Anglo Boomers Destroyed the World

Alright this is more of a 'based on a true story' story rather than actual facts. Just some general musings that were running through my head last night. I know there are massive generalisations but its hard to avoid with a generational topic.


The baby boomers have seen probably the greatest change than any other generation. I'm going to talk about mainly a financial and societal viewpoint, leaving out technology for the most part.

Apparently the BB's were supposed to be the generatiopn to bring the World into a new age (which they did, just not how their parents would have predicted i bet). Throughout their generation they have brought the financial world to the brink many times and yet have done nothing to actually solve any of the problems they created. They saw (and profited from) one of the biggest increases in asset values ever, from property, to stocks and commodities, mainly due to easy credit.

In the late 80's when they were younger and more reckless rampant speculation nearly bought the market undone.

Fifteen odd years later they then started betting on te next generation and again this speculation bought about the tech crash.

Late 2000's saw CDOs and MBS bring the financial world to a standstill yet again. While they did not create these products, it was the boomers who had moved to higher positions within the corporate world and either didnt understand what was happening, or turned a blind eye to it in order to profit.

Now we enter 2010's, BB's have been in corporate and politcal power for approximately 10 years and what has changed since 10 years ago?

Specifically here in Aus:

Roads/traffic are the same/worse than 10 years ago
Health care is the same/worse than 10 years ago
Mental Health is worse than 10 years ago
Fuel prices are similar to 10 years ago
Power/Electricity prices are worse than 10 years ago
Food prices are the same/worse than 10 years ago

About the only thing that has actually improved in the last 10 years is access to cheap electronic gadgets.

It seems to me that we as a society have plateued due to the BB's selfishness that they have carried with them throughout their entire generation. They made their fortunes on the back of huge asset price increase, which are unlikely to be as broadly seen again, and now they patrol the halls of power they are happy to keep the status quo and have very little sense of altruism/forward thinking about them.


Would be interested to discuss, as i said, i know there are a lot of generalisations but the main point i want to put across is in the last 10 years very little has changed for the 'standard' person, which indicate to me, progress is no longer being made as a society.

Well prawn_86, No pont in responding to that it will just end up in a slanging match. Hope your generation does a better job. You certainly have all the answer and work ethic.

Out parents had the best time the world could offer, maybe not as good as us with electronic's. medical etc but less stress, higher values were you could leave 10 pounds on the bar and come back the barmaid would have poured a new drink and taken the money and given you the correct change.
When you could leave you key's in the car and your house door unlocked.
We were too busy making money and enjoying keeping out bank card' s at boiling point to notice we were voting for fools to look after our future.
Back in the days were men were men and amd a hand shake was your word.

I guess after the fall out comming now we and our children will demand more accountability for the feds and want business people running th country mot professional parasites.

Sure we have safer cars which means we can drive faster which briings us back to the previous level of safety.
All will be good until the next generation, like we did, has forgotten history repeats.

sptrawler said:

Well prawn_86, No pont in responding to that it will just end up in a slanging match. Hope your generation does a better job. You certainly have all the answer and work ethic.

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Im not looking for a slanging match either.

I have just been pondering the fact that Western soceity seems to have topped out and standards of living are now declining despite all the promise and potential that was supposed to come from the BB generation.

Glen - I think you have mentioned some very apt points

sptrawler said:

Well prawn_86, No pont in responding to that it will just end up in a slanging match. Hope your generation does a better job. You certainly have all the answer and work ethic.

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Ah, just what we need: another round of baby boomer bashing/baiting/bullying.
As if all this hasn't been done to death already!

t seems to me that we as a society have plateued due to the BB's selfishness that they have carried with them throughout their entire generation. They made their fortunes on the back of huge asset price increase, which are unlikely to be as broadly seen again, and now they patrol the halls of power they are happy to keep the status quo and have very little sense of altruism/forward thinking about them.

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Yep, all of us baby boomers are evil, selfish, without an altruistic notion.

Never mind that many of us are caring for aging parents while still supporting children in tertiary education who are living at home. Never mind, either, that most of us have still found time, whilst working full time for most of our lives, to contribute hundreds of hours of voluntary work, and are the generation most likely to take responsibility for holding neighbourhoods and communities together in a social sense.

Every generation can find something for which they can, if they choose, blame the preceding generations. eg baby boomers could hold their parents and grandparents responsible for two world wars and the Great Depression.

I doubt many of them do, because - unlike much of gen Y - they hold a considerable level of respect for preceding generations and the sacrifices they made.

