Age 45-54 is now Generation X.
Generation X is dying young...The above study spoken about in the above videos makes it clear.
The death rates for our group are rising. Yesterday's "slackers" are kicking the bucket far faster then their parents.
Some articles blame the drugs, and AIDS. These are window covering issues. The power that be outside a few alternative media outlets are hiding the real issue which is the dying economy and changed life-styles. NAFTA and other trade deals like it have changed life in America and are stripping things down. Other races and minority groups have greatly suffered themselves with higher death rates for decades so this study concerns mostly white people. It's obvious the economy has kicked Generation X in the face. There's a reason that Baby Boomers have 47 times the wealth.
Being 47 years old, I have noticed my friends have died far younger and been more sick, then my parent's generation. None of us expect to live as long. One friend died at 46, one man at 55, another in his 50s, my husband's best friend died at 39 and this doesn't include the people who are already disabled. Generation X is not living as long as the Baby Boom generation. Why not? Our parent's generation had a far more economically stable life. They had more access to medical care. They had more secure lives. They had stable families that stuck by them, who did not abandon them or constantly move away. My mother has never faced want or loneliness as an adult. She has never gone to a hospital fearing a resultant tens of thousands of dollar bill from lack of medical insurance. My mother's life has been nothing like my own. She has never seen the inside of a food pantry, she had stable employment that was 8 hours a day, which included retirement benefits and allowed for a life with vacations, a nice home, and expendable income. Many of her peers have shared in the same easier lives.
I will be talking about generational trends. So yes, there will be a broad brush applied to some of these issues. There are good and bad people in every generation so I post this with the caveat again, this does not apply to every individual and there are good and bad people in every generation. The Baby Boomer generation being one of most selfish generations in human history in America, has thrown their own children--Generation X and millennials under the bus for their own benefit. Do any of the wealthy oldsters around here enjoying their retirements, giant bank accounts and new cars, notice the people my age, walking in the rain and snow from their low wage jobs?
While Generation X sunk further down and the millennials have not even been able to afford their own apartments or homes, the Baby Boom generation benefitted from this. The Baby Boomers were told they were special over and over, and boy they never let us forget it! Thus they did not care about what happened to their children after them. Most generations want things to improve for their children, the Baby Boomers, put up bumper stickers on their new Cadillac that said "Spending my children's inheritance"---and boy did they!
The narcissistic sabotage for Generation X, started when we were in our twenties. Don't you know there was a reason when they labeled us all lazy slackers? We couldn't do anything right and we just got out of college. Like narcissist parents do to the scapegoat, we were handed bags of hot air and false illusions that did not pan out. Baby Boomers got the full attention of the world's media, and intelligentsia, and still even as they age, this has not ended. Did you know the millennials are a bigger generation in numbers then Baby Boomers? Bet you didn't. Why? Because all of our lives we have been told how the Baby Boomers are the biggest and the best generation and others did not matter.
We are reaching late adulthood and still hearing about Kennedy getting shot and the rest ad nauseum, while our youthful times get mere nods. No one's talking much about the 80s, sure the Germans got their show Deutschland 83 and there's been a few movies, and memes referring to movies like Back to the Future, but it's like the 60s never ended. I never expected to be this old, and still having it shoved down my throat.
Everytime it seems I read a book even, it's a Baby Boomer doing the talking. Even a recent book I'm reading from the library on education Mission High, featured a teacher who had been in the Weathermen as a youth and graduated in 1967. He was another old hippie pontificating to me the virtues in this case of Common Core. They couldn't get any younger teachers to interview? Generation X still remains invisible even as we ascend into late adulthood and middle age, behind the attention hogging Baby Boomers.
“Generation Xers are the forgotten middle child generation,” says Faith Popcorn, a trend consultant who advises companies on generational differences. “They’re worried about both the present and future. They understand more than millennials that they could be replaced by robots and a lot of them don’t think they’ll ever be able to afford kids or qualify for mortgages.”
Popcorn says “6 in 10 boomers and millennials think their generations are special but only one-third of Gen Xers do. You wouldn’t want to be a Gen Xer.”
We were gas-lighted and told we were "entitled" for having basic wants and needs like an actual full time job that paid the bills instead of pieced together temp work and part time jobs at the coffee shop counter. While Baby Boomers enjoyed the benefits of worker rights and unions, today many of them join the Tea Party and make sure to vote away any of the same breaks for the younger generations. Empathy must be gone, because aren't some of them seeing their adult children doing far worse, because of the cut-throat job market? Selfishness is winning out at the polls. None of the partying in Florida Baby Boomer set, seems to care that most of their adult children will be cooking a can of beans over a rusted metal trash can when they hit their old age, because retirements and pensions are a thing of the past. Even as we get older and sicker, they tell us we deserved it for "failing".
A life time of being called a "loser" by your parents has taken an extreme emotional toll on Generation X. Broken homes, constant moving, lack of stability and then financial insecurity with huge loads of stigma for not measuring up to parental expectations has hurt many members of Generation X without measure. Our lives were destroyed via our parent's selfishness. Narcissists to the end, they sabotaged their own children and competed with them and never let them in the door. Financial pressures that never ended where cash-starved twenties became still struggling forties and fifties took a massive mental and physical toll in Generation X. We never could relax. In too many of our lives, while our parents had fun and shopped while they dropped, the answer for us was always "No". The false dreams we were handed by a bunch of narcissists were crushed by the hard cold hand of reality.
