Baby Boomers..Worst Generation Ever..

[Lumpy 1]

I contend that on the whole the, "Baby Boomers" are the most selfish, lazy, freeloading generation America has ever known, look what their turning over to the next generation...

ah.. btw. ( I am one but I'm not included)..(D))

 

[Article 15]

I totally agree. The country went down the toilet under the Boomers' watch.

 

[Lumpy 1]

I totally agree. The country went down the toilet under the Boomers' watch.

Uh Oh we totally agree.. Hell must be freezing over...

 

[copsnrobbers]

Shit started running down hill when MLK's brother got into trouble. The corruption that followed as a result changed the course of the country. Not fucking Good!

 

[Valerie]

And now the Opinion Page. And baby boomers, it's all about you. Well, isn't it always? In the New York Times this morning, columnist Bill Keller argues it's time for the generation that fought in and against the war in Vietnam, the generation that gave us flower power and credit default swaps to step up and take one for the team. Medicare and Social Security spending has to come down, he argues, and boomers need to make entitlement reform, quote, our generation's cause. It's not our fault there are a lot of us, he writes, but we have resisted any move to fix the system.

Op-Ed: Boomers, Give Up On Entitlements : NPR

 

[Valerie]

The Entitled Generation
The notion that our generation has been spoiled rotten is not a terribly new thought. A dozen years ago Paul Begala (of Bill Clinton and CNN fame) published in Esquire the classic of boomer-loathing, “The Worst Generation.” “The Baby Boomers are the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history,” he declared. It’s a sturdy genre. Perhaps while Googling yourself you have come across the blog Boomer Deathwatch (“Because one day, they’ll all be dead&#8221, a checklist of famous boomers who hit their actuarial sell-by dates. Even Barack Obama, who styles himself post-boomer though he was born in 1961, complained in “The Audacity of Hope” that today’s hyperpolarized political discourse began with the “psychodrama of the baby boom generation.”

Yes, yes, this criticism is glib. We didn’t start the war in Vietnam, but members of our generation fought both in it and against it, demonstrating some of the spirit of sacrifice we are not famous for. Our ranks include the outsourcers of Bain and the wizards of the Wall Street casino, but also the entrepreneurial genius of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The Bill Clinton of Monicagate was the first boomer president, but so was the Bill Clinton of relative peace and prosperity. Our record-buying dollars gave the world disco — so sorry about that — but also Motown and Springsteen. I’d say the argument will continue forever if that didn’t sound like such an all-about-us, boomer thing to say.

But even though the caricature is way too easy, it has stuck, and we all know that it contains more than a nugget of truth. We are an entitled bunch.




http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/keller-the-entitled-generation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[Valerie]

The Worst Generation

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and hate the Boomers

By Paul Begala

AT A PRESS GATHERING just after the 1992 election, David Broder, the dean of Washington reporters, commented to me that my Clintonista colleagues and I seemed so, well, so young to him. "I guess you Baby Boomers are really taking over," he said.

That's when it happened. I'd never been called a Boomer before. Poor Broder. My eyes got squinty and my face got red. The veins in my temples throbbed. The look on his face was horrible. He must have thought I was about to rip off his head and spit down his neck. Which I was.

"I am not a Baby Boomer," I snapped. "I am so tired of hearing about the goddamn Baby Boomers! I've spent my whole life swimming behind that garbage barge of a generation. They ruined everything they've passed through and left me in their wake."

Broder shook his head and walked away.

But the garbage barge just chugs on. As they enter late middle age, the Boomers still can't grow up. Guys who once dropped acid are now downing Viagra; women who once eschewed lipstick are now getting liposuction. At the risk of feeding their narcissism, I believe it's time someone stated the simple truth: The Baby Boomers are the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history.

I hate the Boomers.

I KNOW IT'S A SIN to hate, so let me put it this way:
If they were animals, they'd be a plague of locusts, devouring everything in their path and leaving but a wasteland. If they were plants, they'd be kudzu, choking off every other living thing with their sheer mass. If they were artists, they'd be abstract expressionists, interested only in the emotions of that moment--not in the lasting result of the creative process. If they were a baseball club, they'd be the Florida Marlins: prefab prima donnas who bought their way to prominence, then disbanded--a temporary association but not a team.

Of course, it is as unfair to demonize an entire generation as it is to characterize an entire gender or race or religion. And I don't literally mean that everyone born between 1946 and 1964 is a selfish pig. But...

The Worst Generation - April 2000 - Esquire

 

[Article 15]

<3 Val

 

[Valerie]

Mornin' Art.


I was born on the latter cusp and so am included in this generation, but feel concerned for future generations nonetheless...

 

[Jackson]

The baby boomers turned out to be the worst parents the nation had every seen. While the war generation wanted their children to have better than they had, the baby boomers turned out to be "no spanking, lack in discipline and ethics," fostering a generation of gimme gimme without the responsibility of working for their own success.

