s only so much “up” you can go anyway.

              “Dead mens’ shoes”, as macabre as that is, makes much more sense as a promotion policy.

              Like

            3. Going through the VA process right now, something came up that doesn’t get talked about in this discussion. Namely, the advent of electronic treatment records and how easily/quickly they can be accessed by folks in MEPS. So when you or I were going through, they had only the paper forms we filled out and there were recruiters who “encouraged” potential recruits not to volunteer information. Information that is now readily available to the examiners at MEPS, making it harder to qualify for enlistment. (Or in the case of some of the folks on the vet boards, qualify for service connection for problems.)

              Liked by 1 person

      2. Yes. Born in 1952, so by age a boomer, though the stereotypes usually don’t fit. (How Odd! :) ) I registered for the draft as college began in 1970, and at age 19, they did the lottery bit. I believe my draft number was 43, but keeping a student deferment was no particular problem (once I started to actually understand Calculus and Differential Equations).

        $OLDER_BROTHER had a bum ankle that didn’t get fixed because reasons (not sure anybody realized it was that badly broken, presumably including O_B. [Shrugs]. He ended up with a 4F deferment, while $OLDEST_BROTHER was drafted and was in Basic during the Tet Offensive. He ended up in the Finance Corps, doing payroll in Seoul, with R&R in Japan.

        Somewhere around 1973 the draft boards turned things down, and I got designated as “we’re keeping you in our records, but there’s no way we’ll do a draft”. Otherwise, I would have been drafted shortly after graduation. (As memory serves, it took 6 months between graduation and being called up for my oldest brother.)

        At least where I grew up (a couple of Midwest Metro suburbs), we had the peak kid population in our year. I did some checking, and one elementary school is now an adult education center, while the other seems to have been sold off and is now a homework/afterschool Kid-care center. That town has a pretty wealthy demographic, while the first is low-middle to mid-middle class, and not with a great record of educational excellence. (I thought it was OK in the ’50s, reading at the Dick, Jane and Sally level in Grades 1 & 2.)

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    3. I agree. I was born in 56, so I was 12 in the great symbolic year of ’68. A whole different experience of the 60’s from people who were in college during that decade. The campus unrest, the riots, the terrorism, the drugs, the lifestyle experiments – just looked from where I stood like the “decline and fall” of something not the freakin Age of Aquarius.

      If you add culture into the demographics and economics, it makes a difference. As Sarah points out, most people in the baby-boom age group weren’t cultural “Boomers.” Some people my age looked on the shenanigans, the New Left self-righteousness and the rock-star glitz, with gee-whiz admiration and molded themselves into junior boomers. Others like me learned to say “Bah, humbug” at an unusually early age.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I too was born ’56. Difference is I was 11 for most of ’68 great symbolic year (late October birthday).

        Some people my age looked on the shenanigans, the New Left self-righteousness and the rock-star glitz, with gee-whiz admiration and molded themselves into junior boomers.
        ………………..

        More than a few classmates. Some we lost right after graduation. Just because none of my classmates got drafted and sent to Nam, doesn’t mean we didn’t lose some to the cultural revolution. Classmates I’d known since I was 7 (wasn’t close to them by HS let alone by graduation, different life choice paths, but still I knew them).

        Others like me learned to say “Bah, humbug” at an unusually early age.
        ………………..

        I am guilty here too.

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  10. I think when considering “boomers,” you have to consider the culture of the individual! I’m Puerto Rican, in latin culture family is very important, though at 58 I’m supposed to be in the tail end of boomers. Neither I nor my brother have divorced. I don’t have children, but plan to leave an inheritance to my nieces and nephew. When my husband and I found out what a dead beat father my brother-in-law was, we were shocked! We always assumed the reason he couldn’t pay his fair share in family obligations was because he was providing for his daughters after his 2nd divorce. Now we learn not only did he not provide child support, but the older one has student loan debt she has to pay off, because he did not help her with college as promised. Fortunately, she found work in her field quickly, though I hope to see her in the holidays and give her a monetary gift to help out. I am now helping the younger one, because what she has chosen is very competitive and not likely to have tremendous employment opportunities (journalism with a minor in Arabic; she says she wants to discover the truth for her generation; doesn’t believe what she hears & sees in the media) I won’t let her get into debt. She may be able to get employment with a knowledge of Arabic, but I doubt journalism will be useful; however, she doesn’t care for STEM though all the adults in the previous generation are STEM (medicine & engineering.)

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      1. Well, if it wasn’t a cultural difference, then it must have been that my nuclear family moved to the continental US when my brother and I were pre teens. Being different, having an accent, meant we were picked on and ostracized, both of us became introverted loners, removing ourselves from the society of our peers and not influenced by them. Don’t know the answer, but I always found those I called hippies ignorant and foolish.

