Boomers, Bailouts, and Backlash

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41

I don’t blame anything on my Boomer mother. She did the best she could. She also instilled in me a work ethic and integrity. Not all boomers are as described. However, there was a scheduled anti DOGE protest right outside the local TV station that seemed to have a large percentage of the retiree crowd involved. It was actually quite strange. The had signs trying to get people to honk in support. No one did when I was going by. I DID see a few cars flash the middle finger salute.

Accountability is NOT this Xer’s kryptonite. Quite the opposite actually. Many of us essentially raised ourselves in single parent or 2 working parent gomes with little adult supervision. We grew up fast and had to take responsibility for our own actions early on. The one thing that I do find hard to deal with is laziness. Gen Z and millenials have a large streak of lazy running through a sizeable percentage of them. I think millenials and gen z have a hard time with accountability. I see it in my own son even though I tried to raise him better than that. They also have a really screwed up perspective of what respect means…

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42

I tied the hands of my financial advisor a few years ago, into a more conservative portfolio. I’ve struggle watching the market soaring, while my holdings have languished. I did move some money into a brokerage account so I could do some trading. Hoping for a dead cat bounce, and I’ll sell something, because I’ll convert to some cash that I’ll take out next January.

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43

Boomers were born 1946 to 1964. So easy math - anyone 60 and over is a boomer. I believe Chris is 60? At least I thought that was mentioned once.

I see the whole boomer = bad a little differently. The “elite” have been hard at work over my boomer lifetime strengthening the wealth pump that moves wealth up to them. So naturally, over the course of this generation things have gotten increasingly worse. The boomers who were able to buy property at least have that - and good thing since pensions are a thing of the past for everyone except public employees. And our society has broken the family so there’s no multigenerational home where grandparents can live with kids and grandkid, usually providing light housework, cooking and childcare. Instead society has monetized elders to those “adult communities” where we can extract whatever they’ve got rather than having it passed down.

As far as Chris’ epithet goes, I’m not really sure how this is all the fault of boomers. Millennials, birth years 1981 - 1996, are now at or closing in on middle aged. A 43 year old has had agency for quite a while. Gen X is firmly middle aged +. Don’t the 59 year olds get to share some responsibility?

Personally, I’ve worked hard at planting pollinator friendly plants, I’m careful to avoid chemicals that harm insects, and try to live as lightly as possible. So, no, I haven’t destroyed the insect population. My husband and I have spent many a weekend and evening fixing up houses so again, no, we’ve invested in infrastructure.

I’m clueless what exactly the boomers should have done to turn this train around.

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44

Well, you raised them. Why did you raise them that way? So you could delight in having a moan about them, as Boomers love to do about their children? Is it part of a strategy to deflect attention from all your generation has done to them? Part of the general Boomer strategy to poison all the wells and salt all the fields behind them?

But also, you can’t expect your kids to have the same passions as you. I don’t as my parents. Luckily, in some ways, my dad’s business was self employment - nothing I could take over, so I was free to persue my own thing.

I’m an older Millenial and I’ve built up my own thing. We weren’t all raised by our Boomer parents to be lazy and entitled. Far from it. As I say, not sure why you raised your kids to be people you don’t respect, but there we are.

45

Has anyone noticed that, once a person gets past a certain age, all they want to do is corner people and reel off narratives about their life. About how they worked hard, didn’t have much, were good people etc etc.

Are they hoping to convince themselves of something? Bag a bigger cloud in heaven? I’m not sure.

46

I did raise them. I own that completely. I have mortgaged our paid off residence several times in order to give them a chance to get ahead and build the business to buy equipment that would be what they claimed wanted and needed to get ahead only to see it squandered and the unused equipment being used by myself to recoup some of the costs. I have spent countless hours developing unique revenue streams that there is little interest in pursuing or learning unless I do it myself. Pursuit of state liscensure to get ahead and take over the business has been tepid and taken years to do. Offering them opportunities to excell that in my mind I would die for that are met with indifference has me completely perplexed at the levels of perception and priorities on how we view things. Interestingly, an offer of a substantial cash buy out made several times over the years and we go our own ways brings a look of fear and talk of how they love the business. I have spent years pondering and agonizing what I have done wrong. This is all stuff that is openly and candidly discussed with the counter parties in this equation. I’m willing to own it and asked many time what I’m doing that needs to be changed. They aren’t motivated enough to present ideas to that end. I came to the conclusion that many in this generation are satisfied with just getting by in life and not getting ahead for whatever reason as evidenced by 30 plus years of observation and dogged effort to motivate with minimal results. Feckless moaning over, I got to go find some wells to salt and refine my plans to make their lives even more miserable…that $90k 2025 truck they drive was not doing it (mine is 25 years old, my wife’s Honda is 18 this year) as I hoped it would.