Blame Dr. Spock or whoever, we now have a degenerate population waiting for the government or the parents to pull them through life. Once, hard work and determination was our goal, but that seems to have been lost on a good portion of the population, leaving poverty and the successful with a middle class becoming smaller and smaller.

 

[Article 15]

Mornin' Art.


I was born on the latter cusp and so am included in this generation, but feel concerned for future generations nonetheless...

Hi Val. You get a pass, hun

Time for me to put on my snowsuit and change the oil in my car. Damn, it's cold out there this morning!

 

[Valerie]

Mornin' Art.


I was born on the latter cusp and so am included in this generation, but feel concerned for future generations nonetheless...

Hi Val. You get a pass, hun

Time for me to put on my snowsuit and change the oil in my car. Damn, it's cold out there this morning!

Yep, the frost is definitely on the pumpkin! Brrr

 

[Valerie]

This brings me to a soon-to-be released study by the incorrigible pragmatists at Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank. The study takes a familiar refrain and presents it with a graphic wallop. Though it was intended as a wake-up call, not an indictment of a generation, it can be read as both.

Third Way | Fresh Thinking



The authors examined two categories of federal spending over the past 50 years, representing two of government’s fundamental missions. One was “investments,” which includes maintaining our national infrastructure, keeping our military equipped, helping assure that our work force is educated to a high standard, and underwriting the kind of basic scientific research that is too risky or long-term to attract private money. The report calls this the legacy of President Kennedy’s New Frontier, though the largest infrastructure project in our history, the interstate highway system, was Eisenhower’s baby, a reminder of the days when Republicans still believed in that stuff. The other category was “entitlements,” a catchall word for the safety-net programs that provide a measure of economic stability for the aging and poor: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

You will not be surprised to hear that the red line tracking entitlements goes up while the blue line reflecting investments goes down. What is alarming is the trajectory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/keller-the-entitled-generation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[Wiseacre]

We have met the enemy and he is us. - Pogo, a long time ago

The period of time following WWII was for the first time in history an era of plenty. We were given a lot of stuff that was not earned, and from that point the national conscience began to change. For the worse. Sorry, ain't got the time right now to expand.

 

[uscitizen]

Yep we boomers started it and our children grew it, and their children are hardly worth shootin.

 

[Wiseacre]

Entitlement is an overused word these days, but it does fit the attitude that too many people have today, the idea that I am owed something just for being here. Didn't use to be that way, people were expected to earn their own keep, make their own way. We used to have a strong work ethic, a day's work for a day's pay and you showed up on time and tried to do a good job. I wouldn't say that concept is gone for good, but it isn't as prevalent as it once was. No doubt there are many reason for this decline, but IMHO one of them has to be the rise in dependence on the gov't to take care of us if we can't or won't do it for ourselves. Most of us have no problem with providing for those who really can't do for themselves, but it's another matter entirely if we're asked to provide for those who won't.

Generations prior to the boomers were more or less forced to adhere to those principles, we didn't have a safety net. Now that the net is there, many seem to have stopped worrying about anyone else, including our own kids and grandkids, and instead are looking out just for number 1. We used to sacrifice for them, but not anymore. One wonders how history will look back on this time and what they will say; probably won't be very complimentary.

 

[usmcstinger]

I contend that on the whole the, "Baby Boomers" are the most selfish, lazy, freeloading generation America has ever known, look what their turning over to the next generation...

ah.. btw. ( I am one but I'm not included)..(D))

You are a complete ass hole. You just described Generation Y.

Do you have a unbiased source to back up your bull shit?

 

[Steelplate]

Yes....and the problem with "entitlements" such as Social Security, which has been around since FDR, and Medicare, which was enacted under the Social Security Act of 1965 (the year I was born)is all the fault of the boomers.

Seems to me that the "Greatest Generation" had a huge hand in this too.

And of course, let's not discount the Conglomerate continually throwing the people who used to PAY for these entitlements through taxation under the bus in the form of lower wages, high cost of products and crappy benefits that need to be paid out of pocket.....oh yeah....the elimination of private sector pensions too...another cost to be absorbed by the worker. All to massively increase the profits and personal wealth of people who were already the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet.

But hey....hating people of a certain age is much easier than to actually look at the big picture, isn't it?

I do agree though, they(we) tend to be a shallow lot. Did you know that in Florida and other retirement communities, the prevalence of STD's are skyrocketing? Guess a good chunk of them reverted back to the "free love" days.

 

[Mr Natural]

Sounds like there's a lot of people envious of the fact that the Boomers had the best of everything.

 

[Steelplate]

I don't think it's that so much as it's somewhat misplaced anger at an entire generation of people when the root cause of all of the difficulties we are having are of a much broader and far reaching issue.

As soon as someone mentions about the gradual erosion of wages in this country over the past thirty or so years, the massive breaks and pandering that the wealthy elite get in our country, the continual warring and sabre rattling that we have engaged in my whole life(we must be prepared for the...Commies, and now the Muslims)....which also means big money for Defense Contractors and companies that supply them.

It's too much for some to absorb. So they make it easier on themselves by adopting a simple stance....the less options there are to point a finger at, the better.