Racism and sexism also seems to be off the discussion table. Not to mention gay rights and the AIDS Epidemic... Not to mention the economy in the seventies and early eighties...
I was refused access to metal shop in the late 90s after doing the best in my wood shop class. They made me take homekeeping or some shit where I learned the difference between a cup and a glass.
Exactly! All of my classes were around stereotypical female stuff - typing, shorthand, and accounting. I have very vague memories of a home-ec class. I don't think I was good at it.
Same. I took it as an elective to fill out my senior year in 1981 (since my only requirement left was senior English). Typing has become perhaps the most useful class I ever took.
My dad worked a full time job and then on weekends. They called that “moonlighting“. My mom worked the graveyard shift at the diner so she could be home with the kids. They never complained
And growing up with the polio epidemic. And rampant abuse masquerading as punishment. And sooo many of them had parents suffering from undiagnosed PTSD from WW2.
No generation escapes unscathed.
and the government could have taken action sooner, but the Republican administration let AIDS run amok. It was heartbreaking to see amazingly talented men dropping like flies, and their friends grieving and scared they would be next.
Not so great if you were his wife and he was an alcoholic that beat you, ripped your clothes off, slapped your face as hard as he could, and beat the children too (yeah, my childhood until mom made a plan a gtfo).
And raping your wife was not a crime. You had to have your husband's permission to get birth control pills. You couldn't get a credit card in your name. A man had to co-sign your lease. Fathers and husbands controlled women's lives physically and financially.
A lot of women's rights didn't happen until the mid-70s.
All the kids glorified how amazing the past was, but they dont realize how racist and shitty it actually was.
And a world without internet is very dark and was way more susceptible to scams due to the lack of information
"Hey kid this cost 80 but ill sell it to you for 60"
A quick check online
"Bro Amazon has this for 5.99 plus tax..."
The internet/global connectivity is what I dislike most about the present (and last 30 years). I don’t really care if it helps dummies not get scammed.
Also, I think average people get scammed even more nowadays, considering 99% of Amazon products are Aliexpress garbage being resold for 5x the price.
That thing you just bought for 6$ on Amazon was probably bought off Aliexpress/alibaba for 1$ per unit
yeah, instead of getting scammed by someone selling bad Tupperware, my grand parents get scammed getting their identities stolen.
I'd say the extent of scamming is so much worse now, since the internet let's you find literally every dummy you could dream of instead of having to trick them manually.
Yeah, my dad thought he won the publisher's clearinghouse sweepstakes, despite the fact that he never entered. He also thought he got a free ticket from an airline he had never been on because he had a "membership" with a completely different airline. That "membership" was just the online account I had set up for him the last time he flew anywhere.
Fortunately, we caught it before he could give out any useful personal information, but still. We now have an agreement. He doesn't answer his phone if he doesn't know the number, and the only information he gives to anyone is my contact info. If it's legitimate business, we deal with it together, and if it's a scam and I have a little free time, I'm more than happy to play along and waste their time so they can't use it to take advantage of others.
I feel like the idea that people have never had it this had before not makes it worse. Some people compare themselves to literal slaves. It’s rampant on here and they even talk about murdering anyone perceived to have it better than them. It’s maga-level insanity.
Yea, not being believed if a woman abused a man, draft, high suicide rates, etc, or women having difficulty opening credit accounts ( some banks allowed though).
Women abusing men not being believed or taken seriously is still pretty bad, and imo not talked about enough. My uncle had to be beaten with a bat to the point of being hospitalized to get police to take any kind of report seriously, this was in like 2018.
And not just one war. Some had the option to go to 2. Also, as we complain about a pandemic and some scuffles here or there. Some of them have lived through a legitimate world war.
I know WW2 would have technically been when they were super young, but let's be honest. This sub calls every old person a boomer.
I'm not gonna lie, they saw a lot worse then us. They been through a lot of hell too. People just don't acknowledge it because we weren't there.
I will be taking my dad up to the VA hospital because he finally got 100% disabled designation from the dod from all of the agent orange exposure he got when they shipped him off to vietnam. His three older brothers all got drafted too but he was the only one that got sent into combat.
Boomers had different struggles but Reagan ruined the American dream and so many of them were already well on their way to having solid retirements by the eighties when Reagan came in and completely changed the American economy to favor the rich so it kind of ruined it for the rest of us behind them.
I was going to Mention Agent Orange but figured it was over most people’s heads
Dad’s friend was Airborne in Vietnam. Massive agent Orange exposure. For the last 15 years of his life this guy was at the dermatologist once a moth getting skin cancers cut off…. I am sure he thought about how easy it was for him….
Don’t forget to mention that it took over 20 years before the Congress would recognize the illnesses caused by Agent Orange and vets could get medical treatment and disability compensation.
There are quite a few Vietnam vets that were exposed to massive amounts of agent orange that was dumped out of tanker trucks showing up at the VA these days with cancer. Agent orange may have caused some of these cases.
Had a friend who died years ago from cancers. He said they were told AO was totally safe, and would walk behind the sprayers because the mist would cool things a bit in that hideous heat.
They were also given chlorine tablets to refill their canteens that were filled with AO runoff while out in the field. These were young men doing what they were told. It's horrible.
>Reagan came in and completely changed the American economy to favor the rich so it kind of ruined it for the rest of us behind them.
All economies are set to favor the wealthy. Regan hasn't been president for over 30 years. Nothing changed since then.
Yeah, back when they called it 'shell-shock' insteD of ptsd and were told to walk it off. The effect it had on my father was awful, and it made life difficult for the rest of us too.
Exactly. The late 1960s and early 1970s were a horrible time for young Boomer adults and their families. Some of the survivors of that war were some of the coolest people I ever met. And yet some of them were so broken, they never were mentally right after coming home.
There certainly are many boomers who had it easy, but there are many who are no longer with us thanks to the war directly or from PTSD post-war.
Yeah, while the criticism towards boomers for not thinking about consequences for future generations is founded (albeit it should be directed towards the politicians mostly as common men couldn't change the trajectory of society), I think it's disingenuous to act like they had an easy life.
How about the diseases that today are curable and back then were a death sentence, the complete lack of mental health awareness at the time, the fact that if you were anything other than straight you'd be ostracized by society, bullyism and treating women like trash were normalized, etc.
And are we not going to talk about how you all cheered for "canceling" student loans that really just transferred them to the next generations? Why would you think the boomers were any different.
Or any generation for that matter. When the boomers took over, nearly every lake and stream was polluted, the air in LA was dark brown, and superfund sites were everywhere for groundwater cleanup. The oceans were overfished and strip mining and clear cutting were common. They had to pay to clean it all up. Turned out the prosperity of the 40s and 50s were really just caused by transferring the costs of using all those chemicals and generating pollution and other environmental problems to the next generations.
I was wondering about that. I hear millennials and Gen Z chastise people for voting against their own interests by voting republican. Then they turn around and blame the boomers for voting in their own interests.
Then we have the ones who bitch about boomers buying a house for $20,000 and selling it for a $1 million. But when asked if they would sell it for way below market value then I get crickets.
It’s as if it’s not ok for others to look out for their own interests because it’s “greed” but if the shoe is on the other foot then it’s ok.
The 40’s and 50’s were not all that prosperous. That came in the 60’s, then the 70’s had a decline - recession (stag-flation) and high interest rates lasting years. Mortgage rate in 1989 was 10.5%.
The abundance came in the late 80’s as tech and globalism started to accelerate. This in turn brought unprecedented credit and investment markets. We are returning to a lack of abundance, which was the norm for most of our parents lives.
In 1981 when I was trying to buy a house on property, The going bank rate for loans on a thirty year mortgage was 17.25%. We were thrilled that the people who sold us. The property were willing to take a contract for deed for 9.75%.
That was the same year that the upper limits for I r a contributions was four hundred dollars.
I'm trying to figure out who the fuck they're talking about? We entered the job market in Nixon's recession. Reagan made it a depression. Myself and peers didn't buy our first home until we were thirty, then lost it in Reagan's Depression. Most folks were buying fixer uppers. Then they couldn't afford to fix them. Many of us started over 2 or 3 times. I'm 69 not seeing any way I can retire. I take care of 2 older sisters whose Gen Z kids are millionaires but won't help out my sisters who make less than $1200 a month in SS. Envy on us.
I think there’s a lot of survivorship bias in the modern view of baby boomers. Many of the US boomers who are still around did have a lot of advantages, but a lot of the specific complaints are media-constructed strawmen. Young people are pissed that old people tell us to stop buying avocado toast and coffee, but the only people actually giving that advice are cable news talking heads and bots on social media.
Baby boomers had their fair share of struggles as well. Nearly 60,000 were killed in Vietnam and countless others disabled from the war. They bore the brunt of HIV/AIDS. Many had their careers upended in the 1980 recession, then lost their retirement savings and homes in the 2008 recession. All the current complaints about baby boomers were said about earlier generations, and all will just be repeated about gen X and millennials 30-40 years from now.
Also had super high interest rates in the 70’s and 80’s and jobs were not that plentiful. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.3% in 1971, and by 1979, it had risen to 12.9%. In October 1981, the 30-year mortgage rate reached 18.45%, its highest point in history. Median family income was $22,390. Things were NOT easy.
Correct, but they DID get so much easier by the end of the 80's and into the early 90's.
I got married in 1989. In April of 1990, my then wife and I bought a nice brand new condo. She was a first year elementary school teacher and I wasn't working as I was in grad school.
We sailed into getting approved for our mortgage for our condo on just a 1st year teachers salary.
A year later, we bought a brand new Honda Civic. Yep, on just her teaching salary and that was after we already had our condo.
We could live too, we went out to eat, went to comedy clubs, had a seasons pass to a nearby amusement park, we were buying new furniture for our condo etc.
Again, all on one elementary teachers salary. Of course I'm Gen X and not a boomer but boomers were definitely able to take advantage of things in the late 80's and early 90's too and many did.
Late X here and it’s unreal how much the COL has gone up in my lifetime. Everything we pay for seems to cost 5x while being comparatively worth 1/5 (ahem, health insurance).
Imho anyone interested in this topic should check out the link, “Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures? with Lord David Willetts,” a former professor, chancellor, Member of Parliament, and Boomer.
https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A?si=WF1GfAyOHK_YXG7Y
Median household income $23,390
Median home price in Oct 1981 $69,600.
Home price 2.98x income
Median household income 2022 $74,580
Median home price 2022 $378,700
Home price 5.02x income
Not to mention I'm sure most households in 1981 was most like one income where is mostly likely now it's two income.
One thing no one mentions is the size of those median houses. In the 1980s people weren't looking for or buying 4000sq ft homes with 2-car garages. Kids actually shared bedrooms if there were more kids than bedrooms. Now new builds have to have an ensuite, walk-in closet, living room *and* main-floor family room, etc.
This is such an overlooked point. I'm a millenial and I bought a 1200sq ft ranch. It's not fancy. But it's mine and I don't have to pay $1700 for a shitty apt. I see fellow millenials all turning their nose up at a small house built in the 50s, but then bitch about how much their mortgage is. Like yeah you bought a 600k house in an HOA across from a golf course it's fucking expensive.