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47

Thanks for responding Boomer Chris. The thing I’ve found most interesting in this discussion is the generalisations made such as we destroyed insects, excessive debt etc. I really think the average mum and dad Bommer didn’t go out of their way to destroy nature or take on too much debt or look to worship Fauci. We can now see that we (all generations) have been hoodwinked as the truth is being exposed. The lies and deceit of the past and present generations of the ‘establishment’ has got us to where we are now. We all have the responsibility to do better by working together and not laying blame.
The ‘establishment’ would be so pleased to know that their efforts to divide us have so far been successful.

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48

Good for you!

Boomer here who raised two Millenials. I can’t speak for anyone else. We consciously raised our children to be ‘self-sufficient’, balanced with the mindset of ‘it takes a village’ and a sense of being community-minded.

They each had daily household and farm chores to do and learned practical skills - from cooking and sewing, to knitting and woodworking, to learning how to make a fire and balance a checkbook. As teenagers they put in volunteer hours at the local library while also taking on their first job so that they could save to buy a used car when they got their license.

At age 17 our son wanted to go on a 6-month outdoor expedition that cost about $15,000. Instead of expecting us to cough up the money, he developed his own fundraising campaign by selling his artwork and taking on an extra job. He raised all of the funds this way.

We never gave them any kind of an allowance. Neither one of them had a ‘college fund’, yet both went to college (and one of them has done it without having any debt). Both left the nest and never looked back. Neither one of them has ever asked us for money or has returned home to live. Both have long-term partners, make an honest living, and are healthy and happy people. We are all very close.

Maybe we’re just really lucky, but I’m guessing at least some of how they managed to get where they are was because they grew up with a ‘can-do-work-hard-and-help-others’ attitude. This is also how I was raised by my two working class parents. They simply didn’t have it to give sometimes. We actually did, but chose not to and also to live very simply.

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49

Your story starts when they are adults, rather than their formative years. But it sounds like you made life too easy for them. Seen that with middle class kids.

We all do the best as we think fit at the time and hindsight is a wonderful thing etc etc

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50

Perhaps. My son has been exposed to work since he was very young. In the past I owned a fairly large company that had a prefab division. On holidays from school, and often on weekends he would come to work with me and take the initiative to help the prefab crew. They were very accommodating and he helped them a a lot as a youngster. As he got older he came out in the field while still young and helped crews install underground plumbing
which is pretty physical work. I constantly heard “your son is going places.”
He knows how to work, is an excellent mechanic, is great with clients, still acts like there is no future. Those younger years were spent in a neighborhood with very, very, affluent peers. They were spoiled, wealthy, had all the, latest video games, and parents that were never there. I noticed he started spend endless hours gaming with them. The clincher was when he ran into the house a the age of 12 and asked if he could go to Palm Springs and do an arcade weekend with a friend. Outside sat a limo and a chauffeur to watch them for the weekend while supplying them with endless tokens. I am at whits end, and entertaing the hypothesis that video games destroy the evolution of, and corrupt young developing brains to the point that the process of joyful innovation is replaced with addiction to sight and sound. My son’s, “have everything” peers soon started acting out like Grand theft Auto characters to the point where one of them earned a life sentence for a shooting at a party. We moved to start anew in a different state to get my son away from this crowd!
Sadly, our Grandson has been allowed go down the same road. As a youngster he was allowed to play endless video games by his other side of the family great grand parents who he spent several days a week with. Despite our warnings, my son and his wife poo-pooed our concern. Now they have an 18 year old, who can’t drive because he has no motivation to get a license dispite the fact he was gifted an almost brand new DodgeDakota 4x4 which sits unused in the driveway, sleeps 'til 4pm because he was up all night playing on line games, is very intelligent but lacks any motivation. When this behavior is discussed with his parents, I get the same NPC response when trying get them to plan for their future. YMMV

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51

I feel your pain. Wife and I have had a LOT of conversations about how we might have handled things differently, and knowing what we knew at the time, we would not have done anything differently.

