Remember, boomers voted against their own interests for decades. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
The boomers aren’t a monolith. It’s millions of people with different experiences and actions throughout their lives.
Did a large number vote/legislate themselves into this problem? Yes. Are millions of others also along for the ride despite not supporting this system? Also, yes.
The issues in this article aren’t even applicable to boomers exclusively. Gen-X is a big portion of the population mentioned in the article. This isn’t a generational problem, it’s a class problem.
And don’t forget the fact that if these systemic issues aren’t addressed, we’ll all face the consequences.
Get out of here with your nuanced take. Where do you think you are?
My friend, this isn’t Reddit. We are in the land of the sane. I mean not entirely but to a much larger extent than “big” social media.
We are in the land of the sane.
Now, hold up…
I mean not entirely
Damn fuckin straight. No one that hangs out in these kinds of places is sane enough to contribute to what’s going on out there. The least sane think they do and they’ll create 45 comment long unpopulated wastelands proving as much.
It’s kinda hilarious to see “everyone” act as if they’re above the exact same shit that happened on Reddit, and yet the vast majority of us were from reddit and absolutely aren’t sane.
I mean I’ve read more about guillotines and communism on lemmy this past year than I ever did in the 11 years I was on reddit.
act as if they’re above the exact same shit
I know I am, because I usually come posting here when I have temperature and feel bad and have to direct my attention and anxiety somewhere. EDIT: … so conscious of posting the exact same shit, but above because of knowing it
Actions have consequences.
Those who were taken along for the ride and actively voted against these are a small minority. I can see some benefit of helping them but would need to see what percentage of them actually need it.
The rest of them fucked around and need to find out or we’re just going to keep doing this shit generation after generation. Those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale have happily voted for regressive policies. Fuck’em.
They already fucked our planet, I owe them nothing. We owe them nothing. They owe us.
Let them eat cat food.
It’s not a small minority. Look at the results of every presidential election since the 1980s, they’re not representative of an overwhelming majority of the population. Nor are the republican/democratic splits in Congress.
But that’s all besides the point. These generational lines are all arbitrary anyways. We agree there are problems with the status quo–do you think the fixes just shouldn’t apply to anyone over 55? Would you be okay with that logic being applied to yourself in 30+ years?
those
them
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For as long as you continue to think the problem is age and not class (which you are a fool to think that every boomer is upper class or vice-versa), you will contribute nothing to real change. You’re playing directly into petty division politics like a good little prolie.
Boomers are the ones voting against working class. Take a look at the 2020 DNC primaries. They elected Joe fucking Biden.
Nope. The problem is not class. They could have implemented a better world and choose not to.
They choose to support policies that did this to them. Fuck them and fuck you for falling for it.
They’ve had decades to tax the billionaires into millionaires but they chose not to and they continue to choose not.
So you’re saying you supported everything trump did while President? I mean… you were of voting age while he was elected right? So clearly you agree with everything done? And you agree with everything currently being done?
Funny. My understanding of political history isn’t limited to the past 10 years. The people hitting retirement age today overwhelming supported Reagan in the 1980’s. They’ve had decades to correct their mistake, they’ve had decades to prepare for a proper retirement in the world they created. They have chosen poorly.
Ant and the Grasshopper. They chose to be the grasshopper and dancing away decades of their lives. Now a significant percentage of them approach retirement with zero savings. Fucking zero! Their inability to prepare for the inevitable is not my problem.
The message from the boomers has always been that we cannot afford it. Now that it’s them in need, cost is no issue.
I am more than happy to help the generations younger than myself shore up retirement.'They were born into the shit and most of will never have a chance to save anything significant.
Everyone older than me can get fucked.
But we need to act now or you’re fucked anyway. Remove the cap on social security. Raise taxes on the wealthy. There are dozens of these options that have been floated about for decades.
Save yourselves before you try and save others, half of whom wouldn’t bother to save you once they are comfortable.
Everyone older than me can get fucked.
Just wait until they say that about you. I don’t know what your age is, but your generational cohort certainly hasn’t done everything perfectly either. No “generation” ever has, and never will.
