Baby Boomers vs. Generation X vs. Millennials

My nephew, who is Very Online (wherever the kids are online these days, I think Discord + idk), still asked to be hospitalized last year for depression/self-harm impulses partly informed by isolation and loneliness, so while I have fantasies of how much better my life would have been with the internet ages 12-20, I wouldn't say it's perfectly protective.

i watch all of these. i can't help myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l457OuUXn24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkGPIhxdfXc

lol at anybody getting a house, all our folks are gonna be transferring their wealth to their end of life care unless they're the lucky ones who go in their sleep or on the back 9.

Scott those are awfully bleak. Just endless "marriage is hell" and cynicism vibes, I can't take it.

that's actually just America. in human form.

We had lower expectations

― sarahell, Friday, May 10, 2024 8:48 AM

Ain't that the truth.

The folx my age I know offline are just awful--Trump-loving types driving pickup tanks and posting garden hose memes.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRwg7Xud/

I love watching all these old news clips for the 90s.

Jeez

Some pretty tendentious points about divorce near the end of that clip..

lol at anybody getting a house, all our folks are gonna be transferring their wealth to their end of life care unless they're the lucky ones who go in their sleep or on the back 9.

I have this terminally online boomer guy on FB (knew irl through an old job) who likes to go on and on about how "The Biggest Wealth Transfer In History" is beginning as his generation dies off and gives everything to their struggling heirs. It's all I can do to not chime in and tell him how most of said wealth will be going to the banks, mortgage companies, healthcare industry etc. and basically what's left for anybody else is garage sale shit (books, furniture, DVDs etc).

...and CLOTHES! Jesus Christ boomers love stockpiling clothing.

xp to Tracer
Idk I think that clip is trying to do a lot. The guy who said: "The parents passed uncertain values to their children, and economic uncertainty too" -- first of all we got the values they were trying to force on us, we just didn't find them very valuable. We can talk about the economic impacts of your generation's decision-making, though, by all means.

the thing i don't like about generational thinking in general is it ignores so much, of course all boomers aren't white guys who own a chevy dealership and a pontoon boat, there are plenty of boomer living in poverty, even the imagined generational wealth numbers are skewed by the rich, and the reality is that they maybe on whole doing better but no for millions of boomers

https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/3991136-nearly-half-of-baby-boomers-have-no-retirement-savings/

Xers did have one advantage over millennials (and millennials over zoomers) - education costs. My first semester was in 2000, by 2010 when I went back after an eight year layoff tuition and fees were ~4X higher (and I didn't have all the ancillary housing/food/etc. costs).

I would like to formally apologise for my gen x poverty erasure

I still think the generational handover of property is shaping up to become a significant divide within generational cohorts that kind of undermines the whole generational identity politics thing entirely but maybe the situation in the US is different and in any case I was primarily talking about the upper and upper middle classes (I suspect there might still be more generational than class solidarity even within this cohort right now but I can imagine that changing in all kinds of ways). of course if the property bubble finally collapses all of this will be moot

my expert advice as someone with no money? buy some shares of a good health care ETF or index fund. this one is good: Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV)

its the only way you will ever make any money off of boomers who are all going to start spending their trillions to stay alive forever. its a win/win for the savvy investor.

https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/best-health-care-etfs-to-buy-now

Boomers were the generation that got hit first with declining real wages/deindustrialization/deunionization. Right as the first wave are becoming full adults circa 1970 is when shit started to go south. The Silent/Greatest generations (specifically, the white members of those generations) were the beneficiaries of the midcentury economy.

in retrospect maybe replacing class politics with generation politics was a bad idea

xpost the Roger & Me era

Xers did have one advantage over millennials (and millennials over zoomers) - education costs. My first semester was in 2000, by 2010 when I went back after an eight year layoff tuition and fees were ~4X higher (and I didn't have all the ancillary housing/food/etc. costs).