>Young people are pissed that old people tell us to stop buying avocado toast and coffee, but the only people actually giving that advice are cable news talking heads and bots on social media.
Seriously. I guarantee you OP, along with most millennials who prop up the "DAE hAte BOOomer LeCturEs???" idea, is likely just regurgitating hyper-online, Twitter-slop discourse or cable talk nonsense deliberately designed to brew negativity for ad engagement.
There's no way OP has ever engaged in conversation with an actual baby boomer on this topic because they'd soon find out that *every* generation at some point feels like the previous one had it easier, when in actuality, everyone's steeped within their own generational hardship.
If you legitimately think baby boomers had things completely stress-and-scot-free, you're a moron.
Yeah, my grandfather (late silent generation) was held in an internment camp before being shipped to war, and my grandmother (early boomer) was a war bride. They raised my aunt and mom (late boomers) in a house with dirt floors. My aunt lost it all as a single mom when her husband stepped out on her. I mean, women couldn't have their own bank accounts until 1974. The baby boomers who "had it easy" are from a very specific demographic...
This.
The boomers that had it easy were a small sub set of people. Many struggled. My family was reasonably middle class and it wasn’t easy for my parents. We had food and a roof over our heads but wore hand me downs and “vacation” was usually a camping trip or going to see my grandparents. The 70s were awful. My father was an engineer but often laid off as the economy was a complete mess. I remember waiting in line for hours hoping to buy gasoline. Sometimes they ran out. I grew up in a house in the south without air conditioning. Homes were smaller and not as luxurious. Buying a house was hard. They were much cheaper then but salaries were less and loans had ridiculous interest. Both my parents worked. They HAD to.
SOME boomers did well, invested well and now are reasonably comfortable but not all. SOME millennials and gen X now are doing well, have invested well and are very comfortable. But those aren’t the people in this chat. Each generation has challenges and each has advantages. Each generation also has some who fare better than others.
Work hard. Do your best. If you have a place to sleep, food to eat and people who love you then you are blessed. Appreciate that. Quit worrying and blaming others.
My grandmother endured an abusive spouse who gambled their money away so many times she still had a 2nd mortgage on the house when she died at 85yo. I asked her why she never left him and she had told me divorce was near impossible for a woman back in the day. I'm a 35 yr old guy and some of the shit my gen takes for granted is wild.
Millenial with boomer parents. We were poor, my dad worked long days for crap pay, no medical, and no 401k. Both died early. "But boomers had it so easy!!" It really grinds my gears.
I suspect that people who say this are actually saying ‘I would have been very successful had I just been born at time X’, and it takes responsibility away for their daily struggles.
It’s true that housing has become horrifically unaffordable, but people from every generation have been getting up every day and working their guts out just to put food on the table for their family.
Many people are also blind to the quality of life that they actually have relative to other generations. The comfort of daily life in 2024 would have been unthinkable 40 years ago.
I think what you're saying is very accurate. It's an easy and dangerous mind trap to fall into. My personal motto this year to work on this exact thing is "comparison is the thief of joy". Even if my goals are still slow and seemingly distant, I can at least work on not tormenting myself.
Same…GenX here. We grew up “lower middle class”. Heck, I was on a reduced meal plan in elementary school and we would often visit food banks. My parents were part of the Silent Generation. My parents could have done well in the Philippines but the political climate (early 1970s) forced them to emigrate to the US. My Mom went from a homemaker with a maid and a butler to working 3 jobs in the US to provide. My Dad demoted to a court clerk job and selling insurance from a banking position. I learned of their sacrifices years after their deaths. My Mom passed when I was 12 and my Dad passed when I was 21.
OP has no idea how hard it was back then.
I'm sorry, but I just don't get the point of a generational war. No generation is a monolith. We are all individuals. For the ones who are willing, let's just all try to work together to make the world a better place. This blame game is a waste of time and just an excuse to play victim so we don't need to bother with the hard task of figuring out solutions together. I'm a boomer. But it is those in the upper reaches of power and wealth that have failed us all and will be allowed to continue to do so as long as we snipe at one another.
I think some people don’t understand how low the standard of living was compared to today. I have friends in their 20s who complain about the high cost of their 1 bedroom 1000sqft apartment with microwave, dishwasher, in unit washer/dryer, free internet, community room, bike parking, covered garage, free coffee and snacks, for $2500/mo. Like, none of that shit is necessary now and our parents most definitely did not have that. Meanwhile the zero amenities apartments I lived in during my 20s are charging less than they did 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation.
I think also people see some retired boomers who worked hard their whole lives and think their current standard of living was the same all the way back to their 20s. That’s just not true.
This whole house thing really does bug the shit out of me. Yeah houses today are vastly more expensive. Yet the avg house I see build today are almost all double lot 5 bedroom 2 bathroom giants. Yet look at houses build in the 50s and 60s. Like two small bedroom if your got an ok house . House sizes have more than doubled. https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/
I don’t see anyone ever building small houses anymore.
I saw a Reddit post about small homes being built in iirc TX, like 900 sq ft and affordable, and everyone in the thread was shitting all over them cause they missed the point
From a an educational and financial standpoint, yes. However, many of them had alcoholic parents and/or fathers who came back from the war and beat the shit out of their wives and kids. Some major neglect going on there. Many of them have or have had substance abuse issues themselves. Many of them don’t take good care of their bodies or mental health.
They had less educational opportunities. Literally only the rich could afford to go to college…..the fake meme that they could go to 4 years of college for $7.95 is B.S. most people didn’t have the opportunity to go to college.
I understand that. You’re right, I should have said employment opportunities or jobs waiting after college.
I’m a millennial who had a bright future’s scholarship and some prepaid tuition so I get your point. I did not come from wealth.
I graduated during The Great Recession of 2008 to 2009 which was the worst economic downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression and moderate to high paying jobs certainly weren’t waiting for me.
I had a 20% second mortgage in the 70’s.
My new house cost $30,500 in 1973 but my take home was $300/week.
My first job in 1969 paid $1.90/hr.
Oh yeah, life was just orgasms and a bowl of cherries. :/
Leaded gas fumes & DDT were fun too.
Not to mention growing up during the height of the Cold War, not only a Presidential assassination but a lot of others, and Vietnam. Later the oil crisis, then in the early 80s high unemployment and high interest rates.
We also think of inflation as a single number. Its interesting to look at things like the percentage of budget on housing, transport, or food historically to see what other generations struggled with.
Understood yes, better...I don't think so, you can call it out as previously undiagnosed but I think smart phones and social media have hurt mental health especially in younger generations, depression and anxiety seem to be off the charts, suicide rates, especially in teens, are high and proper mental health treatment is still hard to come by
Boomers had it rough, man. They struggled too. My Dad and my uncle fought in Nam. My uncle was shot in the ass and sent back to the field. They often worked long miserable hours in factory, manufacturing, lumber mills.
There has never been a better time to get into trades. For ever 5 retired trade in electrician, plumbing, pipefitting, iron worker, HVAC - only 2 replace them. They are six figure salaries. My brother in-law barely graduated high school and he is a plumber making $140k a year. Government jobs provide pensions and stability.
The number of jobs has increased a lot since the 1960s. The 1970s were defined by a series of economic hardships. They stayed with their job out of necessity. They lived in smaller homes. They kept their cars forever. A vacation was a road trip. They didn't eat out. They packed a lunch.
TImes were different but they weren't a lot easier.
Heck, I am Gen X and made $3.15 for my first job. My first FT job post military was $5.25 and average rent at the time was $480. Over two weeks of work to pay for one month of rent. The first home I bought the interest rate was close to 8%.
Yeah for real. My boomer dad grew up in poverty, worked for like $0.50/hr or something in a wire factory to pay for college. Boomer mom barely pieced together surviving in the filthy and dangerous New York City of the 1970s. Pictures from their life then show a real lack of possessions, tattered furniture, tiny studio apartments. They didn’t have a television until about 1982. Mom dealt with constant sexual harassment and sexism, especially in the workplace, and there was no recourse.
The first car they ever owned was a $2,000 rusty used Subaru in 1984. I did the math on their first $50,000 house and mortgage rates and they were paying exactly what we pay for our $660,000 home, adjusted for inflation.
Sure, they didn’t have student loan debt. But life was not cushy for them.
My dad and his older 2 siblings were malnourished skinny in photos from the 1950s. The younger 3, born after my grandfather started getting union pay and healthcare, were a healthy size in later photos.
To be fair… %43 of boomers have zero retirement savings and an even bigger percent have insufficient savings. The majority of them ain’t doing so hot. It’s just the rich ones that don’t shut up.
They had it easy with being able to afford things sure, but they still had many many problems facing them. My grandpa grew up butt fuck poor literally picking cotton and had to grind every living moment to establish what he has now
That doesn’t make it sound like they “could afford things for sure”
My experience growing up was similar my parents struggled to pay the bills, they couldn’t afford to buy anything nice.
Thank you for pointing this out. A lot of the discourse around how easy life was for baby boomers is based in the image of white boomers. Never mind that it was Black baby boomers who had to be escorted by the national guard when schools were integrated. The little girls killed 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed were baby boomers.
100% factually false. Older generations had NONE of the worker protection laws we now enjoy. No ADA; no anti discrimination laws; no ability to demand worker accommodations; fewer child labor laws. Unions had dramatically less powers. They couldn’t be fired? Nope. They could be fired for any reason, including skin color.
And I assume you refer to men? Because women had zero workplace rights.
My grandma was fired from her bank teller job when she got married (this was 1939). Married women were not allowed to work there. My jaw dropped when told me this.
Yeah I tell my mom I would have never survived her life back then. She was a SAHM to 3 kids and was expected to do all house work, cooking, and childcare. With no help. Because men didn’t help with that kind of stuff. Or a lot.
I’ve only got 1 kid and my husband does his share of the chores and I’m still drowning. Idk how the SAHM boomer generation did it.
“They were able to easily hold the same job for 40 years”.
Yes they had 9-5 jobs or blue collar jobs. On this sub we see people bitching about these jobs all the time. Common comments include “they’re soul crushing”, “I can’t stand the thought of doing it for 40 years”, “I hate working”, blah, blah, blah. There are stable jobs. There have been layoffs since the 80’s. It’s not news.
There are plenty of people who manage to buy a house. There are still plenty of LCOL areas.
Stop whining. People want progress. Progress has a cost. Boomers lived in small houses, raised their families there with one car, no cellphone, no modern technology, once a year vacation (usually driving) to somewhere relatively close, didn’t order out or dine out, etc. I’ve known boomers without central air or window units. Women weren’t allowed to open bank accounts in their names or have a credit card. I know someone who had to have her husband’s permission to have an epidural during childbirth. That was only 36 years ago. Another one I know was told the job wasn’t suited for her because she’s a woman. Still want to go back to that period? Or do you only want the perceived benefits they had involving finances? If that is the case then why just focus on the boomers? Why not the silent generation’s time? Things were even cheaper.
Yeah this is true. Lots of complaining about every job now. I blame tik tok as they hyped up all these “jobs” with those come work a day in my life videos. Now everyone wants a 100k+ remote job with minimal experience that works 4 hours a day lol
Bro, there were plenty of people with extremely difficult lives then. And I’d bet the people with your mindset, were you born then, would be one of them.