The Baby Boom generation up rooted marriage with their constant divorces, and destruction of traditional values, with the counterculture and drugs leading the way, Baby Boomers led us to many of the rotten places we are today. The old Woodstock navel gazing hippies who only cared about themselves graduated to the career and money obsessed yuppies of the 1980s. The "freedom fighters" became the world's biggest neo-liberal fascists or fascist Tea Partier/Republicans. They codified lack of mercy and the worship of monolithic power. They told us "God is dead" and spat on natural human emotions like affection. Earlier generations were taught family cohesion, loyalty, and defending the weaker and young. Baby Boomers weren't interested in any of that. They were more interested in "finding themselves". Baby Boomers being the most godless narcissistic generation to ever exist, have paved a path of destruction through this country like no other generation before them.
Do the Baby Boomers have empathy for people younger then them? Surely there are some good souls among them, but empathy is lacking in many places. How many Generation X people were told they were "losers" and couldn't do anything right as the carpet was ripped from beneath them? How many were told by the often New Age believing Baby Boomers, that they didn't think positive thoughts? So many of us are told "thinking positive" will deliver the cash right to our door. Sorry it doesn't work. Our media expresses no empathy for the younger generations. They repeat over and over young people [and now middle aged people] are selfish, and lazy.
The SAME exact thing happened to Generation X [this magazine is from the early 90s]
"Hard act to follow"? Anyone want to barf along with me? Maybe there's a reason we wore nothing but black in our twenties. We were already in mourning knowing what awaited us. I had three years in my life where I wore nothing but black. We were already told we were LOST and that it was ALL OUR FAULT, and had nothing to do with the horrible changes being wrought in the economy. There's a reason we went goth, grunge and had the depressed Kurt Cobain as a spokesman.
In other words, Generation X was SCAPEGOATED TO THE MAX.
and they are still doing it to younger people too. "It's your fault there's no job, it's because you are too immature!" is the subtext on this Baby-boomer insulting cover.
Two Thirds Of Gen X Households Have Less Wealth Than Their Parents Did At The Same Age
Let's not forget the gas-lighting is part of the Baby Boomer game too. The poorer generations have been gas lighted to death. Told they are not achievers or as "hard working". There is a reason that many wealthier Boomers have joined the Tea-Party and want to do away with welfare and help for the poor. It's not about improving the country, it's about protecting their own money. How many of us younger people were told we were personally responsible for all of our economic troubles? My husband was blamed for his lay-offs and so was I. My family in my extreme case literally threw me away for my money problems, well before I went no contact. The insults never stopped coming. Lest some see this as just my personal experience, I see the same treatment all over in different degrees.
Young people and middle aged Generation X are called "bums", "losers" and more. They move home to angry older Baby Boomer parents who are outraged at their child's failures and don't let them forget it. How many Baby Boomers did I see complaining about their adult children living with them, who "couldn't get it together"? One still sees in in the magazine articles complaining about the young people and middled aged living at home with their parents. Gas lighting here, covers the real situation which is the 1 percent busy destroying the economy and opportunities within it.
Baby Boomers as a whole are not a generation that is aging gracefully. Since they have more money, life is easier, they seem younger then people my age, in a certain way. My husband took me to this 50's/60s music show where he got some free tickets. People 20-25 years older then me danced around, a few were on canes and sitting at tables who were less mobile. They flirted as much as high schoolers, the women shook their booties, some wearing tight jeans and halter tops and were all dressed "sexy". It was perverse display with some of them. The good times never ended for Grandma and Grandpa Baby Boomer! I felt like a peasant woman sitting there in my long dress and with my walker entering some kind of altered world where these people were experiencing reverse aging while I was growing older at an accelerated rate. Narcissists don't age like the rest of us. A predominantly narcissistic generation will cling on to youth with a death grip. There seems to be little admittance of the passage of time or the normal introspection that should come with age, I've seen in people a generation ahead of them.
When I was in my 30s, I liked to befriend older people. Most of my then elderly friends were from the SILENT generation. They were different, and more traditional. They believed in self sacrifice, they didn't tell me "think positive" or that everything was the young person's fault, they told me younger people have it far worse today and that life changed for the worse. One lady who was a mother in the 1950s told me, "We were happy and had time to spend with our families, now you see these women, and it's nothing but "work, work, work". Another elderly friend who was around 80 was direct, "You younger people are getting sick and dying far faster. Young people are not as healthy, especially in your generation and younger. I think it is because life is far harder for you.
The above statistics in the videos speak for themselves.
Babyboomers Don't Care if Generations Below Them are Poorer
Materialism, Crushed by Bills and Baby Boomers
Interesting post. When I was in high school I saw a psychologist. She asked me what I would like to be in 15 years. I told her that I hoped to be alive. She looked at me in horror as like what in the world kind of answer is that. Guess that I knew dark times were coming. I have had multiple relatives and friends from Gen X commit suicide. It is truly sad!
ReplyDeleteMany of knew the dark times had already arrived and that life would not pan out. The spoiled and smug, would shake their heads and blather on about how we lacked "positivity". Narcs love to unload that word on people.
DeleteAs I was sitting in my rented rooms in my 20s, I already knew my life was not going to turn out like my parents. I think all the abuse and put-downs have taken a toll on Generation X, and led to the despair of suicide sadly in many. Sorry you know so many who have committed suicide. Probably most had some godless narc in the background with cash up the whazoo calling them a "loser".
My high school boyfriend died alone in his apartment at age 47 in 2013. A high school classmate of mine committed suicide at 38 in 2007. My husband's high school female friend died today at age 45. Scott Weiland, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Linkin Park lead singer, etc. My boomer parents are beyond wealthy, have a HUGE network of successful boomer friends, go on vacations, have exotic cars, mansions, and all but ignored me when I was growing up. My mom terrorized me to be more specific. I really feel little hope for the future. I'm trying to be as positive as I can for my children, but it's hard. I look forward to heaven, hope that's not as disappointing as this life.