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I think this is key. I grew up in the 50s and 60s. I can clearly see the constantly advancing dysfunction in our society since then. It’s to the point now where I believe we have a sociopathic society with an abundance of self-absorbed, unmotivated, poorly educated people. There is a saying: “We become what we are around.” The criminal that goes back to his old neighborhood after release from prison becomes once again what he was around. Humans are wonderfully adaptable. But it’s not so wonderful if what we’re around is dysfunctional.

I think these things have crept up on the job of parenting. What we first knew about parenting largely came from our own parents. But I think what they did for us needed quite a bit of adjustment as time went on and we became parents. Double that for the next generation. Things are changing at an exponential rate, so it’s not surprising to me that “what we knew at the time” might not meet the current parenting challenge.

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53

Just want to add this :arrow_heading_down: short video to the conversation, which resonates strongly. I abhor the opinions expressed of these ignorant people.

I am a boomer, tail end. I have long hated the aspersions cast upon my generation. For sure I believe we grew up and benefited from an era that will never be repeated again. We were so blessed to be 60s & 70s kids, free to roam & play without helicopter parents, free to scrape knees, bloody noses and get dirty without running to mom.

Mine was a classic boomer family. Four kids, stay at home mom, and a dad that was doing his utmost to build a business from scratch. Very traditional role models. He could not have been as successful without the stability my mom provided on the home front. We were representative of what was then middle class. My parents managed to buy a small 3 bedroom bungalow & dad built 2 bedrooms in the basement himself to give each kid a bedroom. We camped on weekends. It was a big deal to stop at the Dairy Queen for an ice cream on the way to our campsite on Friday nights. Such memories… Dad had tapped into a key market (oil to natural gas conversion) that saw his business grow exponentially in the late 60’s early 70’s. He did really well by our family financially, only to later see a significant portion of the wealth he invested in commercial land - the family nest egg - destroyed by environmental regulations. That kind of thing sure is ringing a bell these days…

I also remember the downside for my dad in the late 70’s and early 80’s with crazy inflation and every crazier interest rates. He was holding his own in his small business, nose the grindstone, making tough, tough decisions, watching his line of credit and receivables on a daily basis. He went from having 55 staff in the early 70’s boom times for his sector, to just 5 when he ended up closing his business in the early 80’s. The remaining staff would not buy the business because “dad was it”. A man of immense integrity, dad found jobs for all 5 before finally locking the doors.

That was how things were for we boomers. There were great benefits, but there were also great downsides. As there are for every generation. I have always said about those who trash the boomers to question what they would have done differently, had they been born in that era. An era of perceived abundance, yet ignorant of the actual realities of finite resources. And ignorant yet again, due to lack of access to information, of how we were all being screwed left, right and centre by the bankers and politicians.

Spare me any admonishment of boomers. Anyone else born in such circumstances would have done the same thing. We are all products of and respond to the conditions we are born into - something we have absolutely no control over.

That being said, we in the here and now, DO have the ability to influence what kind of situation future generations are born into. We should be doing all we can to ensure they get to experience similar prosperity and peaceful lives. That should IMHO be our collective goal.

https://x.com/BillboardChris/status/1910619016869343594

Edit after posting: I will add that I entered the workforce in the late 70’s. My first car loan was at 21% interest. My first mortgage was at 14%. So it was not an easy ride in the 80’s for a lot of boomers like me. This is the era when the phrase “jingle mail” - mailing your house keys to the bank and walking away - became a new thing. I know a few people who had to walk away from their homes.

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54

Well said. I lay much of the blame on the infiltration of public and higher education by strategic communist operatives. I regret that I did not home school my now 30-something yo children, who have bought the lies hook and sinker that they were told—-much as we all did, I suppose. Although I can say with some pride that my kids have great work ethics and don’t have the sense of entitlement that some do.