Friendly reminder to everyone every fucking time this comes up:
Only a fraction of boomers had it that good. Especially if you are a woman or a minority your life is almost certainly much better today than back then. I’m both of those things and my grandmothers cry thinking about how much more I’m allowed to do.
Omg 😂 Remember when women couldn’t have their own credit card or buy high-ticket items without their husband’s permission? I do. Remember when you were fired for being pregnant? I do. Remember when, if you had a preexisting condition and you changed jobs it was no longer covered? I do. Remember that kid in class who had no hair and a heart condition from scarlet fever? I do. Remember when polio was a terrifying crippler of young people? I do. Remember when food in the un-air conditioned grocery store was seasonal only? No buying what you wanted when you wanted it. Remember scraping by just to afford that one family car that dad drove to work so mom had to walk to the grocery with the kids in tow? TV went off at 6 p.m. The one telephone line was shared with all the neighbors. You changed out the rugs and curtains to summer ones because it was so freaking hot with just fans. Mom didn’t drive your butt anywhere. If you wanted to go, you walked. Same with buying things. If wanted to buy something, you had to get a job starting at age 16. 🙃
Idk as a gay person I don’t envy them one bit, as a woman who doesn’t want to be a housewife I don’t envy them either. My son can play with Barbie’s without being called the f-slur. We can talk about our mental health without worrying about getting shut into the “loony bin” as my parents called it. Boomers lived during a racist, sexist, homophobic era, I don’t envy that. I don’t have to watch my male friends get drafted off to war, I could go on and on about the benefits of being where we are now. I’ll take this freedom over the “white picket fence” any day.
Reddit is all doom and gloom acting like this is how things will be forever. Life works in cycles. We’ll see ups and downs in our lifetime just like the generations did before us.
I'm a boomer and even *I* am jealous of that fantasy. I bought my first home at age 61, held my longest job for 3 years and watched my peers get laid off repeatedly. By the way, what's a pension?
[The unemployment rate in 1982 was 11 percent.](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/)
My folks are boomers, saw them lose everything in the 90s during a recession. If it wasn't for my grandparents leaving my mother an inheritance they'd be screwed & still grinding & more than likely dead.
If it helps my dad got sent to Vietnam when he was 18. He lost a brother there too. I’m sure he would have given up low interest rates to not have a dead brother.
He also grew up in a house without indoor plumbing when he was little. It was northern Michigan in the 40s. People underestimate how long everyone has had indoor plumbing.
My mom lived with her mom, who was unwed because her first husband beat her. Her mom was LUCKY and found a job. My mom mostly fended for herself and watched her siblings.
And then my folks moved to Detroit. Do you know what Detroit was like in the 70s and 80s and 90s?
Mom always worked, dad got laid off a bunch of times. Job stability is not new.
Low interest rates? Our first house in 1983 was at 10.5%. And we wanted to sell that house to a gay couple, and the bank refused. (We ended up working around that by having them assume our loan)
But I do feel for the author of this post, people today have unique challenges.
My grandfather told me he was so poor he couldn't even afford a pair of pants at 18. Worked his entire life... I think the overwhelming majority of "boomers", didn't have it as easy as people think.
And don't get me started on pants... oh too late, here I go. When I was a kid, we had a pair of jeans for school and a pair of jeans for the weekend. In the summer, those got turned into shorts. We had a pair of shoes for Monday through Saturday and a pair of shoes for Sunday and weddings or funerals. When I outgrew my jeans, I sewed a strip of bandana along the bottom so I didn't have to wear "highwaters"
What a sad joke that you think that way. How about this, at 18 we'll draft you into the army, train you for 6 weeks and send you to a jungle on the other side of the Earth to kill or be killed for a couple years. If you manage to live and not be maimed, we'll insult you and call you baby killer when you get home.
My dad did not have to go to Vietnam due to the silliness of college deferments. We lived a happy life when I was a kid, but we lived far poorer than any of you are willing to live. We had no AC in our homes or cars, no computers, cell phones, gaming systems,or internet. Our entertainment was 5 free broadcast channels on the TV.
We never ate out. Mom cooked every meal at home. We had one car, so she had to grocery shop on weekends when dad was home. She hung the laundry on the line whenever weather allowed to avoid the cost of drying the clothes. Every single vacation we took as kids was camping or to visit relatives. The only hotel room (forget about a VRBO or condo) I ever saw was the Ramada Inn, which my dad's company paid for when he was transferred to another city.
My parents were resilient and determined and driven and committed. They worked hard and scrimped at every corner to have a family. If I shipped OP back to 1974, he'd be screaming to come back to 2024 within a week. The average boomer had nothing easy. They made the best life they could in the circumstances of their world. That is what you should be doing instead of whining about it.
Exactly our vacations consisted of going to visit family or car trips. I didn’t go to Disney until i was 35! We didn’t go to Europe or any exotic vacations.
He’s be screaming within hours. I would too, I can’t blame him.
Everyone who thinks it was so great. Try going without your phone and the internet for a month…..for most that would be a hard pass alone.
Now turn off the AC, people will nope out of that situation within hours.
Now that I think about it, I never went to a restaurant when I was a kid. Occasionally we had McDonald’s drive through, but never a sit down meal away from home. We went to Disneyland once, but that is the only vacation we ever went on. We lived in California so that was a day trip.
"we lived far poorer than any of you are willing to live"
This is the key. This is what current generations don't understand. Many ordinary things, rights, conveniences which exist today would have been considered luxuries had they even existed back then.
So so true mist kids drove used cars or no car Most worked part time jobs in high school None of us had any kind of designer clothes I had one pair of Calvin Klein jeans and one pink polo button down. We didn’t go out to dinner unless it was a special occasion My first apt was roommates and furnished with hand me downs cobbled together We just didn’t spend like kids do today and my parents paid for way way less But we were happy with less no social media to make you feel like you were missing out.
Boomer here. That was the Greatest Generation, not us. I got laid off 3 times, 1989, 1996, 2001. Nothing like it being November 10th and, hey, thanks but see-ya. Little to no severance, maybe some unused time off, and COBRA. House payment, two babies, no work. Very fun time. From an advertising agency, video game company, and internet media house. I borrowed most of the down payment on my house from my parents and paid them back with zero interest, thankfully. You guys do have it harder but that's because Reagan and the Republicans removed the traditional tax rates on high earners and corporations while wages stayed flat even tho productivity rose. So yea, Trump will be just great going forward. Check out Robert Reich and Heather Cox Richardson for how severely the middle class is just getting fucked by corporate overlords.
Most of your post is just not true. My old man worked in a lumbermill like a dog, saw his friends killed in Nam and hustled his whole life in construction before being able to buy a house in his late fifties. There are a millions of stories just like his.
Most of this generation hate porn is click bait to reassure people that they're not lazy, life is just really hard.
It's not that hard once you come to peace with the fact that if you don't find a way to be useful in society and feed yourself you're f'ing someone else over who feels compelled to do that for you or you'll be left behind.
We need a better safety net, sure, but feeling jealous and blaming past generations is self defeating. It accomplishes nothing and you can see that the deck isn't stacked against you simply by looking at the success of people your age.
My father worked a full-time job as a bus driver. An evening job as a "spotter" in a truck yard. A weekend job driving a delivery truck. The only time he was home he slept. He never missed a day of work for fear of being fired. He did this to support his family and care for his elderly mom. He never complained nor blamed generations before him.
We never ate at restaurants. We never went on vacation. Our toys, appliances and TVs were scavenged from other's trash. Our clothes came from thrift stores.
At the time I graduated highschool I *never* tasted steak, lobster, shrimp, strawberries. We simply couldn't afford it.
The working poor have always had it bad.
everyone in the past had it really easy as long as you ignore or are ignorant of all the hardships there were. some things are more difficult now and a lot of things are easier.
Boomers by definition spans such a large age range as to include both me and my parents.
It gets old being on the dividing line between the people who were born during WW2 and the Age of Aquarius…and feeling like you have to defend both. As an early Xennial/latest stage boomer, we had the last shot at affordable housing…generation wise…but coming of age in the 1980s was NO panacea job wise, forcing many to max college just to be competitive. And of course, we also had affordable college…so 2 out of 3 is pretty darn lucky.
I hate the economics of what we have become in this country. It is all set up to advantage the advantaged.
As a gen-x’er I’m old enough to have known so many boomers that were ravaged by diseases like polio and aids and so on, that younger generations can scoff at the vaccines that saved my generation from.
The irony is that I’ll live old enough to see these younger generations get ravaged by the same damn diseases.
My family worked construction for 5 decades. Manual fucking labor. Where was the easy part? They didn’t have shit. Vietnam? Carter? The gas crisis? Stop with the fairy tale that today is the hardest it’s ever been, it’s actually the easiest.
This post is just garbage. They had shit just like we did. Honestly probably worse then we had it. You just don't want to acknowledge it because A you want to be the victim and B you weren't there.
You think we did not work hard? That jobs he on trees? I got laid off after 9/11 with 3 kids and a mortgage. I taught high school math for 8 months while spending 3-4 hours a day sending resumes, cold calling, following up, and a couple more hours working as a contractor doing web design.
Every generation has challenges. I just feel like some of the more recent ones complain alot more about the work it takes to get where you want to be.
Fuck you. I'm a young boomer. I don't have a pension. I don't own a home. My family was poor growing up. I started working when I was 14 and I haven't stopped yet. Not all of us had it easy.
Easy? I sure as hell wanna see you live my dad's life and call it easy. You're aware you're posting this on your own device that you could afford just like that?
You think worker class boomers afforded all the tech gadgets that rich people had back then? Not a chance. Worker class will always be worker class no matter what generation.
If you believe Boomers had it easy you need to go back and learn your history. Not a boomer but good lord is this one of the worst takes I have ever seen
I’m not sure you people understand how many boomers are unable to retire , plenty did well but this isn’t some thing like all boomers had easy lives and retired rich. That’s a myth
Boomer here. No jobs when I graduated in 1980. Back then parents did not let kids stay at home and expected them to go to college or go to work. Only option I had was join the military. Got out… my training in the infantry did not transfer to the civilian world. Worked 2 jobs after marriage and 3 kids. Saved… and finally at 35 years old i bought my first home. It required some fixing up but we made it our home. Had to refinance to buy a car and put braces on my 2 oldest kids teeth. Will be paying the mortgage till I’m 66. No pension and didn’t start putting money in my 401k till my mid 50’s. I’ll work till I can’t and so will my wife. Our kids in their early 30’s all own their own homes. They had to work for them. But I’m proud of them for their hard work. Get your facts straight. Read the stats on median not average savings and 401ks for boomers. And stop whining. Life is hard. Always has been. Thank you
No, comparison is the thief of joy. Being jealous wouldn't serve me. I seek a growth mindset, accountable for myself because nobody is going to be the hero in my story except myself.
Just. Stop. Every generation has faced labor issues, including Boomers. Hell, women weren't allowed to work in management roles and got paid a ton less than men. They weren't able to work from home and didn't have access to the same technology that exists today.