        Liked by 1 person

  12. Author Brian Niemeier has his own take on generational cohorts, based more on shared cultural experiences than demographics. (Many Generation Y folks similarly take exception to being lumped in with Millennials.)

    https://brianniemeier.com/2017/11/lost-generations/

    ”

    The Greatest Generation: 1914-1934
The Silent Generation: 1935-1945
The Baby Boomers: 1946-1956
Generation Jones: 1957-1967
Generation X: 1968-1978
Generation Y: 1979-1989
The Millennials: 1990-2000
Generation Z: 2001-2011

    “

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      1. Generation No-Jones?

        Generation Dark Horse?

        Generation Gipper?

        I dunno. I’m a Gen-Y apparently, which is at least better than being Millennial (dob. ’81, c/o y2k), but I’m also a second-generation Odd, and wouldn’t change that a day.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Yup born in ’61 I remember (vaguely) Nixon Price controls and then Watergate and the resignation. Carter/Reagan are the first presidents I have more than vague memory of. I didn’t really like either at the time, Realize Reagan was better than I thought at the time. Still don’t like the Irangate stuff, blatant avoiding of the Congress’ control of the purse. Of course Clinton, Bush the Younger, Obumbles and the Turnip in Chief all seem to make that look like a mere peccadillo.

            Liked by 2 people

          2. Ronaldus Magnus Maximus, of blessed memory. I damned near wept that 4th of November of 1980, when Hope was reborn into the world.

            Like

    2. From the comments at the link –

      “Woodstock?
      Boomers: The greatest event of human history. I need to talk about it some more.
      Gen-X: Shut up about Woodstock.
      Gen-Y: No really, shut up about Woodstock
      Millennials: It was just a concert, the bands weren’t even that good.
      Gen-Z: So should we just burn it to the ground, salt the earth, or a combo of the two?”

      snicker

      Liked by 1 person

      1. *Gen-Z: So should we just burn it to the ground, salt the earth, or a combo of the two?”

        snicker*
        +
        A sodium fire should do the trick.

        Like

  13. Hi, boomer here (born 1955). Thinking it over….
    There were only two of us, but not because my parents weren’t trying. I have two stillborn sisters I hope to meet in Heaven, I know of at least two miscarriages, and my brother survived being born 2 1/2 months premature in 1961 largely through the sheer, stubborn determination of the pediatrician.
    I wanted a hula hoop. Bad. I also wanted a space helmet. Money was tight, got neither.
    Some 60’s comics were so cringey. The best were the ones that stuck to telling gosh-wow stories and didn’t obviously pander to “the youth.”
    I wrote up a piece about attending a mock convention in 1972 and watching it get hijacked by leftists. Very educational, just not the way they meant. And one thing that stuck was my civics teacher, an earnest, competent woman in her late 40s or early 50s, telling me the Youth of America (you could hear the capitals) were “different, ” (and apparently morally superior) to the older generation. So perhaps I should agree to be a delegate for another candidate than Wallace?I was polite, said I’d stay with my choice (my parents’ sources included the comment that my dad’s black employees were saying, “at least when he promises to do something, he does it.”).
    Wallace got a plurality of votes in the school-system wide election and a lot of the cool kids had to change who they would be delegates for….then shafted their voters by switching to Jihn Lindsay on the second ballot.
    This may explain why I’m jaundiced about the marketing to my generation.

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    1. Sigh – another late boomer here. (1954) I actually feel like I’ve gone through my life cleaning up the mess that they created.

      Like

    2. Same here; late ’45. Never felt comfortable with the “boomer mentality”; more so with their parents and grandparents. At least they did what was needed, not what “feels good”. And for a large part of the oh-so-marvelous ’60s I was in the Corps, the last 7 months in RVN.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. I, Boomer, confess, I let my hair grow shoulder length in college, but, to be fair, I was poor, hated buzzcuts, and had no idea where to go to get a good haircut. I loved the music, but I found my rabid demonstrating peers stupid, naive, or (rarely) odious.

    As to your historical accuracy about family dynamics before antibiotics, that’s why so many of H. Ross Perot’s age went by their middle name. They bore the same name as their dead older brother as did my Father in Law. I went to college with one of the last American victims of polio (he was a quadriplegic who made the best of his short life).

    I argue that we’re witnessing a similar but misplaced mass marketing dynamic now, catering to the 3% homosexual and even smaller transexual population. Watching TV, you’d think they were almost a majority. Yeah, how’d that work out for you, Budweiser?

    Yes, I was stupidly arrogant when I was in my teens and twenties. Put part of that down to hormones and part down to writer’s ego. Now, whether because my wife and I never had kids or not, I celebrate young people. Older writers giving young pups like me good advice is what I remember, and I try to do the same. I’m now Eastern Orthodox and, if demography is destiny, we’re going to be contenders with the Mormons (as RAH foresaw) for inheriting the earth. Most of the young-uns I know from church have at least 3 kids and many are actively working on more.

