In another timeline where boomers didn’t destroy the housing market, didn’t ignore climate change, and didn’t continue to vote for regressive policies, maybe they’d have grandchildren.
At some point, us millennials need to also start taking that responsibility. Our oldest cohort is definitely at an age where we are starting to take over power. We won’t be able to blame boomers for shit for long.
I’m sorry but the collapse of the housing market and lack of action against climate change has way more to do with the commodification/privitization of housing and energy (as well as labor exploitation in the case of fossil fuels) than some arbitrary generational definition.
Don’t let yourself be convinced to blame fellow workers for the consequences of corporate and state action.
My point was that they’ve continually voted against their own interests (and against the interests of the rest of their class, which is why they now don’t have grandchildren). I will continue to blame them for that at the very least, as they’ve continually proven that they enjoy the corporate and state inaction (because they’ve always voted to keep it up).
It should also be noted that this is a post about boomers, so of course people are going to bring them up in the comments.
I was told it’s all those immigrants vault. It was on my TV last night so it must be true!
It should also be noted that this is a post about boomers, so of course people are going to bring them up in the comments.
Of course and I expected that. I only bothered commenting because I see a lot of media attempting to use boomers as a scapegoat for severe structural issues. I feel it is our responsibility to rebuke this reactionary rhetoric when we see it. Yes boomers often vote against their own class interest but we must also understand they grew up in a time where propaganda was rapidly becoming more effective and increasingly privatized. Which is to say that the propaganda machine served the rich and their interest. They are severely brainwashed especially in the imperial core. Its easy to be angry at them for letting this happen but we must remember who did the brainwashing. Falling for their scapegoats makes us like dogs fighting over bones thrown by meat
You’re being charitable. You need to remind yourself though that pretty much all of them voted for Reagan because Carter had the audacity to say that we can fix a lot of problems by consuming less. This was a generation that fully believed that they could do a consumerism without end.
Young folks have been priced out of housing & healthcare, you can be fired from your job on a whim, food is astronomically expensive, the political climate is tense, your basic human rights could be rescinded at any time, the future of the planet is being murdered by shitty capitalists with 0 regard for human life…
I mean, who wouldn’t want to bring a child into this world right now?
Eat shit.
I’m hunting for a new job for the second time in less than a year, and I’m honestly a skilled professional with over 10 years of experience, with a lot of proof that I do great work. The labor market is stupid right now, just down right stupid. Full of executives searching for short term profits rather than anyone wanting to actually run a company well. That’s alone is a huge reason, on top of everything else. I don’t even know if I’ll have stable employment, and that means I don’t know if I’ll have stable health insurance - so genuinely what are any actual incentives to my generation to have kids? Literally are there any beyond just “you have a kid now”
I’m a software engineer currently trying to find employment, and it’s so bad I’m wondering if I’ll just have to do something else for a while.
My last company basically fired all their US devs, and outsourced to foreign countries for cheaper.
I am a computing director. My take: software dev has been over saturated for the last 12-15 years but people keep seeing dollar signs in their eyes. My advice: learn a business skill like project management. It will allow you to work in any location.
I have 7 years professional experience, and I’m even getting passed over for positions listed as requiring 1-3 years. It’s wild right now.
I’m thinking about just going back to school, while the market is complete shit.
There are always different parts of the stack to work in. I started in the backend database land. Then, moved to general application dev with a side of web. Now, I do embedded. Never stop learning ;]
That works too. A degree is a reset button on your career. I’d suggest either specializing in something niche to make you more desirable or doing something very different so that you have more options.
What languages/specialties, Doc?
Backend and platform/devops. I’ve worked a lot in Python, building out APIs from the ground up. Lots of cloud and serverless stuff. That being said, is only the most recent fraction of my resume.
I’ll keep an ear out and DM you if I hear of anything. I know that my company is currently really only hiring in APAC but, that might change in a few months.
Hey, thanks! I appreciate it, even just the thought.
Not a worry! We’re all in this together.
It’s shit, right? I’m so sorry. I hope that stability comes to you very soon.
Reject tradition. You have no obligation to sacrifice your well-being because some old, out-of-touch fuckwads want something life-changing from you. Can’t even afford groceries.
They can foster a child if they want one around so badly. Or go sit at a park. Or volunteer at the church nursery or something, ffs.
bingo. The SO and I have talked about it, and we decided if we regret it a bit later and it’s too late, adoption is always a valid choice. After all, we’re not bringing new life in so we don’t have to feel guilty about that, but instead we would be giving a home to someone else who needs one. However, there are still many, many negatives as to why we don’t want to or simply can’t right now.
The parts of the world with the most population growth are generally also the poorest. Richer countries have fewer children, and within those countries richer people have fewer children.
I’m not saying that your concerns about your quality of life are invalid or that they aren’t the reason you personally don’t want children, but they don’t explain this general phenomenon.
Kids are a retirement strategy in poorer countries, they are the opposite in richer ones.
Once again Gen-X is ignored. It’s Gen-X hitting grandparenting age.
My two kids probably won’t be parents, and I’m ok with that. I want them to be happy more than I want to enjoy grandkids. Whatever they choose, I’ll be happy with.
I felt pressure from Boomer parents to have kids, and I didn’t want to do the same to my kids. That’s a hard nope.
Seems like old = boomers and young = millennials for journalist and a lot of people
People are having kids later in life, and the youngest millennials are only ~29.
Millennials are predominantly the children of Boomers, so that’s why these two generations are basing singled out.
Gen-X were called the a Baby Bust generation for a reason; there aren’t enough of them around in order to swap population metrics compared to what came directly before and after.
Yeah this is a good point. Young boomers are, what, 65?
About 59 I think.
Once again Gen-X is ignored.
