The only way you can really define generation is by way of political economy though.

Boomers grew up during the post war era when the social services created by the post depression era were being leveraged to build up white wealth after the war.

Gen X grew up during Nixon and Reagan, experienced stagflation and the massive austerity imposed by the new neoliberal ideology. The wealthy ones got wealthier and the poor ones got poorer.

Millennials were in that post neoliberal haze of the 90s where American empire seemed to have come into it’s power. It has subjugated all developing markets in Asia and Europe and cemented itself as the sole superpower after killing the USSR.

Gen Z and the younger millennials grew up with 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the 2008 housing crisis, and COVID recession, something that caused complete and total disenchantment of America.

It can feel like it’s hard to discuss things between these generations, because any one of them trying to find common ground with younger people only has their own experience in the economic climate of their time. Boomers just say “get a job” because for the white ones it really was just that easy. They don’t grasp the idea of economic stagnation as something that happens when you’re young and that it causes you to enter a state of perpetual poverty that benefits their pension funds.

Generation is absolutely real and informs people’s decisions and attitudes

to an extent but the bourgeoisie capitalizes on these differences to divide the proletariat. This episode of is pretty good:

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-38-the-medias-bogus-generation-obsession

“Baby Boomers are bloating the social safety net!” “GenXers are changing the nature of work!” “Millennials are killing the housing market!". The media endlessly feeds us stories about how one generation or another is engaging in some collective act of moral failing that, either explicitly or by implication, harms another generation. It’s a widely-mocked cliché at this point, namely the near-constant analyses detailing what Millennials have “killed” or “ruined” lately - everything from Applebee’s to diamonds to top sheets to beer to napkins.

The first rule of drama––and by implication, the media––is to create tension. But what if tensions that actually exist in our society, like white supremacy and class conflict, are too unpleasant and dicey to touch––upsetting advertisers and media owners who benefit from these systems? To replace these real tensions in society, the media repeatedly relies on dubious and entirely safe points of conflict, like those between two arbitrary generations. It’s not the rich or racism that’s holding me back–it’s old people running up entitlement spending or lazy youth who don’t want to work!

In this episode we talk about why this media trope isn’t just hacky and cliche, but also subtly racist and reactionary.