Nope. The problem is not class. They could have implemented a better world and choose not to.
I hear you bud. I would suggest what you actually mean is that the problem is class and it’s the Boomers who are siding with capitalist class against the working class. People try to gaslight us into thinking our criticism of Boomer means that we’re creating this division. We are not. They are intentionally fucking us over.
The problem is not class.
This tells me everything I need to know about you.
Eh I would give that comment some grace. They’ve been misled to believe attacking Boomers is being a class traitor. Rather than the reality which is that Boomers are generally either capitalists themselves or working class traitors.
It’s always they’re not a monolith and true enough but if a literal vote doesn’t represent the overall will of the group then that’s implying thay democracy doesn’t work. If most of them voted for this then thats what most of them wanted. We have exit polls and data on this, it’s not as if anyone’s attributing to a group characteristics that only a few of them have, it’s the clear majority, year over year.
The will of the majority shouldn’t infringe on the liberty of the minority. Might shouldn’t make right.
Are you saying the actions of a portion of an arbitrarily defined group should condemn the group as a whole? I’ll ask the same question I asked another commenter; are you okay with that same principle being applied to you in the future?
It’s being applied to me now. Every thread talking about millennials political preferences top comment is always ‘then they should actually vote’ despite the fact that I havent missed an election. The least we can do is keep the same consistency here. Im not here to coddle boomers and treat them in higher regard than how we get treated. You get what you give and the majority of boomers are also getting exactly what they voted for. Must be nice, that’s not a luxury my generation has.
Also whos being condemed? Are you suggesting honoring the democratic outcome of a vote of a group is condeming them? If so then who exactly did the condeming? No one says I’m being condemed when I have to live with shit I didn’t vote for, the comparison is ridiculous.
We agree the current “boomer” policies are inadequate and should be changed, yes? Then is your position that improvements to the status quo should exclude people of a certain age because of how a portion of that population has voted?
If that’s your position, then that’s condemnation. The entire group is being excluded from the solution, despite only a portion having created the problem in the first place.
Apply that logic to any minority/disadvantaged/disenfranchised group, and see where it takes you. Should all Palestinians be punished because they didn’t do enough to stop Hamas? Should black Americans born in the 1910s not have enjoyed the benefits of the Civil Rights movement because they didn’t affect enough change in their youth?
By that logic if you are an adult over 22 years old , you are defacto a MAGA member.
The boomers aren’t a monolith. It’s millions of people with different experiences and actions throughout their live
Millions of them voted for Biden in the primaries. They insist on perpetuating these problems because they’re selfish uncompromising pieces of shit.
So did millions of any other group of people you can think of; white, black, rich, poor, young, and old. Are they all uncompromising pieces of shit too? Is voting for Biden the mark of the beast, and once marked you’re never entitled to government reforms?
Or is there some other purity test one must pass before being eligible for support?
Other groups are welcome to vote for whomever they like. Boomers are not. They have caused so much damage and fucked over so many people. They have no business continuing to do so.
And because of the ponzi scheme that is social security, future generations will be fucked out of their own retirements.
No dude if we can just get rid of the
JudenBoomers, all of our problems will be solved because theJudenBoomers are all responsible for every problem inThe ReichAmerica.If you replace a word with another word it sounds shitty, who would’ve guessed?
It’s all the same rhetoric. The Jews, the Blacks, the Boomers, the Zoomers, the Christians, the Muslims, etc.
Any comment that blames anything but class as being the only reason for why things are so bad is contributing nothing and hurting actual progress. A 1%er Zoomer does more harm in a single day than a 99th-percentile Boomer does in their lifetime.
Boomers are not an oppressed minority, literally the fucking opposite, what in the hell are you on about and wtf is wrong with you comparing reasonable hatred for the generation that fucked us all over to antisemitism? Not at all comparable, you’re just going to bat for a generation that wants you to pay their social security while trying to get it abolished before you get any
Holy shit you’re still missing the point.
There are boomers who are not wealthy.
