Against Against Boomers
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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1978 California Proposition 13
15 min read
The article mentions 'the campaign against property taxes' as 'another purported example of Boomer malevolence.' Prop 13 is the most famous and consequential property tax limitation measure in US history, passed when Boomers were young adults, and remains central to debates about intergenerational housing wealth.
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Social Security Trust Fund
15 min read
The article discusses Social Security's history, the 1983 reforms raising retirement age, and the 'pyramid collapse' concern - understanding the Trust Fund mechanism explains why the system faces sustainability questions and what Boomers actually paid into
I.
Hating Boomers is the new cool thing. Amazon offerings include A Generation Of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America, the two apparently unrelated books How The Boomers Took Their Children’s Future and How The Boomers Stole Millennials’ Future, and Boomers: The Men And Women Who Promised Freedom But Delivered Disaster. “You don’t hate Boomers enough” has become a popular Twitter catchphrase. Richard Hanania, who has tried hating every group once, has decided that hating Boomers is his favorite.
Some people might say we just experienced a historic upwelling of identity politics, that it was pretty terrible for everyone involved, and that perhaps we need a new us-vs-them conflict like we need a punch to the face. This, the Boomer-haters will tell you, would be a mistaken generalization. This time, we have finally discovered a form of identity politics which carves reality at its joints, truly separating the good and bad people.
I think these arguments fall short. Even if they didn’t, the usual bias against identity politics should make us think twice about pursuing them too zealously.
II.
Why, exactly, are Boomers so bad?
Zooming out, it seems sort of like Boomers have delivered the greatest period of peace and prosperity in history: global, American, take your pick. The window of Boomer dominance, c. 1980 - 2010, saw the fall of Communism, steadily rising incomes, steadily growing life expectancy, and no foreign wars bigger than Iraq (total American death toll: 4,500).
The Boomers could reasonably blame their Greatest Generation fathers for sending them to die in Vietnam. Those Greatest Generation fathers could reasonably blame their fathers for plunging the country into a Great Depression. In comparison, we’re mad about - what, exactly? Higher housing prices? Hardly seems World-War-level bad.
Earlier this month, we investigated the Vibecession: the economists’ claim that, despite everyone thinking the economy is bad, actually, the economy is good. We reached no firm conclusion, but in the process, we dug up this chart:
…which shows that Millennials and Generation Z have more money (adjusted for inflation ie cost-of-living, and compared at the same age) than their Boomer parents, to about the same degree that the Boomers exceeded their own parents. This is good and how it should be. The Boomers have successfully passed on a better life to their children.
The liberals make fun of Schrodinger’s Immigrant, who
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