sycasey said:
Another Bear said:
dajo9 said:
Nothing personal bearister, but your generation will go down as one of the worst on history.
I'm technically a boomer, but born at the very end. I'm not taking blame on that stuff. It was the early boomers and the Greatest Generation who combined to make much of the post WWII policy. Yes the GG saved the US but in many ways, and generally they drove progressive policies (SS, Medicare, as you mentioned) because they lived through the Great Depression and it was bad and left scars.
That said, their success with WWII gave them lots of leverage to do what they wanted...like the Military Industrial Complex, which takes HALF of the US budget annually. So GG gets big props for SS, Medicare, education...but the MIC isn't a great thing IMO.
GG also has to take some blame for producing Richard Nixon, probably our most treasonous president until . . . well, you know.
Boomers have produced three presidents, giving us the Clintons, Bush 2, and Trump. So that's not a shining track record either. (Some might classify Obama as a late Boomer, but I'd say his life story hews more closely to that of a Gen-Xer.)
I don't know if it was you I had this back and forth with re: generations, but I'm a strict generational adherent.
Mainly:
Baby boomers: 1946-1964
Generation X: 1965-1981
Millennials: 1982-1999
Generation Z: 2000-
Generations were meant to cover a wide swath of time, at least a decade and a half. And the people born at the beginning of a generation will of course not have the same experience as somebody born at the end of a generation.
Baby boomers were defined by troops coming home from World War II and having lots and lots of babies over nearly two decades, which is why the generation begins in 1946*.
(*It is really odd that the United States is in its 18th year of being run by a president born in the summer of 1946.)
Obama was born in 1961. I'd bet a substantial number of 1961-born babies were born to World War II veterans. The youngest WWII vets were born around 1926. So they would've been 34 or 35 in 1961, prime fatherhood age.
In fact, Obama's maternal grandfather, who served in the U.S. Army in WWII, was 43 when he was born and his maternal grandmother was 38 (a bit older than Kristen Bell and Kim Kardashian, who both turn 38 this year, are now). And still able to give birth to babies. Obama's grandparents would be young enough to be his parents.
Anyways, I know you'll disagree with me. But the whole generation thing is one of my pet peeves.