DeleteSorry to hear you have lost so many friends. It is the same with me. I have noticed more of us are far sicker then Baby Boomer aged people though I know a few nice older people with my same conditions. Yes Queen Spider and pals is wealthy, [well unless she ran through all her money] never could imagine my life, so yeah you saw what I had. It's good you had children, I hope things are better for you soon and them.
DeleteI'm at the Gen X age group. I remember being told that my generation was the worst, entitled, wanting it easy all the time, generation. We were all expected to work at McDonalds after 6 years in university, that a half a loaf of bread was better than none. When my anxiety got the better of me, I was told that I "just didn't want to work." Yeah, thats how society treats people who are sick. Never mind those pretty commercials, which are too vague anyway, talking about compassion.
ReplyDeleteFor me real compassion was hard to find. Authentically,they just wanted to blame me. It was usually that generation called the baby boomers. I was told they "worked hard" deserved what they worked for, for they have worked for it. Now I know "deserved" is such a loaded term, I learned too, that they got naps at work, or just slept when they want to. I heard this. All my uncles. Bought new cars every couple of years, never faced bancrupcy or went broke, and used people of other races to do the dirty work. I believe this is how immigration got started. That no one here wanted to do the dirty work. But now we have to do the dirty work, and barely pay the rent.
I had an uncle who got killed at work, and his wife got a big pension for life, and now I hear of such widows, getting one small lump sum. I talked to my husband about this. That my aunt had the house paid for on top of the pension. Now, when we hear of widows like that they have to make do. And no one has compassion for that woman.
It is easy to understand why our generation is dying early. It sucks cause, I remember the "entitled" gaslighting games they play. Go to university, work 2 jobs, work at McDonald's after. Too lazy?
Hi Joan, yes I remember being told we were the worse, and lazy and had no idea of "social justice" ironic with that last one huh?
DeleteYes we all had to work at fast food for minimum wage after years of work and college often leaving many of us in debt. I worked at Arby's for a time after I had my college degree, piecing the useless jobs together, working all shifts, nights and weekends while my parents coasted along on their 9-5 M-F easy ride where their jobs actually paid the bills. Yeah we were told to be happy with what we got and to suck it up. It never got better for many of us. Some of us tried like me and my husband, constantly moving, endless job applications but the situation never got any better. The jobs just got more cruel and hard to come by and the prices got higher. Yes everyone facing problems or health ones is told, "You just don't want to work". Both parents and the rest of the baby boomers in the family all blamed us for not being able to get jobs. I had memes shoved in my face on Facebook about lazy welfare-good for nothings and bums on disability. Of course I heard about how she told everyone I was a "loser" for being on disability and said it right to my face on this blog, with crazy comments.
Yeah real compassion was in short supply. I suppose people who are spoiled and have had it so easy, just don't have much of it to fine. Their way was easy, they had theirs and their whole idea was for us to just go die, while they took everything away. Like narcs they unloaded the blame and shame and had nothing but criticism for us with problems they themselves set up. My mother had spent endless thousands of dollars on useless shopping and then got mad at me for having any needs at all.
continuing...
DeleteI even got the "I worked hard" line in one letter when I asked her to stop abusing me for being poor. I wrote back "At least you had the opportunity to work and make real wages" in my last NC letter. I never saw my parents pulling 60-70 hour a week shifts or working nights. Both were home every night by 4:30 pm to torture us. They had jobs where they sat doing paperwork all day and having meetings and parties with cake and coffee. They weren't cleaning toilets or standing at a cash register.
Every week they had some kind of party at my mother's office, I wonder whenever they really "worked". They wore nice clothes and kept clean. I wouldn't doubt that naps were possible for some of them. Both my parents disparaged the lost boy uncle and one scapegoat cousin for factory work. Teaching was below them too, so even I was in for it, because it didn't bring in buckets of cash.
My family and the narc relatives now never want for a new car, a vacation. While I border on homelessness, several own second homes and vacation homes. I can't even imagine the sheer wastefulness of owning a house that is empty half the year while being crushed by rent. I see a lot of Baby Boomers as essentially having stolen from their children. The fathers die and leave everything to their already rich widows instead of their "good for nothing" children who are "losers" and embarrassed them with their economic troubles.
Yes they used immigrants to do dirty work and unloaded other dirty work on other races. The inner cities were destroyed by their greed too as they disenfranchised more and more people from economic life, starting there and working their way down. They suppressed wages, using immigrants as slaves, and in their greed ripped off the generations to come.
So now we have no jobs or jobs actually as their servants--the so called "service economy", how many Generation Xers into their Middle Age are now listening to demanding and complaining wealthy baby-Boomers at their restaurant and clerking jobs? They suck it up and go home to their falling apart trailer hoping their old car will get them to their 2-3 jobs the next morning or night.
The Baby Boomers don't care that their own children and grandchildren can't even pay their rent. They are shopping their wealth away and living so long, there will be nothing left so inheritances won't economically save Generation X or the millennials either. I am seeing the family dynamic all over where the spoiled entitled Baby Boomers scoff at the Generation Xers and millennials who have fallen down the ladder. My mother mocks the three cousins who have never been able to afford their own apartment in their late 20s. She offers them no help either with her wide variety of connections. She has mocked my brother and I knew about every dime he got from her. My mother got giant insurance pay-outs when my father died. I heard there were several policies and one was at least 500,000 dollars. Talk about winning insurance Lottos. Much of Generation X can't even afford life insurance or are so sick, even if they can work they are turned down. She also got his large government pension and her own too. You sure don't hear about widows in Generation X getting anything like that. Widows now will end up in the streets. They'll get their 600 bucks from Social Security. Nope there is no compassion either.
