 Boomer: At your age in 1970 I paid off college and bought a house with hard work. Millennials: At your age in 1970 college was 5% of median salary—Now it’s 44%. A median home was $24K—Now its $417K. The top marginal tax rate was 70%—Now its 37%. You worked hard—and then closed the door behind you. 49 comments
@JPinNV @fcktheworld587 @QasimRashid there is still an upsetting proportion of working class boomers who, while not responsible for the massively increasing inequality, still refuse to acknowledge it and would rather blame their kids for actions taken by their government. @Vincarsi @fcktheworld587 @QasimRashid And who does this attitude benefit? Not the so-called boomers, but the very wealthy. @JPinNV @fcktheworld587 @QasimRashid Sure, but pushing back against change, even if the change would be to their benefit and even if they've been essentially brainwashed into believing corrupt authorities over the younger people they claim to love, still makes them complicit. @fcktheworld587 @Vincarsi @QasimRashid I don’t doubt that some attitudes can be mapped onto generational demographics. I just think that cultivating resentments between “generations” distracts from the true sources of (and responsibilities for) gross inequality, and so distracts from ways to address it. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Kushner: none of these guys are “Boomers”, but surely love it when we get so twisted about how the old folk have screwed us over & forget about taxes. @fcktheworld587 @Vincarsi @QasimRashid But enough out of me. I’m hoping @QasimRashid will be very successful! @JPinNV @fcktheworld587 @QasimRashid My point is that characterising pushback against an entitlement that actively prevents collective action as "cultivating resentment" is exactly the kind of dismissive attitude that once again places the onus on young people to solve the problem without upsetting the people who stubbornly refuse to change even their view of their own, grown children as people with valid opinions instead of clueless children. @fcktheworld587 @QasimRashid yes, but there's a difference between "you're just lazy fucks as opposed to us" and "we didn't know any better, we did the best we could". It's like ... I could maybe forgive my parents for hitting me - but where I draw the line is the stubbornness of them insisting I should hit my kids for better results... @fcktheworld587 @QasimRashid Boomers put Ronald Reagan and 2 Bushes in the White House and Neil Gorsuch on the SCOTUS that’s all it took. @fcktheworld587 @QasimRashid Boomers worked crap jobs to give their children an education and safe and secure lives (just like the generation before) in the face of political turmoil and corporate greed. We didn’t feel entitled to anything. Just worked with/through whatever conditions existed.  @QasimRashid and: 24k adjusted for inflation would be 192k today. So lest anyone say "that's just inflation": adjusting for inflation, the price of housing has more than doubled (and wages didn't rise to match) @QasimRashid I tend to think this boomer-vs-millennial framing distracts from the true split: the powerful & wealthy vs the rest of us. There are surely plenty of struggling boomers who want justice, and a few wealthy millennials who are just fine with the current state of affairs.  @JPinNV @QasimRashid It's like a lot of things: it's tempting to blame individuals for their individual actions, but we're in a social system in which democracy is a sham and we are frequently and systematically lied to, so even when the problem is our actions in the aggregate, our efforts to act collectively are actively thwarted or misdirected.  @QasimRashid Wrong!!! It was the billionaires who closed the door!! For a self-professed human rights lawyer ageism is a bad look.  Have to say, not true in my case. My first house had an 18% mortgage which I paid 6 points on. Yes, my college was cheaper and yes, members of my generation (or slightly before, actually) voted for assholes like Reagan who smiled alot and turned the country over to billionaires. But not all of did, so please be careful. Also call me back in 2060 let me know how well your generation actually did. Most of my generation started out as idealistic as you are.   @QasimRashid It's not the same thing we're working for. We're working for survival and food. Owning a house and the general American dream does not exist anymore. That's why nobody wants to work anymore. @QasimRashid @Christo @QasimRashid Not just super rich. A lot of just rich and a lot of non rich who vote GOP and got sucked into trickle down theory. @QasimRashid If this boomer had his way, it would have stayed at 90%. GOP is the main problem but Kennedy started the tax cuts. Not fair to target an entire demographic.  @QasimRashid You are 1000% on with this, my dude. Fascinating thread for watching Boomer apologists freak out. @/Boomers: I am Betrayed by Boomer Hippies - watch your step before clutching your pearls at me.  @QasimRashid Please don't make this about boomers vs. younger generations. Few if any of us would brag or gloat about the difficulty our children and grandchildren are having in purchasing a home.  @Barbramon1 @QasimRashid and, I’m barely a “boomer”, by a couple months. @RiaResists @QasimRashid As a divorced female boomer it took me many yrs to save enough money to buy my first home in MA. At a point interest rates were close to 20%. I waited until rates were in low double digits to buy. A récession enabled me to buy foreclosed property.  @Barbramon1 @QasimRashid @RiaResists Replace capitalism with Doughnut Economics. If we do not replace capitalism, there will be major social unrest and it could easily lead to bloodshed. @Runyan50 @QasimRashid @RiaResists Sufficient numbers of people need to recognize that unrestrained capitalism is a huge Ponzi scheme. The numbers are not there yet, or we'd be seeing more movement toward making fundamental changes. @QasimRashid We Boomers didn’t close the door behind us. Republicans did. All ages of Republicans.  @QasimRashid Gen X: No lies detected. A good number of us still owed college loans into our 50s. Unlucky ones lost their homes in the foreclosure crisis, or weren't in that position in the first place because they've been renting their whole lives. @QasimRashid In the 1960s/1970s public universities received 50% government funding; now they receive 5% government funding. If our government doesn’t fund education AT ALL LEVELS, our whole society suffers. @QasimRashid Boomers: Nixon committed the USA to support Israel militarily. Millennials: Its Bidens fault. @QasimRashid Um...in 1970 the _oldest_ Boomers were turning 24 and the majority were still in high school. In fact as of that year more Boomers (e.g. me) were still in grade school than were old enough to have completed college. Personally I think the shaming of our cohort is richly deserved; overall we have indeed been "America's Least Generation". Doesn't mean comparisons should be wrongly cherry-picked though.  @QasimRashid Yes and? Do you post this to both enrage and victimize us? Because that's really all it does. We have no path to power, bud. You know that, but doing this gets you views and helps you make money.  @QasimRashid @QasimRashid my Dad made about $378/month in 1968. He had to pay house note, car insurance, house insurance, feed and clothe 3 kids and a wife, pay for school supplies and books, car note. How much money do you think he had left over? He had 2 other part time jobs and my mother worked part time to make ends meet. All three of his kids worked starting at age 14 but yeah the boomers had it made   @QasimRashid |
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@QasimRashid the boomers didn't close the door, the ruling class did. Which generation of the ruling class did what is of little consequence, and for intergenerational bickering to take place among the working class is simply not productive. The boomers did what they could, with what they were given. Information was much harder to come by, in their times, and the evidence of their environment led them to believe that reliance on the government and corporations would lead to a good world