Boomers were the generation that got hit first with declining real wages/deindustrialization/deunionization. Right as the first wave are becoming full adults circa 1970 is when shit started to go south. The Silent/Greatest generations (specifically, the white members of those generations) were the beneficiaries of the midcentury economy.

Xers did have one advantage over millennials (and millennials over zoomers) - education costs. My first semester was in 2000, by 2010 when I went back after an eight year layoff tuition and fees were ~4X higher (and I didn't have all the ancillary housing/food/etc. costs).

― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, May 10, 2024 11:25 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah im definitely wrestling with the idea of talking my kids out of going to college.

Seriously everything related to kids is way more expensive now … the tax credit and pre-tax maximum for childcare is super low compared to the cost of childcare

I have friends who paid as much for preschool as I earned in a year

Not an elite preschool either

I looked at what a semester cost at the state college I went to yesterday and was utterly shocked.

i think what i'm going to encourage my daughter to do is go to a low cost local community college and take a lot of general education classes and then see where her interests lie after that, then possible transfer to a 4 year college for a major program

Boomers were the generation that got hit first with declining real wages/deindustrialization/deunionization. Right as the first wave are becoming full adults circa 1970 is when shit started to go south. The Silent/Greatest generations (specifically, the white members of those generations) were the beneficiaries of the midcentury economy.

My father was born in 1926, A silent Gen child. Haven't heard a whole lot about his wealthy early life. In fact, I don't think he ever owned a home and he was an industrial chemist. Plucked out of the Australian outback at 15 and thrust immediately into a chemistry degree at one of the best universities in the country. Still had nothing to his name when he passed.

I guess the system just fucked us all.

I love that there is barely any retaliation though. Stitches I've seen have mostly been along the line of 'Okay. Whatever'

This is what I always say, you can't deprecate us, we come self-deprecated. Our greatest vanity is our sense of ourselves as largely useless.

Yeah im definitely wrestling with the idea of talking my kids out of going to college.

Trade school. The warming world's gonna need HVAC techs and plumbers a lot more than people with business degrees.

Racking up as many credits as possible at community college is such an excellent plan and would be the only plan on offer for my kids, if I had any

I also live in a place where 2 years of community college is tuition free for local high school grads

xxp there is this one woman who keeps appearing in my Facebook Reels (I should probably just get FB Purity to hide that whole thing tbh because it's always shit) who seems to be trying to be a kind of Gen X Influencer, I just find her a total embarrassment tbh but no matter how many times I click "Don't show me this" Facebook just goes no you are Gen X you must like this, look at this!

the fact I still have a Facebook account obv my strongest generational marker

Structural and mechanical engineering are good fields… along the lines of unperson’s comment…

If they are cool with living at home, the community college transfer plan is a good one. My best friend convinced his daughter to do that.

Yes to community college! My oldest just finished his first year toward an audio engineering degree (2-year), and thanks to a rare bit of the Tennessee education system that actually does something good, he did it for free. Second year is free too, as long as he stays above a 2.0 GPA and does 8 hours of community volunteering per semester. Then he'll decide whether he wants to go on to a 4-year degree or just look to start working. We'd have to pay some for a 4-year school, but the state schools are at least quasi-affordable in-state.

My nephew did that track, a super-cheap associate's degree followed by two years at a state school where he got an engineering degree and he got a good job and actually bought a cheap house. Dude's in his mid-20s with zero student debt and some equity.

At the time they lived in Silicon Valley so the community college was as good as a lot of other 4 years

Xp Tipsy … I think a half dozen of my friends went through that audio engineering program

It's a good program! And literally the only thing he's probably interested enough in to stay focused on.

