- Boomers are having their last dance in charge.
- Gen X leaders are stepping up to replace the last of them.
- Younger leaders are taking charge of politics and corporate giants such as Boeing, HSBC, and Costco.
Cool great so if we’re making generalisations, the generation who was nothing but snarky, cynical, and too lazy to stand for anything is taking over from the spoilt brat boomers.
At least it’s a slight improvement.
As a millennial (only just though) maybe we should just skip Gen X and millennials and hand everything over to Gen Z. Maybe a generation who are generally consuming less and care about the environment would do a much better job of making sure the world doesn’t burn.
Turn on, tune in, drop out.
I’m Gen-X and I barely feel in charge of my own life, much less the direction of the nation.
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Millennials aren’t going to be the savior you think they are. Like, I want to be hopeful, but I see a lot of Millennials my age just acting scared. They’ve finally gotten some stability, they’ve finally gotten some comfort, and they’re incredibly loss averse. I see a bunch of people my age bought a house in the suburbs posting in the neighborhood Facebook group every time there’s a loud bang “did anyone hear that noise? What was it?” with people lamenting about how the neighborhood is going downhill.
Ten years ago, millennials were pissed the fuck off and were ready to burn shit to the ground. The ruling class gave them just enough to be scared of losing it.
People raised with the same ideas as their parents/friends/society aren’t going to magically change just because they come from a younger generation. When Millennials start coming into power, there are still going to be Millennials on both sides of the political divide. The Republican ones will likely be just as insane, if not worse than the Boomers or the Gen Xers. It’s not like Millennials are just magically going to all be progressive and everything changes. Any of them getting into politics are going to become part of the mainstream political culture and internalize their political beliefs as they learn from their elders. The Right is much more organized about maintaining their ideas and pushing their beliefs, that’s why they work so hard to suppress the other side.
Can we stop making assumptions of an entire group based on some arbitrary rule? The people that will get to power is based on the population that votes for them and not when they were born, start voting in primaries, supporting candidates that match your values and going out to vote for them during election and you might just get what you want.
Millenials might just make it, but if Gen Z is actually like what it looks like, leadership positions everywhere are going to skip a generation.
Said every generation ever.
The boomers grew up in the “Golden age”… Gen x is the boomers first round of kids… Born from hippy free love and mistakes… Then the boomers grew up, got divorced, and started their millennial “real” families… Gen x caught the shit end of the boomer stick for sure, and it fucked them up as a generation… That and the fact that they caught a lot of the boomers pig headedness, probably because they had far less access to information than millennials.
Luckily they’re a small and mostly insignificant generation that won’t ever be able to prop up the old oligarchy parties the way the boomers have been able to.
I’m Gen X and I can tell you from experience that that is mostly accurate.
We’re the generation that was born, came of age, and entered the workforce when Boomers were still far from retirement age and hording all the good jobs. We had to all go to university to study for the leftovers.
It was the generation after us, that second round of kids that you talk about, that came of age and started going to University right around the time that Boomers began to retire, leaving all these well paying jobs for them to pick up now that us X’ers had already settled on the crappy jobs.
The tech boom of the 90s would disagree with you. Millennials hadn’t finished puberty yet so they weren’t taking the jobs, and boomers were still astonished by the concept of electricity. And since the computer industry was new, it wasn’t like anyone was going to college for it yet.
Luckily they’re a small and mostly insignificant generation
Fuck you buddy. You’re right, but still, fuck you.
As a millennial, I think I can speak for all of us and say we’re OK with Gen Z taking over early, they might still have the emotional capacity to effect lasting change.
I agree, and since most of us didn’t start our careers “on time” due to the absolute destruction of the economy in 2008, and also being most of the military strength during GWOT, Gen Z can take charge.
Just don’t short us too badly, maybe throw us a little bone here and there. We will happily take it since our Boomer parents were so massively shitty to us.
That’s really the answer to any of the “Generation ___ will save us”. It’s not generations, it’s age. If a generation takes over earlier it will be more far looking and less fearful. If it doesn’t, it will age into being the same mess all the others have been.
The Boomers dying off might change things merely because they were a huge generation and X is a small one, meaning the average age of a voter should be going down.
The difference is that Millennials seem to be disproportionately tired of responsibility while Boomers hoarded it. What sort of Millennial wants to go through the effort of maintaining a home owners’ association or of showing up at town halls to complain about new developments? Just give us some mtg cards and a runescape membership and you can have the White House.
Abrogation of responsibility is still messy selfishness, but it’s easier to work around for people who do want to be productive. Those in power are more than old enough that Millennials not replacing them in large enough numbers means reasonably middle-aged Zoomers get those positions instead.
I can guarantee you there are Millennials happily ruling over petty little fiefdoms. No generation is universally petty dictators or lazy gamers. The same sort of assholes are born again and again, just waiting for their chance.
Sure, I’m not denying that, but what matters in a democracy and even a corporation isn’t the purity of each generation, it’s the relative fraction of different groups. Going from 60% petty dictators to 20% is far more important than going from 20% to 0%, especially when it’s just one demographic among several.
