As a Boomer, I’m Tired of It

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, youngster—it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so..."

Baby boomers are individuals born between 1946 and 1964, so as of 2025, they are between 61 and 79 years old.

The year 2025 marks a significant milestone in the United States. Why? Because a record number of people will reach the age of 65.

I’ll be 65 this year.

Recognize these Boomers?

There’s lots of us. These are off the top of my head.

On average about 11,400 Americans will turn 65 every day of the year 2025. Over four million Baby Boomers turned 65 in 2024.

Your farmers, plumbers, electricians, custom home builders, great musicians, athletes, movie stars, car mechanics are retiring. Is anyone replacing them?

There’s a saying, “wisdom comes after you have paid (many ways) for knowledge”.

The hand-off of preserving the American way of life from our generation to the younger generation isn’t going so well in my opinion.

Why is that?

Is it because we failed to pass along our wisdom?

Our knowledge?

Has the wisdom we have tried to pass along been derailed?

Yes.

The younger generations don’t want our wisdom, but they’ll take the good stuff we’re leaving behind.

Historically each generation has disdain (contempt for someone or something unworthy) for the previous one, but today, disdain has turned into hate. If nothing else we did respect our parents and great grandparents generations simply because they had more life experiences than we did but now we have “OK, Boomer”.

What’s “OK, Boomer”?

It is a derogatory retort used by the younger generations to dismiss or mock the attitudes of older people, particularly Baby Boomers.

It’s new with us. We didn’t do this with our parents or grandparents.

I read a lot of derogatory comments about Boomers on Substack, many are made about statements that are just wrong, and generally I ignore, but it was this comment that caused me to finally react:

It’s not the first time

Yuri Bezmenov

has made a comment like this and it’s not the first time I’ve told him sweeping comments about a generation he thinks he knows about are dumb.

The comment was pulled from this post at

bad cattitude

which was also making fun of a person from my generation. It was a video of a man about my age bashing a Trump doll on the counter of a “TherapyTrumpy 5¢ booth” where

el gato malo

had captioned “i think maybe i kinda figured out where a lot of the millennials learned their coping skills…”

The replies to Yuri’s comment were several Boomers pointing out the inaccuracy of his statement.

One would recognize that when a swipe at the entire Boomer generation occurs it’s not just directed at “regular folks”, it includes people like in the collage above, and there’s a lot more of those “famous” folk in our generation.

I read both Yuri and el gato malo on regular basis and generally agree with and like what they say, but sometimes the generalizations about a whole generation, my generation, get to be tiresome and old.

You’d think they’d find a new schtick (gimmick).

I submit, mental healthcare issues are prevalent these days, painfully obvious daily, and I would also submit it’s less with Boomers and more with the age groups el gato and Yuri belong to.

Yuri is a millennial, he says so on his “about” page and from just reading, el gato seems to be an older member of Gen X.

And while these guys see Boomers as mentally deranged here are some of the mental disorders Boomers see daily.

Has MSM also destroyed millions of the members of these generations?

If yes, MSM has been granted some huge power.

But it’s a “thing” to bash Boomers, but it’s also a thing to bash Millennials and Gen X.

So if you want to be “hip”, show that you’re relevant to your generation, bash another generation that’s not yours.

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, youngster—it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so..." Mark Twain

I explored this idea of elder bashing in another post recently, and directed Yuri to it, it compares China’s cultural revolution, you know the revolution that destroyed China as a great nation, to America’s current cultural revolution.

The Rise of America’s Little Generals

Often when derogatory comments are made about Boomers, they’re uninformed in my opinion.

They’re made from a one dimensional perspective.

They’re made to continue to fill the echo chamber.

They’re made from an indoctrinated viewpoint.

Where does that indoctrination come from? Could it be our education system?

I read somewhere once that the difference between indoctrination and education is that indoctrination closes the mind and education opens the mind.

Most incorrect viewpoints about Boomers have to do with the subset of Boomers who were the most colorful.

Many of those “colorful” individuals went on to infiltrate government, entertainment and education departments of our universities and local public schools.

Nixon. Ford. Reagan.

But somebody voted for these guys in that time frame.

I wonder who those Boomers were?

Think they’re bashing Trump dolls today?

Think they let MSM corrupt their brains?