The generation didn’t fuck you over, the bourgeoisie did, as they always have. The fact that some of the bourgeoisie is made up of baby boomers is purely incidental. You are not being oppressed by Thomas James, 76 year-old local caterer who marched for Civil Rights before you were even born.
Thomas James is dead. He had to work his entire life and died because he couldn’t afford the meds he needed, or got run over at a civil rights march, or just broke his body with labor and broke half his bones falling down the stairs. Almost all the good boomers are dead, and there were very few to start with. They’re the most conservative voting block out there afaik, maybe older people are worse on average but I doubt it. Boomers and the bourgeoisie are both to blame for the shit situation we’re in. Less so with boomers, but you sure as fuck shouldn’t be letting them off the hook or defending them when they’ve never done the same for you
There are poor boomers. They didn’t all vote for greed. , jfc
True, but the vast majority did, and even the “good” ones are usually the kind of democrat that wants Hillary Clinton as president and wants to bomb more middle eastern countries. Obviously there’s exceptions, but most boomers have voted to fuck over themselves and everyone else, and now want others to pay them so they don’t have to experience the consequences
Their gray new deal was killing off pensions and having people rely on 401ks.
And they voted for it in droves.
Honestly pensions shouldn’t be tied to private accounts, whether they’re owned personally or by corporations. There’s too much fuckery for profit.
You could say the same about the whole financial “industry”.
The entire idea of bundling debt is testament to that.
Yeah, bundling risks together doesn’t change the overall risk. It just makes you more likely to see the average case. The math behind this isn’t new since 2008.
But the people who were supposed to watch for that were instead watching for their chance to get a sweet job at one of the companies they were supposed to be regulating and Bush and Obama worked very hard together to make sure none of the banks suffered for their fraud or not doing their due diligence other than a couple of sacrifices (that might have been more of a consolidation than a sacrifice). The whole thing is rigged and it’s not so much that those in power don’t care as they are in on it.
The old idea was that you have Social Security, traditional pensions, and a 401k. Each of these has flaws, but together they can cover for each other.
Pensions can be tied to private accounts provided you also have the other two.
Retirement age in the US should be 60 for everyone, not based on tiers of what year you were born. We have some at 65 and some at 67, this is wrong, unethical.
And ALL Americans should be required to pay into the system regardless of the income you make. If the wealthy paid their fair share we would have less problems in the system. And yes, they would be eligible to collect retirement like anyone else.And ALL Americans should be required to pay into the system regardless of the income you make. If the wealthy paid their fair share we would have less problems in the system. And yes, they would be eligible to collect retirement like anyone else.
Woah there, internet friend. Getting the wealthy to pay their faire share sounds awful like communism. This is America, were the rich can do whatever they want.
[grabs sickle and hammer and begins chasing the US oligarchs]
If old people wanted to Retire they wouldn’t be the Largest Republican Voting Block in America.
And the ones who voted Democrat should have chose someone better than Joe fucking Biden in the primaries. But no they’re a bunch of selfish uncompromising assholes.
How about make it so young people can afford to live and they might be more excited about working.
We could have better jobs if old people weren’t squatting in them for eternity.
That doesn’t help people currently approaching 65 that this article is focusing on.
“Elections have consequences” moment
It doesn’t mean that this is not a social problem we need to face a solve today. Like if we could establish a UBI, would we just not give it to people over 65? I don’t understand how folks here are so retributive to a whole generation, when probably 40 to 45 percent of that generation didn’t vote for Reagan.
A social problem “we” didn’t create. The Boomers did.
Half the Boomers didn’t, either. It was they who got everyone started talking about the environment. They also built this fucking thing we’re typing on. Shit, the ability to divorce people if you need to was one of their biggest breakthroughs. I have no business kissing their butts, but you millennials? are fascist about this stuff and it has to end, now. Nobody has the luxury of your bullshit.
Millennials are what, 40 now? Some freelancers writing sniveling articles about avocado toast 20 years ago does not allow you to desperately look for scapegoats to blame for everything that happens to you. Nobody cares if your parents are bad people, everyone else alive does not pay for that.
