Baby boomers comprised a larger share of voters in 2024, accounting for 32%, but they are trending lower after hitting a peak of 36% in 2016.
Ocasio-Cortez, a millennial herself, expects the younger generation will soon tip the scales in American politics.
“Millennials are not punk kids anymore. We’re grown adults with mortgages and kids,” she said. “And we—that generation is starting to be decisive at the polls. And there is anger at being ignored, sidelined, having our economic futures mortgaged by the generations that came before us on everything from the economy to climate. And we’re taking the reins.”
From global warming to debt crisis to lack of affordable health insurance (all intentional), Boomers have definitely overstayed their welcome.
They never were, that’s a stereotype that let boomers silence an entire generation.
I don’t care what someone who voted to fund Israel has to say about anything.
Just like the death of the Republican party, we’ve been hearing this too for a decade now.
Millennials will be the next biggest voting block! Gen Y is pissed and going to change everything in the voting landscape!
So far, not a god damn thing. I mean, we’re not seeing record turn out outside of one single election and in the last election we even saw that millennials increased their voting share to Republicans.
They may be mad but they’re the exact same morons as the rest of America.
One thing to remember is that, even now, we live in a gerontocracy. The wave of younger candidates winning in primaries is a sign of things to come, but more than the voting population shifting to younger people, we’re still waiting for the candidates and politicians themselves to be younger on average. Still so many very old people in the US senate/house.
And a kakistocracy to boot!
Plutotheokleptokakistocracy, to be fully accurate.
The momentum was never there because we were all busy following the boomer path of trying to go to college to make aoemthing of ourselves and ended up in college debt for life and then got shat on, by the very people who raised us to take that path in good faith hoping it would work out the same for us as it did them but it fucking didn’t.
It’s 50/50 here ya know. Like we all had the chance to not do what they said to do or go against the paths we were raised to follow and do our own thing. They also failed to see the absolute state of the changing world and only focused on what benefits them.
The Student Loan Crisis is quickly becoming an increasongly unsustainable drag on the economy, and will eventually become a true National Security Threat. When everyone is enslaved to their student loans for decades, there will be many opportunities for nefarious types to leverage those desperate loan holders, in an infinite number of ways.
Student Loan Reform is becoming an issue nearly as important as Health Care.
Every single generation in the past 100 years has said the same thing. “My generation will fix it when we’re in charge”.
The God Damn boomers were the hippies from the 60s. What the fuck happened to peace and love?
My generation (Gen X), my goodness, we could see through all the bullshit. We’re the original centrists.
Every single one of my children’s Gen Z friends are all so woke they never sleep.
Turns out every generation is full of selfish shortsighted dumbasses just like the one before it. Just like “The Greatest Generation”. Just like the boomers. Just like Gen X.
Faith in humanity…fading
What you describe goes way back further than 100 years.
The hippies never disappeared, they were marginalized, ostracized, and excised by a fascist system. The War on Drugs was one of many tools the oppressive government used. Some hippies did in fact become yuppies but I don’t blame them, the system was simply stronger than their ideals.
GenX aren’t what I would call centrists. That implies they try to balance or can see the value in both sides of the political spectrum. They are not leftists by any means as multiple fascist purges of the left in US history has ensured they don’t exist in any appreciable numbers. I could agree they are centrists between the right and the far right.
GenZ are not woke, they are malleable. They don’t have strong ideals, values, or a Zeitgeist if you will. I think you confuse woke with just not caring and accepting reality as it is. This is not really conviction though, it is sinply resignation.
You are absolutely correct every generation is selfish. Also, the generation before will always complain about the later generation. This theme has existed throughout all recorded human history.
Most the people I meet are generally good and will make positive decisions given the time, resources, and opportunity. This is regardless of generation.
The problem clearly lies with a minority of wealthy individuals who have disproportionate level of power and representation. This is also nothing new. This same issue existed when the country was founded.
Humanity is doing good in many places. Its just Americans who are the absolute worst
Yes agreed, please don’t let Americans ruin the “human” name.
Nah its just that nice progressive people are also not ruthless murderous cunts, and thus bad at sezing power which then just ends up in the new generation of ruthless murderous cunts. Most people are pretty great which is sadly not a good trait for enacting change.
The people who were hippies in the 60s are mostly still hippies today. Well, the ones who subscribed to the peace and love philosophy at least. Despite the media attention the hippies were never large enough to be a politically influential group in that generation. Most of the boomers grew up bullying the hippies.
Both my boomer parents were hippies. My Mom literally lived in a commune for some time in her early 20s. She voted for the T-Dog in 2016 because she wanted to see real change.
I used to chuckle when I was a kid the way my Dad would look at me and roll his eyes when my grandparents would talk about politics and religion. My Dad loves his MAGA hats now. And wonders why his grandchildren don’t want to be around him.
My sample size of 2 says otherwise!
