Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Did Baby Boomers Have it Better Than Their Kids?
Thanksgiving dinner would not be complete without inter-generational verbal conflict conducted while consuming a bird for the crime of being delicious. Traditionally, these discussions have revolved around how the older generations had it so tough:
- “I had to walk 12 miles barefoot in the snow to Our Lady of 25th Street and we had one nun to teach 145 kids”
- “Our tenement had one outhouse for 15 units to share”
- “Because of the Kaiser I could never really enjoy my liberty cabbage”
With all the changes of the last few years, I say that in 2014 the tables have turned, and it’s time for the younger generation to tell their elders how good they had it this holiday. Some reasons:
- The economy is growing half as fast for us as it did for Boomers (real GDP growth 1974 to 1984 was +37% and for 2004 to 2014 was +17%). And these are the government inflation adjusted GDP numbers;
- Every other ad on TV is features a couple discussing ED or Henry Winkler hocking reverse mortgages;
- The U6 unemployment rate has been well over 10% for 6 years and is currently almost 13%. For the non-economic nerds, U6 unemployment includes those who gave up looking for a job or are forced to work part-time because they can’t find a fulltime job, unlike the nonsense U3 (“total unemployment”) number the media uses;
- Homes were an investment not a reverse ATM machine (median home prices were up almost 50% from 1976-1980 and down 10% from 2006-2010);
- “Don’t let the bedbugs bite” was said as a joke for boomers; today, we check our kids’ mattresses; and
- Coca-Cola had real sugar, cars were made out of metal, and saying “Merry Christmas” was not a micro-aggression leading to a one-way ticket to the reeducation camp
And please don’t tell us about growing up during the Cold War and living with ICBMs pointed at your garage; you weren’t the only ones, and Red Dawn wasn’t marketed at you. Wolverines!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Published in General
M – you had me to here, but this might just be a quirk of us being a few years different in age. I’m the idiot who bought the house from the boomer in 2005 only to see the bubble pop. Sounds like you are on the tail end of the Silent Generation and I’m on the early Boomer end.
Well, the Boomers as well are waiting for parents to die. Previous generations would have received much more inheritance windfalls by now, but the Boomers keep on waiting because their parents insist on hanging on, blowing the inheritance on silly things like extended end-of-life healthcare. Selfish jerks, staying alive like that!
The pre-Boomers tend to be very concerned about keeping healthy in retirement, and get lots of exercise and healthy eating. The pre-Boomers saw the health of their parents deteriorate at the end of their lives. The pre-Boomers aren’t afraid of death, per se, but rather tend to be very preoccupied with avoiding a poor death like they saw their parents go through. The side effect to this is that they’re living longer as well as healthier lives.
As, see, I bought a condo in 1999 when condo prices were very low, knowing that the Boomers’ kids would soon be leaving the nest and the Boomers would be downsizing. As the boomers move from houses to condos, my reasoning was that the condo prices would go up and the house prices go down.
In the US, this is almost precisely what happened. Sadly, in Canada, while condo prices have gone up, there hasn’t been a corresponding drop in house prices because we’ve been bringing in enough high-skill, high-fertility, immigrant families to fill up demand.
As such, I’m still in my condo, watching the property tax bill go up and up as the condo market gets hotter and hotter…
Sir, if I had any idea I was talking to a Canadian I never would have agreed with anything. The silly dollar coins, the “eh”s, and those weird gravy fries I had (I know, I know, Montreal is different). Anyway, wish I had you as a financial adviser 10 years ago. For me it was all “housing price appreciation could slow but it hasn’t gone down going all the way back to the Depression”…….too bad history did not begin in the thirties.
I am not a certified financial planner, and I take no responsibility for anybody using anything I write to make actual real world decisions!!!!
I simply read Boom, Bust & Echo when I was in college (graduated 1997), and it made a heck of a lot of sense to me, especially the bits about investing.
I’m a child of Boomers, and I feel like the answer to this question is inarguably “yes.”
Good Ricochetti contributor, as we said on the playground of my grade school “takes one to know one!”
Hold on.
Some of the prosperity that the boomers enjoyed was a direct result of World War II.
There was great jubilation all over the planet that World War II was finally over. People started having families again. Partly because the war had created social situations for our parents.
There was also “pent-up” demand worldwide for U.S. goods.
And technology exploded in part because of the military investment in it.
Some of the things you are blaming boomers for were historical events, not something innately evil about the boomer generation.
Just to throw this out there, 55,000 boomers died in Vietnam.
Speaking of, has anyone else noticed the commercial where the narrator says “it was the night before, and…” Of course he means “the night before Christmas,” but he doesn’t say that, he doesn’t even say “before the holiday” or whatever, he just says “it was the night before.”
Of course they shouldn’t even be playing Christmas commercials before Thanksgiving, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Agreed. Much of what Boomers enjoyed was the result of their parents. The difference we have is I don’t think this was passed along
“Kettle of fish” you from door county Wisconsin? I love it.
My Boomer husband and I both put ourselves through college–and our 5 kids. I’m actually rather tired of generational warfare. The blame game ignores the fact that our nation’s ills lie with everybody, but mostly leftism. Who put in place entitlements? Not boomers, and they are the drivers of the debt. Who put Obama in office, the perpetuator of the current bust and corruption? Some boomers but mostly younger folk. This kind of blame game is useless and destructive.
MS – thanks for the comment. I can’t imagine how busy 5 kids must have been.
The posting is not really about blaming, it’s about exploring if Boomer kids are in a more difficult spot than there parents. If true, this would be about the first time in US history this occurred.
Also, by no means do I mean to imply every Boomer kid has a worse deal than his/her folks. I am generalizing to make a point
BTW – Ricochet Editors – how dare you clean up the grammer in my post. My words are my life, man! Just kidding. Thanks.