Don’t fucking talk about voting until every last one of you is doing it. Fuck you for refusing to show for Clinton, THAT is on your head, so worry about your own crimes, you killed a lot of people by letting Trump through at the worst possible time, plus slacking off on all the other elections you didn’t even know existed, and if you don’t like that framing of responsibility, then fuck OFF about the baby boomers.
How many times now have I seen you little bitches no-show? How many chuds have you made wealthy? Rogan and a bunch of these other right-wing fucks becoming wealthy for stupid podcasts is on your generation for listening to them. How many times have you stepped up for anything but self-pity? How many more excuses? I don’t care if you never get to buy a house, shut the FUCK up about it. Welcome to reality for, like, 99% of the global population.
It ends. The next time I catch one of you talking about your “struggle” making 140k a year in stupid fucking Frisco, I swear to fuckin god. Everyone understands your living expenses just fine, you NEVER shut up about it, across what? 7 platforms? Somebody is making 25k in the same fuckin town, in a restaurant you’re too special to eat at, fuck your whining.
Scapegoating is a bad, bad, bad habit that your entire generation seems to share, I think it’s a trauma thing. Don’t care. I just got done hoping that COVID didn’t kill me and my whole family over some trash job that exists so you and your family can bang the order button from safety. Fuuuuck you and your victimhood, you expected us to be all cool about that while you decided to have yourself a worker’s rights movement that we weren’t invited to unless we stayed obedient to your ideas for FUCK sake. It’s your responsibility to process your trauma, it’s nobody else’s responsibility to put up with your failure to do so.
If you expect the millions of people who went under the bus for your convenience to just “get over it” and be all cool, then you will get the fuck over whatever is your problem and STOP trying to build solidarity with each other through scapegoating one group after the other. Who’s next after enough Boomers are dead? We know you won’t just drop that shit, it’s how you are, so who has to be your scapegoat next?
None of us, globally, are ever going to be free of the conservatism that seems to be baked into roughly half of humanity, that causes all this grief.
You think Boomers are bad? Some of the people on this Earth, we can’t discuss their evil without getting called xenophobic, good thing they’re all moving to live closer to you, so rise the fuck above, get over yourselves, and prepare your souls for that situation.
Maybe, with some sort of coherent political will, we might be able to get a fucking leash on the wealthy, who are always at the root of our suffering, but not so long as you and your kind get played like a fucking harp, constantly spewing casual hatred on a generation of people who ultimately had no more control than yours does, and who aren’t anymore or less fashy than you fucks clearly are. THEY show up to vote, YOU bitch and do nothing.
You’re 40! Fuck sake! This is teenage bullshit. You should have figured this out on your own by now. Enough.
Get the fuck over it, now. Tell your fucking friends. People are holding YOU personally responsible for the Palestinian genocide because you aren’t doing enough about it, so see how you feel about being in the hot seat over shit you can’t control. Motherfuckers, goddamn.
As a millennial I figure this POV being criticized is more like gen z not having real life experience after college. There’s a lot to be critical about from previous generations, but when it becomes vindictive, retributive, etc. it is not call. This is the type of POV and shit that arms the Republicans of accusing libs of wanting death panels for grandma and grandpa. The lemmyverse unfortunately reads like university Marx reading group populated by edgelords.
Maybe, with some sort of coherent political will, we might be able to get a fucking leash on the wealthy, who are always at the root of our suffering, but not so long as you and your kind get played like a fucking harp
Just wanted to highlight this portion of what was most likely a very cathartic post, just so it doesn’t get lost in the verbosity of the comment.
Every one of us should be asking every politician for ranked-choice voting, if nothing else. I hardly ever even see it mentioned.
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You mean the cohort that we’re going to have to bury in four feet of concrete to keep the lead in their bodies out of the soil?
fuck. here we go.
you think this money to help them retire is coming from the government? no. lol.