My wife and I are old, and we’ve moved more and more left as life has go on, so now we’re strongly Progressive, and our son is so far left, he thinks we’re fairly conservative. He knows we’d never vote MAGA, though.
Counter anecdote: my parents are still far left. My mom was a local union rep, still attends protests, and is volunteering today.
My folks were hippies and my dad joined the service with long hair and retired 20 years later with less hair, fewer drugs and still farther to the left of his gay son (and I’m pretty much ‘capitalism bad’ at this point).
I’m a little jealous to be honest. I can barely talk to my dad anymore. He swallowed the propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Everything he says is word for word from cable news or facebook.
I got lucky. My Dad was a hard-core Republican, and we battled often during the Bush administration, but he drew a solid line at Trump.
We grew up in NY state, and we KNEW who Trump really was from the very beginning, decades ago, long before The Apprentice re-branding, and my Dad refused to support him in even the most casual way. He even quit the neighborhood Republican Club that he’d been in for YEARS, because they all joined the MAGA Cult. He was always a very logical guy, with a Mathematics degree, so he had excellent Critical Thinking Skills, and he wasn’t going to abandon them for the likes of Donald Trump. He could barely stand GW Bush, he really despised Trump.
My mom also despised Trump from the get-go, but when the Pussy Grabber tape came out, she lost her mind. For years, whenever anyone brought up his name, she’d go on a rant, starting with “I don’t understand how ANY woman could vote for that man…” I’ve told her I write about this, and she’s proud of it. He is fully irredeemable in her eyes. Unforgivable.
In my Dad’s last election, in 2018, he voted a straight Democratic Ticket, for the first and only time in his life. He was still a Republican, but never a MAGA.
I got lucky.
Gen X got skipped in politics. The boomers refused to cede power, and it’s like the Xers largely aged out of entering the political space.
Gen X chose to be the “I’m not really into politics” generation. As if electing our leaders was a spectator sport we could just not participate in. And then we all claimed to be too cool for political parties when we started noticing the world was really going to shit. Which is how we got centrists.
I know because that was me.
I’m GenX and have voted since I could. By the time I was in my early 30s I liked by politics like my music - independent. I don’t usually vote by party but by candidate history and ideals.
I’m way the fuck left though. I support left parties like the NDP, but I’m not registered with them. I recently voted for the Liberal dude over NDP because I thought the NDP running was a serious twit.
I don’t think I’d ever voted conservative.
"My generation will fix it when we’re in charge”.
Except my generation hasn’t had a chance yet to prove that they will. My generation is fucked.
I hope I’m wrong but it seems like the ratio of selfish stupid people is constant across generations.
Just like the correlation between disease and war being basically timed out perfectly.
It seems most people like ignorance when it’s convenient to confirming their worldview.
She didn’t say “boomers”, fucking Fortune added that. And they reported this specifically to stir the bogus generational conflict.
AOC should not have mentioned generations at all, she’s supposed to be uniting us against the billionaire class, and here she is quoted in a billionaire rag about this. I hope she does better, and soon.
That khumbaya idealist world is not happening. The other side actively weaponizes these conflicts successfully, if you keep pretending they don’t exist you alienate everyone.
100% this. So sick of this shit.
That’s some big “all
livesgenerations matter” energy you got there…Generational warfare is counterproductive. I have much more in common with a working class boomer, than I do with a rich person who is my same age.
Ok…
So complain about Fortune magazine…
Or at least click the link to see which part of the headline AOC actually said before blaming her for the entire headline.
Like, it’s just such a weird line to care enough to read the headline and write a comment…
But not take the two seconds to see what her actual quote says.
“Millennials are not punk kids anymore. We’re grown adults with mortgages and kids,” she said. “And we—that generation is starting to be decisive at the polls. And there is anger at being ignored, sidelined, having our economic futures mortgaged by the generations that came before us on everything from the economy to climate. And we’re taking the reins.”
What about that is “generational warfare” that upset you so much?
Do you disagree with the reality of what she’s saying?
Or do you acknowledge it’s true, and are just upset someone said it? Because saying it is what wins elections.
This is not old versus young, plenty of old heads want what the younger gen wants.
This is class warfare. The Epstein class has been attacking the rest of us for ages with impunity. The first strike came from Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.
I appreciate what AOC does in most respects, but this is a miss for her. We can’t afford this divisive messaging and she needs to be told this.
Accountability to the people for ALL politicians.
There is no war but the Class War.
Except in a way it is old vs young. The old will need more and more care, and that ends up coming from the youth. The same youth that were promised a future that doesn’t exist, and now have little desire to give giving what they cannot afford. Many countries are going to have to have a real reckoning with aging populations, and few have even started the conversation.
Young people would not mind providing that care if they were paid for it.
If we soaked the rich to fund the welfare state there wouldn’t be so much simmering anger.
Not doctors and lawyers, the billionaires and decimillionaires. The epstein class.
Tax wealth not work.
If we soaked the rich to fund the welfare state there wouldn’t be so much simmering anger.
