He found a way to bring back inflation, give the super-rich room to rebound and gobble up more assets, and make the middle and lower classes pay for it.
Hi Sandy, sorry to take so long to reply. I considered finding a trove of things to give you—books, articles, relating my own experiences over the past three decades—but decided to, for now, give you two. The first is this concise piece by Brookings back in 2015 which lays out quite a few of the relevant characteristics/issues with Boomer leadership (including their reluctance to abdicate power, which is playing out right now), but also some snippets about GenX (still AWOL—my generation, too many of the ordinary members of which still think it’s not time to get serious yet), and Millennials. There are many more things: manipulating tax codes for generational benefit, almost universal abandonment of investment in societal goods, etc. but this will suffice for now.
The second item is a personal reflection. Given Boomer control of our government for the past 15-33 years (presidents excepting Biden since 1992, House since ‘98; Senate since ‘08), let's take our temperature. In other words, how it has gone/where we are now/where are we headed? One word answers are fine. But as context for that answer… a quote by my then-battalion commander from 2000, explaining why he’d recommended me for the highest block on my evaluation: “Frank, I’m saying you’re my top commander, in large part, based on the performance of your unit. Some might quibble with that (my Bde Cdr, the now-well-known Mark Hertling sorta did), but my response is, ‘Well, if your unit WASN’T performing well, I’d sure as hell be holding you accountable for it.'” I don’t know—maybe things are fine after all?
I think the Boomer Legacy, once it is no longer able to blame GenX, Silents or Martians for things not going according to plan, will be…what it is. I just know that, in the last 6 years for so, I’ve heard more Boomers say things like, “we MEANT well.” I guess that ‘s better than “things are great—stop complaining slacker GenXer!” (if you think these weren’t a mainstream narrative for decades, I can show you). Still, I think most of us realize where we’ve arrived is something quite less “ideal” than both sides of Boomer Gen’s messianic drive had dreams of achieving. Hey, I could be proven wrong...I just don’t think I will be.
He found a way to bring back inflation, give the super-rich room to rebound and gobble up more assets, and make the middle and lower classes pay for it.
Yep, he really hits just about every point. Ten minutes of visceral, accurately-termed, awesome invective.
I'm biased but I have a one-word wrapper for 94% of this: Boomers.
Aging boomer here. Pls explain.
Hi Sandy, sorry to take so long to reply. I considered finding a trove of things to give you—books, articles, relating my own experiences over the past three decades—but decided to, for now, give you two. The first is this concise piece by Brookings back in 2015 which lays out quite a few of the relevant characteristics/issues with Boomer leadership (including their reluctance to abdicate power, which is playing out right now), but also some snippets about GenX (still AWOL—my generation, too many of the ordinary members of which still think it’s not time to get serious yet), and Millennials. There are many more things: manipulating tax codes for generational benefit, almost universal abandonment of investment in societal goods, etc. but this will suffice for now.
The second item is a personal reflection. Given Boomer control of our government for the past 15-33 years (presidents excepting Biden since 1992, House since ‘98; Senate since ‘08), let's take our temperature. In other words, how it has gone/where we are now/where are we headed? One word answers are fine. But as context for that answer… a quote by my then-battalion commander from 2000, explaining why he’d recommended me for the highest block on my evaluation: “Frank, I’m saying you’re my top commander, in large part, based on the performance of your unit. Some might quibble with that (my Bde Cdr, the now-well-known Mark Hertling sorta did), but my response is, ‘Well, if your unit WASN’T performing well, I’d sure as hell be holding you accountable for it.'” I don’t know—maybe things are fine after all?
I think the Boomer Legacy, once it is no longer able to blame GenX, Silents or Martians for things not going according to plan, will be…what it is. I just know that, in the last 6 years for so, I’ve heard more Boomers say things like, “we MEANT well.” I guess that ‘s better than “things are great—stop complaining slacker GenXer!” (if you think these weren’t a mainstream narrative for decades, I can show you). Still, I think most of us realize where we’ve arrived is something quite less “ideal” than both sides of Boomer Gen’s messianic drive had dreams of achieving. Hey, I could be proven wrong...I just don’t think I will be.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/boomer-dominance-means-more-of-the-same-in-the-114th-congress/
OK. You're mostly talking about political leaders who are Boomers, not all of us in the cohort.