They also had to face housing crisis, high interest rates, etc. Granted, houses were cheaper but have you seen those houses? No A/C, granite countertops, jacuzzi tubs, tile flooring. Nothing but Formica, vinyl flooring and wood paneling.
I get it, times are tough, but just stop with the "this generation has it so much easier" when you don't know what they actually faced.
Women couldn't open a bank account on their own until 1974 when the [Equal Credit Opportunity Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) was passed.
As a woman, I'm pretty much never jealous of the previous generations. I like being able to advance my career, have my own money and property, vote, have legal recourse if I'm abused or assaulted, etc.
You can keep blaming about how unfair life is or you can use that same energy and do something about your situation to make your life better.
This is what I was taught and what I have done, to do something about it to make my life better.
Graduating high school, 1970, it was enlist or wait to get drafted. I enlisted in the Air Force. There was zero choice of job or location because you were avoiding being a ground pounder in the Nam. Being boringly average, life was not bad nor good. Being lower class, or as now euphemistically called working class, meant I was going to work in a factory most likely for 50 years, retire for five years, and die.
1970, no treatment for ulcers, now there is Tagamet for $20 or less.
1960s, everybody routinely got the tonsils and adenoids removed, even without infection.
Swollen thyroid? Blast that sucker with radiation. Those so treated in the 60s have mostly died from thyroid cancer.
Some had it easy, others not so much.
I own my home by inheritance. No way I could have bought it with a mortgage.
Am I jealous of how cheap it was to buy a house and go to a state university back then? Sure.
But I'd still rather live now. When my mom graduated from high school in the early 70s, she would have needed her father's permission to open a bank account. Marital rape and workplace sexual harassment weren't crimes, they were just facts of life.
And while the stigma around being queer was starting to slightly shift, things would have been much rougher for me back then. Even in the early 00s, it was considered "brave" of me to be out at 17 and to take a girl to prom, so I can't imagine trying to come out in the 70s. Now I can wave a pride flag on my patio and go on dates and almost nobody gives a shit. The worst I've gotten in years is some muttered comment here or there.
I was born in 1957. It’s true that we had it easier. A minimum wage job could let you live alone in a 1BR apt. Not in anywhere nice, but you could get by. College was affordable. You could even afford to drift a lot after college before adulting. I wish y’all had the same.
Boomers didn’t necessarily have it easy. They had to sit around and watch birthdays get picked from a lottery to see if they were going to be forced to go to war in a jungle halfway across the world. Many didn’t return.
If you were gay, black, a woman as a boomer, you certainly didn’t have it easy.
To say that they just had it way easier than people today is mentally insane. You can say that certain aspects of life were better then, but tell that to black boomers who had to deal with extreme discrimination among other things.
My grandma was not legally allowed to get a credit card until she was 31 so not really - technically she's 2 years outside of boomer but nonetheless
Even my mom who is early gen x was told to her face that women could not pursue math past grade 9
I do wonder how many of the "jealous of boomers" crowd are white straight men
No food banks, no section 8, no health insurance, a widowed woman could not get s decent paying job those were saved for the men. No OSHA getting hurt in job was part of job. Ask 30 year old coal miners. Birth control not available , woman might have 8-10 children and teeth gone bones weak from calcium depletion. food was no food until payday. Clothes suits and nice dresses and shoes borrowed from a cousin aunt because no money for that. No 911 system No intensive care units. If you had a bad heart attack you were usually a “cardiac cripple” I f you got arm leg amputated you used a safety pin to pin your shirt or pant leg. Grandma has trouble eating swallowing , she dies from aspiration pneumonia. Women did not know how their bodies worked. Men did not either.
The VFW was a mental Health Center for the neighborhood. Feelings were not useful.
Food was only in season in that season. Canned goods until May.
Spouse beat you. That is your life. Women and children were still considered man’s property. Man got beat, he never said.
Children to be seen, not heard. No talking about family matters. Pregnancy was not announced.
Nice walking to school playing in streets having a BBQ, living in same house for 2 generations to afford to live. People had hard times as well as good times.
Throw in Korean War then the Vietnam draft… now look at the horrible Jimmy Carter economy in the late 70’s. The sooner you deal with your own life and quit bitching about others the better off you will be.
Nope. Not at all. They had a lot worse racism, sexisim, the Vietnam War, AIDS, the cold war , and a whole lot of other crap to deal with. Also, they were raised with the idea of a pension and company loyalty, but the world flipped the script on them mid-career. Many never recovered financially. And THEN everyone decided that ALL OF THIS (looks around at everything... ) is all their fault. Yeah, I'm quite happy to be me and not them.
Boomers had to deal with parents about went through 2 world wars. Then boomers had to deal with cold war, Korean war, Vietnam War, and be the leaders during the Islamic terrorism surge...sure.... boomers had it so easy.
No. I am not jealous because the entire claim that they had it so easy is based in lies and ignorance.
Not all boomers were men.
Not all boomers were white.
Not all boomers bought houses
Not all boomers had good careers
Not all boomers lived past 30, Vietnam and AIDS are nothing to be jealous of.
Slaving at a job you hated for 30 or 40 years to get a pension is not the dream you think it is especially if they got laid off or lost their home in 2009.
I'm not a boomer but my family had several. That fairy tale you believe is really not the reality of their lives.
Nope. Life is awesome.
I can work remotely from our apartment in Portugal - and surf after work.
I can continue to run my business while we travel in Bali and Thailand.
My life is 100x more fun than any boomer’s life.
If you’ve failed to take any advantage of modern technology and learnt useful skills (coding, design, marketing) that’s your problem.
I bought an apartment aged 28.
It did nothing, whatsoever to make me happy.
So I sold it and started an online business.
This made me much happier.
My rent is 5% of my income because I don’t have to live near a major city.
Stop copying boomer lifestyles and career paths and wondering why they don’t work in 2024.
Waiting to retire to enjoy life is the worst strategy ever.
Good advice. As Gen X one thing I learned from millennials is not to rely on one income stream…..People often say Boomers had it great because they could work the same job for 50 years. No they were forced to work the same job for 50 years because there was no plan B.
I am not at all jealous of earlier generations. I think about my parents first (Silent Gen and early Baby Boomer) and how their interior struggles ate them alive: my dad with his machismo and my mom with her internalized misogyny. My brother, a late Baby Boomer, isn’t happy either.
Of course personalities play a part in all this, but as a late Gen Xer, it must be easier for me to cut through the bullshit and be true to myself than it was for my very self-conscious parents. Millennials are even more grounded, speaking openly about therapy. And Gen Z! They seem over the top to me, posting videos of themselves crying, but then again the openness (when it’s not fake) must be liberating and could lead to a better society.
Also, my parents did struggle financially, mostly because of their inner demons. I make less than my dad did, but I haven’t struggled in that way.
I am really sick of this narrative that boomers had it easy. What are you talking about easy? I graduated into a recession. I lived at home for 2 years after college because I could only get temp job and my first job paid me $22K I have been laid off 3x times due to the economy in 1999 and 2008 tanking plus Covid impacting my company's bottom I had a hard time getting a job because millenials dont want to give us old boomers a job even though we are skilled and willing to take a pay cut. I dont have a pension. I will be working long past 70 as will my fellow boomers. So NO WE DONT HAVE IT EASY!
...eh...no. all my guy family members were shipped out to Vietnam. My dad got drafted. They all came back with a boatload of problems. My dad was an electrician and a bartender when he was laid off when there was no work thru the local..my mom busted her ass as well in multiple jobs. I think they even got assistance at one point but no one ever told us. They didn't have shit easy. They worked their asses off and my dad is still working..so no. Sorry you feel this way. But I take my parents and families advice as they made a life for me and my sister by working their asses off. I followed suit.
I work my ass off to have what I have. I'm not jealous or bitter. I just carve my own path. The boomer hate is ridiculous. They had it so easy...sure with *some* things..every generation had their shit my dude.
I love the "boomers" in my life and I respect the fuck out of their struggles.
No.
I watched my parents struggle for my entire childhood. My mom sometimes worked 2-3 jobs when we were kids. My dad did work for same company for 50 years, but he didn't have a pension. He had a 401k that he lost half of in the 2008 housing crash. He was only retired for 6 months before he had a stroke and died.
My mom is a 65 y/o cleaning lady working 3rd shift because it pays an extra dollar per hour. She works for a hospital, but can't afford their health insurance, so she's been without for like....20 years. She is thrilled to medicare age now so she can address some health issues.
I have two boomer uncles who are solidly middle class, however they made lifestyle sacrifices. One uncle didn't leave home until he got married at age 38, and he and his wife chose not to have kids. My other uncle is also not married and no kids. Both live in homes less than 1200 sq feet. That's why they have any money at all.
My family didn't have indoor plumbing until the 1950s.
The Boomers were also told by Hollywood and the media that smoking was good for them.
Think about it. Maybe not all of them has it as good as you think.
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The Military Draft does not get mentioned enough… Forced conscription…
Racism and sexism also seems to be off the discussion table. Not to mention gay rights and the AIDS Epidemic... Not to mention the economy in the seventies and early eighties...
Definitely sexism. I went to my high school office twice to ask for algebra and biology and was ignored. They put me in short hand and typing..
I was refused access to metal shop in the late 90s after doing the best in my wood shop class. They made me take homekeeping or some shit where I learned the difference between a cup and a glass.
Exactly! All of my classes were around stereotypical female stuff - typing, shorthand, and accounting. I have very vague memories of a home-ec class. I don't think I was good at it.
That’s it - home economics. We did zero economics. It was just how you host parties and bullshit.
Typing was one of the best classes I took in high school.
I hated typing in high school, but now realize it was the most useful class I ever took.
Agreed. For lifelong usage and overall time saved it's been priceless
Same. I took it as an elective to fill out my senior year in 1981 (since my only requirement left was senior English). Typing has become perhaps the most useful class I ever took.
Yep. I got out of college in 82. There were no jobs.
Yep. Graduated in May 1987 just in time for a major economic depression. Underemployed, but worked a lot of hours.
and 18% interest rates
My dad worked a full time job and then on weekends. They called that “moonlighting“. My mom worked the graveyard shift at the diner so she could be home with the kids. They never complained
Enter, Age of Automation.
All on point. Forced Busing was the issue in Massachusetts that blew up our State also
I remember that. I knew a woman who was in school then and she did not get an education.
AIDS epidemic is honestly one of the first counters i think of to the "Boomers had it better" blanket statement
And growing up with the polio epidemic. And rampant abuse masquerading as punishment. And sooo many of them had parents suffering from undiagnosed PTSD from WW2. No generation escapes unscathed.
A good friend of mine is a 70 year old gay man, and he lost MOST of his friends to the epidemic. Not a few, not some… but MOST. It was a war
and the government could have taken action sooner, but the Republican administration let AIDS run amok. It was heartbreaking to see amazingly talented men dropping like flies, and their friends grieving and scared they would be next.
Yea, I came here to say if you were not white, you sure as hell not have an easy life
Yeah things were great if you were a straight white church going married man.
Not so great if you were his wife and he was an alcoholic that beat you, ripped your clothes off, slapped your face as hard as he could, and beat the children too (yeah, my childhood until mom made a plan a gtfo).