Not doctors and lawyers, the billionaires and decimillionaires. The epstein class.
If you taxed 100% of the 0.01% wealthiest, took every drop and redistributed it, each person in the world would get $5k USD.
When you get to that 1%, you are already talking about the doctors and lawyers and people you don’t want to target, and compared to many parts of the world, you may already be in the 1 or top 5% of wealth. Should your money be taken as well, so those in Afica with nothing get something more?
Maybe that would certainly change things for some, but wouldn’t have the effect you want, and would also collapse the world economy and put all of us back in the stone age. Certainly I think when you hit a billion of net worth you get a nice little trophy and have 99% of it redistributed, but just ‘taxing’ wealth isn’t going to do a damn thing about fixing societal issues that cost far far more than $5k a person.
We’re going to be old one day and need care. Society as a whole takes responsibility for this.
The young need to support the old and in turn, we will be supported when the time comes.
Socialist mentality is about benefit to all, including the elderly. The rich also have it in for the elderly. To them, the death of the boomer generation profits them, because they can come up with more excuses to eliminate social security, thereby screwing us all. They want to saddle us with a privatized retirement system that they control for their own profits.
We also need to fight for ourselves and our own interests.
We can fight for the interests of all, not just our select group.
Society as a whole takes responsibility for this.
No it really doesn’t, and never has. Families and communities have taken care of that. Not entire societies. It shouldn’t be the youth’s burden to work their entire life just to ensure the old have a comfortable 20+ years to live while owning everything and giving little back.
Socialist mentality is about benefit to all, including the elderly.
Really really depends what you mean by socialism. By owning the means of production? Umm, that’s all people, instead of you guessed it, mostly the elderly.
We also need to fight for ourselves and our own interests. We can fight for the interests of all, not just our select group.
Those two statements directly contradict each other. So what is it, do you want to have a good life for yourself, the family you raise, or the person down the street who will ask each year that more is taken away so they can live comfortably? In previous ‘generations’ the family either did well and took care of each other, or the family suffered, rather than everyone in the next town over, the next city, state and county over suffering because everyone wants to live in a home by themselves and have an acre of land.
Thanks for your input, Elon
I am not sure 100,000 years of how humanity handled things is suddenly ‘Elon’ but you go on queen. Perhaps we as a society should be working on our communities and helping each other out rather than thinking isolation and rugged independence is the way to survive life. But hey, you can only tell people to touch grass so much.
This is not old versus young, plenty of old heads want what the younger gen wants.
She said millennials are getting more politically active…
And you’re attacking her because she’s divise?
By any chance do you consider the phrase “Black lives matter” divisive and think “all live matter” is better?
Logically that’s what you’re saying, I just would prefer not to make that assumption, so just trying to clarify.
Edit:
And in the spirit of clarity, this is her quote that you said is divisive:
“Millennials are not punk kids anymore. We’re grown adults with mortgages and kids,” she said. “And we—that generation is starting to be decisive at the polls. And there is anger at being ignored, sidelined, having our economic futures mortgaged by the generations that came before us on everything from the economy to climate. And we’re taking the reins.”
This day and age with a growing positive sentiment toward authoritarianism, anti intellectualism, and fascism, I think some punk would be good. A lot of punk, even.
Yea I feel this lol. I’ve never put dye in my hair but fuck am I considering it lol. Fuck the system and YES I am 32 who CARES we’re all BURNING
I started dying my hair in my late 20s. It was really uncomfortable then because at least in my area it was very uncommon. Now that I’m turning 40, I’m doing it again, and its a lot more common now so its not nearly as uncomfortable (people stare less these days, cuz they care less)
its a lot more common now so its not nearly as uncomfortable
That was the point of punk though. It wasn’t about dying your hair purple, it was making it a colour hair wasn’t. It was to be different. Run against the grain of society if you didn’t like the way the grain was going. Be who you wanted to be and dress however you wanted. If someone said boo, you gave them the finger. If someone was racist or a homophobe, we’d scream at them and get in their faces.
Now that you can buy any colour hair dye in the grocery store, green hair isn’t much of a statement. Same with clothes. The common folk were trying to dress above their class with Izod shirts, a sweater draped over their back, and penny loafers - like they just came from tennis at the country club. Ripped jeans, or worn out 30 year old clothes were considered low class and trashy which is why we loved them. Now you can buy pre-tattered clothes. That isn’t a statement.
HOWEVER: If you want blue hair, ripped jeans, and a nipple piercing, do it!
Hell yeah! I can’t decide on the colour yet. Also I need like, 80% of my hair off anyway. Cheaper and I haven’t seen a hairdresser in 8 months lol. But my guy is on vacation for another week.
If I don’t like it I can always just shave it off lol. Benefits of being masc presenting (though nonbinary)
What colour are you thinking of doing?
Maybe the solution is to not limit to one color!
