re: #233 LeftyRambles2413 (HappyWarrior)

I’m a young-ish boomer (1960), and I honestly find myself feeling more like I belong in GenX. Older boomers sometimes have the attitude that if they made it, anyone can unless they’re lazy. Forgetting all the social programs that helped them, that inflation and stagnant wages have take a huge toll on those who couldn’t get established before they took hold. Kinda pulling the treehouse ladder up after themselves and then bitching that no one comes to visit. And do not even get me started on the cost of college and trade school. That has helped destroy the middle class just as much as wage stagnation and the destruction of labor unions.

I’m not doing better than my parents. At all. They never worked to make sure any of us kids went to college, the three of us are the only ones in the family who never went to college. I was too busy surviving homelessness in high school to even consider secondary education. Investing in Amway was more important to them than their kids’ futures.

Every generation has its good and bad bits of history and actions. What I think is that older Boomers especially got very comfortable with the legacy of The Greatest Generation, and lost some of the vigilance that got us an interstate highway system, a functioning power grid that serves nearly every home, a public school system that at one time was one of the best in the world and other things that helped families succeed. Now those things are falling apart due to lack of maintenance and a systematic dismantling of protecting those things while conservative politicians have spent decades decrying them as socialist. And for some fucking stupid reason the average American bought into that crap.