Yes one can see why our generation is dying early it's so very obvious. I was called "lazy" and a "bum" while working 4 part time jobs before I was disabled. Such treatment destroys peoples health. There is a huge malaise on the young. Sometimes I get so angry watching what is happening to the millennials, it's like the wickedness of Baby Boomers will never end. In their case, they can't even afford the milk crates and rented room and are being handed giant student loans, while being told they are lazy and entitled.
By leaving inheritance to thier rich widows, I assume you mean, the 3rd marriage where the survivor steals from the dead one's kids and keeps everything for themselves and their own kids.
DeleteIts quite telling to hear of the baby boomers and their "half a loaf of bread" philosophy. Talking of basic need for food, well they believe that we can't have the whole loaf. Just make do.
ReplyDeleteThis coming from people who bought up all the cars in the car lot, and bought houses for just a few weeks wages, and went to work to catch up on their sleep.
It's just more of their rhetoric. They sit on their high horses and judge younger people who have had completely different lives. My mother in her spoiled life, has no place to judge me and that goes for other spoiled biddies who wasted endless opportunities I never had. Yeah they could buy a new car without even blinking, and half of their income wasn't going to keep a roof over their heads. I'm so tired of hearing their self satisfied fantasies.
DeleteDear Peeps and Friends, about 10 years ago i was looking for entry-level office-work...university grads were hoping to score those same entry-level jobs. How sad! Ya study yer butt off for years in college, only to end up scratching for a receptionist position. Yep, the college kids were studying, while i was out guzzling beer to the wee hours of the morning. This economy inhales. College WORK should be rewarded with a management position - not answering phones/entering simple data-fields.
ReplyDeleteThat's sad. I think the "Everyone needs college" even to empty the trash and type data in a computer stuff is nonsense. At the very least they should be fair and stop driving young people into debt making them get college degrees for low level jobs. I don't think college is worth it anymore and have told young people this. Unless you have science and math aptitude and are going to do something lab related or have skills others don't have, don't waste your time. I'm in shock the college bubble hasn't burst yet.
DeleteThe money is in trade schools you know electricians get bonus checks for getting the job.
DeleteI tell young people go into trades, they can't outsource, maybe you can get your own small business too.
DeleteYou're a brilliant thinker, Peep! Same demographic. I also had baby boomer parents who didn't think they should help their kids through college because my dad did it on his own. However, during that time, earnings were enough that he could work a co-op job and support a wife at the same time and earn his tuition at engineering school. You could get by with not having automobile insurance and not wind up in jail. And it turns out, my grandparents helped more than they admit with their we-pulled-ourselves-up-from-our-bootstraps bullshit.
ReplyDeleteHi Jennifer, thanks. Sorry your Dad was too stingy to help you through college. The college racket has been fueled by Baby boomers profiting off the cost of college that is far higher than the inflation rate. I read an article the other day that makes it clear "working" through college is impossible. How does someone pay for a college that costs $10,000-30,000 a year, while having to support themselves on an 8 dollar an hour a job, its impossible. Yes I tired of the bullstraps crap long ago. A lot of the Boomers got jobs that could support families and their elevated lifestyles without college even.
Deletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-28/you-can-t-work-your-way-through-college-anymore
DeleteMy father still refers to me as a "non contributor." I have been in the Army for almost 20 years and deployed all over the place. How much more "contribution" do people want? It's NEVER enough!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a father that needs kicked to the curb. That isn't anything someone should put up with. The richest ones while leeching and scamming the system will come up with the worse insults.
DeleteI am 57 and I don't know where I belong. I have always complained that I was the whipping boy for my parents and now it's my responsibility to cater to the whims of teenagers. I definitely have more friends dead than alive. I know that's more perception than reality but it seems like it's the truth.
ReplyDeleteYou probably are what is considered Generation Jones, who are the people who got the first whiffs of what was coming to Generation X. The teenagers scare me. While I defend millennials here, there seems something very conforming about them that disturbs. They seem more alike then different which worries me. Sorry you lost a lot of friends too.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones
DeleteYeah, as a Gen X-er I was curious why you keep defending Millennials. They're absolutely part of the sabotage and assist their parents in annihilating us. You characterize them as suffering and poor. The reality is they live with their wealthy Boomer parents and never have to pay for anything UNLESS THEY CHOOSE TO.
DeleteWe're sandwiched between Narcissist them and their Narcissist parents, and being vampire sucked and drained to death. It's no wonder we all suicide.
Check out lost generation on reddit. The millennials are aging out of the time when parents will accept them living at home and some are waking up to dead futures. Mom and Dad can't live forever and it's different for a 25 year old to be at home. You are right Gen X is like the red headed step child generation between the two, but it seems to me the economic standing of millennials is very poor. Remember some of those millennials got parents not interested in "sharing the wealth" so to speak.
Deleteforgot a phrase in above, it is different for a 25 year old to be living at home rather then a 35 year old. Gen X is now pushing into their 50s which means millennials are now going deep into their 30s.
DeleteThis article is very timely, and it reminds me of the spike in death rates that occurred in the Soviet Union after it collapsed. My, what a bonanza of health the free market brings...
ReplyDeleteI don't have much time now, but I will be re-reading this a few times.
Yeah its like the Soviet Union. The free market or "globalist slave" market is such a "wonderous" thing and still they will have dopes to line up to vote for the "right to be fired".
DeleteDuring high school I was proud of my lack of conformity. But somewhere along the way I realized that I was conforming to the idea of not being a conformist. If everyone is growing their hair long and smoking pot it ceases to be a statement. Same thing with hip hop and 3 inch long fingernails and finger snaps.