This time I’m handing the wheel to a friend, since I need someone to bleach for me and that seemed like a good trade, but I’m only brining dyes in the red/pink/blue/purple/turquoise range, I’d be down for a full rainbow, but probably not until its short. Very hard to keep yellow nice during the dye when its waist-length. But I wanna enjoy the long for a bit with color, its fun to braid and looks neat with my hair accessories.
I tend to use conditioner to cut the color down, so I often end up more in the pastel range. Then sometimes ill do dark streaks in the pastels which looks pretty neat.
If you hate the color, clarifying shampoo strips it out decently quickly if you are using vegetable dyes. Then you can try it again.
Is that the message being communicated by the colored hair I’ve been seeing lately? If so, that’s awesome. It flew right over my head.
Doesn’t seem that way. They just seem to like that hair color without punk tenets.
I just did, same age as you. I’d never changed my hair color, but the clean look and tradwife fashion and whatever need some stronger counterculture (I was already dressed in black all the time).
It’s surprisingly easy! You need to be careful with the materials, but other than that, it is doable at home. My hair is dark pink-orangey now. I’m loving it.
Currently trads are the counter culture.
“Counter Culture” people have been the norm since the late 70s. But people LOVE thinking of themselves as the underdog.
Until I can be fired for being trad, you’re wrong.
@[email protected] Okay - so what is it you are saying that you can be fired for? Being a Nazi?
Wtf are you talking about dude? Where is the Nazi shit coming from? Use context clues.
Let me ask it differently then - what group can you be that will get you fired?
Same as some demagogue crying for 10 years he is being canceled. He has 25 million viewers. Shit is mainstreamed and some people didn’t hear the shot.
@LittleBorat3 sorry - who are you talking about?
Fill in your favorite, right wing influencer that is being supposedly suppressed up to millions viewers and look how mainstream these views became.
If you ask them they are the underdog.
Okay… Everyone likes to see themselves as the underdog. Based on the state of “influences” I would contend left leaning ones are doing it as well. Maybe it is the nature of having an audience? Or jockeying for authority.
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I loved the phrasing in this one.
Many will read it as:
We’re not punk kids anymore
But it should be read as:
We’re not pink kids anymore
We are adults. Punk adults.
Your typo reminded me of something.
When I was little, we had a children’s TV personality/character called Grynet. Looking at Wikipedia it says that she was supposed to be a parody of a typical teenager, I was a little young at the time, but she strikes me more as this pink princess punk which as an adult I think is wonderfully inclusive.
Her tagline was “ta ingen skit!”, roughly “Don’t take any shit (from others)!”
Hah nice
ya remember how punk rockers used to smash guitars? so anyway, there’s this company called flock safety…
Go on, I’m listening…
well friend, so is flock safety.
look up benn jordan, he has better words than i do.
Based and tea party pilled
true, good to see AOC has shunned and been shunned by the national DSA as well
the DSA is dissolving from its policies out
i wonder if marx can save them lol
We’re also mad about the corruption, industrial scale pedophilia, and the land theft and genocide. Thats not going away. There needs to be paybacks. The guillotines arent for show. We have criminals to round up.
Capitalism baby!
Capitalism isn’t the problem, it’s wealth inequality. Do you think things were better back under the Manorialism system? No capitalism there, but the rich owned vast manors and the poor who worked their lands were born there and had to work that land for their entire lives.
All capitalism did was to give a shred of social mobility where none existed before.
I think we’re both saying the same thing. I don’t have the answer, but I sure as shit know what the problem is.
The answer is guillotines. Make the rich scared enough about losing their lives and they’ll voluntarily surrender some of their power. The trick is to scare the rich without the rest of the death and chaos that were part of the French Revolution.
some good things happened as a result of the french revolution. Sometimes a revolution NEEDs to happen in order for a slower but persistent and endless level of oppression and rampant structural abuse to be fixed. The revolution produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, setting a wbenchmark for civil liberties that we still go by. It abolished the feudal system and the social injustices, starvation, and brutalities that persisted. It erased forced labor practices of the corvee-- where peasants had to spend a portion of their time laboring for their lord-- essentially a period of hard labor slavery. Lords could force peasants to do extra labor at their whim, and the peasants were bound to drop everything and do as they were told, without pay. It enabled equal representation under the law, where before the revolution birth and wealth were the measure of the availability of justice. It also pulled back the power of the church in France, which was full to bursting with rampant corruption, decadence, and brutal abuse.
The heads of the elite were well worth the trouble, it was the death of the starving and oppressed peasants that was the real cost. Those rich fucks and corrupt rapist priests had it coming and then some. The vast majority of the deaths were due to the elite and their forces attacking peasants and employing scorched earth tactics in fear, around famine and bankruptcies, and the loss of feudal authority. If the people had been more savage in coming after the elite, some of the needless deaths could have been avoided. The years of famine, ill treatment by government and bankruptcies made “the Great Fear” that started it unavoidable and inevitable. Lots of interesting parallels to the US now eh? Although we’re pretty far from being gangs of starving rabble yet. Still a ways to go but we’re on our way.