    Yes, the baby boom was a Godzilla event in our history, and the baby bust after it was of similar if opposite impact. But, as you hint, I think the huge migration from country to city is a HUGE dynamic that is still playing out. A civil war in this country seems unlikely mostly because of geography. It’s not the South against the North any more. It’s the rural against the urban and their values that are antagonistic to each other. Even Texas has Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. The West Coast is run by Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and, to a lesser extent, San Diego, but the Central and Imperial Valleys are as red as it gets as is eastern Washington and Oregon.

    How does it all play out? I give my own take in my next book, but check back with me in 20 years (when I’m dead haha). Woody Allen may famously say, “So long suckers!” but I say, “Good luck and God bless all of you-all of you on the good Earth!” (and with luck Mars and Venus too).

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    1. You’re a little behind the movements. The moves to cities has…. halted, except for illegal and homeless. Probably first time in our history.
      And people aren’t as mixed as they were 3 years ago. They’ve started to separate. If you look, there’s a lot of moving going on. My friend and acquaintance group? More than half of us moved.

      Liked by 1 person

  17. My paternal grandmother had twelve live births. Several miscarriages and 4 children who lived to adulthood. One was completely disabled with cerebral palsie and her oldest contracted polio at 14 and spent a year in an iron lung but recovered and only walked with a cane as an adult. My folks had 6 kids, 2 miscarriages and 6 adult children ( all still living). My folks retired at age 55 (mom never worked) and dad is still going strong at 89.

    Hubby and I had 6 kids. The bill for our oldest child’s labor, delivery and doctor visits was $315.00 total in 1980. By the time we had #4 in 1986, it had jumped to $2500.00. All same Dr. Same Catholic hospital. 3 years later, that Dr. had retired and the hospital was no longer Catholic, the bill was $25,000.00. And #6 was even worse because he had to be flown to Denver for surgery right after birth. He had ongoing health problems, but even so we were a one income homeschool family and keeping up until Obamacare.

    After that there was no keeping up even after we refinanced our house to pay things off and I went to work.

    We will never be able to retire.

    But that’s what we get for trying to have the same kind of family we grew up in.

    Or so I’m told.

    We had started paying into an annuity when we married at 19 to work toward our eventual retirement. That company went under in the 90s taking a decade of savings with it.

    We next lost our life savings in the 2008 crash.

    So , yeah, bad luck too.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Yikes. All three of my kids—and the eldest is 15—were $300 births. In the US. Because our insurance is through an HMO that has its serious issues, but piecemeal hospital stays isn’t one of them.

      Lucky me, I got to be the board operator on shift when they were doing the Obamacare “debates.” Which they were not. Same damned quotable talking point from each and every congresscritter, just so that their local news group could clip them directly. I think for my entire shift there were two unique speakers, and I had to listen to every one of them so I could slip in station ID if they ever stopped for breath. Worst shift of my life, and that includes the time I came in with the board so scrambled that we didn’t even know if we could get a single-line live show on the air.

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      2. Oh you misunderstood. The total bill was $315.

        Our portion was $25 with insurance paying the rest. I was illustrating how high the charges rose in just a few years.

        We’ve had insurance all along, but by the time you have copays, deductibles, and Above Reasonable and Customary charges that your insurance doesn’t pay you are looking at a lot of money.

        Especially when you figure in drug costs etc.

        3 different insurance companies that the school district I work for used have gone out of business since Obamacare. Our family yearly deductible was $300 in 1995. It’s now $8,000.

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  19. I would add that our X generation was basically feral. Our parents were consumed with their own issues and concerns. We’re the ones who stayed outside all day, drank from the hose and came home when the streetlights came on. Do you remember that there were tv public service announcements in the 70’s and 80’s asking parents: “It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?”

    After I grew up, I realized my entire generation were latchkey kids, ignored, mostly self-raised. I thought it was just my family, but it was all of us, pretty much. I tried to take the best parts of my free childhood and add in things like regular meals and help with homework, and lots of hugs, for my children. I like them a lot, so I think we did pretty good.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I wouldn’t call Gen X feral. Feral is the youth engaging in sudden and rabid violence against random strangers. Gen X was self-reliant. Latch-key kids might have had little supervision from parents. But they still knew how to behave.

      Like

    3. After I grew up, I realized my entire generation were latchkey kids, ignored, mostly self-raised. I thought it was just my family, but it was all of us, pretty much. I tried to take the best parts of my free childhood and add in things like regular meals and help with homework, and lots of hugs, for my children. I like them a lot, so I think we did pretty good.

      Many failed that balance, and merely went pendulum. And as with your generation they thought they were the singular iconoclast who was going against the grain…. all together.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. Wait. Wasn’t “stay outside all day, drank from the hose, and came home when the streetlights came on” normal for kids in the ’50s and ’60s?

      I’ve thought of GenX latchkey kids (and the public service announcements clutching pearls about it) as being “The Closing/Twilight of Free Range Childhood.” The authorities were slow to gear up for it, but in the end they did gear up because the Left must have control control CONTROL!

      Like

      1. It was normal for the Reader except he was expected to know when sunset was. There were no streetlights in his neighborhood.