Millennials aren’t better people, they’re just younger, with currently less opportunity to lord over others than people 30 years older have. But as they rise into the ones with the power, they’ll be the same humans we’ve always been.
I mean given the passage of time and human mortality this was almost guaranteed to happen at some point.
Considering the nature of linear time, I dont know what the alternative could be.
We could all die in some catastrophic event
God I hope so.
The great leveling🤙
Biden is actually the first and only president from “The Silent Generation”
(Side note: Trump, Dubya, and Bubba were all born in 1946)
It’s also possible that Gen X will be skipped over the way the Silent Generation was skipped.
Kamala is the youngest possible Boomer (born in 1964). If she wins and serves 2 terms she’ll be out in 2032. At that point Gen X will be between 52 and 67. People might want a candidate younger than that.
I damn well hope so. As an elderly old man, I’m exhausted seeing technically illiterate and wildly socially backwards old men in charge of most parts of our political apparatus.
Time for people who know the internet isn’t made of fucking tubes. Or that climate change is on top of us, in the process of burning/melting those things we need in order to live.
The funny thing is that the “tubes” metaphor isn’t actually all that bad. Whoever suggested that metaphor to Ted Stephens knew what they were talking about. But, he didn’t actually understand what they were saying, so he looked like an idiot when he tried to use the metaphor to explain why an email was delayed.
Within two months and one week of each other.
You know how in school they say “one day one of you will be president.” Well for Bidens generation all of them were wrong except his teacher
Huh, that’s interesting.
I would vote for a vampire, mummy, or other deathless creature.
Took way too long. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.
This headline makes me incredibly happy.
Kamala was born in the last year of what is considered boomer, but still a step forward to Biden’s silent generation
Generational cohorts care more about events that shaped you in life rather than birth year
At least she’s under the retirement age!!!
Retirement age is 55. She is 59.
Retirement for her is 67.
I think it’s like 65 or 70 in the US.
Holy fuck it’s 67. We’re fucked
You should have known this at 13. Oh, public education. 🤦♂️
When I was 13 the retirement age was not 67 bud
If you were taught retirement age was 55 when you were 13 you must already be retired or thought you were very close to retirement. It hasn’t been 55 since the early 80s.
The full retirement age in the United States varies depending on the year of birth:
- For people born in 1960 or later, the full retirement age is 67.
- For those born between 1943 and 1954, the full retirement age is 66.
- For those born between 1955 and 1959, the full retirement age gradually increases from 66 and 2 months to 66 and 10 months.
However, individuals can start receiving Social Security retirement benefits as early as age 62, though benefits will be reduced for early retirement. Conversely, delaying retirement beyond the full retirement age can increase benefits until age 70.
Kick the Boomers out!
Gen X is too small to matter. Millennials are stepping up and will compete with Boomers for a little while until they finally take over. Thing about Millennials though is that it is a very K shaped generation. About half have had decent success and are conservative/liberal and the other half have been absolutely crushed so it’s kind of a mixed bag and as long as the Boomers have any influence not much is likely to change. GenZ is bigger than Millennials though and should be right behind them. They are very different and much more politically radical, on both the left and right. Things are likely to change with them.
One thing I’m looking forward to with millennial leadership is just people that finally fully understand the power of the internet, big data and what truly distinguishes the information age. If you didn’t grow up with it, it’s hard to grapple with just how much it truly upended … fucking everything. They mostly still don’t understand that a computer can basically read their mind now, just through indirect data gathering and comparing them to all of the other people. We all get that at a more intuitive level, we’ve spent too long around these algorithms and seas of semi-anonymous others.
Of course we’ll be in some quantum AI room-temp-superconductor age by then, so, y’know how it goes. But we should at least have a better handle on the information age problems, so that’ll be nice.
But we should at least have a better handle on the information age problems, so that’ll be nice.
Technology keeps creating new problems. The problems don’t stay still and wait to be fixed.
Not to be contrary, but the problems aren’t technology’s fault. That’s all on us.
It’s almost like generational distinction is meaningless and it’s actually about class.
And life stages
Spoken just like the boomers. Heads up your own asses just like them.
65 million X compared to 72 millennial. Wow. Carry on.
Whatever.
Are you ok
Are you?
I am not, but I think that’s unrelated. Mostly. Or not at all.
In an existential sense?
I’m absolutely spiffing, thanks for asking! Yourself?
Adequate.
Fair to middling?
Sufficient to acceptable. Not good—but not bad! I’m… fine.
There’s apparently 65.2 million Gen Xers vs 75 million millenials. Smaller, but “too small to matter” seems like a really weird take.
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I’m worried about the Alphas and younger Zs who weren’t paying attention until after Covid. The news doesn’t talk about Trump’s laundry list of controversies or extremism. They just yell about the economy and the border and point at Biden.
As usual, they make rationalists look alarmist.
Boomers? Biden wasn’t even a Boomer!