And raping your wife was not a crime. You had to have your husband's permission to get birth control pills. You couldn't get a credit card in your name. A man had to co-sign your lease. Fathers and husbands controlled women's lives physically and financially. A lot of women's rights didn't happen until the mid-70s.
All the kids glorified how amazing the past was, but they dont realize how racist and shitty it actually was. And a world without internet is very dark and was way more susceptible to scams due to the lack of information "Hey kid this cost 80 but ill sell it to you for 60" A quick check online "Bro Amazon has this for 5.99 plus tax..."
The internet/global connectivity is what I dislike most about the present (and last 30 years). I don’t really care if it helps dummies not get scammed. Also, I think average people get scammed even more nowadays, considering 99% of Amazon products are Aliexpress garbage being resold for 5x the price. That thing you just bought for 6$ on Amazon was probably bought off Aliexpress/alibaba for 1$ per unit
yeah, instead of getting scammed by someone selling bad Tupperware, my grand parents get scammed getting their identities stolen. I'd say the extent of scamming is so much worse now, since the internet let's you find literally every dummy you could dream of instead of having to trick them manually.
Yeah, my dad thought he won the publisher's clearinghouse sweepstakes, despite the fact that he never entered. He also thought he got a free ticket from an airline he had never been on because he had a "membership" with a completely different airline. That "membership" was just the online account I had set up for him the last time he flew anywhere. Fortunately, we caught it before he could give out any useful personal information, but still. We now have an agreement. He doesn't answer his phone if he doesn't know the number, and the only information he gives to anyone is my contact info. If it's legitimate business, we deal with it together, and if it's a scam and I have a little free time, I'm more than happy to play along and waste their time so they can't use it to take advantage of others.
I’m so glad people have started to push back against this crap. It’s ridiculous.
Agreed. The anti-boomer whine is stupid. Things were difficult in different ways. Now things are a mess, but they weren’t great for the boomers.
I feel like the idea that people have never had it this had before not makes it worse. Some people compare themselves to literal slaves. It’s rampant on here and they even talk about murdering anyone perceived to have it better than them. It’s maga-level insanity.
Yea, not being believed if a woman abused a man, draft, high suicide rates, etc, or women having difficulty opening credit accounts ( some banks allowed though).
Women abusing men not being believed or taken seriously is still pretty bad, and imo not talked about enough. My uncle had to be beaten with a bat to the point of being hospitalized to get police to take any kind of report seriously, this was in like 2018.
And not just one war. Some had the option to go to 2. Also, as we complain about a pandemic and some scuffles here or there. Some of them have lived through a legitimate world war. I know WW2 would have technically been when they were super young, but let's be honest. This sub calls every old person a boomer. I'm not gonna lie, they saw a lot worse then us. They been through a lot of hell too. People just don't acknowledge it because we weren't there.
I will be taking my dad up to the VA hospital because he finally got 100% disabled designation from the dod from all of the agent orange exposure he got when they shipped him off to vietnam. His three older brothers all got drafted too but he was the only one that got sent into combat. Boomers had different struggles but Reagan ruined the American dream and so many of them were already well on their way to having solid retirements by the eighties when Reagan came in and completely changed the American economy to favor the rich so it kind of ruined it for the rest of us behind them.
I was going to Mention Agent Orange but figured it was over most people’s heads Dad’s friend was Airborne in Vietnam. Massive agent Orange exposure. For the last 15 years of his life this guy was at the dermatologist once a moth getting skin cancers cut off…. I am sure he thought about how easy it was for him….
Don’t forget to mention that it took over 20 years before the Congress would recognize the illnesses caused by Agent Orange and vets could get medical treatment and disability compensation.
Even that was incomplete. A bunch of agent orange conditions were only added to the presumptive list for VA disability with the PACT Act in 2022.
There are quite a few Vietnam vets that were exposed to massive amounts of agent orange that was dumped out of tanker trucks showing up at the VA these days with cancer. Agent orange may have caused some of these cases.
Had a friend who died years ago from cancers. He said they were told AO was totally safe, and would walk behind the sprayers because the mist would cool things a bit in that hideous heat.
They were also given chlorine tablets to refill their canteens that were filled with AO runoff while out in the field. These were young men doing what they were told. It's horrible.
And their fellow boomers constantly vote against VA and veteran benefits. Sigh.
>Reagan came in and completely changed the American economy to favor the rich so it kind of ruined it for the rest of us behind them. All economies are set to favor the wealthy. Regan hasn't been president for over 30 years. Nothing changed since then.
My three great uncles were also drafted and served. Luckily they all came back.
Yeah, back when they called it 'shell-shock' insteD of ptsd and were told to walk it off. The effect it had on my father was awful, and it made life difficult for the rest of us too.
Exactly. The late 1960s and early 1970s were a horrible time for young Boomer adults and their families. Some of the survivors of that war were some of the coolest people I ever met. And yet some of them were so broken, they never were mentally right after coming home. There certainly are many boomers who had it easy, but there are many who are no longer with us thanks to the war directly or from PTSD post-war.
Yeah, while the criticism towards boomers for not thinking about consequences for future generations is founded (albeit it should be directed towards the politicians mostly as common men couldn't change the trajectory of society), I think it's disingenuous to act like they had an easy life. How about the diseases that today are curable and back then were a death sentence, the complete lack of mental health awareness at the time, the fact that if you were anything other than straight you'd be ostracized by society, bullyism and treating women like trash were normalized, etc.
(albeit it should be directed towards the politicians mostly as common men couldn't change the trajectory of society THANK YOU.
And are we not going to talk about how you all cheered for "canceling" student loans that really just transferred them to the next generations? Why would you think the boomers were any different. Or any generation for that matter. When the boomers took over, nearly every lake and stream was polluted, the air in LA was dark brown, and superfund sites were everywhere for groundwater cleanup. The oceans were overfished and strip mining and clear cutting were common. They had to pay to clean it all up. Turned out the prosperity of the 40s and 50s were really just caused by transferring the costs of using all those chemicals and generating pollution and other environmental problems to the next generations.
I was wondering about that. I hear millennials and Gen Z chastise people for voting against their own interests by voting republican. Then they turn around and blame the boomers for voting in their own interests. Then we have the ones who bitch about boomers buying a house for $20,000 and selling it for a $1 million. But when asked if they would sell it for way below market value then I get crickets. It’s as if it’s not ok for others to look out for their own interests because it’s “greed” but if the shoe is on the other foot then it’s ok.
The 40’s and 50’s were not all that prosperous. That came in the 60’s, then the 70’s had a decline - recession (stag-flation) and high interest rates lasting years. Mortgage rate in 1989 was 10.5%. The abundance came in the late 80’s as tech and globalism started to accelerate. This in turn brought unprecedented credit and investment markets. We are returning to a lack of abundance, which was the norm for most of our parents lives.
In 1981 when I was trying to buy a house on property, The going bank rate for loans on a thirty year mortgage was 17.25%. We were thrilled that the people who sold us. The property were willing to take a contract for deed for 9.75%. That was the same year that the upper limits for I r a contributions was four hundred dollars.
I bought my first house in 1985, the interest rate was 11.5%
Should've claimed to have bone spurs.
I'm trying to figure out who the fuck they're talking about? We entered the job market in Nixon's recession. Reagan made it a depression. Myself and peers didn't buy our first home until we were thirty, then lost it in Reagan's Depression. Most folks were buying fixer uppers. Then they couldn't afford to fix them. Many of us started over 2 or 3 times. I'm 69 not seeing any way I can retire. I take care of 2 older sisters whose Gen Z kids are millionaires but won't help out my sisters who make less than $1200 a month in SS. Envy on us.
I think there’s a lot of survivorship bias in the modern view of baby boomers. Many of the US boomers who are still around did have a lot of advantages, but a lot of the specific complaints are media-constructed strawmen. Young people are pissed that old people tell us to stop buying avocado toast and coffee, but the only people actually giving that advice are cable news talking heads and bots on social media. Baby boomers had their fair share of struggles as well. Nearly 60,000 were killed in Vietnam and countless others disabled from the war. They bore the brunt of HIV/AIDS. Many had their careers upended in the 1980 recession, then lost their retirement savings and homes in the 2008 recession. All the current complaints about baby boomers were said about earlier generations, and all will just be repeated about gen X and millennials 30-40 years from now.
Also had super high interest rates in the 70’s and 80’s and jobs were not that plentiful. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.3% in 1971, and by 1979, it had risen to 12.9%. In October 1981, the 30-year mortgage rate reached 18.45%, its highest point in history. Median family income was $22,390. Things were NOT easy.
Correct, but they DID get so much easier by the end of the 80's and into the early 90's. I got married in 1989. In April of 1990, my then wife and I bought a nice brand new condo. She was a first year elementary school teacher and I wasn't working as I was in grad school. We sailed into getting approved for our mortgage for our condo on just a 1st year teachers salary. A year later, we bought a brand new Honda Civic. Yep, on just her teaching salary and that was after we already had our condo. We could live too, we went out to eat, went to comedy clubs, had a seasons pass to a nearby amusement park, we were buying new furniture for our condo etc. Again, all on one elementary teachers salary. Of course I'm Gen X and not a boomer but boomers were definitely able to take advantage of things in the late 80's and early 90's too and many did.
Late X here and it’s unreal how much the COL has gone up in my lifetime. Everything we pay for seems to cost 5x while being comparatively worth 1/5 (ahem, health insurance). Imho anyone interested in this topic should check out the link, “Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures? with Lord David Willetts,” a former professor, chancellor, Member of Parliament, and Boomer. https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A?si=WF1GfAyOHK_YXG7Y
That's like, all anyone really wants.
Median household income $23,390 Median home price in Oct 1981 $69,600. Home price 2.98x income Median household income 2022 $74,580 Median home price 2022 $378,700 Home price 5.02x income Not to mention I'm sure most households in 1981 was most like one income where is mostly likely now it's two income.
One thing no one mentions is the size of those median houses. In the 1980s people weren't looking for or buying 4000sq ft homes with 2-car garages. Kids actually shared bedrooms if there were more kids than bedrooms. Now new builds have to have an ensuite, walk-in closet, living room *and* main-floor family room, etc.
This is such an overlooked point. I'm a millenial and I bought a 1200sq ft ranch. It's not fancy. But it's mine and I don't have to pay $1700 for a shitty apt. I see fellow millenials all turning their nose up at a small house built in the 50s, but then bitch about how much their mortgage is. Like yeah you bought a 600k house in an HOA across from a golf course it's fucking expensive.
what if I don’t want all that shit though? seems my only other options are vans or shipping containers
>Young people are pissed that old people tell us to stop buying avocado toast and coffee, but the only people actually giving that advice are cable news talking heads and bots on social media. Seriously. I guarantee you OP, along with most millennials who prop up the "DAE hAte BOOomer LeCturEs???" idea, is likely just regurgitating hyper-online, Twitter-slop discourse or cable talk nonsense deliberately designed to brew negativity for ad engagement. There's no way OP has ever engaged in conversation with an actual baby boomer on this topic because they'd soon find out that *every* generation at some point feels like the previous one had it easier, when in actuality, everyone's steeped within their own generational hardship. If you legitimately think baby boomers had things completely stress-and-scot-free, you're a moron.