You mean Nuremberg style trials and hangings? Pretty much every American above the level of mayor going back about 80 years should be put up on trial for crimes against humanity.
Probably a whole lot of companies, and executives that directly supported this as well.
Here here
This framing gets it wrong. It isn’t boomers vs. millennials. It isn’t immigrants vs. citizens. It’s ordinary people fighting over a shrinking share while an extraordinarily wealthy few accumulate more money, assets and political power than they could ever need. Stop turning class problems into generational wars. Tax extreme wealth.
I agree that is class war but boomers are enabling the wealthy.
Boomers would rather punish millennials for our avocado toast than see billionaires taxed.
Again, you are falling for their propaganda. “Boomers” wants no such thing, but fascists do. Fascists comes in all ages, including millenials and gen zs. This is not about age, it is about whether you are in the ruling class or not.
It is not generational war, it is class war.
Yeah that’s a hard one to understand though, I had to see people my own age teaching hate worse than “the boomers” before realizing them dying out won’t fix the real problem.
There’s also a non-negligible amount of Gen X, millennials and Gen Z who are fascist supporters.
Fascist appeal transcends generational lines.
It can be both. I don’t know a whole lot of retirees that want better for the next generation and are willing to sacrifice for that.
“Boomers” wants no such thing, but fascists do
I would say “boomers” have largely contributed to the conditions that have brought about fascism in this country, and have normalized looking the other way in service to the almighty dollar.
My boomer mother has no clue what she votes for. She’s completely uninformed. Lives in the states. Fox News has made her terrified of brown people crossing the border for a better life. Doesn’t think ICE is bad, but the people they kill should have just complied.
She’s voted Trump every time. Thinks he’s going to fix everything because she watched his reality TV show and thought it was all real. The worst part, she follows the party line her boomer friends follow. I’ve spoken to a bunch of them. They’re all fucking idiots.
She and her boomer friends are definitely contributing to the downfall of the US. They don’t see it. They don’t care.
I must have missed a memo, since the boomers did do quite a lot to push things forward, too. Not all boomers are Faux watchers FFS.
I think it’s no surprise boomers though who struggle to learn new tricks and are more susceptible to snake-oil scams and fear mongering. That’s not inherently unique to one generation, for we’ll be there one day too.
Though I’ll say they and GenX may standout a bit more, having grown up in an era so far removed from the modern tech world.
I’m early GenX. Me and my friend embraced the new tech. We were 10 years old and hammering out Basic on a little computer attached to my TV. Typing in code from a magazine so we can play a game. Saving it to tape and trading with another kid who typed out some other game.
Later, when the internet came out, the guy who could connect at the highest baud rate was the coolest. Winsock and Mosaic baby.
Baby Boomers have voted more Republican than both the generation that came before them and the generation that came after them.
Not all boomers.
There is a story for everyone. For you it’s Boomer for others expats and yet for others men. (Or Flanders)
Everyone gets his story so a small portion can fly private!
Exactly right. They manufacture enemies out of us and enjoy their yachts while we squabble and miss the point.
Divide and conquer is the way the right defeats the left in this country.
Put the minor conflicts aside and walk in lock step. A United front is the only way we can resist. 💪
Meanwhile I made the comment you’re replying to, and yet I’ve been unnecessarily aggro elsewhere in this very thread, cuz damn is this tactic effective and requiring constant vigilance to counteract.
I think you and I used to fight. But with this statement I am on your side.
As it’s a class war, we’re all on the same side, opposite the billionaires. We just need to recognize that simple fact.
Cheers, and I love that about this place. Thanks for making Lemmy worthwhile.
Hahaha - I mean. You called me a misogynist rape apologize and followed my comments in other threads. But my trolling eventually wore you down I think. But yes - fun - glad we can be pals now ;)
For what it’s worth, “followed [your] comments in other threads” is not a thing I do, I haven’t bothered to go review our interactions, and I’m not curious enough to do so now, lol. I’m not that type of user.
This is a small place, and if I was commenting on more than one place you were, it’s because I kept running into your comments while I was reading other things.
I speak my mind here, and the heavier the topic, the less concerned I am with politeness and civility. But I don’t go in for “drama” usually, I wouldn’t have recognized your name here had you not recognized mine.
I’m usually just interested in the strength of arguments, or I hold that as an ideal I strive towards, anyway. I sometimes fly off the rails, and I apologize when I feel that I’ve been unfair. I don’t when I don’t.
It’s a little bit boomers vs. millennials, based on the boomers and the millennials I have encountered
… Let’s unpack this.
-
Person points out this is just another case of wealthy and powerful people stirring up trouble between two groups of people. This is easy because people are easy to trick. If the headline is to be believed, even AOC, who isn’t stupid, believes boomers are the source of the problem.
-
You point out that, based on the people you know, there’s a conflict between boomers and millennials.
but… that’s not proof that the source of the problem actually IS either group. It’s still the case that this conflict is caused by a third group of people who have a vested interest in making sure the poors fight each other.