Just to add one other point:
In terms of passing on our wealth: we’re not dead yet. :)
Most of us won’t be retiring until we’re 70.
What I think is cool about the boomers as parents is that we’ve stretched the period of actively helping our kids in myriad ways right through our kids’ thirties.
The run-up to attaining middle-class financial independence is much longer now than it was when we were kids, and I think we are doing a great job of changing with the times.
Most of my friends are actively involved in helping their kids. Our kids are not fully launched.
We’re not holding down the rocking chairs on the porch just yet.
Yabbut, it also encourages kids to depend on their parents financially into their thirties.
I discourage my dad when he wants to “help me out”, just cuz I’m too proud to admit I could use the help. My sisters have zero compunction against taking as much loot as they can get their hands on, and their financial habits reflect that, which puts even more pressure on the Bank of Dad. (One of my sisters is pushing 50. You’d think she’d be able to get by without cheques from daddy by now!)
Yes, yes, yes, I know my father would rather see his money go to good use while he’s still alive, but I feel guilty taking cash from him in a way I wouldn’t feel guilty about receiving an inheritance.
I have a hard time saying what sort of state the economy is in. Of course, the administration seems to do all it can to obscure real info. They claim unemployment is low, but a lot of people are underemployed or have quit looking for work. Anecdotally, among the young people I know, it often takes a long time to find a good job, but those who are persistent and responsible do eventually, and in the meantime their parents help them. I have a feeling parental help is at an all time high , as Marci points out.
Our kids have had a fairly long route to independence, but they all (except the college student youngest) seem to have found their niche, sometimes in surprising ways. That’s what we are most grateful for this Thanksgiving.
Another point–I think the tech revolution is responsible for the loss of many jobs that used to exist. We working on coming up with new ones. I hope we will. People need work to feel good about themselves.
WHOOPS. Wrong thread…
Thanks for letting us late boomers off the hook, PPF! But, seriously, I blame wealth and technology for ruining us all whatever our age.
When I was moving into adulthood, there was still an expectation that you would take a step down before moving up. Mr. C and I shared our first home with another couple after we were married!
Our kids either don’t have that expectation, or are so distracted by their electronics, they’re not interested in how they live otherwise. [Okay, I have a sixteen year-old who just moved into the basement and who leaves everything where it drops on the floor. Maybe I’m not an impartial judge.]
I think the lack of delayed gratification and lack of self-control are plaguing the younguns. We boomers probably share some responsibility with the prosperity/technology factors. But, we’re having to fight the culture all the way down!
Whoa, there, Mis. :)
So after he’s dead, then you’ll not feel guilty about having some money from him.
I know what you meant, but this just made my day.
I wish I could communicate laughing somehow.
Too funny.
I prefer cultural definitions of the Baby Boom, for I think those are what defined the generation.
The demographically late Boomers — including our President — could go both ways. If they still wish they could’ve gone to Haight-Ashbury or Woodstock, then they’re Boomers. If not, then they’re Gen X.
Interesting.
Your year delimiters for the boomers fit with the ones that used to be in place years ago. I don’t know when it changed.
I am on the young side of the Boomer set myself and I can tell you I did not have it as easy as I believe my Son has had. I had supportive parents who saw me through my undergraduate degree. However, upon graduation in 1978, I was forced to accept a four year commitment to the US Army, because I accepted a monthly ROTC check, no scholarship. This all thanks to the Vietnam era RIFs and the sudden realization by that genius, President Carter, that we may have cut the military a little too much, so a fast paced program to build it up. My first duty station found me commanding a platoon with horrible discipline, a total drug problem, only half educated tot he GED level, and white officers could not go into enlisted barracks without an escort. On top of that I made $8,200 per year as a commissioned officer.
Leaving the service in 1982 found an economy on its butt. The atmosphere of good feeling toward veterans was one of contempt and I was unemployed for a year. No President got up and urged employers to hire me. Grad School? Very weak GI Bill and total benefits after 4 years of service were less than $5,000 total. Compare that to the Armed Forces today.
My wife and I were kicked out of our apartment in 1983/84 because it went condo and the mortgage payment on $28,000 at 17.46% was more than our monthly take home. Lucky enough to get a job with a Bank and then went through 8 merges over the next 30 years each time I had to compete to keep my job.
We gave our Son the exact same educational support our Parents gave each of us, although because tuition has risen much faster than inflation and we only had one child, the cost to us was much higher than to our parents impacting things like our retirement plan. Our Parents retired in their 50’s, because they had great defined benefit plans and free healthcare. Us, like our Son, not so much.
What is different is one’s outlook on opportunity. Despite all of the hardships we went through never did we question that if we worked hard we would have success. My Son is on a great path to success but in large part only because he fell into the correct networks that we helped him get access to. That is the real difference today IMHO, you have to know people to get ahead.
That’s about $29,800 after adjusting for inflation.
Today, base pay for a Second Lieutenant is $34,862.40.
So, millenial officers have it about $5,000 better than you did.
;-)
In retrospect Misthiocracy, I should say that my military experience was one of the greatest times of my life because not only did I experience the US Army at its worse, I experienced it at its best, thanks to the commitment of President Reagan and the Sec. of the Army John Marsh. Never in my study of military, political or economic history has there been such a positive turnaround of such a large organization so quickly in terms of quality, discipline and morale. In my last year of active duty I was so proud to be part of the US Army I swear I would have served for free. It is this experience that gives me hope for the future if we are led by the right people.
That works out to about $26,800 per year.
May I also assume that benefits weren’t nearly as good in 1978?
SGLI, life insurance was $10,000 and the GI Bill program was very weak. All others are about the same.