It’s coming from us. filial responsibility laws are already on the books. if you can’t fund your own retirement, get it from your kids before you’re allowed to get anything from the state.
your boomer parents will reverse mortgage their house, liquidate everything, then come for your paychecks like child support, until you’re tapped out permanently. they won’t do it maliciously, not directly, they’ll do it because it’s a “requirement” of properly retiring. sorry hun, it’s the law, I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to!
they’ll drain you and keep you drained until they die. if we’re lucky, the state then won’t turn around and suck the state-paid care debts out of you as unfurnished filial debts.
Lucky for me my mom died before she could reverse mortgage her house! Free house y’all.
It’s the young that are fucked not the old
It’s not really young or old that are fucked. It’s still the poor and rich, and guess which one is fucked. Over time the wealth gap is widening which sucks for younger people. But it’s still a rich and poor problem, and I think we should have sympathy for those with financial insecurity regardless of age.
Ok yes I agree good point. Just like the left vs right instead of rich vs poor… I can’t get through to my parents or uncles on this so it’s pent up. I just don’t want there to be some we have it the same when I just haven’t experienced that
The numbers aren’t great. Turns out the boomers fucked their own too.
Good.
No. Needless suffering for the greed of others is never good.
You say “needless” I say “completely self inflicted”. I say “good” because they’re actually experiencing consequences of their shitty behavior. Will it make them decide to do something else? Probably not but it’s nice to see someone getting their just desserts.
In an era of rampant voter disenfranchisement I don’t think we can blame the victims for their predicament. Post World War 2 leaders got the electorate they wanted by making leftists and minorities criminals.
Imagine thinking “leftists” and “minorities” when people are talking about “Boomers”.
I’m sorry are you of the opinion that there are no retirement age BIPOC people?
It’s both
Boomers got cheap houses, well paying jobs without higher education, and will be getting out largely without dealing with the consequences of severe climate change. It’s not equal in the slightest
I didnt say it was equivalent
Well it ain’t both either. Ones fucked. The young ones. The other had it good.
There are more rich boomers than anyone else. They’re are also poor boomers who didn’t vote for this shit. You can’t damn whole generations. Nō generation ia a monolith just like no race, nation, gender or religion is
I’m not damning but I’m not giving sympathy either. The young get my sympathy. The old had plenty
Did I claim it was equal?
We both are.
This is capitalism in action folks. Siphon all the money up to the top. Whoops, no one can afford to live now. Oh well.
Super sustainable!
Oh I know! We could get together as a society, through our government and socially pay for a security fund. For those that retire. We could call it social security! No one would ever be against that. Taking care of our elders and those who’ve worked their whole life. /S
It’s extremely sad that we are going to have to learn this lesson, again.
an economist did a video the other day on how solvable it is. The gist, the shortfall is on a 75 year projection, and there are multiple ways of solving it, but working longer only gets 40% of the way there. So given the trade off on quality of life for people vs solving it in the many other ways, that seems like a shitty strategy. Also you need the politicians to do their part…
What if we killed everyone on their 65th birthday?
It seems way more fair than letting the privileged quit early and the vulnerable suffer
What if we killed everyone on their 65th birthday?
I’m all for that. I’m 40 and I’ve had enough of this bullshit.
Logan’s Run?
Yeah I am confident that with any amount of prep time even 65 year old me could take on the Box.
Then I get his fish, and plankton, and sea greens, protein from the seas.
Yeah I am confident that with any amount of prep time even 65 year old me could take on the Box.
Right? If Box and a Dalek fought everyone would be taking bets on who tipped over first.
(Box goes up stairs and laughs)
(Dalek levels entire future city of Logan’s run in order get Box)
(Dalek still manages to fall over)
Watch this be top priority for DC because all of them are geriatrics.
They’re all rich. They got theirs, why would they give a fuck about anyone else?
Old people are gullible and vote. Both parties want them taken care of.
They aren’t all rich
Oh gosh, one ain’t rich, that changes everything
Yeah, no you’re right, there’s NO poor old people. FFS
We’re talking about politicians, buddy.
OK fair point I missed that in the OP. Carry on =)
Social security? That they paid for?
It’s their fault that they were dumb enough to go along with whatever lie the system pitched them in their days. And they’re suffering for it.
Still don’t trust economists