Okay yes let’s unpack it, please
What percentage of “the people who have a vested interest in making sure the poor fight each other” do you think are boomers, and what percentage are millennials? And of those millennials, what percentage of them are acting on behalf of, and/or dependent on a mega powerful boomer?
And to be fair I said a little bit.
There are millennials in this US administration. The fuck are you talking about?
It’s class. Not age.
Does “on behalf of a powerful boomer” include…ya know…having an inheritance from them and working in the family business?
Okay dude, Millennials are no better than boomers, got it. Everyone is the same in every generation…only once you achieve $500k per year do you become hateful and evil
Money is the only thing that corrupts, and the evidence I see of younger people voting differently than older people, and younger people next to me in the protests means nothing. The kind loving boomer neighbors of mine are probably also in that crowd of protestors somewhere, I just missed every single one of them when I looked…
You’re not wrong that it’s rich vs poor first and foremost. But you’re lying to yourself if you think boomers aren’t actively harming younger generations, and that younger generations are totally fine with it.
Cool, thanks for the utterly useless straw man reply where you reduce my own more nuanced take into this idiotic “oh okay so then it must be this cartoon version of what you said”.
I’m not taking the side of boomers at all. They’re uniquely deranged and damaging to us all, and have been that way for decades.
Take whatever you want from my POV, not a lot of point in discussing with you further.
I mean all I literally tried to say was “it’s a little bit millennials vs. boomers”, which you seemed to take as a direct challenge, and had to “well acccccctually” argue against, for some reason. I actually never disagreed with your overall point, I only “straw manned” when it was clear you’d dug your heels in and weren’t reading the actual point of my comments and needed everything in black and white. You really weren’t presenting your argument with much wiggle room at all.
There are millennials in this US administration.
What pathetic percentage do they take up in your gerontocracy?
I don’t have the first clue how I’d determine something like that. Do you? I’m talking about the US Presidential administration.
Maybe you’re talking about Congress + the actual presidents we always get? The elected officials themselves are all old as fuck.
Wonder how many of those congressional staffers are millennials? And the executive cabinet, etc., all the many many unelected creatures.
Your take is shallow and bad and betrays a poor understanding of our government and who actually does the “work” in it.
[Edit - I didn’t say anything here I disagree with, but I’m bringing an unnecessary tone to discussions in this thread where I’m not even adequately reading the stuff I’m replying to, so apologies on the hostility at the end, I’ma chill out]
Uhh, yeah. Look at how many senators and Congress people there are, then see how many of them are over the age of 50, then divide that number by the total and multiply by 100. Are you 12?
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AOC is a tool like the rest of them. Her messaging is out there to hold millennial women to the Dems.
And there is anger at being ignored
Hey now, being ignored is the Gen X identity, millennials don’t get to steal that!
But seriously, although the whole “generation names” stuff is BS, people are influenced by what things are like when they were growing up. People who had access to the Internet when they were kids are naturally going to see the world differently than those who didn’t.
It has also been a consistent fact that older voters vote more. So, as “Millennials” get older, they’ll probably vote more, like every group does.
The real question is whether those votes will matter. I’m not going to claim that there’s no difference between democrats and republicans. But, in the past the democrats and republicans that won their primaries were both heavily constrained in what they were allowed to do after taking office by powerful special interest groups. So, a democrat might be more likely to vote for something like more federal funding for the arts, and a republican might be more likely to vote for something like more tax cuts (without lowering spending of course), neither one would likely vote for an increase in the minimum wage because the people who fund their campaigns don’t want that to be considered.
This time, it could actually be different. There’s enough anger out there that people who aren’t owned by the wealthy are surviving the primary process. Some “traditional” democrats are either finding their courage, or are getting scared of what might happen to them if they don’t stand for the things their constituents care about.
Because everything benefits them so they gotta vote. Nothing benefits Gen X to the current generation, so voting seems useless.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the price of the average US home was $11,000.00
A Boomer could graduate high school and be living in their own place with no roommates with money they’d earned delivering newspapers.
And depending on their area, that house may sell for a million+ now to millenials who have no other option if they want to live the classic american white picket fence dream
I think that the US as a country needs to abandon the idea that every family should have a detached house with four bedrooms, two cars, and a lush green front garden surrounded by a picket fence. It’s just not sustainable. That made sense in 1960, but the country’s population has doubled since then.
On the other hand, I would like to see it possible for every family to be able to at least afford a basic 2-bedroom condominium with all the amenities that modern life has to offer, including walkable spaces, accessible green areas, and reliable public transportation.
11,000 hours of minimum wage labour in my city would be $185,000. Maybe a bit too low to be entirely realistic, but $200,000 is probably within reach with a bit of elbow grease on the government side.
There are a ton of factors but most problems simply stem from greed. Boomers pulling the ladder up behind oneself and then making fun of millenials for having less assets and saying it’s because we’re lazy.