ReplyDeleteAgree, there's a point where the non-conformity becomes conformist, though you know, what scares me about today's youth? There's no subcultures. We had the punks, goths, hip-hop, skaters, preps, jocks, nerds, etc and different dress to go with each. Today all the young people dress exactly the same. That weirds me out.
DeleteI personally can't stand either Boomers or Millennials, and I will vomit if I see yet another drawn on caterpillar eyebrow, hair extensions, or clumpy trainers. Also not a fan of Boomer trainers with the cross laces. Anyway, I for one think Gen X are in fact aging less quickly. Boomers have aged really badly.
DeleteSame predicament as you with job and work situation, it has been a problem all my life and shows no sign of letting up. Family likewise broken, unsupportive and just downright mean. I've been told my family was mean even by Gen-X standards.
The only way I have ever got any satisfaction in this life is by doing the things I want and am talented at, anything else is a waste of time and the world today is a rigged game. I feel so out of touch with it and the shocking number of non-jobs there are out there that I feel I should just recognize my bipolar disorder for what it is and exist on state benefits without guilt. This is a situation not of my making but as you say, complete and utter intergenerational cruelty.
Your account of the 50's/60's music show was mesmerizing. And poignant. Wife and I call the boomers the "forever young" generation. These hypocrites accused their kids (and grandchildren) of refusing to grow up!?! No, it's the boomer generation that never grew up. They benefited from the most prosperous economic times in the history of the country, with two shots in the economic arm - the end of WW2 and the Vietnam War. Trade and Labor Unions reached the zenith of power at the same time boomers were of working age. Illegal immigration was kept in check from the time boomers were 18 til they reached retirement age in many cases. That would be nice now wouldn't it? Economic prosperity was handed to the "forever young" generation on a plate like none other in American history. Perhaps world history. It was the boomer generation that took us off the gold standard. It was the boomer generation that gave us NAFTA. It was the boomer generation that broke labor unions. It was the boomer generation that exported the manufacturing base. It was the boomer generation that "imported" cheap labor. It was the boomer generation that gave us Desert Storm 1. It was the boomer generation that gave us Desert Storm 2, a conflict that will never end, at least in our generation. It was the American boomers in power that destabilized the Middle East which in turn created a seed bed of radical Islamists. Like the narcs they are, they destroy who they can destroy then blame the ones they destroy.
ReplyDeleteI would like to say this about the 50 something death rates. I've know and/or known of a number of white 40-50 somethings that died who were not financially disadvantaged. I think Peep nailed it - it's stress. It's the stress of being the Scapegoat Generation.
Scapegoating will destroy a human being's health even if they are financially secure.
Generation X should be named The Scapegoat Generation.
What a brilliant piece of writing once again from Peep.
Hi Smakintosh, Thanks for your comments. Yeah that 50s/60s show was weird. Among the Baby Boomers I feel far older. I didn't write about this yet, but I have felt OLDER even then my own mother and suppose now I see why. "Forever young" sums them up, they have stayed selfish and focused on themselves and don't care about future generations or leaving a "legacy", they only do for themselves.
DeleteI agree they got all these economic blessings and workers rights, they then worked to squander as fast as possible. They benefited off the unions and then worked to destroy them for the next generation. Older people back then cared about the future of the country and its people and their own children instead of chopping it up and handing it to the rest of the world and not selling out for short term profits that would hurt the next generations. Yes they broke labor unions, they destroyed working life bringing in temp jobs and contract work, and as they did this they kicked the younger people in the face for not owning homes or being able to afford families or match them economically. Their endless wars in the Middle East seem now without end and they have given us a far more dangerous world. Baby Boomers not only became the worlds biggest fascists on both sides of the divide, they went from spoiled two faced peaceniks to the biggest war lovers this world has ever seen. The anti-war movement is dead since Obama came in and pushed the neo-con agenda, and the right wing, lusts for war even in their own churches like the one I left. Baby Boomers ran that place. That was interesting since they'd have social events they would purposefully leave me out of---the 60 and ABOVE club.
Yes like narcs they destroy who they can and then play the blame games. My mother is the epitome of her own generation. Sucking up the goodies, squandering all the family wealth, and laughing at the suffering of younger people even in her own family. There was no building up of future generations, there was only sabotage. She supports the endless wars--hey she worked for a war related govt organization counting the body-bags for Desert Storm 1 and 2 and the break up of the unions.
I'm not surprised some 40s and 50 years olds died who were not economically disadvantaged. The career world with all the narcs in charge has become a hell pit, where stress is a daily reality. So yes some "make it" but at a price.
Baby Boomers not only destroyed the country they destroyed multitudes of other people. They took the best country in the world and turned it into a narc snakepit on the decline. Yes Generation X, their children have paid an incredible price.
I usually side with Boomers by default but Smacintosh illustrates why I don't really feel like I fit there. That and the wikipedia page on the generation Jones. Baby Boomer cuts a too wide swath through the demographics. Age wise I see my parents as boomers. But I always felt like a dog looking in a butcher shop window. I have a degree in economics and if you look at the numbers people that entered the work force in the 50's and 60's basically had to just show up. Their prosperity wasn't as much skill as it was being at the right place at the right time.
ReplyDeleteThey really applied the name Baby Boomer to too many. I put Baby Boomer in the over 60 crowd really because life for those in the older 50s, was so different. You are right they just had to show up and a job was there for them and a lot of it was just luck. LOL about feeling like a dog looking in a butcher shop window. Everything came so easy to my parents, that's how I felt especially as I got older. Even the one who had crappy health had an easy ride for most of his life.
DeleteJust learned of another suicidei of a former classmate. She was only 46 years old. So tragic!
ReplyDeleteGen X has been crushed. So sorry to hear this.
DeleteWe were absolutely destroyed!