        Like

        1. Not always sunset. We had to be home by dinner or sunset, depending on which was first. Wintertime that was before sunset. Summertime that was in time to wash up before dinner so needed to be able to read the sun. (Raining? Intuition better be up to snuff. Or with a friend who had a watch.)

          Not a feral generation either. Better believe mom knew whatever we got into before we got home. Non-cellular grapevine worked just fine. Depending on the severity of the transaction decided whether punishment immediately of the dreaded words “Wait until dad gets home”.

          The problem with son’s generation was no one was home in all the surrounding houses. In our neighborhood/block, including other kids of similar age (despite being within eyesight of the grade school. We’ve been here now almost 35 years. Houses have just in the last 5 – 10 years started turning over from long term senors 80+ raised their families here to families with children.

          We weren’t the oldest parents in son’s classes. If only because while we were shepherding our oldest through the school system, other older parents were shepherding their youngest or sometimes even their grandchildren. (Repeating, for anyone new here. We did not put off having children. We were lucky to have the one.)

          Like

  20. Working, so merely quick quips.

    1945-46 and 1953-4 were “years of catching up” for returning servicepeeps. It probably took 4 years for the returned combat arms folks to finally get the oats out of their systems. Sheeeesh….

    My somewhat amorphous generation are “Broomers”, because we are the ones who tend to clean up the messes of others.

    Heh!

    (Fades into the woodline….)

    Liked by 1 person

  21. I was born in 1982 so I suppose technically I’m a millennial. Being lumped in by age instead of common interests reminds me too much of public schools so I reject the classification.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “I reject the classification”. 1954. Classification as “boomer” became non-operational the week after HS graduation when I Got A Job. A hard-hat, hard work, physically demanding, dangerous Job. Classify me any way you want but don’t dare reference year I was born.

      Like

  23. Another thing that became big that skewed a lot of the priorities was advertising.

    The boomer generation was dropped into a massive aspirational hole because of the existence of the well-oiled machinery of Hollywood to create movies, later TV shows, and distribute them widely and quickly. Their writing and “style” tended to reflect “the world outside the window” of the people creating them.

    With very few exceptions, those “windows” were New York/Manhattan and Hollywood/LA. And the marketing was made in those places, especially New York and the height of its “style.”

    And that skewed a lot of the perceptions of people. They wanted that New York or LA experience, even if it was in Cedar Falls or Atlanta or Dallas or Miami.

    We’re still getting that issue today, especially since the creative/intellectual jobs have New York or LA as the aspirational “victory” point. You haven’t made it in your particular creative esoterica if you aren’t in Hollywood or Manhattan. Anything less means that you’ve failed, you’re a dilettante at best or you’ve “settled for what you can get” at worst.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The problem the boomers always have had is they believe B.S. I’m one of the older Xers. We almost always saw through it.As far as I’m concerned, it’s gullibility that has destroyed western civilization, and the boomers are merely a symbol of it.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. My illusions popped when I was College 1.0 and what the textbook and the prof described had nothing at all to do with what I’d lived through. You know, per the book and the prof, the 40th president almost triggered WWIII, forced people to eat cat food or starve, destroyed civil rights, caused tens of thousands of veterans to become homeless, and made the drug crisis worse*. Oh, and destroyed the economy. I’d seen the 1970s-80s farm crisis from the middle of it, and NONE of what she and the book described made sense. So I put down the approved answer and wrote the whole thing off.

        *OK, I’ll give the book half credit here, but point to the bureaucracy et al and civil asset forfeiture rather than to the POTUS driving people to smoke/snort/shoot up out of desperation with their lives.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. We had our “Comrade Professor” (actually a low-level tenure chaser).

          I repeatedly blew up his riffing on Marx, leftoidism, and assorted barnyard ballast.

          I managed a B, over his howling objection, by out playing him in the bureaucracy of academia.

          Like

  24. There’s one thing about the Boomers that I think has been generally overlooked: their parents. All the Boomers’ parents were veterans of the Depression, and a great many of them had their young-adult lives permanently changed by WW2. Especially the men. They got drafted, went off to the military life, spent years living in a military environment… and then suddenly were out and on their own again. I think a lot of them, maybe a majority of them, immediately set about surrounding themselves with a civilian version of that organized, disciplined environment. In particular, I look at early levittowns and I see an uncanny resemblance to the cheap, cookie-cutter housing that the Army and Navy built for enlisted and junior officers. And I have the distinct feeling that a lot of those war veterans really threw themselves into the effort of making sure their kids would never suffer either the deprivations of poverty or the horrors of war. What kind of effect did that have on their parenting?

    Like

    1. Pretty much agree with Wolfwalker on the importance of the parental component.

      Born 1952 in medium-sized Texas town (for that era; “small” by today’s standards).
      My parents bought a house in the new subdivision, which went up right after the war, including the elementary school (forward looking school board!), which was easily filled by families where 4 (like mine) was an average number of kids.
      Half the people on our street had been to school with my parents (both born/raised in Home Town).

