Boomer Bust Redux

So where are we now? The baby boomers control the political process and until they loose that control, nothing good or constructive, to solving the many problems in our country today, is going to get done. Yes, I said that, I will shout it out if I need to. We are now at a point that the younger generations have enough voting power to unseat the boomers. It needs to be done, and soon. Time is short, we have until the middle of the next decade, 2025 at the latest. After that, I think we really are screwed, we will have reached the point of no return. The choice of whether or not to save the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and stop the rise of the worlds oceans and all the destabilizing climatic events that will follow is critical. Solving the many social and economic problems that are growing larger in this country, will require a greater and greater amount of money the longer we wait. Money from taxes on people who do not have to pay much now due to recent and ongoing tax cuts. Wealthy people who see that as privilege, and they have bought and paid for that privilege in the politicians that they control, that the boomers control. It is also very advantageous to them to keep the country divided socially, any organized movement to solidify a voting bloc against them has been so far, successfully prevented. Without any unity, we cannot move forward on issues that concern the welfare of all of us, not just the rich.

The boomers inherited the prosperity of their parents, who struggled through the great depression and WWII to build a robust society and economy. We, the boomers, never had to sacrifice or work very hard to get to where we are today. I have been fairly comfortable all my life, the future without that comfort frightens me very much. The boomers like me are exceptionally motivated to keep that comfort and control. And as a result of all this, the next generations will have to sacrifice in ways that we cannot possibly imagine. Do they have the will and fortitude to do so? For the sake of our country, our planet and our civilization, I sincerely hope so. (Below, Lynne, me and Robert, our only child, September, 1983. Did we doom his future for our present comfort?)

Boomer Bust

My generation, the baby boomers, (those born between 1948 and 1965), have come under a lot of fire and criticism lately from the younger generations, and not without good cause. It is now felt that we have squandered the future economic security of this nation for everyone else but our generation. Starting in the 80s, Regan era deregulation and tax cutting, gradually weakened the robust country that the boomers inherited. Constantly borrowing money to fund wars and social programs for ourselves, we have raised the national debt to incredible levels, leaving future generations the problem of how to pay it all off. We have allowed the country’s critical infrastructure to degrade, and the public education system to deteriorate, forcing students to go deep in debt to fund the ever increasing costs of a college education. We won’t even get into the disastrous consequences that the housing and tech bubbles exploding on our watch created, due to deregulation and relaxing the laws that kept watch on these potentially dangerous things.

And let’s talk about that huge elephant in the room, the one that everyone in our generation completely ignores, climate change. Yes, climate can be thought of as an important part of the fabric of the economy. It has also seriously degraded over the last 40 years. We knew about the dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels way back then, but hey, it won’t be a problem until after we are gone. It is our ultimate failure and the one I am most deeply ashamed of, and the one that now, will be the most expensive to fix.

Though it is not going to get fixed, not any time soon. The boomers control the political process and it has now degraded into keeping the status quo for themselves. They have resorted to all kinds of strategies to maintain their political power and the horrifying consequences of this is now evident in the current administration and its frightening discriminate policies towards to anyone who opposes them. So have the boomers doomed American civilization? Let’s talk about that. (Below, young boomers, my sister Linda, me and my sister Debbie, Easter, 1958).

My parents house

I recently spent a bit of time at my parents old house waiting while the estate agent gathered things together that might be interesting to someone. So I prowled around the place checking for any last bits of personal papers or mementos that belonged to my parents. The place was a mess, all the drawers, closets, attic and basement emptied of the things that they used and tossed in boxes for people to pick through. We were very much a middle class family, the kind that evolved in the 50s during that era of post WWII prosperity. The furniture is old and not very stylish, but comfortable and well used. This house and all its goods made up a working household, a place which functioned daily, providing the means for sleeping, eating, resting and playing. It now stands mute, cluttered with those things which we used every day, not filling their function anymore, a machine that has slowed down and stopped, no longer useful and unnaturally quiet now. There is no chatter of children or the murmur of our parents, the rattle of breakfast being prepared, showers, getting dressed, eating and the rush to catch the bus for school. The evenings with the squawk of the TV in the background, doing homework, helping with the dinner preparations and cleaning up afterward. In the summer, picking fruit from the orchard, and the assembly line precision of pitting, cleaning and cutting the fruit, putting it in jars and boiling it for preservation. The holidays with visiting relatives and cousins to run around the house and play with. Birthdays with outdoor cookouts with everyone gathered around a large table made out of a big piece of plywood set on sawhorses, groaning under the weight of all the food and deserts, a yard full of laughter and noise. That is all gone now, the estate sale, which is just a garage sale with an auctioneer, was starting and so began the final step to completely cleaning out the house prior to selling it. The whole place will just be torn down and discarded, like the rest of my parents generation, finally forgotten. (Below, the garage at my parents, everyday things that we used).