The end-of-century victories of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, however, forced historians to realize that conservatism could no longer be dismissed as a mere road bump on the inexorable progression toward a liberal future. The result, over the past two decades, has been a veritable tsunami of historical literature on conservatism. Virtually all of these works have been written by liberals. Nonetheless, historians of this new generation consider themselves to be unbiased and even sympathetic observers of conservatism. Many believe their collective efforts have produced a profound historical understanding of conservatism as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon, and thus contributed in some measure to bringing politically opposed citizens together. Liberals Don't Know Much About Conservative History And both sides suffer for it. By GEOFFREY KABASERVICE. September 09, 2018

The reason I get angry about comments like the one that set me off (above) is that I wasn’t part of the colorful subset of Boomers, nor were a decent amount of my peers.

And yet we get lumped into these uninformed remarks.

Ronald Reagan was the first president I voted for.

I/we was/were part of the group that made the country go while the lunatics were out protesting.

Much like what goes on today.

Do these photos represent the entirety of the younger generations today?

Are there members of the younger generations making the country go in the background while these lunatics usurp (to seize and hold something by force or without right) the image of their generations?

Will there be an “OK Millennial” or “OK Xer” in the future?

I sure hope so.

They got it coming.

Too bad I won’t be around to see it.

The search string in the images above “3 reasons xxxx are hated” had some interesting results don’t you think?

Predictable too.

The reasons boomers are criticized today have more to do with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), environmental factors and refusal to embrace technology than economic and political factors.

I could site the expected retorts, like what about Martin Luther King? Greenpeace? We invented today’s technology? These are fluff issues that distract from the main reasons younger generations hate Boomers so much.

Why do they hate us?

Politics and economics are the big ones, and the “facts” they generally believe are wrong.

Boomer Political Power

We get slammed because some believe our generation has been in Congressional power since the early 80s.

Because of our numbers it’s plausible. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that there are 76.4 million baby boomers.

But.

Boomers have not held Congressional power since the 80’s.

In summary:

1. Between 1983 and 2008, Boomer population in the House of Representatives was 46.3%, in the Senate 28.3%. There were 2 Boomers (WBush, Clinton) and 2 greatest generation (GI) presidents. (Reagan, HBush)

2. From 2009 to 2020 Boomer population in the House of Representatives was 55.8%, in the Senate 59.4%. In that time frame there was 8 years of Gen X (Obama) 4 years Boomer (Trump) and 4 of Joe Biden of the Silent generation (well we were led to believe it was Joe).

3. It is Congressional leadership that steers which bills get the green light. Between 1984 and 2023 there have been 2 Boomer speakers of the house, Newt Gingrich and John Boehner. Both Republicans. In Senate leadership there have been 3 Boomers in leadership, Thomas A. Daschle(D) , William H. Frist (R) and Charles (Chuck) E. Schumer (D). The Silent Generation, the Greatest Generation and now Generation X have had a whole lot more control over society and lawmaking than Boomers have had.

In detail:

There is a database of government representatives (only goes to 2020) you can query to review the detailed data I collected for the above points listed below: https://www.lifecourse.com/goal/overview.php

1. Representatives of the 98th to the 110th Congress years 1983-2008 were silent generation (born 1928-1945) 42.6%, greatest generation (1901 to 1927) 6.7% , generation X (1965- 1980) 4.3% lost generation (1883 to 1900) 0.1% or 53.7% in total. Boomers were at 46.3%. Senators of the same time frame silent generation 53.9%, greatest generation 16.6%, generation X 0.9% or 71.4%. Boomers 28.6%. Presidents in same timeline Boomers 61.5%, greatest generation 38.5%. (Reagan, Bush, Bush, Clinton)

2. Representatives of the 111th to the current Congress years 2009-2020 were silent generation (1928-1945) 9.4%, greatest generation (1901 to 1927) 0.1% , generation X (1965- 1980) 33.5%, Millennial 1.2% or 44.2n %. Boomers were at 55.8%. Senators of the same time frame silent generation 19.3%, greatest generation 1.3%, generation X 20.0% or 40.6%. Boomers 59.4 %. Presidents in same timeline Boomers 20%(Trump) generation X 80% (Obama)

Boomer Political Power: Social Security

One of the big political issues generations behind us complain about is Social Security. They proclaim that social security won’t be there for them because they are having to pay into a system that’s paying us in retirement. Social Security is a pay as you go system and hasn’t changed since its inception. However what did change were the rules for those who shape policy surrounding Social Security.