I wonder what sort of human beings Gen Y will spawn? Given the arrogance and lack of respect, plus the sense of entitlement exhibited by much of Gen Y, I doubt it will be pretty.

And when you make these sweeping comments, you might pause to consider that you are tarring whole populations with the dirty brush strokes of the few who are in power, either in governments or in big business.

Example: much of Australia is against a carbon tax because we realise it is a socialist redistribution of wealth which will damage Australia and Australians. However, if sufficient numbers of self-involved, self-aggrandising politicians believe they can derive some political capital out of this, it will happen.

By your reasoning, all of the rest of us are responsible and should, in the passing of history, be held to account for this piece of foolishness which will set Australia back.

Julia said:

Ah, just what we need: another round of baby boomer bashing/baiting/bullying.

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Freedom of speech is subjective and relative to the hat one wears.

prawn_86 said:

Specifically here in Aus:

Roads/traffic are the same/worse than 10 years ago
Health care is the same/worse than 10 years ago
Mental Health is worse than 10 years ago
Fuel prices are similar to 10 years ago
Power/Electricity prices are worse than 10 years ago
Food prices are the same/worse than 10 years ago

Click to expand...

Once a capital base is established in a society as the result of healthy economic equilibrium, it can operate for many years under unstable conditions before the base is hollowed out by lack of new capital formation.

What you are describing is simply the hollowing out process as the base feeds on itself through unproductive mechanisms which add no value in return for their demanded yield (which holds a real purchasing power equal to and often greater than the yield of real productivity).

To put it on a relative basis, Australia has for years consistently underperformed global peers in productivity and has at the same time sustained consistently higher inflation than its counterparts.

The facade covers the depleting capital base all through this process, retaining the semblance of normalcy.

New capital simply will not form in a society which is too far from a state of healthy equilibrium and without this sustaining force, a crumbling of the facade is usually the end result. How we get there is largely unpredictable, but the outcome is clear.

To put it bluntly, it isn't a plateau, rather it is the inflection point of a rather scary looking macroscale trend which plays out over many years. The end of a rollercoasters first upward slope, the descent from which suddenly reminds your gut just what gravity really is.

sinner said:

To put it on a relative basis, Australia has for years consistently underperformed global peers in productivity and has at the same time sustained consistently higher inflation than its counterparts.

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Maybe a dose of communism is what we need? Lop the fat and put all the bludgers to work.

As a proud baby boomer, I can only see one disaster that my generation foisted on the world.

And that was John Denver.

What a warbling pillock he was.

Thankfully the Dead and Jethro Tull kept him in his corner.

gg

The present financial chaos was caused by Greenspan and his cronies, they are the generation before the BBs.

Sorry to disappoint you

macca said:

The present financial chaos was caused by Greenspan and his cronies, they are the generation before the BBs.

Sorry to disappoint you

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but who purchased the notion, through our greed and ignorance, us oldies did.


Yes us older people have caused serious problems, for which I am ashamed.

I know I will be leaving my children and grand children in a worse position than I had, with less opportunities and more responsibilities. They are going to have to support a massive pension claim era, when we practically had nothing, be exposed to rampant multinational control when we had opportunity, and be required to pay what we, in our early retirement and control of the assets want them to pay, when we could forge ahead in an inexpensive world of opportunity.

Problem is that as we get older, we control the vote, so there will be pressure to fund health, aged care services etc at the expense of roads, industry, and education etc.

NOT a good situation, and I am truly worried for future generations.

Oh and I do think we need to increase the retirement age (80 is the new 60), increase super contributions and change the whole pension/social security system.

medicowallet said:

Problem is that as we get older, we control the vote, so there will be pressure to fund health, aged care services etc at the expense of roads, industry, and education etc.

NOT a good situation, and I am truly worried for future generations.

Oh and I do think we need to increase the retirement age (80 is the new 60), increase super contributions and change the whole pension/social security system.

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Any changes to pensions are probably going to leave the BB's exempt (such as one the the current proposals in the USA), meaning that once again the younger generations will have to pay.

I read somewhere (Time i think) that for the 1st time in this Western 'boom' children born today have a lower life expectancy than their parents. Makes you wonder

medicowallet said:

...

Problem is that as we get older, we control the vote, so there will be pressure to fund health, aged care services etc at the expense of roads, industry, and education etc.

NOT a good situation, and I am truly worried for future generations.

Oh and I do think we need to increase the retirement age (80 is the new 60), increase super contributions and change the whole pension/social security system.

