No, this post isn’t what you think it is. Okay, maybe it is a little but it’s more nuanced than what you’re expecting.
There’s obviously a pretty big generational divide going on these days between boomers and millennials, Gen Z and some Gen Xers. I’m going to be honest about where I’m coming from right upfront. For at least the past 10 years, I’ve been saying that boomers have been the worst electorate in modern history. WAIT! This is not a slam on boomers post. Just be patient.
The last 40 years have been by far, the worst for the working class since the electorate included women and black people. Wages have been completely flat while productivity continues to rise. There isn’t much of a middle class left, and we’re back to 1929 levels of income inequality. The preceding 40 years were much better for people who depend on a pay check to provide for their families. During that 40 year period, we saw The New Deal, the implementation of Medicare, and The Voting Rights act. Granted, the New Deal left out large swaths of women and African Americans but it helped to create a middle class in America when none had previously existed. LBJ signed Medicare into law and enacted it within one year.
This was an era of bold, sweeping changes that radically changed our country for the better. It was not a perfect era by any means, but it was significantly better than the subsequent 40 years.
The next 40 years were about selfishness and fear. It all started in earnest in 1980 when Americans were given a choice between a president who was telling them to conserve, and a guy who encouraged Americans to take out second mortgages on their homes so that they could have nice things. Prior to Reagan, Americans saved up, put down 20% to buy a house, and then paid off their mortgages for the next 20 – 30 years. And then, they left their fully paid off home to their kids. The notion of using your home as an ATM was not widespread and it certainly wasn’t baked into the culture. But boomers didn’t want to do that. They wanted to have nice things, whether they could afford them or not.
Why? What changed? I have a theory. I’ve always said that conservatism is a luxury item. People get selfish and self absorbed when things are going well. It’s really just human nature. When you have stuff, you become less concerned with others and more concerned with protecting your stuff and amassing more stuff. And naturally, you and you alone are the reason why you were able to get that stuff, so government needs to stay out of the way and let you go about the task of getting more stuff.
None of that is true, but it’s how humans are wired to think. Boomers were the recipients of all of the benefits of The New Deal and LBJ’s reforms, which afforded them the luxury of being selfish and demanding that government get out of their way.
The Silent Generation on the other hand, had to be liberal. Their formative years were The Great Depression. When you grow up in a society where there are no opportunities to succeed no matter how hard you’re willing to work, you want the government to help create the opportunities that you don’t have. The Silent Generation voted for FDR four times because his wide-eyed socialist ways were working in a big way. And you know what happened to republicans after that? They became flaming liberals. Dwight Eisenhower strengthened Social Security (and a lot of The New Deal), increased the minimum wage, created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, created the Interstate Highway System, and increased the top marginal tax rate to 91%. You read that correctly: ninety-one percent. This forced corporate executives to reinvest in their companies and ensured that vulture capitalism like Bain’s business model wasn’t possible. Richard Nixon created the EPA, ended the draft and (get this) passed a universal basic income bill through the house. That’s right, Richard Nixon wanted every American to receive a $10,000 a year safety net. And you know what? 90% of Americans were in favor of it.
This Hunger Games culture that we have now is relatively new, and it started with Reagan’s infamous, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help” mantra. I don’t blame boomers for partaking in the luxury that is conservatism. As I said, I think this is just human nature and I really don’t think they could have turned out any other way anymore than the Silent Generation could have turned out differently than they did.
Millennials, you should know that you would have turned out the same way if you grew up in the same country that boomers grew up in.
I have to digress for a minute to make this about me so that you understand my perspective. My family moved to the US from Iran when I was three years old. My father was a blue collar, (chef) immigrant, Reagan republican. I am part of Gen X. I wasn’t paying much attention to the election in 1980 because I was too busy being ten years old, but I knew that my father loved Reagan. I clearly remember Reagan’s inauguration. It was a split screen of Reagan being sworn in on one side of the screen, and the hostages being freed from Iran on the other side. The narrative that the country was fed (and ate) was that the Ayatollahs were so scared of the b-list movie actor, that they released the hostages before he could do anything mean to them. This was a narrative that my otherwise intelligent, Iranian father believed. As an 11 year old, I found this to be preposterous and knew that an evil and unholy deal had been made to put that image on our tv screens. Years later, a then former Iranian intelligence operative wrote a book in which he stated that Reagan traded arms in exchange for the release of the hostages. Those negotiations were done before he had any authority to make such a deal. That day, inauguration day 1981 was when I realized that I need to learn everything I could about politics.
Believe it or not, lots of immigrants were republicans at that time. They believed in the American dream, which still existed. They believed that if you work hard enough in America, you can achieve anything you want to. And they could, for a little while longer.
And then along came Bill Clinton. Here we had a democrat running on “ending welfare as we have come to know it”. Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound very FDR or LBJish. But again, when things are going well, you have the luxury of conservatively wanting to make sure that no one else is taking your stuff. When he finally managed to reform welfare, the bill was called, ‘‘Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996’’. And this was supposed to be a liberal. Here’s the part of his 1996 State Of The Union address that made my skin crawl:
And with that, neoliberalism became embedded in the American culture and telling the difference between a republican and a democrat became more difficult because both sides agreed that government was bad and corporations know best. The Overton Window massively shifted, The Hunger Games began and America went from supporting a universal basic income to internalizing the idea that if you’re poor, it’s because of some moral failing on your part.
I write all this to let millennials and gen z know that there’s a reason why boomers are the way they are, just like there’s a reason why you guys are the way you are. You grew up in completely different countries. So maybe you can stop with the derisive “okay boomer” and either accept that boomers are from mars and millennials are from venus, or make an effort to communicate in a way that’s relatable to the other generation.
Either way is fine because you, millennials, are finally the majority of the electorate. In the last midterm, gen x, millennials, and gen z outnumbered boomers in voting. You guys are at the helm now, and there’s probably not much of a reason to fight with boomers for much longer. By the next presidential election, they will be almost entirely irrelevant.
And boomers, please stop referring to millennials as entitled or spoiled. That’s honestly a bridge too far for your generation. Millennials have none of the advantages you had and squandered. If you don’t want to hear them and learn why their perspective is so different from yours, at least refrain from talking down to them. You are not going to talk them into the moderate incrementalism that you’ve been trying for the past 40 years, and you’re definitely not going to do it with insults. Maybe you can pass the torch with some graciousness?
Just a thought.