I will maintain, as I always do, that getting lumped in with the wrong group and ignored is the most Gen-X thing going right now.
With that, I conclude: whatever ::eye roll::.
I mean you can still have grandkids. I’ve heard they’re great deep fried with a light cornmeal batter and a creamy dill sauce.
Ah, the middle child of the generations.
Gen X is normally described as 1965-1980 so 44 to 59 years old.
Average age of mothers first birth right now is 27. It was around 25 for most of Gen X. So 25 + 27 = 52. Yeah new grandparents are not boomers.
maybe if gen x did something we wouldn’t be forgetting about them /s (i kid i kid)
but seriously, go get into the government or something, you guys are the prime age for entering the government right now.
Told my mom if she wants grandkids she better stop voting for conservatives. Didn’t work, and a deal’s a deal.
I mean, she’s a boomer, if she said she had I still wouldn’t trust her.
Boomers: “Reality can be anything I want.”
she better stop voting for conservatives
Democrats have won the popular vote in the last seven of eight elections. If everyone struck this deal, I would expect to see significantly more grandkids than we’re getting.
But also, states like California and New York and Massachusetts are seeing grandkid-gaps bigger than anything you’ll find in Utah or Ohio or South Carolina. If conservatives are causing the problem, you would expect to see more Gen Alphas in the bluer states, wouldn’t you?
The poorer families in those states make do better than poorer families in red states, but not enough to support having kids
Maybe next time leave the ladder behind instead of taking it with you.
The wealthier Boomers left behind millions of tiny little ladders specifically for their kids to climb.
The poorer Boomers died before hitting retirement age, or died in debt, or bankrupted themselves paying for end-of-life health care, or got scammed or otherwise denuded of their accumulated wealth.
Incidentally, its the wealthier Boomers who continue to set national policy from the board rooms and lobbying offices established by their own parents and grandparents. Meanwhile the poorer and more isolated Boomers are left to drown in their own poverty, ineffectually raging at the collapse of neighborhoods and the destitution of their pension funds and the deterioration of their suburban homes, unless their children and grandchildren are able to help them out at the end of their days.
Folks like to pretend this is one generation pitted against another. But its selection bias. The only members of the Boomer generation you hear from are the ones that came out on top. The rest have been killed in the wars or poisoned by industrial waste and lead pollution or foreclosed into homelessness to die on the streets or confined to digital communities like Facebook where they’re drowned out by waves of misinformation accounts. Legions of dead Boomers never got to decide how the current generations live. They were burned up and thrown out, just like the current generation of bourgeois GenXers and Millennials and Zoomers plan to do with the rest of us.
They all came out on top. Even the poorest boomer right now today living in the street had a better shot at the American dream than all but the most lucky of youth right now.
Yes some fucked up or got screwed over but as a vast majority even these people supported and continue to support the same people who have put them there in the first place.
Even the poorest boomer right now today living in the street had a better shot at the American dream
Trying to explain to a sharecropper born in 1945 and dead from cholera or smallpox in 1965 that he had just as good a shot at the “American Dream” as someone born after modern sanitation, public education, and highway mass transit was installed in their municipality forty years later.
But I can’t, because that sharecropper was illiterate and also dead.
Maybe they shouldn’t horde and partition their wealth from their children and do everything possible to ensure every penny is spent before death.
You’re not wrong, but this is more of a class issue than a generational issue, although in this case they certainly intersect. My boomer parents don’t have any money; they got screwed over by the 1% just like the rest of us.
“Oh no it’s the consequences of my own actions!”
Make college and homes unobtainable… You get what you get and you don’t get upset.
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And Boomers allowed those organizations to exist by their votes.
Boomers repealed all the laws on those guys in exchange for better returns on the 401ks and home sales.
They sold humanity to our corporate overlords, they need to be held to account.
They’re so anti-socialism: Suspend Medicare for 10 years, let the system sort itself out.
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no it’s the lack of building supply and market liquidity.
Shit like airbnb is going to have a more influential effect on the market than something like blackrock.
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how is the market liquidity like in canada? I know the housing market is in a much worse state, but from i understand, it’s the same problem. And if you want to argue for mid density housing, by all means go for it, i’m not against it. But at the end of the day if we built more housing, there would be more liquidity in the market, and people would be buying more houses.
Generally the market will push towards having some level of unmoved product, so it would make sense that there are unsold houses in a desparate market, people just aren’t willing to pay for it. If it’s too high, nobody buys anything and product simply doesn’t move, which from what i understand is roughly where canada is right now.
The US has a similar problem, but it’s mostly zoning and NIMBY types out here. Fixing zoning and incentivizing new building would really help.
I want the lions share of the profits of our economy! I want to pull the ladder up behind me! Why aren’t these lazy millennials having kids for me!?
You’re entitled millennials!
/Vomit
you fucking millennials and your avocado toast cost me grandbebbies!
Shouldn’t 'ave fucked up the economy and environment, simple as
Yeah cuz they’re hoarding the houses.
Lmfao thanks for ruining our whole society, boomers. Reap what you’ve sowed.
How dare someone elses wants effect me!!
Make the world a place that will be liveable in 100 years and pay people enough to exist:
A) without children, and B) with children
and boom, problem solved. Statistically, anyway.
Elder millennial here. I had kids, my brother didn’t, and my kids, though young enough to change their minds, are adamant they won’t have kids.
I think the more interesting stat likely unfolding is the marked decrease of great grandparents in a generation.
To be clear this is not a “threat to society” or whatever, people can decide if they want kids or not. Just a shower thought.
The real solution has always been immigration to get more bodies in the country managing the economy. It’ll never happen though.
Doesn’t that just kick the can down the road?
No. The world population will hit 10 billion in the year 2040. The only question is whether there will be enough people to keep the first world going or not.
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