Since January 1984, members of Congress have been required to pay into the Social Security system, just like other U.S. workers, and are entitled to the same benefits upon retirement. Prior to 1984, members of Congress were covered under a separate retirement system, the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), and did not pay into or receive benefits from Social Security.

But there’s more.

In addition to Social Security, members of Congress also participate in the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), which provides a pension based on their years of service, age at retirement, and salary. This pension can be as high as 80% of their final salary, which is currently $174,000 per year for most members. And this comes from taxes you pay.

So there’s really no incentive to change the system.

And while it’s true Social Security is a pay as you go system, the greatest Ponzi scheme ever, it is what we allow to continue to exist.

What’s a Ponzi scheme?

AI generated:

A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud where returns to earlier investors are paid using the capital from new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operation of a legitimate business. This scheme relies on a continuous influx of new investors to keep going, and it ultimately collapses when it becomes difficult to recruit new participants.

photograph by W Scott McGill.

But what younger generations seem to forget is that we paid too.

Lots.

In fact we paid more into the system than we’ll ever collect.

It turns out, it was our parents, the Greatest Generation (born 1928-1945) who are one of the biggest causes to the drain.

Social Security came into being in 1935, in 1939, there was an amendment to the 1935 law:

The Amendments added two new categories of benefits: payments to the spouse and minor children of a retired worker (so-called dependents benefits) and survivors benefits paid to the family in the event of the premature death of a covered worker.

So if you are a member of a younger generation and had the unfortunate experience of a working parent dying and the other parent (maybe one who never worked or contributed) received Social Security benefits because of it, you have already benefitted from the system we paid into. The same goes for a family member collecting disability.

You’re welcome.

Reference.

Social Security benefits come from two sources: taxes collected from current workers’ paychecks and a trust fund of specially issued U.S. Treasury securities. This trust fund is scheduled to be depleted in 2034, but the system will still collect hundreds of billions in payroll taxes and send out hundreds of billions in benefit checks. If Congress doesn’t intervene, the system can still pay 77% of projected benefits. 3 things millennials are getting wrong about Social Security.

I’ve written about this issue before.

Adulting Part Nine: RMD WTF?

Boomer Political Power: Cheap Houses

The other issue younger generations hate the Boomers is because we could buy cheap houses and they can’t.

We could buy cheap houses because Republicans (think Nixon, Ford and Reagan) ran the government which meant a robust economy. There was that one hiccup where Jimmy Carter(D) got elected after Ford, but eight years of Reagan corrected that mistake. We also still had traditional norms and values in our society and squashed the sort of woke nonsense crippling American culture today.

Vote for Republicans who are fiscally responsible if you want a good economy.

Denounce the lunatic visions of the socialist left.

Get involved locally with fiscally responsible conservatives.

Don’t let the lunatic visions of the socialist left creep into your life or community.

Donating your money to climate change agendas, democrats, Ukraine and illegal alien aid funds doesn’t lead you to a down payment on a house. Just like Trump’s America first agenda will benefit Americans first, taking care of you first will benefit you, sort of like putting the oxygen masks on you first before assisting others on a crashing plane.

Take care of you, then you’ll be able to take care of whatever else you want to.

Reject 15 minute cities, they’re designed to get rid of the American dream of owning a home. I imagine Greta (Thunberg) loves 15 minute cities.

Vote down property tax increases, especially if you live in an apartment and especially for public schools, schools already spend in excess of $12K per student and look at the results. (It’s Democrats that push these issues.)

Am I Getting a Refund?

And besides, it’s not really your money to give to the schools, the majority of it comes from that guy down the street from your apartment that actually owns a house.

Property Taxes Are Wrong

Selfish Boomer logic?

Yes.

Remember, we could buy cheap houses and now we have all the money too.

That’s why.

We were helped by politicians who shaped our world. Since the late 90’s, politics has focused more on lofty, unachievable social goals not policies that value the traditional family unit and the needs of that unit. Like home ownership.

The self serving house buying information provided here is common sense knowledge some of us passed on to our Millennials.

My Millennial and just about all of his friends, and the Millennials I deal with on a regular basis own homes.

Do you?

To the other youngsters, those who haven’t enjoyed this sort of knowledge transfer, the ones who bash Boomers, I bet you have Boomer parents who are currently protesting against Israel, siding with Hamas and bamming Trump dolls on the counters at fake therapy booths like in el gato’s video.

But that’s not all of us, or even most of us.