DeleteI appreciated your slant on my generation. We all grew up listening to music, watching tv, and reading books and magazines that were aimed at the Boomers, not us. We were the post-Sputnik generation, and the schools were beginning their slide into utter decay because the Boomers were no longer being educated. My high school no longer had field trips...because the Boomers smoked pot when they went on theirs. My generation was the first to face unaffordable college and no jobs upon graduation, but the Boomers called us "slackers" for stringing together whatever part-time, no-benefits jobs we could, to pay for the 2-bedroom apartment we shared with 5 of our peers.
ReplyDeleteOur generation made the Internet work, put in the weekend-and-late-night shifts to keep society running, and now we're expected to cater to the Boomers' kids, the Millenials. Those "Baby on Board" stickers in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Yeah, not for GenXers, but for Millenials. "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!?" didn't apply to us, the Latchkey Generation. It's our job to cater simultaneously to the Narc Boomers and the Narc Millenials.
A number of "Xers" here state they are children of Boomers and that they are in their 40s and 50s (so born c.1960-1970)--I doubt the older Xs are really children of Boomers, who were born at earliest 1945 and latest 1960-64, depending on what source you consult. Most older GenX were raised by younger Silents, not Boomers. I am at the tail end of GenX, born in 1980. My parents are early Boomers, born very late 40s.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I have seen, most Boomers are aware the job market and economy are NOT healthy are not nearly as forgiving or stable as it was for them; however, they fail to consider it when discussing their children's or younger peoples' lives, financial issues, etc.
I can not even count the number of times I have been told by people of the Boomer group that either we are too lazy or 'entitled' and like another post said, we should just take what we can get without complaining---the Boomers are highly hypocritical: they went from all-out protest and preaching change and equality, to turning right around to make as much money as they could thru greed and easy work, while not only raiding and ruining the economy but also mortgaging the future of the next generation in the process. In short, the Xers got screwed and knew it, but at least try to make do--the Millenials do not even know just how screwed they are yet. For most of us any meaningful job and financial security is out of reach, at least in any foreseeable future and things like even home ownership and pensions are likely to not become a reality for a good majority of us.
Not only has housing become so expensive, job wages have stagnated and taxes and cost of living have kept on going up and up.
My parents bought their first house in 1984, in a fairly affluent suburb of Boston. For yearsthey were able to sail thru life, little financial trouble at all. They sold that house 21 years later for three times what they paid. Taxes on it had quadrupled, too.
Even when I was making a decent slary, I would NEVRR had been able to buy that house (in 2015), let alone pay the taxes, which are not about $8,200 a year (was $1,200 in 1989).
I worked at a grocery deli one summer back in 2000, as a summer job while in college--it paid $8 per hour, full time. It wasn't great pay, but it paid for books and left me with plenty of spending money.
I went back to that same store in 2010, so TEN years later to take a second job (hint, hint) for a while...I was told the pay would be $7 per hour. So, a dollar less than a decade earlier. Full time status has essentially disappeared for most employees there, too. Just-in0time scheduling was starting to be practiced, too, which makes it HELL to not only plan anything in your life, but to even hold down a second job. I asked a worker last summer (in 2016) what the pay was out of curiosity and she said they start new ones out at $11.50/hour. (MA raised min. wage a few years ago to $11). Adjust for inflation over 15 years and that's actually a little less than I made for same job in 2000. The same can be said for many other jobs..wage stagnation. Something past generations, in this country anyway, never had to deal with. My parents are aware of it, but fail to consider it when discussing our generations problems with employment, finances and the future. I sometimes wish I had grown up back in the fifties.
Many other jobs that formally required just a high school dip. now require a 4-year college degree---for crap pay.
college is a racket. Even since I finished in 2005 the rates have soared. Books now cost insane money--more then double just 15 years ago in many cases.
I was forced to sell a car back in 2001 just to buy books, when the prices were raised and my parents refused to help. They paid tuition, but still thought books were very cheap (both grad. college in 1969/1973). They were going to let me attend without books if I wasn't able to come up with the $600 needed--a big jump over the previous year of about $450.
You bring up some solid points, and while I agree with you on several, every generation has to be responsible for its own success. So we were dealt a bad deck, that doesn't mean you sit and cry about the dealer. Also, I find your argument that there's a lack of 80s nostalgia laughable. Have you watched ANY TV or movies in the past 10 years? We dominate that shit! Our generation LOVES nostalgia! From School House Rock to Pop Rocks. Hell, some even elected a "president" who promised to bring back the "good feelings" of the 80s. So now that you pointed out the issues that our generation is facing in our middle years, what can we do to change things and make our mark? Will we go out like the Silent generation and not produce a president?
ReplyDeleteTrump is bringing back the good feelings of the Baby Boomers, and Trickle-Down not the feelings of teenagers [Gen X] from the 80s. Sure our own generation seeks out the 1980s but have you seen any sitcoms based in 1980s nostalgia, or even 1990s, even when I buy library books, on non-fiction subjects, it's Baby Boomers and Vietnam, etc. I am not sure how Gen X can make a mark. I feel like those who attempt it are pushed to the outer margins even still. Ask yourself now why both of the last presidential candidates were SO OLD, it was a big deal for Reagan to be 69-70 back in the 1980s.
DeleteUnknown, you don't just bounce from city council to President. Boomers kept recruiting each other, rather than young people, to run when we were young and would have been learning the ropes, working our way up. The used Xers as vounteer campaign staff, handed out a few staff jobs. Most of us couldn't afford to work for free anyway so they called us apathetic. Now ther's a big public-service hole where X would have been. Coming up next are a lot of family-money millennials.