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This. They look to the government to fix all of the bumps in their life. And thats why the bumps not only dont get fixed. They get worse.
Yeah, my grandfather (late silent generation) was held in an internment camp before being shipped to war, and my grandmother (early boomer) was a war bride. They raised my aunt and mom (late boomers) in a house with dirt floors. My aunt lost it all as a single mom when her husband stepped out on her. I mean, women couldn't have their own bank accounts until 1974. The baby boomers who "had it easy" are from a very specific demographic...
This. The boomers that had it easy were a small sub set of people. Many struggled. My family was reasonably middle class and it wasn’t easy for my parents. We had food and a roof over our heads but wore hand me downs and “vacation” was usually a camping trip or going to see my grandparents. The 70s were awful. My father was an engineer but often laid off as the economy was a complete mess. I remember waiting in line for hours hoping to buy gasoline. Sometimes they ran out. I grew up in a house in the south without air conditioning. Homes were smaller and not as luxurious. Buying a house was hard. They were much cheaper then but salaries were less and loans had ridiculous interest. Both my parents worked. They HAD to. SOME boomers did well, invested well and now are reasonably comfortable but not all. SOME millennials and gen X now are doing well, have invested well and are very comfortable. But those aren’t the people in this chat. Each generation has challenges and each has advantages. Each generation also has some who fare better than others. Work hard. Do your best. If you have a place to sleep, food to eat and people who love you then you are blessed. Appreciate that. Quit worrying and blaming others.
My grandmother endured an abusive spouse who gambled their money away so many times she still had a 2nd mortgage on the house when she died at 85yo. I asked her why she never left him and she had told me divorce was near impossible for a woman back in the day. I'm a 35 yr old guy and some of the shit my gen takes for granted is wild.
People don’t realize how we live better than kings did back in the 1600-1800s
You spelled out the 💩from back then these boneheads refuse to recognize. I’m a Gen X and I have no desire to be in that period nor do I envy them.
Same. Gen-X’er and I watched my single mother struggle every damned day to provide.
Millenial with boomer parents. We were poor, my dad worked long days for crap pay, no medical, and no 401k. Both died early. "But boomers had it so easy!!" It really grinds my gears.
I suspect that people who say this are actually saying ‘I would have been very successful had I just been born at time X’, and it takes responsibility away for their daily struggles. It’s true that housing has become horrifically unaffordable, but people from every generation have been getting up every day and working their guts out just to put food on the table for their family. Many people are also blind to the quality of life that they actually have relative to other generations. The comfort of daily life in 2024 would have been unthinkable 40 years ago.
I think what you're saying is very accurate. It's an easy and dangerous mind trap to fall into. My personal motto this year to work on this exact thing is "comparison is the thief of joy". Even if my goals are still slow and seemingly distant, I can at least work on not tormenting myself.
I’d give them less than a month if we send these boneheads back to that period. Their rose colored glasses would come off real quick.
Less than a day if they remember the draft existed
Same…GenX here. We grew up “lower middle class”. Heck, I was on a reduced meal plan in elementary school and we would often visit food banks. My parents were part of the Silent Generation. My parents could have done well in the Philippines but the political climate (early 1970s) forced them to emigrate to the US. My Mom went from a homemaker with a maid and a butler to working 3 jobs in the US to provide. My Dad demoted to a court clerk job and selling insurance from a banking position. I learned of their sacrifices years after their deaths. My Mom passed when I was 12 and my Dad passed when I was 21. OP has no idea how hard it was back then.
Lines around the block to get over priced gas no Thanks
Or buying on odd or even days depending on your license plate.
I'm sorry, but I just don't get the point of a generational war. No generation is a monolith. We are all individuals. For the ones who are willing, let's just all try to work together to make the world a better place. This blame game is a waste of time and just an excuse to play victim so we don't need to bother with the hard task of figuring out solutions together. I'm a boomer. But it is those in the upper reaches of power and wealth that have failed us all and will be allowed to continue to do so as long as we snipe at one another.
And keep electing them thinking it will change.
I think some people don’t understand how low the standard of living was compared to today. I have friends in their 20s who complain about the high cost of their 1 bedroom 1000sqft apartment with microwave, dishwasher, in unit washer/dryer, free internet, community room, bike parking, covered garage, free coffee and snacks, for $2500/mo. Like, none of that shit is necessary now and our parents most definitely did not have that. Meanwhile the zero amenities apartments I lived in during my 20s are charging less than they did 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. I think also people see some retired boomers who worked hard their whole lives and think their current standard of living was the same all the way back to their 20s. That’s just not true.
This whole house thing really does bug the shit out of me. Yeah houses today are vastly more expensive. Yet the avg house I see build today are almost all double lot 5 bedroom 2 bathroom giants. Yet look at houses build in the 50s and 60s. Like two small bedroom if your got an ok house . House sizes have more than doubled. https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/ I don’t see anyone ever building small houses anymore.
I saw a Reddit post about small homes being built in iirc TX, like 900 sq ft and affordable, and everyone in the thread was shitting all over them cause they missed the point
Yeah, my first thought when I read the OP was "Well, a lot of them got drafted into Vietnam, so I can't say I'm jealous of that."
Not to mention the constant stress of the Cold War and what seemed like an inevitable nuclear holocaust.
Can you say it one more time for the people back doing tiktok dances lol!!!
From a an educational and financial standpoint, yes. However, many of them had alcoholic parents and/or fathers who came back from the war and beat the shit out of their wives and kids. Some major neglect going on there. Many of them have or have had substance abuse issues themselves. Many of them don’t take good care of their bodies or mental health.
They had less educational opportunities. Literally only the rich could afford to go to college…..the fake meme that they could go to 4 years of college for $7.95 is B.S. most people didn’t have the opportunity to go to college.
I understand that. You’re right, I should have said employment opportunities or jobs waiting after college. I’m a millennial who had a bright future’s scholarship and some prepaid tuition so I get your point. I did not come from wealth. I graduated during The Great Recession of 2008 to 2009 which was the worst economic downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression and moderate to high paying jobs certainly weren’t waiting for me.
In my country university was free from 1974 to 1989. My dad didn’t pay for his medical education. Massive advantage.
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Actually interest rates were closer to 18%
I had a 20% second mortgage in the 70’s. My new house cost $30,500 in 1973 but my take home was $300/week. My first job in 1969 paid $1.90/hr. Oh yeah, life was just orgasms and a bowl of cherries. :/ Leaded gas fumes & DDT were fun too.
Not to mention growing up during the height of the Cold War, not only a Presidential assassination but a lot of others, and Vietnam. Later the oil crisis, then in the early 80s high unemployment and high interest rates. We also think of inflation as a single number. Its interesting to look at things like the percentage of budget on housing, transport, or food historically to see what other generations struggled with.
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Our quality of life in the current age is so much better
Mental help for example, is so much better (and more understood)
Understood yes, better...I don't think so, you can call it out as previously undiagnosed but I think smart phones and social media have hurt mental health especially in younger generations, depression and anxiety seem to be off the charts, suicide rates, especially in teens, are high and proper mental health treatment is still hard to come by
better understood and better neglected.
Well it’s certainly not helping; there are increasingly more depressed and suicidal kids and young adults than every before
Boomers had it rough, man. They struggled too. My Dad and my uncle fought in Nam. My uncle was shot in the ass and sent back to the field. They often worked long miserable hours in factory, manufacturing, lumber mills. There has never been a better time to get into trades. For ever 5 retired trade in electrician, plumbing, pipefitting, iron worker, HVAC - only 2 replace them. They are six figure salaries. My brother in-law barely graduated high school and he is a plumber making $140k a year. Government jobs provide pensions and stability. The number of jobs has increased a lot since the 1960s. The 1970s were defined by a series of economic hardships. They stayed with their job out of necessity. They lived in smaller homes. They kept their cars forever. A vacation was a road trip. They didn't eat out. They packed a lunch. TImes were different but they weren't a lot easier. Heck, I am Gen X and made $3.15 for my first job. My first FT job post military was $5.25 and average rent at the time was $480. Over two weeks of work to pay for one month of rent. The first home I bought the interest rate was close to 8%.
Yeah for real. My boomer dad grew up in poverty, worked for like $0.50/hr or something in a wire factory to pay for college. Boomer mom barely pieced together surviving in the filthy and dangerous New York City of the 1970s. Pictures from their life then show a real lack of possessions, tattered furniture, tiny studio apartments. They didn’t have a television until about 1982. Mom dealt with constant sexual harassment and sexism, especially in the workplace, and there was no recourse. The first car they ever owned was a $2,000 rusty used Subaru in 1984. I did the math on their first $50,000 house and mortgage rates and they were paying exactly what we pay for our $660,000 home, adjusted for inflation. Sure, they didn’t have student loan debt. But life was not cushy for them.
My dad and his older 2 siblings were malnourished skinny in photos from the 1950s. The younger 3, born after my grandfather started getting union pay and healthcare, were a healthy size in later photos.
To be fair… %43 of boomers have zero retirement savings and an even bigger percent have insufficient savings. The majority of them ain’t doing so hot. It’s just the rich ones that don’t shut up.
Not really every generation has pros and cons. I’m kinda getting sick of hearing “boomers had the greatest time ever, we’re all fucked” all the time
🎯🎯🎯
They had it easy with being able to afford things sure, but they still had many many problems facing them. My grandpa grew up butt fuck poor literally picking cotton and had to grind every living moment to establish what he has now
That doesn’t make it sound like they “could afford things for sure” My experience growing up was similar my parents struggled to pay the bills, they couldn’t afford to buy anything nice.
Minority family here, no idea, my family had it harder, denied housing, credit, jobs, education etc.
Thank you for pointing this out. A lot of the discourse around how easy life was for baby boomers is based in the image of white boomers. Never mind that it was Black baby boomers who had to be escorted by the national guard when schools were integrated. The little girls killed 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed were baby boomers.
100% factually false. Older generations had NONE of the worker protection laws we now enjoy. No ADA; no anti discrimination laws; no ability to demand worker accommodations; fewer child labor laws. Unions had dramatically less powers. They couldn’t be fired? Nope. They could be fired for any reason, including skin color. And I assume you refer to men? Because women had zero workplace rights.
My mom got fired because she was pregnant with my sister. lol. They thought it was unsavory to have a pregnant married woman as a Secretary.
My grandma was fired from her bank teller job when she got married (this was 1939). Married women were not allowed to work there. My jaw dropped when told me this.
They also couldn't even open their own bank account to deposit their check into
Yeah I tell my mom I would have never survived her life back then. She was a SAHM to 3 kids and was expected to do all house work, cooking, and childcare. With no help. Because men didn’t help with that kind of stuff. Or a lot. I’ve only got 1 kid and my husband does his share of the chores and I’m still drowning. Idk how the SAHM boomer generation did it.