It’s a minority, sort of like the trans community today, only one is led to believe trans people are 90% of the population.

Same monkey, different tail.

Boomer Political Power: Student Loans

Student Loans are another area where younger generations blame Boomers for the cost of their $200K women’s studies degrees.

It was dumb to take that much money without an idea about what kind of job it might get you.

You don’t solve lofty world problems and then be able to retire with a good nest-egg (a sum of money put by as a reserve) involving yourself in social justice (the fair treatment and equitable status of all individuals and social groups within a state or society).

You improve society and subsequent generations by creating tangible things. Inventions, structures and vehicles, capitalistic businesses.

I counseled my Millennial to pursue engineering. He’s an Aerospace Engineer making six figures, and he owns a house also has no student debt. Conservative Boomers saved for their kids to go to college. I paid cash each semester and I’m not wealthy, just frugal (a person who lives simply and economically).

History.

The first federal loans were issued in 1958, as part of the National Defense Education Act, to support study in areas deemed critical to national defense. Loans were given to students by colleges, which were required to match the federal funding. Seven years later, the Higher Education Act of 1965 created a broader guaranteed student loan program. Modeled after a state-run program in Massachusetts, it was the first government loan system open to students regardless of their major. The government subsidized the cost of federal loans for qualified students, offering them a way to borrow with much better terms than they’d be able to find on the private lending market.

…

But budget accounting rules changed in 1990, so that loans made directly by the government and loans guaranteed by the government had to be counted the same. And in 1992, the government realized it could save money switching to a direct loan system. That shift happened slowly until 2010, when guaranteed loans were completely phased out. During the transition, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that ending the guaranteed loan system would save up to $68 billion over a decade.

…

For decades, the amount of federal loans disbursed climbed year after year, as college enrollment rose and loan eligibility and limits expanded. But that trend appears to have ended in about 2010. Read whole piece here.

In 1990, the Democratic Party controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In 1992, the Democratic Party maintained control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In 2010, the Democratic Party controlled the Senate, while the Republican Party gained control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections in November of that year.

Barrack Obama(D) ended the ability to get a student loan from a bank in 2010, through the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HCERA). This was roughly ten years after Millennials started going to college.

The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HCERA) passed by the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010, by a vote of 220-211. It was then passed by the Senate on March 25, 2010, by a vote of 56–43. Nancy Pelosi(D) was the Speaker of the House. The Senate Majority Leader was Harry Reid(D). Both were of the Silent Generation born 1928 to 1945.

The Democratic Party held the majority in both chambers of Congress in 2010.

The bill required that all student loans originated after July 1, 2010 be done via the Direct Lending Program. The Direct Lending Program, officially known as the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program, provides low-interest loans directly from the U.S. Department of Education.

It’s another reason to disband the U.S. Department of Education.

Sacred Cows

Because of the government loaning basically free money to anyone who applies, colleges substantially raised tuition prices.

The average cost of a public four-year in state program in 2010 was $9300 per year (it was $2800 per year (undergraduate Engineering) in 1980 when I went).

When I looked at MIT (my graduate school and out of state) for my kiddo in 2008-2009, it was around $48K per year, so we chose another institution. For the 2024-2025 school year MIT was $86K per year for reference into the insanity.

With the government backing the student loans, Universities have no problem charging obscene dollars for inadequate programs. The government, to them, is a bottomless pit of money, so accountability and thrift are not on the radar – anywhere.

So that is why, dear youngster, your college debt swallows your paycheck.

The patterns to recognize here is that Democrats cause the regular people to absorb the financial downsides to their policies.

I imagine they recognized how dumb all of this was and tried to forgive student loans in Biden era, at least we think it was Joe Biden.

Vote Republican.

All The Money

Al Pacino (Silent Generation 1928 to 1945). Scarface. 1983.

Another place younger generations seethe about the success of the Boomers is that we have all the money.

Yes.

We do have all the money and guess what, we donate a lot of it, in fact more than the other generations coming up.

BABY BOOMERS

• 51.0 million donors in the US

• 72% give

• $1,212 average annual gift

• 4.5 charities supported on average per person

GENERATION X

• 39.5 million donors in the US

• 59% give

• $732 average annual gift

• 3.9 charities supported on average per person

MILLENNIALS

• 32.8 million donors in the U.S.

• 60% give

• $481 average annual gift

• 3.3 charities supported on average per person

Are you donating anywhere?

