Maybe next time leave the ladder behind instead of taking it with you.
The wealthier Boomers left behind millions of tiny little ladders specifically for their kids to climb.
The poorer Boomers died before hitting retirement age, or died in debt, or bankrupted themselves paying for end-of-life health care, or got scammed or otherwise denuded of their accumulated wealth.
Incidentally, its the wealthier Boomers who continue to set national policy from the board rooms and lobbying offices established by their own parents and grandparents. Meanwhile the poorer and more isolated Boomers are left to drown in their own poverty, ineffectually raging at the collapse of neighborhoods and the destitution of their pension funds and the deterioration of their suburban homes, unless their children and grandchildren are able to help them out at the end of their days.
Folks like to pretend this is one generation pitted against another. But its selection bias. The only members of the Boomer generation you hear from are the ones that came out on top. The rest have been killed in the wars or poisoned by industrial waste and lead pollution or foreclosed into homelessness to die on the streets or confined to digital communities like Facebook where they’re drowned out by waves of misinformation accounts. Legions of dead Boomers never got to decide how the current generations live. They were burned up and thrown out, just like the current generation of bourgeois GenXers and Millennials and Zoomers plan to do with the rest of us.
They all came out on top. Even the poorest boomer right now today living in the street had a better shot at the American dream than all but the most lucky of youth right now.
Yes some fucked up or got screwed over but as a vast majority even these people supported and continue to support the same people who have put them there in the first place.
Even the poorest boomer right now today living in the street had a better shot at the American dream
Trying to explain to a sharecropper born in 1945 and dead from cholera or smallpox in 1965 that he had just as good a shot at the “American Dream” as someone born after modern sanitation, public education, and highway mass transit was installed in their municipality forty years later.
But I can’t, because that sharecropper was illiterate and also dead.
Boomers should have thought of the shareholders.
That is, the kids they fucked over with their bullshit ideas and absolute misunderstanding of the world they created.
I’d love to be able to speak with my parents again, but (and I never thought I would ever say this, if you had asked me 10 years ago) I need to see some heads popping out of asses.
“You should have kids so you’ll have someone who will take care of you when you’re older.”
Bruh, I’m not subjecting a person to this godforsaken world so I can guilt trip them into babysitting me when I’m old and senile.
as someone who’s parents’ retirement plan was that - I absolutely agree. There’s no way anyone should subject their kids to that level of guilt and stress.
Aww. Maybe if they didn’t spend their days treating their kids like their bank accounts and actually voted to help them afford things like housing and health care they’d have grandkids.
Instead they supported ghouls like trump and clinton instead of the guy who wanted to give everybody health care!
Lmfao thanks for ruining our whole society, boomers. Reap what you’ve sowed.
Told my mom if she wants grandkids she better stop voting for conservatives. Didn’t work, and a deal’s a deal.
I mean, she’s a boomer, if she said she had I still wouldn’t trust her.
Boomers: “Reality can be anything I want.”
she better stop voting for conservatives
Democrats have won the popular vote in the last seven of eight elections. If everyone struck this deal, I would expect to see significantly more grandkids than we’re getting.
But also, states like California and New York and Massachusetts are seeing grandkid-gaps bigger than anything you’ll find in Utah or Ohio or South Carolina. If conservatives are causing the problem, you would expect to see more Gen Alphas in the bluer states, wouldn’t you?
The poorer families in those states make do better than poorer families in red states, but not enough to support having kids
The diameter of that condom is huge…
That massive dong is probably another reason for the lack of grandchildren
Those are very expensive. It’s what drove me to get a vasectomy
I made a nextdoor account recently for my small business and one of the first posts I see is boomers decrying the closure of a small prop leaded plane toy airport closing to make way for apartments.
Wah traffic, Wah my homes value, Wah crime rates.
These people are fucking obsolete.
We have a new multi-block set of apartments going up in the suburb near me that they’re doing the same about. It’s going to ruin the town! It’s going to lower property values! Won’t someone think of the children?!
It was parking lots. It was just parking lots before. It was a place for commuters to drop their car and go into the city. I can’t even with these people. The best part is that those apartments will probably bring in more tax revenue than their entire single-family subdivision!
having a baby costs as much as a
decent used carluxury automobilethat’d do it.
I own two used cars and, after inflation, both of them combined cost me less than the birth of my first kid.