ReplyDeleteI notice this too. I have gone to civic meetings, town halls, and seen city council meetings my husband is covering for his freelance employment and I have noticed the complete dearth of any Gen X. It's like no one under 60-65 is in any of these places. I noticed this in churches too. Where's Gen X? So busy scrapping and surviving for crumbs, they got left out of the operating of their own country. I even notice when I read books, it's still alive Vietnam and JFK. Where's Gen X? It's like we do not exist. And now we are getting old and have entered our 50s. I definitely agree with you about the giant public service hole. The Bowling Alone guy probably needs to warn everyone, all civic clubs are going to crater once Baby Boomers die off, I don't think there are enough family money millennials to fill the gaps, maybe in such big cities, but not smaller places.
Deleteeveryone thinks generation X died with Kurt Cobain. No!, I'm still here! and my wealthy mother called me lazy so she did have to feel bad if I could not afford a crown on my tooth. She was shocked I just had it pulled and now she is embarrassed of my missing BACK tooth. I make her look bad because I did not marry a rich boomer. These people suck.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it's like Kurt Cobain was the last of our numbers. Yes that is terrible, what your mother said. Oh I get the teeth thing and rich boomers who don't get it. My mother once told me when are you going to get your teeth cleaned, at the time I hadn't seen a dentist in 20 years. One reason I stay in my snooty affluent town is it does have charity, and a free clinic and dentistry for the poor here. I lived too long with dental care, and I remember when they wanted to pull a front tooth at the charity place--they try their best but I was freaking out thinking I'd be suffering look-wise even more and found a dentist via a charity program, that mostly works on middle class and above people but takes poor and disabled folks. Thank goodness for him and his partner! I sent a thank you note this holiday season. Yeah I made mine look "bad" too, the money didn't roll in so I was just an "embarrasment". They do suck.
DeleteYes, Blame your problems on others, I am considered a boomer since I was born in 1961. When my mother died while I was going through medical problems related to midlife autistic breakdown (Basically the neurological degeneration that comes with it catches up to people with hfASD Asperger's the rest of my blood relitives disowned me. Don't take this as a complaint because I worked my ass off while my ex gen X wife sat on her fat ass and did nothing. That is why your lives are so miserable, you did it to yourself. Time to stop playing victim and do something to better yourselves. Bunch of whiny do nothings. I might not have much but what I do have I earned. Never expect others to do for you as you will always be disappointed.
ReplyDeleteI can see why the wife is an ex wife. LOL I have Aspergers too, if you have no empathy for a fellow Aspie with more disabling health problems why should anyone have any for you? Sounds like you have identified with the people who disowned you. Some eat their shit sandwich in life and tell others how great it tasted. You don't sound like a happy person for all the stuff you supposedly "earned".
Delete"Playing the victim"
DeleteMore boomer gaslighting while they gobble up all the resources, point to the crumbs and ask why everyone is so "whiny".
"Playing the victim"
DeleteMore boomer gaslighting while they gobble up all the resources, point to the crumbs and ask why everyone is so "whiny".
It is gaslighting, when I hear non-empathetic boomers, get started with that "snowflake" BS, I want to hurl. The narcs love to shut everyone down, calling them "victims" and "how dare you complain".
DeleteUK gen x here, It is the same in the UK, Most of my friends are dead. Some to strange cancers, a lot to suicide or drug overdose. I am crippled from working minimum wage jobs that were too heavy for me and have been left with a severe back injury. I didn't realise until recently that it was a generational thing but it makes a lot of sense when you see how peoples lives have played out.
ReplyDeleteIt's terrible to hear so many of your friends have died young too. it's same for me and some are living with terrible autoimmune and other disorders. Here they have made the ages for retirement up to 70, how is someone supposed to work manual labor and minimum wage jobs that old? It's going to be impossible. Yeah those jobs do wear out the body. Lower money, more stress, lack of medical care massively ages people far faster as well. Hope things get better for you.
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DeleteI have many generation X friends and I care about them just as much as my own generation. As an aging boomer (72 years old) I never understood this generational hatred stuff. Just like racial hatred you select a group that’s different from your group and find a reason to hate and/or discriminate against them whether it’s race, generation, sexual preference or gender. I believe the best way is to put differences aside and judge everyone on an individual basis.
ReplyDeleteI think most people really do judge people individually and do this without thinking about it, but in a general way they still are prejudice against other people as a group. So why would someone write an article that is a put down to a certain generation? The answer is because they can get away with it. Do you think that someone could write an article that was titled: The Slacker Race?
Next time point that out to someone that writes an article against your generation. The reverse is also true. Do you think Tom Brokaw could have written a book titled: The Greatest Race? As for Brokaw’s book it’s what I call lightweight reading for lightweight minds. Think of it logically and say there are 4 million years of human existence and 200 thousand generations. How is it that a man born in 1940 could select The Greatest Generation? The answer is he can’t and if you think he can then you’re stupid.
I never heard any of my boomer friends say anything negative about generation X. Older generations complain about younger generations, but that’s just human nature. Never let other people define who you are as an individual. I can see by the other comments, on this blog, that many people in your generation hate boomers. I can only speak for myself when I say I haven’t said anything derogatory about generation X.