Other authors reading this: have you polled your paying subscriber ages?

I bet it would be an interesting cluster of age brackets.

That’s easy for me, I write for fun, so I don’t charge.

I’ve made my money.

All The Money: Wealth Transfer

Yes. We do have all the money and guess what, it will be inherited by Millennials, so rev your engines and start that hate.

We have all the money because we’re just staring to inherit money from the Greatest Generation who also had a lot of money.

But we made our own money too.

Lot’s of it.

And any Boomer who feels they need to apologize for it A) didn’t seize the day and make lots of money, B) is letting a jealous snot extract a reaction, C) is a moron for apologizing.

Apologize. Kevin Kline (Boomer). John Cleese (Silent Generation). A Fish Called Wanda. 1988.

Boomers and the generations who came before us created and introduced many tangible inventions modern generations take for granted, usurp (to seize and hold something by force or without right) and rely on. These inventions led to entire industries being created. They also led to lifelong income streams and sources of royalties for many of us. Some of the royalties will transfer to offspring.

Imagine that, we’re so evil.

Lists probably are incomplete, and don’t include the corporations that were started, but I think I got the big stuff:

WHAT THE GREATEST GENERATION (and earlier) INVENTED:

• Automobile

• Early Electric Car

• Steam Engine

• Early Nuclear power (Manhatten Project - atomic bomb)

• Radio

• Concrete

• Petrol

• Railways

• Airplane

• Early Rockets

• Battery

• Morse Code & Telegraph

• Steel

• Transistors

• Antibiotics

• X-Ray

• Refrigeration, early appliances

• Television B&W w/tubes

• Film Camera

• Motion Pictures

• Early Telephone

• Banknotes

• Early Computers

• Early Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Assembly line production

• Early Rock and Roll

WHAT BABY BOOMERS INVENTED:

• Modern Electric Car

• Ethernet

• Internet

• Email

• World Wide Web

• Neural Net and Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Apple II – PC’s

• Nanotechnology

• Universal Serial Bus port (USB connection)

• Lithium Batteries

• CMOS Active Pixel Image sensor (phone camera)

• Credit Cards

• ATM

• Modern Telephone

• Fax

• Mobile Phones/Cell phones

• Disposable Cell Phone

• Improved Refrigeration, modern appliances

• Rockets

• Space Exploration

• Moon Landing

• Clean Nuclear Power (reliable nuclear power plants)

• Scanning and Tunneling microscope

• Digital Television and Movies

• Satellite Television

• Modern Rock and Roll and other genres, including rap

• Omnimax film

• 3D Movies

• Drive in Movies

• Drive in Restaurant

• Fast food/Drive through

• Shopping Malls

• DNA Finger printing

• Artificial Heart (Jarvik 7)

• Viagra

• Contraceptives

• Modern prosthesis

• Controlled Drug Release technology (timed release medicine)

• Synthetic Skin

• Ambulatory Infusion Pump (insulin injection)

• Portable Dialysis machine

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

• Greenpeace

• Earth day

• Segway Personal Transporter

• Optical Character Recognition

• Digital flat screen TV & Computer

• Touch Screens

• Digital music

• Automated External Defibrillator (AED)

• Video games

• E-Commerce

• Blogging

• Internet relay chat (early social media)

Let’s compare to what’s been built on what we built.

• Social Media Platforms (Facebook, Twitter etc.)

• Free Shipping

• Amazon - founded by a Boomer

• Streaming Media

• Advanced video gaming

• Podcasts

• Food Delivery

• Meal Prep delivery services

• Crowdfunding (Kickstarter)

• Rocket quest for Mars

A fun read: 20 Modern Trends Millennials Think They Invented, But Didn't

How tangible is this third list?

How beneficial to humankind?

Is it a list that will transcend time?

If you took away the first two lists, would the third list exist or perhaps would that third list be a little more interesting?

Would it be a little more beneficial to humankind?

Who knows.

We made it too easy for them, and now we have OK Boomer.

el gato malo

, I bet your video guy was that guy, or was with that guy…and he didn’t vote for Nixon(R), Ford(R) or Reagan(R). He voted for Jimmy Carter(D).

We’re not all like him.

Books I’d recommend:

Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives (Debating Twentieth-Century America) by Michael W. Flamm and David Steigerwald.

Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me: Debunking the False Narratives Defining America's School Curricula by Wilfred Reilly.

Wow. That was a long one!

Thanks for your time.

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