Used? After 20 years children cost well above half a mil. When you factor in all of the food, clothing, sitters, school, trips, and of course college, you’ve set yourself back by quite a bit
This doesn’t even factor in the monetary value of the parent’s time
Way more than any car I’ve bought.
For some reason I’m not surprised about Facebook being explicitly boomer-centric
Way to focus, Wall Street Journal. We can always count on you for in-depth journalism
/s
Oh they are deep into something, it is just is not as nice smelling as journalism
In another timeline where boomers didn’t destroy the housing market, didn’t ignore climate change, and didn’t continue to vote for regressive policies, maybe they’d have grandchildren.
Young folks have been priced out of housing & healthcare, you can be fired from your job on a whim, food is astronomically expensive, the political climate is tense, your basic human rights could be rescinded at any time, the future of the planet is being murdered by shitty capitalists with 0 regard for human life…
I mean, who wouldn’t want to bring a child into this world right now?
Eat shit.
I’m hunting for a new job for the second time in less than a year, and I’m honestly a skilled professional with over 10 years of experience, with a lot of proof that I do great work. The labor market is stupid right now, just down right stupid. Full of executives searching for short term profits rather than anyone wanting to actually run a company well. That’s alone is a huge reason, on top of everything else. I don’t even know if I’ll have stable employment, and that means I don’t know if I’ll have stable health insurance - so genuinely what are any actual incentives to my generation to have kids? Literally are there any beyond just “you have a kid now”
I’m a software engineer currently trying to find employment, and it’s so bad I’m wondering if I’ll just have to do something else for a while.
My last company basically fired all their US devs, and outsourced to foreign countries for cheaper.
What languages/specialties, Doc?
Backend and platform/devops. I’ve worked a lot in Python, building out APIs from the ground up. Lots of cloud and serverless stuff. That being said, is only the most recent fraction of my resume.
I’ll keep an ear out and DM you if I hear of anything. I know that my company is currently really only hiring in APAC but, that might change in a few months.
Hey, thanks! I appreciate it, even just the thought.
Not a worry! We’re all in this together.
I am a computing director. My take: software dev has been over saturated for the last 12-15 years but people keep seeing dollar signs in their eyes. My advice: learn a business skill like project management. It will allow you to work in any location.
I have 7 years professional experience, and I’m even getting passed over for positions listed as requiring 1-3 years. It’s wild right now.
I’m thinking about just going back to school, while the market is complete shit.
There are always different parts of the stack to work in. I started in the backend database land. Then, moved to general application dev with a side of web. Now, I do embedded. Never stop learning ;]
That works too. A degree is a reset button on your career. I’d suggest either specializing in something niche to make you more desirable or doing something very different so that you have more options.
It’s shit, right? I’m so sorry. I hope that stability comes to you very soon.
Reject tradition. You have no obligation to sacrifice your well-being because some old, out-of-touch fuckwads want something life-changing from you. Can’t even afford groceries.
They can foster a child if they want one around so badly. Or go sit at a park. Or volunteer at the church nursery or something, ffs.
bingo. The SO and I have talked about it, and we decided if we regret it a bit later and it’s too late, adoption is always a valid choice. After all, we’re not bringing new life in so we don’t have to feel guilty about that, but instead we would be giving a home to someone else who needs one. However, there are still many, many negatives as to why we don’t want to or simply can’t right now.
Once again Gen-X is ignored. It’s Gen-X hitting grandparenting age.
My two kids probably won’t be parents, and I’m ok with that. I want them to be happy more than I want to enjoy grandkids. Whatever they choose, I’ll be happy with.
I felt pressure from Boomer parents to have kids, and I didn’t want to do the same to my kids. That’s a hard nope.
Once again Gen-X is ignored.
I will maintain, as I always do, that getting lumped in with the wrong group and ignored is the most Gen-X thing going right now.
With that, I conclude: whatever ::eye roll::.
Ah, the middle child of the generations.
Gen X is normally described as 1965-1980 so 44 to 59 years old.
Average age of mothers first birth right now is 27. It was around 25 for most of Gen X. So 25 + 27 = 52. Yeah new grandparents are not boomers.
Yeah this is a good point. Young boomers are, what, 65?
About 59 I think.
Maybe they shouldn’t horde and partition their wealth from their children and do everything possible to ensure every penny is spent before death.
You’re not wrong, but this is more of a class issue than a generational issue, although in this case they certainly intersect. My boomer parents don’t have any money; they got screwed over by the 1% just like the rest of us.
