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| That doesn't look like gelato. |
"My husband retired last year, and ... we are going to follow a dream and live in Rome for a year. Art. Music. Gelato! After Rome, my calendar is a blank. Like every other new retiree, I'll have to invent a life for myself. ... So much has changed in the world since the day I launched as a baby financial reporter in 1963. When it comes to what to do with our money, we have tons of options that didn't exist back then. So which should we choose?"
I have nothing against JBQ, but these comments made me again aware of why I hate my own generation so much. There is so much "entitlement" in them. Not that JBQ and many Boomers are not entitled to the rewards of having worked hard in their lives and the choices now before them. And not because I am in agreement with a growing sense among younger Americans that the Boomers are becoming a burden. A piece in the online forum Medium addressed the issue in this way: "What the Hell Are We Going to Do About the Boomers? Nothing has prepared us for the baby boomers' return to infancy." As that title suggests, the article is about the demands that elderly people make not only on the healthcare system but also on their younger family and other relatives.
Boomers, according to the article, grew up with practically free college education (at state universities like the one I attended) and good infrastructure, but have since then hollowed out the benefits they enjoyed, not to forget locking "their own health care money into place -- through state and company pensions and Medicare -- and then slashed it for everyone else."
The author of the piece, one Bernie Bleske, waxes positively when it comes to the contributions the Boomers made to fighting "the sins and demons their parents never fully conquered — racism, sexism, disease, and poverty" — but he is incensed that they would prefer to pass on their inheritance to charities rather "than to their own children or government institutions or into future savings. Fifty-seven percent said each generation should earn their own (damn) money (thank you very much). More than half thought it was more important to invest in children than adults, though heaven forbid that investment applies to schools."
While it is true that infrastructure has gone to hell -- a subject to which Donald Trump has drawn attention -- trillions of dollars that might have gone to infrastructure were instead diverted to transfer payments that have deincentivized standing on your own two feet. This has affected not only what was once known as the underclass; great numbers of Americans have grown up in middle-class homes and are whining babies.
The problem, however, does lie with the Boomer generation. We came of age in the austere 1950s, when options were limited and when we were drilled into habits and attitudes, by parents and teachers alike, that would make us successful. Those of that generation like myself who first went to school in the 1950s learned to read, write, and compute, and absorbed the ability to sit quietly at our desks for long periods, all without Ritalin. These habits were also instilled in us by the surrounding society, which disapproved of failure. Back then we said "broken marriage," not the nonjudgmental "single parent." Back then there was no safety net for the ordinary, garden-variety failures of life, no welfare, not to mention no Parents without Partners, no therapy in which to talk your problems to death. Unless you wished to exist on the fringes of the social order, you were forced to take responsibility for the choices you had made, to do what was called the right thing.
Those habits served us well when we left high school or went to college as the economy took off in the 1960s. We were the first beneficiaries. And the first thing we did was to institutionalize indulgence. In 1973, the Boomers began to preside over a vast spending spree: the Great Society. Year by year, a many-tentacled octopus produced a national attitude and an accompanying bureaucracy of programs and entitlements designed to prevent people from … well, from feeling hurt, from having to face the consequences of bad choices, of failures. Half a century later, unlike in the 1950s, if you make mistakes, you are supposed to turn to the government to bail your out, to allow someone else to pay for your shortcomings. If you become fat, it's not from overindulgence, but from a medical condition. If you can't read beyond third-grade level after eight years in school, you move on to high school anyway. Parents can no longer spank their own children, teachers can't fail them, and everyone agrees that competition is bad for the psyche. And don’t forget the foremost legal victory of my generation, Roe v. Wade. Whatever the effect on the nation’s psyche of this 1973 legal decision, it spawned a huge bureaucratic network, one promoting indulgence, lack of personal responsibility, and a loss of inner starch.
So, by all means, blame the Boomers, but blame them for having turned the U.S. into an "entitlement" society. And then grow up and try to change the direction of things.