Two of them now have businesses involving synthesizers

kid who grew up with my youngest has been floating around and now he's learning how to be a welder! i was like: right on! that's the ticket. the trades are desperate for people. there are hvac/electrical companies that will pay to school/train you and then give you a $$$ job. there are no plumbers anymore. they all old.

my youngest is going to Massart - and it is not cheap despite being a public school - but he is totally hooked on photography now and he made it his major and i am super-happy cuz that is a skill that can pay the bills. you can go anywhere in the world with that knowledge. everyone needs a shutterbug especially on the digital end. i showed him that Vivian Maier documentary last night. he was riveted. it's a riveting film.

i feel like disclosing something right here in this thread that probably gets me a side-eye or an 'are you serious?' from many here. it certainly would have from the me of a year ago. i'm seriously considering a career change into law enforcement. at 41 years old lol. i'm scheduled to interview for the state highway patrol in a month. the pay is $10 per hour more than what i currently make! that and about 5 other reasons are driving it, including desperation, but i also feel like i might actually enjoy it. i've been trying to make being in archives work for me for 15 years. the wages are terrible and i hate the work. i'm so tired of living from paycheck to paycheck and the thought of sitting in front of a computer pretending i care about the endless tedium of a secretarial job i can't force myself to do anymore for barely enough to live on is, well, so depressing that i'm seriously considering law enforcement instead lol. i really think it would be much better for me. i don't know how this data point fits into this thread exactly, other than that i must be one of the desperate millenials who has been crushed out of illusions of idealism by the grind of capitalism or something. idk i'm already a tool of the state and student loan forgiveness is making that non-negotiable so i might as well get paid $10 more per hour to be one that gets to drive around and look tough. and work with men! i know everyone here hates men, and i certainly don't like or relate to a lot of the dumb man shit, but after 15 years of working with mostly women, i gotta say that i'm really looking forward to a change in the gender dynamic. it's probably a grass is always greener situation but god the thought of sticking out like a sore thumb among a bunch of women who treat me like i'm a fucking alien for the rest of my professional career? blech. why did i choose librarianship for god's sake? this message board is mostly to blame tbh. i should have realized so much earlier that it was a profound mismatch for me. i remember feeling that like the first semester of library school but i ignored it. anyway for the highway patrol application they of course do the pt testing and i'm going to really enjoy getting the speed up on my 1.5 mile over the next month. i also had to quit weed last week which has actually been easier than i thought it would be and it feels good. i thought about going the pd route but that still scares me a little, i've been talking to some irl cops and they all agreed that highway patrol might be a more doable thing for 20 years or whatever. i could actually start to expect some kind of retirement! i had given up on that idea years ago. still don't know about ever owning a house but at least i could afford a new car. a tacoma so i can go camping every month. and this particular career, i could get the fuck out of utah so much easier and finally never have to see another fucking mormon for the rest of my life.... take-home lesson for anyone younger than say 30 reading this, do NOT go into librarianship unless you truly are 'detail-oriented'.

<3

When I browse job listings I have lingered on cop and cop adjacent jobs far too much for comfort because they are the perfect nexus of "good money (relative to my life experience)" + no degree required and not starting out making $12 an hour as an apprentice and trying to work up.

I couldn't actually do it but I get the impulse. It's kind of like bartending listings - I'd destroy my body doing that instead of my soul, though, because I am incapable of refraining from drinking and smoking in that environment.

well i'd rather get pulled over by map than some other cop

What I do for a living doesn’t require a degree, though I have one in a totally unrelated field… there are limits to what I can do without a more “advanced” certification that does require a degree or equivalent in said field… but there’s a lot of work as is.

Xp maybe “debra and the truther pony” can be the new 11-99 license plate holder

what about like an airport cop instead of highway patrol? Seems safer (and easier) to me

ooh and when you become a cop you get a MAKEOVER!

https://images.halloweencostumes.com/products/46438/1-1/sexy-cop-plus-size-mens-costume.jpg

ASSUME THE POSITION, PERP!

I’m guessing yr not in a red state map. If you were my only note would be that red-state govs and legislators are starting to get expansive ideas about the highway patrol, seeing it as their own personal police force. e.g. deploying them to high-crime urban areas.