      Very much a Depression Grandbaby. Me and my sibs, and most of our peers, were not spoiled or helicoptered by our parents, as a group: had chores, summer jobs, school performance expectations, etc.
      Never went to Woodstock (no one I knew did; too far away), was definitely Odd but not Hippie (we had a few, but not radically so), and I personally didn’t even dig the music of the era all that much (Simon and Garfunkel for the win).

      BUT I’m also with SusanM about the class aspect. When I got to college and met the Boomers from Big Cities, East Coast, and Money, many had a very different upbringing, with the associated political differences.

      IMO both sides of that class division wanted what Wolfwalker said, about avoiding a repeat of both poverty and war, but went about seeking it in different ways — thus accelerating the Republican / Democrat split that has widened even more since then.

      Add to that the turn-on/drop-out cohort which cut across the classes (for those following the math, there are now four Boomer Boxes for psychological orientation).

      I don’t really think the entire generation did the messing up that undeniably happened; I’m inclined to point mostly to the leftish-hippie upper-class slice, because that’s the main group still causing the problems today.

      Like

  25. My feeling — and I’ve said this before — is that having been born in 1959 to parents who were born before the Great Depression (father fought in Europe in WWII), and having grown up around older cousins who were definitely of the Boomer generation, I am a Boomer at heart. I don’t identify as GenX because frankly I don’t fit their mold, and TBH I don’t really get along with a lot of GenX. But I don’t really identify as a Boomer, either. I tend to view myself and others more by political and moral philosophy than I do the generation to which they allegedly belong.

    At best there is a lot of “your mileage may vary” in these generational identifications, at the least because there is so much variation on how people identify the generations themselves. So I don’t consider them particularly useful as predictors of behavior, etc.

    Like

    1. See, I think it’s more belief than class. I keep reading these class-war things, and by it, both Dan and I being skilled “keyboard workers” with college credentials, we should be on the “elites” side. But we’re not.

      Like

      1. The Reader agrees. The country has long had a level of class conflict. The Reader’s parents believed in the class distinctions (the Reader’s mother pushed him to go to Princeton and become a lawyer on the presumption that lawyers were higher status than engineers). The Reader thinks it started to shift to belief conflict as us hated Boomers came of age.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. A lot of America’s “class” conflict is between the folks who recognize we don’t really have ancestry classes, we’ve got behavior classes, and the folks who are very, very upset by that.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The problem for Marxists is that behavior class can be changed, maybe even easier than economic class (in America as it was). That’s why they glommed onto race and sex to set up their conflicts.

            Of course, with the trans movement and its’ “identify as” nonsense, they’ve just made those changeable too. Sucks to be them.

            Liked by 1 person

      3. college credentials
        ……………….

        They think anyone with college credentials should be on the elites side. Um. No. Not a chance.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. College educated = Bourgeois

          The Communists rise from the Proletariat, that is farm and factory laborers.

          Those college wannabees are early nominees for “dead” in any real Revolution.

          So funny to see them pretending not to be doomed, commissars of the mind and then casualties of their Boozhee class.

          LOL

          Liked by 1 person

      4. Obviously, you and Dan are traitors to your class. Obviously.

        Those who believe that people with money an/or care about the planet enough to forgo gainful employment if it involves fossil fuels, are definitely of a better class than people without are desperate to virtue signal that in every way possible.

        So yeah, it’s about beliefs for sure.

        Very crafty of whoever is behind this nonsense.

        Liked by 1 person

  27. Born in 1961. My class was the largest through high school. Classes before us each became a bit larger, those behind us started shrinking. My elementary school closed down about 30+ years ago. I’ve never felt I was a Boomer.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. We’re down two grade schools feeding the one middle school in the area I grew up in (We live a whole mile from the house I grew up in. We are just west of the school district dividing line). Other district middle school feeder grade schools have also disappeared (I think down 8 – 10 over last 50 years, not counting the ones torn down and rebuilt). OTOH the district we live in has grown two k – 8 and one alternative HS. Not births, but how the city has developed. This is the district that 60+ years ago was formed because the existing district didn’t want the fringe outside of urban growth boundary areas included in the school district. Now all of that new district is either in the urban boundaries, or (us) within the urban growth boundaries. As son was entering school the other district reached out to the “new” district to merge. The universal response paraphrased was “F* Y* H* No!” (Note, we are < 1/2 mile from two grade schools. One our district, all but across the street. The other the other district not quite 1/2 mile away.)

      Like

      1. Graduated HS 1963. Graduating class was 900+; the incoming sophomore class (HS was 10-11-12; junior high was 7-8-9) was around 2200. No idea what’s happened since then.

        Like

        1. Checked; current total enrollment (now 9-12) is around 1500, and the demographics have changed significantly, with ~70% black, ~5% white, the rest mostly Hispanic (and 100% “disadvantaged”). Was ~99+% white, one black student in the ’65 graduating class. Of course, this was FL in the early ’60s…

          Like

  28. I’ve maintained for over 20 years that the notion of a 20-year “generation” was absolute nonsense. A political decade group is about 10 years, with the break-point being at about mid-decade. Those of us born in the late ’50s and early ’60s are the Baby Busters…call us a “Boomer” and we’re likely to slug you. It’s a serious insult. We LOATHE the Brat Boomers.