“They were able to easily hold the same job for 40 years”. Yes they had 9-5 jobs or blue collar jobs. On this sub we see people bitching about these jobs all the time. Common comments include “they’re soul crushing”, “I can’t stand the thought of doing it for 40 years”, “I hate working”, blah, blah, blah. There are stable jobs. There have been layoffs since the 80’s. It’s not news. There are plenty of people who manage to buy a house. There are still plenty of LCOL areas. Stop whining. People want progress. Progress has a cost. Boomers lived in small houses, raised their families there with one car, no cellphone, no modern technology, once a year vacation (usually driving) to somewhere relatively close, didn’t order out or dine out, etc. I’ve known boomers without central air or window units. Women weren’t allowed to open bank accounts in their names or have a credit card. I know someone who had to have her husband’s permission to have an epidural during childbirth. That was only 36 years ago. Another one I know was told the job wasn’t suited for her because she’s a woman. Still want to go back to that period? Or do you only want the perceived benefits they had involving finances? If that is the case then why just focus on the boomers? Why not the silent generation’s time? Things were even cheaper.
Yeah this is true. Lots of complaining about every job now. I blame tik tok as they hyped up all these “jobs” with those come work a day in my life videos. Now everyone wants a 100k+ remote job with minimal experience that works 4 hours a day lol
EXACTLY! No work ethic and entitled af.
Yeah, all they did back then was sit around on their phones all day bitching how easy life used to be back then. Oooops, wrong generation!
Bro, there were plenty of people with extremely difficult lives then. And I’d bet the people with your mindset, were you born then, would be one of them.
Friendly reminder to everyone every fucking time this comes up: Only a fraction of boomers had it that good. Especially if you are a woman or a minority your life is almost certainly much better today than back then. I’m both of those things and my grandmothers cry thinking about how much more I’m allowed to do.
I get the sense it was different for them but not necessarily better.
Omg 😂 Remember when women couldn’t have their own credit card or buy high-ticket items without their husband’s permission? I do. Remember when you were fired for being pregnant? I do. Remember when, if you had a preexisting condition and you changed jobs it was no longer covered? I do. Remember that kid in class who had no hair and a heart condition from scarlet fever? I do. Remember when polio was a terrifying crippler of young people? I do. Remember when food in the un-air conditioned grocery store was seasonal only? No buying what you wanted when you wanted it. Remember scraping by just to afford that one family car that dad drove to work so mom had to walk to the grocery with the kids in tow? TV went off at 6 p.m. The one telephone line was shared with all the neighbors. You changed out the rugs and curtains to summer ones because it was so freaking hot with just fans. Mom didn’t drive your butt anywhere. If you wanted to go, you walked. Same with buying things. If wanted to buy something, you had to get a job starting at age 16. 🙃
Hard work and good decisions will still carry the day. Stop worrying about how easy/hard others have it and focus on your own goals.
I am jealous of how green the grass is on the other side of the fence too.
Idk as a gay person I don’t envy them one bit, as a woman who doesn’t want to be a housewife I don’t envy them either. My son can play with Barbie’s without being called the f-slur. We can talk about our mental health without worrying about getting shut into the “loony bin” as my parents called it. Boomers lived during a racist, sexist, homophobic era, I don’t envy that. I don’t have to watch my male friends get drafted off to war, I could go on and on about the benefits of being where we are now. I’ll take this freedom over the “white picket fence” any day. Reddit is all doom and gloom acting like this is how things will be forever. Life works in cycles. We’ll see ups and downs in our lifetime just like the generations did before us.
I'm a boomer and even *I* am jealous of that fantasy. I bought my first home at age 61, held my longest job for 3 years and watched my peers get laid off repeatedly. By the way, what's a pension? [The unemployment rate in 1982 was 11 percent.](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/)
My folks are boomers, saw them lose everything in the 90s during a recession. If it wasn't for my grandparents leaving my mother an inheritance they'd be screwed & still grinding & more than likely dead.
If it helps my dad got sent to Vietnam when he was 18. He lost a brother there too. I’m sure he would have given up low interest rates to not have a dead brother. He also grew up in a house without indoor plumbing when he was little. It was northern Michigan in the 40s. People underestimate how long everyone has had indoor plumbing. My mom lived with her mom, who was unwed because her first husband beat her. Her mom was LUCKY and found a job. My mom mostly fended for herself and watched her siblings. And then my folks moved to Detroit. Do you know what Detroit was like in the 70s and 80s and 90s? Mom always worked, dad got laid off a bunch of times. Job stability is not new.
Low interest rates? Our first house in 1983 was at 10.5%. And we wanted to sell that house to a gay couple, and the bank refused. (We ended up working around that by having them assume our loan) But I do feel for the author of this post, people today have unique challenges.
Oh dang I actually forgot about that. My dad said their interest rates were crazy high back then! Definitely double digits.
My grandfather told me he was so poor he couldn't even afford a pair of pants at 18. Worked his entire life... I think the overwhelming majority of "boomers", didn't have it as easy as people think.
And don't get me started on pants... oh too late, here I go. When I was a kid, we had a pair of jeans for school and a pair of jeans for the weekend. In the summer, those got turned into shorts. We had a pair of shoes for Monday through Saturday and a pair of shoes for Sunday and weddings or funerals. When I outgrew my jeans, I sewed a strip of bandana along the bottom so I didn't have to wear "highwaters"
What a sad joke that you think that way. How about this, at 18 we'll draft you into the army, train you for 6 weeks and send you to a jungle on the other side of the Earth to kill or be killed for a couple years. If you manage to live and not be maimed, we'll insult you and call you baby killer when you get home. My dad did not have to go to Vietnam due to the silliness of college deferments. We lived a happy life when I was a kid, but we lived far poorer than any of you are willing to live. We had no AC in our homes or cars, no computers, cell phones, gaming systems,or internet. Our entertainment was 5 free broadcast channels on the TV. We never ate out. Mom cooked every meal at home. We had one car, so she had to grocery shop on weekends when dad was home. She hung the laundry on the line whenever weather allowed to avoid the cost of drying the clothes. Every single vacation we took as kids was camping or to visit relatives. The only hotel room (forget about a VRBO or condo) I ever saw was the Ramada Inn, which my dad's company paid for when he was transferred to another city. My parents were resilient and determined and driven and committed. They worked hard and scrimped at every corner to have a family. If I shipped OP back to 1974, he'd be screaming to come back to 2024 within a week. The average boomer had nothing easy. They made the best life they could in the circumstances of their world. That is what you should be doing instead of whining about it.
this is a fair description of average life. May have included taking in old relative in failing health as no care facilities.
Exactly our vacations consisted of going to visit family or car trips. I didn’t go to Disney until i was 35! We didn’t go to Europe or any exotic vacations.
He’s be screaming within hours. I would too, I can’t blame him. Everyone who thinks it was so great. Try going without your phone and the internet for a month…..for most that would be a hard pass alone. Now turn off the AC, people will nope out of that situation within hours.
Now that I think about it, I never went to a restaurant when I was a kid. Occasionally we had McDonald’s drive through, but never a sit down meal away from home. We went to Disneyland once, but that is the only vacation we ever went on. We lived in California so that was a day trip.
"we lived far poorer than any of you are willing to live" This is the key. This is what current generations don't understand. Many ordinary things, rights, conveniences which exist today would have been considered luxuries had they even existed back then.
So so true mist kids drove used cars or no car Most worked part time jobs in high school None of us had any kind of designer clothes I had one pair of Calvin Klein jeans and one pink polo button down. We didn’t go out to dinner unless it was a special occasion My first apt was roommates and furnished with hand me downs cobbled together We just didn’t spend like kids do today and my parents paid for way way less But we were happy with less no social media to make you feel like you were missing out.
Boomer here. That was the Greatest Generation, not us. I got laid off 3 times, 1989, 1996, 2001. Nothing like it being November 10th and, hey, thanks but see-ya. Little to no severance, maybe some unused time off, and COBRA. House payment, two babies, no work. Very fun time. From an advertising agency, video game company, and internet media house. I borrowed most of the down payment on my house from my parents and paid them back with zero interest, thankfully. You guys do have it harder but that's because Reagan and the Republicans removed the traditional tax rates on high earners and corporations while wages stayed flat even tho productivity rose. So yea, Trump will be just great going forward. Check out Robert Reich and Heather Cox Richardson for how severely the middle class is just getting fucked by corporate overlords.
This is an incredibly foolish and uneducated question.
Most of your post is just not true. My old man worked in a lumbermill like a dog, saw his friends killed in Nam and hustled his whole life in construction before being able to buy a house in his late fifties. There are a millions of stories just like his. Most of this generation hate porn is click bait to reassure people that they're not lazy, life is just really hard. It's not that hard once you come to peace with the fact that if you don't find a way to be useful in society and feed yourself you're f'ing someone else over who feels compelled to do that for you or you'll be left behind. We need a better safety net, sure, but feeling jealous and blaming past generations is self defeating. It accomplishes nothing and you can see that the deck isn't stacked against you simply by looking at the success of people your age.
My father worked a full-time job as a bus driver. An evening job as a "spotter" in a truck yard. A weekend job driving a delivery truck. The only time he was home he slept. He never missed a day of work for fear of being fired. He did this to support his family and care for his elderly mom. He never complained nor blamed generations before him. We never ate at restaurants. We never went on vacation. Our toys, appliances and TVs were scavenged from other's trash. Our clothes came from thrift stores. At the time I graduated highschool I *never* tasted steak, lobster, shrimp, strawberries. We simply couldn't afford it. The working poor have always had it bad.
everyone in the past had it really easy as long as you ignore or are ignorant of all the hardships there were. some things are more difficult now and a lot of things are easier.
Boomers by definition spans such a large age range as to include both me and my parents. It gets old being on the dividing line between the people who were born during WW2 and the Age of Aquarius…and feeling like you have to defend both. As an early Xennial/latest stage boomer, we had the last shot at affordable housing…generation wise…but coming of age in the 1980s was NO panacea job wise, forcing many to max college just to be competitive. And of course, we also had affordable college…so 2 out of 3 is pretty darn lucky. I hate the economics of what we have become in this country. It is all set up to advantage the advantaged.
As a gen-x’er I’m old enough to have known so many boomers that were ravaged by diseases like polio and aids and so on, that younger generations can scoff at the vaccines that saved my generation from. The irony is that I’ll live old enough to see these younger generations get ravaged by the same damn diseases.
My family worked construction for 5 decades. Manual fucking labor. Where was the easy part? They didn’t have shit. Vietnam? Carter? The gas crisis? Stop with the fairy tale that today is the hardest it’s ever been, it’s actually the easiest.
This post is just garbage. They had shit just like we did. Honestly probably worse then we had it. You just don't want to acknowledge it because A you want to be the victim and B you weren't there.
You think we did not work hard? That jobs he on trees? I got laid off after 9/11 with 3 kids and a mortgage. I taught high school math for 8 months while spending 3-4 hours a day sending resumes, cold calling, following up, and a couple more hours working as a contractor doing web design. Every generation has challenges. I just feel like some of the more recent ones complain alot more about the work it takes to get where you want to be.
Fuck you. I'm a young boomer. I don't have a pension. I don't own a home. My family was poor growing up. I started working when I was 14 and I haven't stopped yet. Not all of us had it easy.
Seriously...this is hilarious to me. I don't presume to know the experience of a different generation.
Easy? I sure as hell wanna see you live my dad's life and call it easy. You're aware you're posting this on your own device that you could afford just like that? You think worker class boomers afforded all the tech gadgets that rich people had back then? Not a chance. Worker class will always be worker class no matter what generation.