As for boomers being an entitled generation, well you don’t have a clue how it was in the 1960’s. I consider generation X lucky because you people never knew the fear that your approaching 18th birthday could be a death sentence. Think about being drafted and sent halfway around the world to fight in the jungles of Vietnam for the rich US Military Industrial Complex against a nonexistent enemy who suffered also. If you people spent just one week living in the 1960’s you would be crying to come back to your safe 1980’s and you would be happy that boomer protests ending the draft and cleaned up many of our dirty polluted cities. All I can say is if you like your freedom from the draft then thank a boomer. If not, you can go right on whining about how awful we are and how we ruined your lives
I have boomer friends too. A lot of this generation labels I use as short hand, to illustrate trends. Some could have an argument that it is just another dividing point. I don't agree with judging any individual on generation. I have critized Gen X and think my own generation was too apathetic, taking the "slacker" stuff too much to heart, and did bow out. I do wish you could have more empathy though at why younger people are upset over the economy, where they are not getting their own adult lives or even able to start families, etc, due to the lack of good jobs and piling on debt. It is true boomers faced the horrors of being drafted to be sent off to Vietnam but the US military industrial complex is still oppressing people today and denying people full adult lives because adult money is only there for the superstars and connected, isn't good either. That costs lives from a different direction, drugs and suicide for all the hopeless and those rates are going up. Now they use economics to get people to join the military, it's a draft of a different sort, so people in small rural towns join the Army because there's no jobs available, I saw that happen right in front of me.
DeleteSo please open up your mind, as lives were destroyed in Vietnam, lives are being destroyed today just in a different way.
The complaiscent denial of the elder is an elegant thing. All too consistent. All too well orchestrated. Painted in endless night.
ReplyDeleteGeneration X, cut out from its roots, remains feeble until we rejoice in our fate. I am, chronologically, at the tail end, but separated in time from my peers. I did not draw from them as they did from each-other. I lived with dead company. So of Generation X, I toasted September 11 2001. A date which will live in infamy. Just another slaughterhouse in our own memory, but will be rued with hateful remorse by the Caliphate.
Boomers will never see life through any lens but their own. They are a narcissistic generation, piling on to others all the spiteful nonsense their egos tell them is real. Boomers bought homes and raised families on janitors' salaries. Xers have trouble scraping together down payments on engineers' pay.
ReplyDeleteBoomers destroyed blue-collar work in this country for short-term greed. They enabled a mass immigration of cheap labor and a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs via nafta. They then removed long-standing caps on college tuition so that we paid vastly more to attend college. And the labor market is so diluted that a bachelor's degree is worth less now than a high school diploma was in 1960.
Just remember that it's all our fault for being "whiny." Generation X will spend the remainder of our lives changing the soiled adult diapers of Boomers for the privilege of being called whiny. Narcissists do hate when others actually recount their actions back to them, though, so I do understand the rage we're seeing in Boomers' final act. It didn't have to be this way.
[caveat for below, yes there are SOME liberal boomers and allies, this does not apply to:]
DeleteSo much narcissistic rage they are destroying the country literally as they shuffle off this mortal coil. Today I saw the Orange Asshole quote George Wallace, as he wished more violence against Americans. The country is erupting into riots, and the conservative boomers are already repeating their same crap. This is a generation without empathy or any sense. Yeah the author who wrote the Sociopathic Generation was absolutely correct on that though I did not agree with all of his politics. They called us all whiners and blamed us for everything. Narcissists never prepare for old age, have no idea making the world better for the young, they want to destroy it before they leave, so we don't get to enjoy anything they may miss out on. Thanks for your post.
No, thank you for writing a Gen X blog, one of the few around, really. There is so little community among Xers that a lot of us feel alone much of time, like our experiences in life are inscrutable to others. I get tired like many of us of being constantly besieged by Boomer and Millennial discussion and culture.
DeleteThe Boomer desire to burn the ships when they die is a very real thing in my experience. I don't know a single Xer who has been mentored in a career by Boomers. They simply don't have time, they say, though it seems more like they don't care to pass on the acquired knowledge that was passed on to them by the GI and Silent Generations. So they leave us to teach ourselves everything, and then castigate us for not knowing what they know.
What bothers me about all this is that Xers as a group seem paralyzed by what seems like a learned sense of helplessness. What we should be doing right now is expending every stitch of our energies pushing back on the Baby Boomers, rolling back property-tax breaks for wealthy Boomer homeowners and demanding a larger voice a la the Millennials. Instead, we remain silent, almost resigned to a fate we know is coming. I think we are destined to be overtaken by the Millennials right at the moment the Boomers finally step aside. Life has taught us that whatever hope we see on the horizon is only a mirage, so we do nothing, expect nothing. We need to stop that, if only for our own gratification.
Thanks anon, yeah it is lonely out here, I do feel like Gen X blogs are very rare. Hmm is Gen X the Stockholm Generation too? Abused by too many narcissistic boomers who got all the attention and benefits while we were thrown to the wolves?
DeleteOur generation was passive [not me personally] and ate the shit sandwiches, but things have gotten so bad, millennials and Gen Z are in the streets literally fighting for their lives [far more diverse generation] and under an economic system where they will have no health care or families. If they don't fight back they will be destroyed.
I agree with you too many boomers want to burn the boats as they step off this mortal coil. They [the conservative ones] want to end America, they don't want any progress, just death and suffering. Their envy of the young wants to literally destroy millions of lives.
The rich Gen Xers I know seemed to become proto boomers, adopting fundie/evangelical religion too, while poor ones disappeared from society...and yes ever since this article, people in the Gen X age bracket are still dying far younger. Every group, book club, organization I belong to has no Gen X in it. It was boomers and around 4-5 years ago millennials started showing up.
Where did everyone go? Yeah I ask that a lot. Being called slackers must have ruined self esteems and endured a form of learned helplessness. Gen X is of the age where the kids would be leaving the house, so the continued non involvement with community and more is strange, I wonder how many are at the beck and call now of elderly boomer parents, and too worn out with lack of money or overworked if they did manage a career to take anything on. Yes the millennials will step in when the boomers die off. We will be ignored even in our old age. Even now as Trump tries to destroy the country, Gen X is silent. The doing nothing and refusing to stand up, is a major problem. I did otherwise, but was always out there alone, generation wise.