There are still plenty of us Xers who are complete and utter cunts. Don’t let your guard down.
That is true of every generation. Call it a human flaw.
As a Gen Xer I’m heartened to see Gen Z stepping up to literally save the world. Seeing the swell in support for Harris and in voter registration numbers, I for once am feeling hopeful. I hope they can accomplish what the forgotten generation couldn’t.
Gen Z reporting in. Above comment’s point was not to generalize an entire demographic as ‘doing good’. & it was a good one. Don’t assume that of us either.
Judging entire groups of people as a monolith is always bad. I’ll add ‘good’ is subjective of an individual’s values. Expect future generations to mock us for what we believe acceptable.
Gen Z unfortunately seems to have stepped back on the gender equality front. I hope it shifts back but self-identified feminists are down compared to millenials and misogyny is up. I’d be happy to attribute most of that to economic stress though.
Very good point, and I did not intend to make an argument about generations being different. Generations indeed consist wholly of individuals with their own opinions. On an individual level, age is no better an indicator of personality than your zodiac sign.
In my comment I just wanted to express that, after a long period of dread, I am feeling more hopeful after seeing so many members of the young generation getting engaged and making a difference where I personally feel we failed.
It was also meant to express appreciation and gratitude to those who are getting involved and as encouragement to those who are yet to do so.
Just remember there was leaded gasoline everywhere before 1995, and av-gas mostly still is
Expect future generations to mock us for what we believe acceptable.
I sure hope so. If future generations aren’t making fun of me for how backwards I am then we’re not progressing.
I’ll caveat that not all changes are ‘good’ changes too. The future generations might not value the things we hold dear, like the jury trial. One day maybe they’ll sadly see that as us wasting ordinary people’s time.
People in the future are not automatically our betters, but our equals, (hopefully) armed with the knowledge of our failings and armed with that of our successes.
I feel like the judge cannon stuff is a very good example of why jury trials are a thing. Corrupt judges are real yo
us Xers
Already I see a lot more self awareness versus the boomers, so it looks like a net positive in any event
Not really, you also see a lot of boomers calling out other boomers.
Yeah, people act like there aren’t progressives and conservatives in each generation. My retired Boomer parents still think a lot of bigoted and reactionary old people are the reason we can’t have nice things. My Silent Generation grandparents were happy to label Republicans as mostly irredeemably evil even when the political zeitgeist favored treating them as intellectual adversaries with earnest beliefs about the best ways to run society for the good of everyone.
And on the other end, the proud boys were a Gen Z / Millennial phenomenon.
It’s true that people tend to become more set in their ways as they get older. OTOH, that sometimes means that the militant socialist just gets grumpy and complains instead of remaining a hopeful activist. It doesn’t always mean that people start becoming right-wing and conservative.
Every generation has plenty of those - no worries!
Yeah, they’re called “capitalists.”
Yeah. X/Mil cusper here. The elder Gen X are more like Boomers than anything, but have more anger and technical acumen.
If I’m not mistaken in gen X is the first generation to become more progressive as it ages
As a Gen Xer, I wish that was true, but in terms of US voting patterns, it isn’t
Dang, you’re right, it’s the millennials that are changing that trend!
I hope it continues into the Millennials’ later years, but I’m feeling cynical about that…
Def. I’ve only gone harder left/prog/anti-capitalist as I grew older.
I didn’t change but the parties shifted for me.
Yup
saaaaame…55 and left as hell
Same. Grew up in a conservative household and shared many of the same views when I was younger. But the more the conservatives have shifted towards hating “the other” the more I’ve realized that was always what they, and their policies, were. They’re just not subtle about it now.
If you’re so confident in your world view, you shouldn’t be afraid of it being challenged, whether by speech, or people being free to be who they are, want to be, or were born into. If it doesn’t harm you, why should you care?
The fact that neo Nazis align themselves with the GOP, Trump,and MAGA, should tell you all you need to know. I’ve never donated to a Democrat’s campaign… Until today.
Tucker Carlson.
This is such a gen Xer thing to say.
Whatever
Ok Boomer
I guess my joke about the cynicism of genx is getting missed.
We prefer the term “hating on your X”
Even if Harris were Gen X, this would be premature.
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At least you got to enjoy coffee and cigarettes
checking the average age of the House, the Senate, and the Gubernatorial slate
Awww…
Uh i wouldn’t boast about Boeing lol
Warm bodies outnumber the dead, news at 11.
you’d think so, but boomers had it so good they hardly ever die. the amount of stress they left the newer generations while not giving a fuck themselves made them likely to outlast some millennials let alone xers.
I’ll take your comment at face value and see it as a comment on the theory that ‘there’s more people alive today than have ever lived’.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead/
However that seems not to be true. The dead are more numerous. However they are unlikely to vote (unless the republicans find a way).
I do appreciate this clarification. Granted it wasn’t my intent, as I was more focused on modern history.
But hey, learn something new every day!
No I didn’t read that in your comment, but found it too interesting a tidbit not to share !