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Further to my post just above, I want to add this. My dad, ever the entrepreneur, encouraged all 4 of us to work, to do things to make pocket money when we were kids. I had regular customers for snow shovelling and lawn mowing, as did my friends. We were raised with a sense of responsibility, so much so that if one of us was sick & could not do our work, we got our friends to take care of our customers. I am talking kids between 8 and 12 years old. We pick wild raspberries and sold them by the pint door to door. My brother went out at night and picked big fat earthworms to sell to neighbours who liked to fish. We painted fences, did chores, babysat. My first official paid job was at 10, selling Christmas trees at one of those pop up lots found in most communities which was a few blocks from home. I knew a kid who was selling trees so I just marched up to the trailer on the lot, knocked on the door and said “can I sell Christmas trees too?”. I did that for 4 years, working evenings and weekends - all day on Sat & Sun. I was paid 10% commission & had some pretty darn good paydays for a kid. In hindsight it is amazing my parents let me do that. I have a hard time imagining that happening now. We all had part time jobs as teens. And even though it was hard to take at the time, the rule in our house was at the end of high school either you went to university, which my parents would pay for, or you got a job and paid room and board. I moved out at 18, while making only 2.25 an hour.

The bottom line is a very strong work ethic and sense of responsibility was instilled in all of us. I am grateful for that. It has served me well in adulthood. I see the same kind of traits in a lot of boomers. The road to whatever wealth that cohort has today has largely been paved with a lot of trial and error, grit and determination through some pretty wild eras.

These are the things I tend to see missing in a lot of the younger generations today. Not all for sure, but many. How kids are raised, the values & morals instilled plays a huge role in how their later lives evolve. Nothing is guaranteed, but a great work ethic & sense of responsibility usually provides a solid foundation to build on. A foundation that sees one get through all the seasons of life.

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56

Probably this is an intended strategy ?

It can only be sustained in the short term, but your suggestion may be part of the pressure being directed east ?

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I recall those mad interet rates. It has been awkward for many to get where they are today, the tail wind which aided those people was more of a zephyr.

However, today the cost of buying a house in comparison to wages is even more difficult despite the lower interest rates, as wages are either near nil, or just short of the level to manage. I speak from the UK.

Specifics apart, the thrust of Chris’s comments are sound in terms of affordability, job availability, and above all wages versus the ‘finance’ ‘machinery’.

It has not gone un noticed by me that Chris got a much better start in life than I did, so his wisdome is more an enjoyable academic prism, rather than anything I can afford to carry out. His advice during covid and his passion for gold place him well above others, despite my relative poverty and lack of ability to join in.

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58

It’s the old “hard times produce good men, good times produce weak men” etc. story. We boomers had it good for sure (so did our kids for the most part), so it’s no surprise that we dropped the ball and left the world a worse place in many ways.
As for the gray-haired protesters, my money says that the vast majority of them are graduates of liberal colleges where they were indoctrinated with godless, communist BS at impressionable ages. They are in many ways victims of the system who have simply continued to spew the same poisonous ideas onto subsequent generations. Yes it is disgusting and sad that they do not appear to be able to think rationally (although we should hold all generations to the same standard in that regard). We are all of us products of multiple influences over which we had little control, especially in our youth.
I do appreciate your insights, Chris. Nobody likes to accept blame when things turn out badly, and we humans tend to be very self-centered creatures who are easily deceived. I truly believe this is a spiritual battle that cannot be won without reliance on the good Lord above. Blessings and peace to you and Evie.

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60

Your well written post is spot on.

The topic has been aired by millions for years.

Parental guidance of the highest order makes sound individuals.

Parental Guidance !!

So many get no real guidance, and maybe a similar proportion get very poor guidance. The schools, when they are working well, still can’t make up for an outside, (or even a home), environment.

‘How Oh How’ does society solve this ongoing problem.

A good mate of mine (now long gone) often said that some kids can only be helped by getting them out of their home environment !

I certainly have believed, for over 50 years, that schools should be 50% academic and the rest vocational; (dealing with the sick, the old, animals, engineering, municipal maintenance, catering, etc.)

Some new thinking could help, you have the solution, but there are multitudes working against good solid parental values and upbringing !

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61

Great words.

In fact if many parent and grandparents back then saw; modern day television, social rules, and revealations only now seen in whistleblowing social media, they would not only be shocked but be incapable of giving any advice to youths for such an alien new world.

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