I don’t agree that the reason single-family detached homes with lawns are necessarily unaffordable primarily because of greed. That might be one factor, but I think the main factor as to why they’re unaffordable is simple geometry. Councils don’t want to pay for miles of roads, pipes, and electrical cables just to serve less than a hundred families, so these costs get imposed on the developers and homeowners. Some states, including mine, will require new single-family developments to have an HOA, which is responsible for paying for the upkeep of some of these resources. That directly results in higher assessments for ratepayers. Or, where the council absorbs the costs, they still get passed on to owners and renters through higher property taxes.
So while I’m sympathetic to your arguments, I feel that blaming only greed is a shallow understanding of why nobody can afford a house.
Yeah - you forgot the realtors and realtor groups.
Absolute scumbags.
“Councils don’t want to pay for miles of roads, pipes, and electrical cables just to serve less than a hundred families”
Yes, correct, they don’t want to pay for it. We need to allocate more taxpayer money to corporate bailouts.
Remember to add the ‘s/’ for sarcasm
There may be GOPs reading this and that’s their mantra
To make my point clearer because you missed it: Councils should NOT be paying for these regardless of whether anything relating to corporate bailouts happens, because detached single-family houses are a poor use of resources and an inefficient and wasteful form of housing.
This is not a popular observation around these parts, but it’s true. My city has almost no private equity presence in the market, yet we still have a housing affordability crisis. The geometry problem came first, caused here in the U.S. by zoning and building codes; then houses became the biggest source of investment wealth for individuals because of the artificial scarcity those codes created; then private equity smelled money and moved in.
I live in one of Italy’s richest cities, gross wages for millennials may go from 24k€/y to 60k€/y for the luckiest ones. A normal 80m² apartment goes for about 200-400k€.
It’s not just an American problem, and apparently more efficient housing isn’t enough of a solution.
I think that is a different situation in your city. I don’t know which city it is, and I don’t claim to know much about how the Italian economy works, but housing prices seem similar to what I’ve got in my city (Portland, Oregon, USA), except that wages are drastically lower. So my guess is that it’s a problem with people being underpaid as Italy is a developed economy, similar to the US.
€24,000 a year would be about €12 an hour which is below minimum wage in my city. A minimum-wage worker would be paid about $34,000 annually, or €29,500. The mean hourly wage in my city works out to about $76,000 annually (€66,000). I prefer the median as a better estimate of what ordinary people make, but the census bureau only reports the mean as far as I could find.
Older Millennial’s had options after the 08 crash
True, but you had to be in a position with money saved up and your career unaffected by the recession so unfortunately that’s a relatively low percentage
I mean prices were lower for like 8 years before exploding with low interest rates, time was there to save
Sure but the job market was a joke so if you weren’t already established in a stable career, your income was going to be pretty garbage on top of school loans. Realistically, you would be looking at college grads who have enough seniority in their career that wouldn’t put them at risk of being let go as well as having little to no school debt. You’re looking at people who are at least 23, more likely late 20s in 2009ish. That’s certainly near the '81 cutoff for millenials. I was 18 in 2008, luckily retained my low paying retail job while going through uni, with my school debt and the garbage job market, it wasn’t feasible at all for me to take advantage of the prices.
Wait, when did the cutoff for millennial become 1986? Last I saw it was 1981-1996, with some fuzziness at the edges.
My bad, typo, I’ll edit
I was also in uni in 2008 but graduated in 2010, bought my first place in 2011
I’m happy for people that were able to do that but you gotta understand you’re probably in the like <10% that could do that. I doubt you would say you were in the same situation as most people born between '81-'96. Gen x was in the best position to take advantage.
My younger sister somehow bought a house with her friend. Her first job paid $80k a year. I made $7.25 and hour and this was not an option.
Just another, the privledged got to buy, and the poors didnt.
Yeah I had the option of being ruined
One job loss and I could have been ruined too but luckily that didnt happen
They do not give you a loan if you earn nothing because you’re unemployed and you don’t have any capital in the bank.
There would have been a way for me but not without generational wealth and immediately landing a great job out of college.
TLDR: if things went great in your life yes you’re right.
I was 20 and making $7.25 an hour.
Which seems reasonable to me
And they could get educated by earning a few shekels at the bursar that they found on a street corner.
Yeah we’re middle aged punks now!
We may not be punk kids anymore but we’re definitely still punk.
Sure you are, dad, sure you are.
Heart says pit, knees say balcony
I think the big difference between boomers and gen X/Millennial isn’t so much “aging gracefully” it’s “aging realistically”.
Like, there wasn’t as much pressure to “grow up” most of us saw all this shit coming and just knew we didn’t have the numbers, but still kept trying.
So we avoided midlife crisis (mostly) and just maintained the same personality and interests the whole time.
So now, were still relatively the same mentally, so acknowledging that our bodies are obviously not the same as 20 years ago isn’t something to freak out about and but a Corvette.