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Maybe we dont vote once we retire? Good Luck!
Increase the retirement age, thats already happening but we have exempted ourselves (BBs) - because there ends up being a shortage of workers. remember we did bring in early retirement (55) in an attempt to leave work opportunities for our kids - we feared no jobs, and now reversed that. (But a naysayer will argue we did it to have more time retired, the mistake was not selling the super idea to support that till too late). The pension system is undergoing change, and anyone that can see beyond a decade will tell you the pension is not going to be worth more than a few crackers, and the next generations will be in a far better position with their retirement options.

But dont fret too much, we didnt quite make ourselves immortal, and we will cark it - so problem solved, unless the last few of us greedy mongrelised baby boomers sell us gold and diamond encrusted coffins so that we can take our hoarded fortunes selfishly to our graves.

And all that 'financial buggery' is employing the masses too by the way.

Good thread prawn I agree with your general thrust, was hoping for more buy in by the younger generation on the forum as I already know what the BB's response will be but really interested in peoples opinion like yourself.

Maybe they have better things to do than argue the obvious!

The BB's really have no where to hide (I am one BTW) as a group I don't think any other so far has been studied quite as much nor has as much data been collected.

Wysiwyg said:

Maybe a dose of communism is what we need? Lop the fat and put all the bludgers to work.

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Are you being silly or serious?

All that is really actually required, is for current societal incentive structures to be smashed and replaced with something sane.

prawn_86 said:

Specifically here in Aus:

Roads/traffic are the same/worse than 10 years ago
Health care is the same/worse than 10 years ago
Mental Health is worse than 10 years ago
Fuel prices are similar to 10 years ago
Power/Electricity prices are worse than 10 years ago
Food prices are the same/worse than 10 years ago

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I dont agree.
Roads. I can drive from Ballina to Brisbane in 40 minutes less time than it took 10 years ago. I'll admit there needs to be improvements but they are better than they were.

Health Care. If I had the problems 10 years ago that I have had these last few years I'd be dead.

Mental Health. Out of my department, I think! ... I hope!

Prices generally are about the same percentage of earnings as they were 10 years ago. They seem worse because most people are spending a lot more on things that they didn't have 10 years ago eg mobile phones, that they begrudge the amount necessary for food etc. Ask any food producer and they will tell you they are getting a lot less now than they were 10years ago.

nioka said:

Ask any food producer and they will tell you they are getting a lot less now than they were 10years ago.

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Thats my point. Producers are getting less (my old man is one), paying more for costs (fertiliser etc) and yet shops are charging more. So these lower returns to farmers are not being passed on to the consumer. If anything prices have increased meaning a larger margin for stores.

It's amusing to see some of the blatant denial of some of the baby boomers in this thread! I'd have thought they'd make their denial a little less transparent, and also not take things said about their whole generation so personally. I'd ask why they feel so guilty but I don't think they'd be willing to answer :

If it makes the baby boomers feel any better, I'll confidently bet that generation Y is going to screw the world up far more spectacularly than any other. I'm generation X for what it's worth (the ones in between who tend to get ignored )

Sdajii said:

If it makes the baby boomers feel any better, I'll confidently bet that generation Y is going to screw the world up far more spectacularly than any other. I'm generation X for what it's worth (the ones in between who tend to get ignored )

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Yeah, I tend to agree with the above

prawn_86 said:

In the late 80's when they were younger and more reckless rampant speculation nearly bought the market undone.

Fifteen odd years later they then started betting on te next generation and again this speculation bought about the tech crash.

Late 2000's saw CDOs and MBS bring the financial world to a standstill yet again. While they did not create these products, it was the boomers who had moved to higher positions within the corporate world and either didnt understand what was happening, or turned a blind eye to it in order to profit.

Now we enter 2010's, BB's have been in corporate and politcal power for approximately 10 years and what has changed since 10 years ago?

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So, just curious Prawn. What caused the other bubbles to pop? You've used a nice little subset of data to try and support your argument but lets take a somewhat wider view. What causes all those bubbles in the market prior to the BB's coming in and stuffing everything up? /sarcasm.

What about 1974?
How about 1929?
How about 1891?

In fact just go back for me and tell us about each of the events that occurred on average about 8 years apart since 1875 and relate them to the baby boomers for me will you? If you can't do that - then perhaps market bubbles shouldn't be laid at the feet of just one generation.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

What worries me Prawn is not what BB's have done in the past, or how easy they have had it compared to any other generation or anything like that. What worries me is that currently 5 people are employed for every 1 retired. Give it 20 -30 years and that number will drop to 2.7 people employed for every 1 retired.

Scary eh? But what are we going to do? Line them up against a wall when the revolution comes?

Cheers
Sir O