
Millenials aren't entitled; Boomers were just lucky - forrestbrazeal
https://theoutline.com/post/3785/millennials-arent-entitled-boomers-were-just-lucky
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bootsz
This is what has always confused me when hearing people talk about "the
economy"... Clearly in the US we romanticize the post-WWII era beyond belief,
and indeed it was an incredibly prosperous time. But is it really reasonable
to use that as a baseline for comparison as to what constitutes the "normal"
state of things? During that time you had so many favorable factors aligning
in just the right way that made the post-WWII era what it was, that to me it
seems more like an example of an improbable and unusually prosperous
situation, not "the way things are supposed to be". It just seems like now
anything short of the economy of the mid-20th century is seen as a disaster.

I remember during the last recession how much everyone was always equating it
to the Great Depression. I'm sorry but... what? Yes I know a lot of people
were out of work, many in my family were as well. But my grandparents went
through something of an entirely different magnitude in the 1930s. It's just
not even comparable. But because we collectively have this idea in our heads
of the post-WWII situation being "the real America", as soon as things deviate
a bit and go south it's as if we're in an apocalyptic situation. Just seems to
me like people need a bit more long-term historical perspective.

The Boomer generation (economically speaking) came up in possibly the most
favorable conditions possible. But to them it was just the "normal" way of
things so they wonder why younger people can't be just as successful.

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chasingthewind
I agree with this to an extent. Where I'd diverge is on the question of
whether we should say that some of the reasons things aren't "as good" as they
were in the post war period is because certain segments of society (business
interests, capital owners, etc) have used their influence to improve their
prosperity at the expense of the average citizen. To the degree to which
that's the case, describing the post war period as "lucky" will gloss over the
systematic process of favoring corporate interests over individual interests
and normalize the idea that a strong prosperous middle class is an abnormal
scenario that we shouldn't attempt to replicate. I don't believe it's easy to
return to the specific economic circumstances of the post war period but I'm
not sure we're trying very hard right now in the U.S.

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bootsz
Good points. I'd agree (as would most people) that a strong middle class is
highly beneficial. I think the disconnect I see is more related to how
likely/realistic that particular set of conditions is. But of course just
because something is hard to attain doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it.
The issue is that a lot of people who benefitted from these circumstances
perhaps don't realize how fortunate they were.

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douglaswlance
Generalizing so broadly is a terrible way to understand the nuance of the real
world.

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shams93
The thing is the boomers who are still alive are either the ones who "made it"
or the ones who were "born to make it." What you don't see are all the Vietnam
vets who died from heroin overdose on the streets in the 60s. Looking at a
typical Vietnam vet's life its hard to say that all boomers were that lucky.

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RickJWag
As a near-Boomer (early Gen-Xer) I do believe I fell into a lucky time. I left
high school, then a quick college-paying stint in the service to a red-hot
economy in 1990. (Ronald Reagan was to thank for that, and Bill Clinton kept
it going.) I started in Programming then, it's been a great ride to this day.

I think kids today have it harder, the opportunity isn't there. AI may take
the programming jobs, I'm not sure. (Kids today also have to be exceptionally
well-grounded, I think there's a lot more ways to go astray.)

I wish the Millenials good luck-- they'll need it.

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alexkavon
"Your generation isn't like mine!" says person worried about history repeating
itself.

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bch132
There are plenty of things to complain about re: Baby Boomers, but this
article is silly on numerous levels, particularly with logic and statistics.

"the rest of the worlds’ factories were destroyed, while ours were not.
Globalization hadn’t taken off, so there was no competition between, say, auto
workers in the U.S. and auto workers abroad." Not sure what factories being
destroyed has to do with globalization, but OK...

"Digging into Chetty's data" \- what a joke - those who did not live during
the Great Depression earned more than those who lived in it - holy shit, what
a conclusion - going to be tough for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic
Sciences to ignore such astute work...

The fact that the author is a PhD candidate at NYU, will soon be an assistant
professor at PSU, and is presumably a millennial isn't going to endear any
Baby Boomer (or reasonable human of any generation) to the millennials with
such a half-ass screed.

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rdiddly
Boomers were lucky, but it was because of energy. Energy undergirds economies
and builds wealth. Energy production per capita was sharply on the rise (and
overall wealth therefore expanding) when most Boomers were born. By the time
GenXers grew up and Millenials were born, energy, and economic growth, had
entered a plateau, with many little bumps and dips, and a measured all-time
peak in 2005. There may yet be another peak coming. But if the likes of
Richard Duncan[0] are right, it will eventually decline, such that per-capita
energy utilization will look like a transient pulse of very short duration on
the timeline of history, resembling some of these graphs here[1], and not the
infinitely upward-sloping curve imagined by techno-optimists.

Boomers simply had the good luck to be born on the upward-sloping portion of
the per-capita energy utilization curve.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory)

[1][https://duckduckgo.com/?q=olduvai+theory&iar=images&iax=imag...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=olduvai+theory&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images)

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IshKebab
That sounds like bullshit. Seems much more likely that energy use and
production follows the economy rather than the other way around.

Boomers did well because the population was much smaller and globalisation
wasn't a thing.

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rdiddly
On the way up, energy use follows economic activity. On the way down, it's
vice versa.

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bighi
I won't even comment on the generalization, but... why can't it be both?
They're not mutually exclusive.

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mikebelanger
Agreed. Its too complex an issue for it to boil down to "Generation A has it
easier than B".

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Double_a_92
Damn you scrollwheel hijackers!

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G4BB3R
I can't understand. Millenials and those titles are ocidental stuff or
"usonians" only?

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rdiddly
The whole thing is a bit silly, kind of like astrology, but yes these labels
mostly were invented and applied in the West.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_generations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_generations)