    Overlaying all of this are the shifts in cultural decades. For someone born in the early ’60s, as I was, the Cold War was something we grew up with. The Berlin Wall coming down, the first night of the Gulf War, and 11 Sep 01 are events of vivid memory. For someone born in 2000 – an adult by any measure – they are events in a history book.

    And the youngsters are ill-educated on history. Not really their fault, they know they were poorly educated but have no idea how to fix it. I’ve occasionally considered writing a book on Post-World War II American history.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. “History and Moral Philosophy”

        Balboa’s Legionary Press has a version coming out, but I don’t want to wait half a millennium for it.

        Like

      1. After Hurricane Katrina, I became convinced that in the event of a disaster, the first order of business should be to go to the affected area, find the three top Democrats, and throw them in prison. Instantly.

        Because they are invariably either responsible for the disaster being worse than it needed to be, were looting the relief supplies/funds, or both. Often both.

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  30. “According to several sources, private entities are not being allowed to deliver supplies and only the Red Cross aid is delivered. “

    On 2001 we were evacuated because of a fire in our National Forest. We were away from home for 9 days. Except for hubby who stayed to assist firefighters, etc with parts and whatnot 5o keep the trucks running.

    He was hassled constantly by the feds for helping. As was anyone else who was actually helping.

    Looters not so much.

    Like

    2. After a hurricane trashed my neighborhood, I went on a deterrence patrol to keep scrappers and looters off the properties of evacuated neighbors.

      Of course I carried a Garand rifle at sling arms.

      The scrapper crew trying to loot my upstreet neighbors’ wrecked awning took one look at me and didi-mau promptly.

      Not long after, a Deputy drove up beside me.

      “What you got there son?”

      “M1 Garand rifle sir.”

      “That thing loaded?”

      “Yes sir.”

      “Good man.” And drove off.

      No looting. No non-weather losses. No drama.

      Neighborhood watch practices rule .30-06.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Oops. Forgot to wave on our way through Helena this last spring. Came south from Canadian border through Waterton, and Choteau (where maternal grandfather’s parents homestead was, no idea where) to West Yellowstone. (Maternal grandmother grew up in Red Lodge. Her sister’s family still owns the ranch and the house they grew up in, in Red Lodge. Supposedly I’ve seen both. Not that I remember it. Montana in the mountains, somewhere, again I have no clue, is the one room cabin I’ve described here before, they lived in when mom was an infant and toddler while grandpa worked in the mines before WW2.)

      Like

  32. I was born in 1960 and consider myself a very late tag-end boomer. My younger siblings aren’t boomers, and I’ll nod agreement if our gracious hostess (or anyone else her age) growls at the idea of being a boomer. But I’ll growl back if anyone tries to claim that I’m not a boomer. Yes I arrived very late to the party, but if boomers are “generation clannish” then I’m a member of the clan.

    (Being an eldest child may also have made a difference.)

    Liked by 1 person

  33. In the 70;s they started talking about boomers but back then it was 1945-1955ish and my generation didn’t have a name.They certainly didn’t say us 10ish year olds where boomers.

    I was surprised to find out I am now a boomer. Except mum is also a boomer. Seriously how does that work? I am so not the same generation as my mother.

    But one of the Papers was talking about boomers complaining, except all 3 of the people named were Gen X.

    I guess older then 40 or so=boomer?

    Liked by 1 person

  34. Defining who is or is not a “Boomer” is a pretty slippery concept. I tend to include the War Babies, starting nine months after the invasion of Poland. Young men were being mobilized out of the reproductive population, but there were a lot of “three day pass babies” and saying goodbye to a sweetheart going off to war loosened a lot of inhibitions. A lot of the leaders of the ’60s counter culture were, however, depression babies rather than boomers. Hippies were war babies and the very youngest post war babies. They tended to look down on those of us who were too young to have been in San Francisco for the Summer of Love and still in High School during Woodstock. I usually include my baby brother, born in 1960, but that’s a pretty fuzzy transition and his experience is quite a bit different than we older three born between ’52 and ’55. Born in ’53 I was almost always in the largest class the school had ever had, with the following classes tapering off pretty quickly.

    Your questioning of whether the hula hoop was ever really a thing is the the clearest and most certain evidence that you are in no possible way a “Boomer”.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Sarah, I think this article may explain a major source of people’s reluctance to forgive student loans: the end result is ineffective and useless, and forcing people to pay for someone else’s lemon won’t fly.

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/08/15/crippling-stupidity-n1719535

    “So now you see, you overindulged cabbages, er, I mean, leaders of tomorrow, why the rest of us don’t want to pay off your student loans. Not only are they not our loans to begin with, but college IQs seem to be dropping by the minute.”

