There's a much more substantial article in esquire about this:<p><a href="http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-recession-0412?page=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.esquire.com/print-this/young-people-in-the-recess...</a><p>It was submitted recently but didn't make the front page.<p>If I think about this stuff too much, it makes me want to burn things.<p>It's going to come back to bite the boomers in twenty years when the youth feel absolutely no obligation to support them. I and a lot of my peers are planning to leave our home countries specifically so we don't have to spend a single penny supporting the twilight indolence of that morally vacuous cohort who <i>literally</i> ruined the world for their benefit, after spending their youths supposedly saving it, and their middle ages talking endlessly about how great they are for having done so, all while they carved chunks out of their children's future.
There seems to be a lack of intelligent conversation on this subject, but this article (despite not being very substantial) hit upon one of my pet peeves, so I'll give it a go.<p>Western society, or at least North American society, has long been set up to the benefit of the boomer generation. That is not terribly surprising as they make up the largest single group. I don't blame them individually or collectively. It is, after all, my parents generation. The real issue, to my mind, is that they still occupy the top positions they they have been occupying since their 20s and 30s. This point of view may not get much sympathy on a forum dedicated to entrepreneurial pursuit, but I feel I have been seriously disadvantaged in my career as there is still a glut of boomers occupying the middle and upper rungs. I have a good job, but it is a limited term position, and I am still at the bottom of the totem pole. I am in my 30s, but I am still considered and treated like a "young person." When is it my turn?<p>This is, of course, part of the reason that I lurk on HN, and that I consider launching a start-up almost on a daily basis.
Not sure if this was sarcastic or not, but the words are true. Boomers had it and continue to. Whats left for the younger generation is a world of fear and terror, where standing outside of the yellow marked line can and most likely will castrate you.
I hope the baby boomers realize that the 20 somethings out there don't give a damn about their entitlements and we'll pick up and move to Africa if we have to because all we need is a solid internet connection.
Simple fix in two steps. 1. Delink entitlement with inflation. 2. Inflate away.<p>Non-working Boomers with fixed incomes will lose due to inflation. Working late comers will have their earning raised with inflation.
This kind of thing will continue in any government system wherein the current body can borrow large sums of money now to pay for perk's now with little to no consequences now. Eventually someone pays the price but the bet is that someone will be around when the current beneficiary isn't.
<i>(Compared to the protest movement of the Sixties, the Occupy movement is a toothless tiger.)</i><p>Maybe that's because the Occupy protesters have seen the videos of what happened in more extreme cases to the 60s protesters (not to mention advances in crowd control techniques, like microwave guns, pepper spray, and using LRAD at close range).
It will be fun getting entitlement changes through with this age distribution:<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-CONGRESS_AGES_1009.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-CONGRE...</a>
There's a good book about this:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Pinch-Boomers-Childrens-Future/dp/1848872313" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Pinch-Boomers-Childrens-Future/d...</a><p>... by a serving UK cabinet minister (so I guess it didn't do a lot of good).
Speaking from outside North America:
We're hoarding popcorn right now to see if you can figure out this one.<p>(however I've heard some west europe countries are sharing the milder form of the same disease)
You can have the entitlements, we have a chance to change the world. For all the hippy protests, and idealism, and futurism, that generation did SQUAT.
The way the baby boomer generation has raped our society of wealth by piling on debt to be paid by future generations is an abomination. To me, it is concrete proof that democracy doesn't work. How is it possible make things fair in a popularity contest when you're outnumbered?<p>I honestly don't know why everyone under the age of 30 isn't rioting and burning down the system right now. They got dealt a shit hand.