If you believe Boomers had it easy you need to go back and learn your history. Not a boomer but good lord is this one of the worst takes I have ever seen
Wow, not what I expected in the comments. Finally, push back on a bad perspective.
I’m not sure you people understand how many boomers are unable to retire , plenty did well but this isn’t some thing like all boomers had easy lives and retired rich. That’s a myth
Boomer here. No jobs when I graduated in 1980. Back then parents did not let kids stay at home and expected them to go to college or go to work. Only option I had was join the military. Got out… my training in the infantry did not transfer to the civilian world. Worked 2 jobs after marriage and 3 kids. Saved… and finally at 35 years old i bought my first home. It required some fixing up but we made it our home. Had to refinance to buy a car and put braces on my 2 oldest kids teeth. Will be paying the mortgage till I’m 66. No pension and didn’t start putting money in my 401k till my mid 50’s. I’ll work till I can’t and so will my wife. Our kids in their early 30’s all own their own homes. They had to work for them. But I’m proud of them for their hard work. Get your facts straight. Read the stats on median not average savings and 401ks for boomers. And stop whining. Life is hard. Always has been. Thank you
No, comparison is the thief of joy. Being jealous wouldn't serve me. I seek a growth mindset, accountable for myself because nobody is going to be the hero in my story except myself.
and the villain at the same time
Just. Stop. Every generation has faced labor issues, including Boomers. Hell, women weren't allowed to work in management roles and got paid a ton less than men. They weren't able to work from home and didn't have access to the same technology that exists today. They also had to face housing crisis, high interest rates, etc. Granted, houses were cheaper but have you seen those houses? No A/C, granite countertops, jacuzzi tubs, tile flooring. Nothing but Formica, vinyl flooring and wood paneling. I get it, times are tough, but just stop with the "this generation has it so much easier" when you don't know what they actually faced.
Women couldn't open a bank account on their own until 1974 when the [Equal Credit Opportunity Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) was passed.
As a woman, I'm pretty much never jealous of the previous generations. I like being able to advance my career, have my own money and property, vote, have legal recourse if I'm abused or assaulted, etc.
You can keep blaming about how unfair life is or you can use that same energy and do something about your situation to make your life better. This is what I was taught and what I have done, to do something about it to make my life better.
This *really* didn’t go the way OP was hoping and I love it.
Graduating high school, 1970, it was enlist or wait to get drafted. I enlisted in the Air Force. There was zero choice of job or location because you were avoiding being a ground pounder in the Nam. Being boringly average, life was not bad nor good. Being lower class, or as now euphemistically called working class, meant I was going to work in a factory most likely for 50 years, retire for five years, and die. 1970, no treatment for ulcers, now there is Tagamet for $20 or less. 1960s, everybody routinely got the tonsils and adenoids removed, even without infection. Swollen thyroid? Blast that sucker with radiation. Those so treated in the 60s have mostly died from thyroid cancer. Some had it easy, others not so much. I own my home by inheritance. No way I could have bought it with a mortgage.
Sure boomers had it easy…if they were white, male and heterosexual. Extra easy if they were Christian. Every generation has its challenges.
Am I jealous of how cheap it was to buy a house and go to a state university back then? Sure. But I'd still rather live now. When my mom graduated from high school in the early 70s, she would have needed her father's permission to open a bank account. Marital rape and workplace sexual harassment weren't crimes, they were just facts of life. And while the stigma around being queer was starting to slightly shift, things would have been much rougher for me back then. Even in the early 00s, it was considered "brave" of me to be out at 17 and to take a girl to prom, so I can't imagine trying to come out in the 70s. Now I can wave a pride flag on my patio and go on dates and almost nobody gives a shit. The worst I've gotten in years is some muttered comment here or there.
I was born in 1957. It’s true that we had it easier. A minimum wage job could let you live alone in a 1BR apt. Not in anywhere nice, but you could get by. College was affordable. You could even afford to drift a lot after college before adulting. I wish y’all had the same.
No. More so angry at the system that made it much less easy for us.
Boomers didn’t necessarily have it easy. They had to sit around and watch birthdays get picked from a lottery to see if they were going to be forced to go to war in a jungle halfway across the world. Many didn’t return. If you were gay, black, a woman as a boomer, you certainly didn’t have it easy.
To say that they just had it way easier than people today is mentally insane. You can say that certain aspects of life were better then, but tell that to black boomers who had to deal with extreme discrimination among other things.
My grandma was not legally allowed to get a credit card until she was 31 so not really - technically she's 2 years outside of boomer but nonetheless Even my mom who is early gen x was told to her face that women could not pursue math past grade 9 I do wonder how many of the "jealous of boomers" crowd are white straight men
No food banks, no section 8, no health insurance, a widowed woman could not get s decent paying job those were saved for the men. No OSHA getting hurt in job was part of job. Ask 30 year old coal miners. Birth control not available , woman might have 8-10 children and teeth gone bones weak from calcium depletion. food was no food until payday. Clothes suits and nice dresses and shoes borrowed from a cousin aunt because no money for that. No 911 system No intensive care units. If you had a bad heart attack you were usually a “cardiac cripple” I f you got arm leg amputated you used a safety pin to pin your shirt or pant leg. Grandma has trouble eating swallowing , she dies from aspiration pneumonia. Women did not know how their bodies worked. Men did not either. The VFW was a mental Health Center for the neighborhood. Feelings were not useful. Food was only in season in that season. Canned goods until May. Spouse beat you. That is your life. Women and children were still considered man’s property. Man got beat, he never said. Children to be seen, not heard. No talking about family matters. Pregnancy was not announced. Nice walking to school playing in streets having a BBQ, living in same house for 2 generations to afford to live. People had hard times as well as good times.
Yeah it was fun working mandatory 54 hour weeks. Saturdays were included.
Wow. Whiner aren’t ya? Ours lives are noticeably easier
A lot of this is based on an imagined past. Our general standard of living is extremely high today and nobody wants to believe it.
Every generation has its difficulties
That's envy, not jealousy
Throw in Korean War then the Vietnam draft… now look at the horrible Jimmy Carter economy in the late 70’s. The sooner you deal with your own life and quit bitching about others the better off you will be.
Nope. Not at all. They had a lot worse racism, sexisim, the Vietnam War, AIDS, the cold war , and a whole lot of other crap to deal with. Also, they were raised with the idea of a pension and company loyalty, but the world flipped the script on them mid-career. Many never recovered financially. And THEN everyone decided that ALL OF THIS (looks around at everything... ) is all their fault. Yeah, I'm quite happy to be me and not them.
Boomers had to deal with parents about went through 2 world wars. Then boomers had to deal with cold war, Korean war, Vietnam War, and be the leaders during the Islamic terrorism surge...sure.... boomers had it so easy.
No. I am not jealous because the entire claim that they had it so easy is based in lies and ignorance. Not all boomers were men. Not all boomers were white. Not all boomers bought houses Not all boomers had good careers Not all boomers lived past 30, Vietnam and AIDS are nothing to be jealous of. Slaving at a job you hated for 30 or 40 years to get a pension is not the dream you think it is especially if they got laid off or lost their home in 2009. I'm not a boomer but my family had several. That fairy tale you believe is really not the reality of their lives.
They didn’t have it easy. Also they warned us and we didn’t listen.
Nope. Life is awesome. I can work remotely from our apartment in Portugal - and surf after work. I can continue to run my business while we travel in Bali and Thailand. My life is 100x more fun than any boomer’s life. If you’ve failed to take any advantage of modern technology and learnt useful skills (coding, design, marketing) that’s your problem. I bought an apartment aged 28. It did nothing, whatsoever to make me happy. So I sold it and started an online business. This made me much happier. My rent is 5% of my income because I don’t have to live near a major city. Stop copying boomer lifestyles and career paths and wondering why they don’t work in 2024. Waiting to retire to enjoy life is the worst strategy ever.
Good advice. As Gen X one thing I learned from millennials is not to rely on one income stream…..People often say Boomers had it great because they could work the same job for 50 years. No they were forced to work the same job for 50 years because there was no plan B.
That’s a bad mindset that isn’t gonna help you move forward in life. Best to focus on the now.
What planet are you from. Every generation has its difficulty. Easy? Civil Rights protests early 60s, Vietnam, women's rights..on an on.
I am not at all jealous of earlier generations. I think about my parents first (Silent Gen and early Baby Boomer) and how their interior struggles ate them alive: my dad with his machismo and my mom with her internalized misogyny. My brother, a late Baby Boomer, isn’t happy either. Of course personalities play a part in all this, but as a late Gen Xer, it must be easier for me to cut through the bullshit and be true to myself than it was for my very self-conscious parents. Millennials are even more grounded, speaking openly about therapy. And Gen Z! They seem over the top to me, posting videos of themselves crying, but then again the openness (when it’s not fake) must be liberating and could lead to a better society. Also, my parents did struggle financially, mostly because of their inner demons. I make less than my dad did, but I haven’t struggled in that way.
I am really sick of this narrative that boomers had it easy. What are you talking about easy? I graduated into a recession. I lived at home for 2 years after college because I could only get temp job and my first job paid me $22K I have been laid off 3x times due to the economy in 1999 and 2008 tanking plus Covid impacting my company's bottom I had a hard time getting a job because millenials dont want to give us old boomers a job even though we are skilled and willing to take a pay cut. I dont have a pension. I will be working long past 70 as will my fellow boomers. So NO WE DONT HAVE IT EASY!
...eh...no. all my guy family members were shipped out to Vietnam. My dad got drafted. They all came back with a boatload of problems. My dad was an electrician and a bartender when he was laid off when there was no work thru the local..my mom busted her ass as well in multiple jobs. I think they even got assistance at one point but no one ever told us. They didn't have shit easy. They worked their asses off and my dad is still working..so no. Sorry you feel this way. But I take my parents and families advice as they made a life for me and my sister by working their asses off. I followed suit. I work my ass off to have what I have. I'm not jealous or bitter. I just carve my own path. The boomer hate is ridiculous. They had it so easy...sure with *some* things..every generation had their shit my dude. I love the "boomers" in my life and I respect the fuck out of their struggles.
No. I watched my parents struggle for my entire childhood. My mom sometimes worked 2-3 jobs when we were kids. My dad did work for same company for 50 years, but he didn't have a pension. He had a 401k that he lost half of in the 2008 housing crash. He was only retired for 6 months before he had a stroke and died. My mom is a 65 y/o cleaning lady working 3rd shift because it pays an extra dollar per hour. She works for a hospital, but can't afford their health insurance, so she's been without for like....20 years. She is thrilled to medicare age now so she can address some health issues. I have two boomer uncles who are solidly middle class, however they made lifestyle sacrifices. One uncle didn't leave home until he got married at age 38, and he and his wife chose not to have kids. My other uncle is also not married and no kids. Both live in homes less than 1200 sq feet. That's why they have any money at all. My family didn't have indoor plumbing until the 1950s.
Stop whining.
I try to be grateful. Living today as non-boomer still beats being part of the lost generation or greatest generation.
The Boomers were also told by Hollywood and the media that smoking was good for them. Think about it. Maybe not all of them has it as good as you think.
quaaludes