    Like

    1. The reason people don’t want student loans erased is because it’s only one small part of the population that benefits.

      If you had some one who could declare full debt jubilee – as in everyone’s loan balances instantly go to zero, from the big banks real estate deals to your cousin you lent $50 – no one would make a peep.

      It’s the unfairness that people are really objecting to.

      As you can see by the people who ask why the government isn’t making the same offer for business and home loans.

      Like

      1. To say nothing of the Parable of the Wicked Servant problem, where everyone would be glad to get what they owe wiped out, while still wanting to collect on what they are owed.

        Like

      2. But and this is what I’m writing, most student loans are unfair, because what was sold is not what was delivered, because the state lied (are you surprised) about what they’d do, and because, no, it’s not the “overindulged cabbages” that have those loans. MAYBE a few of them. VERY few.
        Most of the people stuck with them are the striving kids of the working class.
        Which is monstrous.

        Like

        1. I’m looking forward to your student loan essay. I think I have an inkling of what you are getting at, but am waiting for a more complete explanation before deciding what I think of your thesis.

          Like

        2. I disagree about what was sold being not what was delivered. The degree in Underwater Basketweaving was a meme in the 1970s…before we had memes. American colleges have always been willing to sell diplomas to students who had four years of tuition money and just enough sense not to burn the schoolhouse down.

          If a student chose to major in Booze, Drugs, and Party instead of a more profitable field, that was their free and knowing choice. It is not my concern. Not when I sold myself into indentured servitude to the Navy in order to pay for MY college bills, and spent 70 hours/week studying and doing homework.

          Now, if you wish to propose some means for the Useless Studies major to WORK off some of his debt, we can talk. I don’t know if GI Bill benefits can be applied to education already received, but they certainly should. And the Navy can certainly use some corrosion control teams (don’t get me started).

          Like

          2. Except that underwater basket weaving had all the requirements available. And they actually offered the classes. And didn’t change them after you started buying them. Or declare that the credits you’d gotten went stale.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. Only a little related, I actually had an officer with submerged textile manufacturing.

                He was super cheery about how a chief had suggested it.

                No, I didn’t tell him. He was really that … innocent. Same guy who was horrified that someone as nice as me would support–gasp! — W, a REPUBLICAN.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. My dad has a textile engineering degree. TBF there probably are textiles that need to be woven under water. I haven’t asked him. I kind of want to, now, but he’d probably go on for three hours, and my eyes would glaze over.

                  Like

                  1. As you well know, I am the idiot who will ask that!

                    And most of the guy’s degree was plastics that needed to be “spun” without air.

                    Like

                    1. Yeah. I’m sure dad will tell me. I’ll ask if I go over next Spring and he’s still with us. over the phone, I’ll just fall asleep.
                      Dad was EXTRAVAGANTLY happy in his job, which is why he only retired at 80 (or 83 if you adjust for what his real age probably is.)
                      He was in his seventies when Dan and I went to the factory to pick him up for lunch, and he was crawling on hands and knees over a piece of fabric still on/coming out of the machine with a magnifying glass. Apparently the machine made an “odd” clink and he wanted to make sure it wasn’t affecting the weaving? Dyeing?
                      I always think of that for “Let me be that happy in my job.”

                      Like

      3. If you had some one who could declare full debt jubilee – as in everyone’s loan balances instantly go to zero, from the big banks real estate deals to your cousin you lent $50 – no one would make a peep.

        –
        That would be useless. All the idiots that are drowning in debt now would just bury themselves in debt again within 6 months. Just like if they won a million dollars in the lottery they’d be poor again in a year.
        ———————————
        “They wonder what is wrong with our country, but isn’t it fairly obvious that if children are being treated like animals instead of rational beings, as adults they’ll behave like monkeys?”

        Like

        1. “That would be useless. All the idiots that are drowning in debt now would just bury themselves in debt again within 6 months.”

          So?

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          1. So now you’ve established a precedent. And I doubt that they will wait 50 years to use our warm body democracy to vote in politicians who will be happy to exercise stare decisis to do it again.

            Like

            1. And then nobody loans anyone anything and voila! no more loan problems for anyone, ever.

              Credit card companies go out of business and business returns to being done the way is was before “Buy now! Pay later!” was invented.

              Still not seeing the problem.

              Like

      4. The screams of outrage from the lenders would shake the planet. Everyone who owns bonds? Wiped out?

        Like

            1. Yeah, and that will happen when pigs fly. Heck, jubilee will happen when it all comes apart for Student loans.
              All I say we should do is grant dischargeability in bankruptcy.

              Like

      1. Sarah, my comment was intended to show you what you’re fighting against. I say go ahead and get rid of all of it. If we can get the HigherEd endowments to do that, that’s called gravy.

        Like

        2. … you don’t need to strip the universities of their endowments to do it.

          All you do is stop the government from lending money for school, and get rid of the loans they’ve already issued.

