The Boomer Blockade: How One Generation Reshaped Work and Left Everyone Behind

This will be true of economies that go through quick growth. It’s already hit Japan and led to the “lost decades”, it will hit China in 20 years or so...<p>But the issue is more complex. Today there is global competition and your jobs (never mind promotions) get shipped off.<p>So they don’t even have a chance at a working stiff’s job at all. That’s where desperation comes from.

Great article. I&#x27;m very suspicious of attempts to &quot;blame it on the boomers&quot;, but this has some very good analysis that should be built upon.<p>There are some confounding factors - the baby boom&#x27;s sheer relative to the preceding and succeeding generations means that at least some of the noted effects would occur even if the &quot;age you got promoted&quot; probability distribution remained the same.<p>The specific complaints about the consulting and legal industries expansion of the career path have the issue that the size of those firms have grown massively over the time period indicated- McKinsey had 88 staff in 1951, 7700 in the early 2000s and 27000+ by 2018. That’s simply not the same company&#x2F;industry and not really due to demographic trends.<p>Overall though, it makes raises some good points (particularly the implication that there is&#x2F;was positive ageism toward boomers in the selection of executive roles) that are worth reflecting on.<p>BTW- it’s really Gen X (and the younger boomers) that got hosed here. The boomers really are retiring now and millennials will have plenty of career ahead after that.

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Hacker News hug of death took it down.

I&#x27;m a boomer and I can think of a few things off the top of my head that made the 80&#x27;s and 90&#x27; a great time for a young person to be alive. 1) The previous generation was small because of the depression and ww2 - not a lot of older workers. 2) Paul Volcker came in with Ronald Reagan and tamed the crippling inflation that was hurting everyone. 3) No one at work or at home had a personal computer on their desk - the computer revolution took off 4) The Soviet Union collapsed leaving the US once again the sole super power. 5) People became health conscious and quit smoking. Medical technology advanced and prolonged our working life. There are probably things I am forgetting, but indeed, it wasn&#x27;t hard to make money, buy a house and start a family.<p>Edit: I don&#x27;t see how anyone can blame boomers because it&#x27;s harder now. I gave my millennial kids a good start.

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&gt; For the first time in the last 60 years, the 55+ cohort is bigger than any other ten year age cohort.<p>How much of this is due to the boomer gen being larger in size and more of them having to stick around working<p>Doesn’t sound like all of them got to retire<p>&gt; If boomers are increasing their share of wealth, it is clearly at the expense of the following generations.<p>how is this clear? Wealth can’t be created only taken ?

Interesting article - but it&#x27;s even worse than that. I had a friend of mine who is a lawyer at a large hospital system. When the boomer head of the legal department retired they gave him the same job she had with half of the salary. Even when the boomer blockade stands down, what&#x27;s left isn&#x27;t what it used to be.

Think about the rhetoric being used whenever someone refers to &quot;boomers&quot; today.<p>First, identify a sub-group. Begin referring to the group as &quot;they&quot;, as &quot;other&quot; than &quot;us&quot;. Make sure they are not seen as heterogenous individuals - &quot;they&quot; are a single, malevolent entity.<p>Next, ascribe to them great power, unearned, over &quot;us&quot;.<p>Then, ascribe to them ill-gotten wealth, power, control. All nefarious and self-aggrandizing.<p>Now describe them as &quot;the problem&quot;, as &quot;intractable&quot;, implying that something must be done - about them - to them.<p>Begin to use the language of violence, attributing it to &quot;them&quot;. A <i>blockade</i> is an act of war, committed by an aggressor.<p>What do you think the outcome of this kind of rhetoric will be?