Like, getting old sucks, but it’s better than the alternative…
Just because I’ve had to go from getting hammered and committing petty crimes to having about 2 beers and being in bed before too late…
I’d say I miss watching the sunrise, but I wake up in time to see it. It was always more beautiful when you’re still up for it…
For real - tell me you lack self awareness without saying you lack self awareness.
I’m 48. I play in punk bands and just hosted an anti-profit folkpunk festival in the woods where 20 bands played. Am I also not punk because of some arbitrary line you have drawn?
When did I stop being punk? I’m dying to know.
Seems like some comments got deleted somewhere. But AOC didn’t mean Punk Kids as a movement, genre, or theme. It was simply the derogative punk. She could have said whiny, or drooling, quiet.
And your festival sounds cool. I stumbled across Defiance OH in Columbus a couple of years go. Been a fan ever since.
I was not replying to AOC’s comment but the ones in here that seemed to intimate that you can’t be old and still be punk.
If I read that wrong, that is on me.
I admire that. Good in you.
But yes punk spans boomers, X, and mil. Part of me wonders if it has a place in Z. It is sort of there - but my friends kids who present Punk are rather authoritarian on social issues and policy. On my side of the aisle - but their application is different.
Getting old sucks, but dont let folks rile you up so much that punk starts being a label rather than a movement. Punk is as punk does. Nobody needs credentials.
So, she didn’t say “boomer”. But she did frame it as a generational issue.
It really has nothing to do with age. In fact that’s backwards. It’s about people who have been in power too long, and are coincidentally old. They aren’t corrupt because they’re old, they’re corrupt because they’re in power, and they’re old because they’ve been in power a long time. Too long. Bernie is rare because he’s avoided becoming corrupt, his age is coincidental.
We need term limits for Congress. That won’t stop the corruption but it will mitigate the damage they can do, and help prevent them from becoming entrenched and forming damaging long-term alliances with other corrupt politicians and billionaires.
You might say, “voting is the term limit”, but voters are notoriously terrible at spotting corruption, and of course, the politicians do everything they can to hide it.
It’s a generational issue…
For the entirety of America’s recent decline, Boomers have been the largest voting demographic.
They were the ones active in primaries dragging both parties parties right and fucking up almost every aspect of American society.
No one is saying the problem is every single person in that demographic.
But it is 100% that demographics fault. Because they’re the ones that spent a literal lifetime voting for it.
The problem isn’t just the boomer politicians, it’s all the boomer voters who see voting for anyone younger than themselves as a personal insult.
They’re openly age discriminating against anyone younger than them, but anytime you get generations attempt to discuss it, boomers crawl out of the fucking woodwork saying “this” is why they can’t do the thing we were just saying you can’t do
Unfortunately decades of far right am talk radio pipeline adapted very well to gel with online platforms. Then they were able to cleverly take advantage of algorithms to "red pill " people. Younger generations are generally more liberal than their parents but far Right strategies have made a big dent in that.
Plenty of boomers who actually marched for civil rights out there, and plenty of young people stanning turning point usa and mourning charlie Kirk
Younger generations are generally more liberal than their parents
That’s because the American education didn’t even really exist till the 1970s…
That’s when school buses to every student became a thing, and we stopped having one room school houses and started sending everyone to real schools.
From then till GW’s “no child left behind” we taught every American critical thinking and empathy.
Republicans recognized that was a bad thing for them, and changed our education system to rote memorization and the lowest denominator…
The numbers in a year don’t automatically make people more progressive, it’s not an innate thing that happens naturally.
It was happening for a couple decades because we put the work in as a society. We stopped doing that decades ago.
And it would be shocking to find out the people who can’t see that, got a public education within that brief window where critical thinking was actually taught.
Like, the reason Gen Z is the first generation to have lower IQs than their parents isn’t that Gen Z is stupid, they’re just the first full generation to all get “no child’d” some parts of older generations got it, but for Gen Z they all got it, so theres no one to bring the average up.
It’s important to talk about this stuff, because we’re still failing the kids in school today, and if people don’t understand what’s happening, we’ll never get it fixed.
Term limits will not do what you want.
It will just shift the corruption to an unelected support structure of beaurocrats and party suits that have no elections to even theoretically hold them accountable.
Look at the term limit we have: the 23 amendment was a mistake. The country and the world would be objectively better off if it had not been passed.
I think the bigger problem with corruption in government starts with the public service to private industry lobbyist pipeline. There needs to be a full 25 year prohibition on anyone leaving the government and becoming a lobbyist for any industry they had a hand in regulating while they were publicly employed. There are wayyy too many people in agencies that soft-ball the application of the rules they oversee with the aim of getting hired by those firms when they retire. Got that one straight from an inspector who came to the ATFE from the IRS and saw tons of that behavior from their co-workers. Called it out on several occasions and found millions in unpaid corporate taxes. Those laws need to be enforced with teeth.
She’s not wrong…
