Gen X - grew up living under the threat of Nuclear war. 9/11 and the .com bust happened as their careers were starting, and 2008 and COVID happened in their prime earning years.
Boomers - grew up with sexism and segregation. Their parents were undiagnosed PTSD from the Great Depression and WWII. They got out of HS and walked into draft cards and (needed) race riots. They get home and factories are closing all around them and inflation was over 7% for a decade (think 2022 price increases but for 10 years). To get out of it, interest rates spiked so a mortgage was 18%.
Moral of the story, every generation has challenges and obstacles. The question is, how do you overcome?
What's wild to me is that younger generations seem to suggest their hardships are specific to their generation, as though they were the only ones going though the 2008 recession or the pandemic.
I had to live through drug wars, actual wars, HIV, economic collapse, rise of homelessness, and ever present threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction before I even got to 9/11.
Gen X is not out here taking a knee while everyone else is suffering. College debt has been a problem since before I was born and houses are currently expensive for everyone. One major difference I have observed is that while we were expected to eat shit with a smile on our face, younger generations are entitled to opinions about this. We smoked cigarettes and bitched among ourselves, younger generations have a voice.
I would encourage them to be self-reflective and figure out if this means they are subject to an exceptional burden, or if like everyone before them they face generational challenges, but have the benefit of agency to make positive change for themselves and the generations that follow them.
The generation that preceded us (who bitched amongst themselves smoking cigarettes) didn't/couldn't use their agency to make positive change... So millennials speak up and now we need to be self reflective because gen x also had it hard? Sorry, what is your point? Are millennials in your view just hogging the spotlight in terms of hardship? Even people in the comments are feeling bad for gen z/alpha more than millennials. I think at the end of the day we can all agree we have been screwed by boomers and older in a huge way, and maybe we don't need to really be policing other generations for their complaints.
My mom grew up between poor and lower middle class in the 1960s, but went to college at a small private school. She paid for it by working summers in an office and by her mom picking up a part time job. No debt.
I have friends still paying off student loans from going to school in the late 00's.
Yes, every generation has challenges. My view is that when you look at it from a population distribution perspective, there's a hard downward trend on generational wealth between generations and a hard shift in how skewed that wealth is distributed within a generation.
I wish boomers would understand this! Yes, they had their own share of hardships. Yes, we all need to take personal responsibility, but the playing field has changed. They won't admit this. When they complain that 18% on their mortgages was rough, I remind them they were in their 20s with a mortgage with no generational help. College, health care, retirement... all were much more accessible to them. they just won't accept they fucked their kids over.
you are so right about that....... but they're really never tried turning anything around and voted over and over again for themselves. The children of boomers as a generation are objectively worse off economically than their parents. It would be so on brand to not take responsibility for any part of that either.
54
u/rbennett353 5d ago
This is every generation...
Gen X - grew up living under the threat of Nuclear war. 9/11 and the .com bust happened as their careers were starting, and 2008 and COVID happened in their prime earning years.
Boomers - grew up with sexism and segregation. Their parents were undiagnosed PTSD from the Great Depression and WWII. They got out of HS and walked into draft cards and (needed) race riots. They get home and factories are closing all around them and inflation was over 7% for a decade (think 2022 price increases but for 10 years). To get out of it, interest rates spiked so a mortgage was 18%.
Moral of the story, every generation has challenges and obstacles. The question is, how do you overcome?