          Liked by 1 person

  36. Boomer here, 1956. Tail end.

    In case anyone is wondering why there’s all this Boomer hatred out there of late, let me offer a possible reason:

    https://archive.li/Kh8hJ

    “In Canada, Natural Death Is Slowly Being Replaced by Doctor-Assisted Suicide”

    “The practice has become so common that a commission that reports to the legislature in Canada, the End of Life Care Commission, or Commission sur les soins de fin de vie, sent a memo to doctors in the province reminding them Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying law is intended only for patients with serious and incurable diseases or those suffering from irreversible declines in their conditions.
    “We see, more and more, that the cases receiving medical aid in dying are approaching the limits of the law,” the head of the commission, Michel Bureau, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “We’re now no longer dealing with an exceptional treatment, but a treatment that is very frequent.”
    If current rates continue, more than one in 14 deaths in Quebec will be doctor-assisted by the end of the year. Dr. Bureau notes that the rate is higher than any other place that allows the practice — 4.5 times the rate of Switzerland and three times as high as in Belgium. The rate is twice as high as in neighboring Ontario, he said.”

    In a Socialist society, old people are inconvenient for several reasons. One is that they don’t work anymore, therefore don’t produce taxable wages. Another is that they own things that can’t be taxed away from them. Real estate, investments, savings, all these things are taken out of circulation because some old person owns them. They also take up a lot of hospital beds, and when medicine is provided by government that gets expensive.

    To a Socialist, old people look like a cost. Red ink. Costs get cut, right?

    And that’s why it is so very, very convenient to blame those racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe Boomers for all the ills of society. Just get all that old dead wood and clutter out of the way, and the economy will perk right up.

    MAiDs is the Government of Canada program for fixing the Boomer “problem”. For real. They’re really doing it. Right out in the open, in broad daylight, in front of everyone’s face.

    The thing that Socialists always have going for them is that they are far more evil than anyone imagines they could be.

    Just remember that the next time you read about how Generation Whatever is causing X problem. It’s a psyop.

    Like

    1. “The thing that Socialists always have going for them is that they are far more evil than anyone imagines they could be.”

      Well, almost anyone.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I would argue that most of us, born and raised in North America, have trouble imagining a government killing their own people on purpose over money. And not very much money either, in the grand scheme of things.

        Say what you want about Hitler, he wasn’t killing ethnic, Aryan Germans, aka -his- people. He was killing -other- people. (What a great guy, right? So considerate.)

        For killing your OWN people you have to go to the true, hard-core psychopaths like Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and Stalin. And now… Trudeau? Really?

        Unexpected, is all I’m saying. I never thought they’d go there, for sure, and I’m considered a tinfoil-hat-wearing wingnut by many. But there they are, doing it.

        Like

    2. Okay. No. Most of us have hated media-boomers from the beginning, because they’re annoying and sanctimonious.
      BUT yes, this is how the state solves a problem like the boomers. it was my big “NO” against Obamacare.
      MEanwhile most boomers wanted it because “it will pay for our healthcare.” BAH.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. This. It’s tempting to kill people because they are inconvenient. But we are ALL inconvenient at some point.

        Like

      2. I’m the guy who’s been screaming since the 1990s that you don’t ban guns to save lives and reduce crime. You do it because you don’t want the people defending themselves.

        But it’s very hard to throw off a lifetime of happy-slappy Big Government Is Your Friend propaganda. I’m still shocked by the public health with Covid, and the business with MAiD is flatly unbelievable.

        The sensation is like watching the wizard you thought was just an average jackass say “Release the Kraken!” and then the for-real freaking Kraken comes strolling up the beach and starts eating people.

        Or like #LetsGoBrandon pushing The Button on Russia so he can win the election. It’s too evil, it can’t be real. But there it is…

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Hm. Yes, i seem to recall the assisted suicide advocates claiming much the same thing as has been claimed by abortion advocates: Safe, legal, and rare.

      And yet, somehow…rare always falls by the wayside…

      Liked by 1 person

        1. True, alas.

          I’ve even read some accounts where folks are more or less being herded to the assisted suicide nonsense because…they are too poor. What. The. Actual. F***?!?!

          Liked by 1 person

  37. I’ve always had problems with the years that cover the Boomer generation as it includes my parents and myself. I was born 4 days too early to be in Generation X. And for about 20 years, every other year I was a boomer or gen x-er and then the bastards (Media/Marketing/Whoever) made up their minds and put me in with my parents. In 1968 I was self-performing durability tests (i.e. jumping off the swings on the swing set and falling down the stairs, Etc.)m Woodstock was a non-event in my life. The falling down the stairs thing may explains some of my behaviors later on in life but I blame my father for getting into British humor shows on PBS.

    I’ve only commented on here a couple of times but I always enjoy reading through the comments for level of intellectual honesty that prevails here. I don’t always post because I find whatever I had to say has already been said. As you often say, it is good to know that you are not alone in the world.

    Like

  39. Pingback: Baby Boomers – “a marketing category is not an age group” « Quotulatiousness

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