Like a snowball speeding down a mountain

[SoCalDem]

It gathers momentum as it heads downhill..

What we have is the "largest generation" aging steadily, and being more and more tentative and fearful as they age. How do I know this? I AM one of them. Boomers grew up believing that they (we) truly were going to succeed, and many of us did, but millions more just did okay...not great, but okay.

Boomers got jobs, had kids, bought houses & cars.... did all the things they/we were "expected" to do. They saw THEIR parents (for the most part) being able to retire after 25- 30 years at a job (career), and they expected that their turn would also come. We all learned, as children, to "take turns".

What they (we) did NOT see coming, was that their parents would be the LAST of a two-generation, pre/post-WWII experiment, and that things would be very different at the end of their own lives...and whatever they had planned for their own children would not be happening (for most of them).

None of this happened overnight, but time has a way of accumulating things, and when many/most of us were not paying close attention, the "rules of the game" were being changed. We morphed into a dog-eat-dog society, where grabbing & getting is valued more than caring & sharing. We are a society that worships wealth & acquisition, and that scorns failure to achieve them.

Most of society still clings to the belief that if they work hard, they too will succeed, but the tools to succeed are increasingly withheld from them.

Virtually zero interest on money saved, invisible (and incorrectly reported) inflation , multiple recessions, stagnant/decreasing wages, a diploma with a $40K+ debt attached, stripped-away home equity, crushed unions, dissolved/unfunded pensions, downsized/outsourced jobs (and healthcare along with them) ...all of these have been things we have had to deal with at the same time as the children of boomers struggle with their inability to afford college, find jobs, homes of their own, or even dare to fall in love & marry.

These younger ones are afraid & unable to grow up, and millions of them never left home or if they did, many have had to return. Often they are returning to homes of Boomer-parents who got the triple-whammy of having their grown up kids still with them, at the time in their lives that their own elderly parents are declining, and are with them as well..or are receiving financial help from them. This is happening to them as they lose their own jobs and health/wealth.

A robust family (early on) that could support them all on one full-time job and one part-time job (or no other job, if Mom stayed home with the kids) is now stretched to the max, with no relief in sight.

The pensions of old, were replaced by gambling on 401-ks which have spectacularly underperformed and the ubiquitous pink-slip at age 50-something.

Our economy has been regularly scrubbed (of wealth) by the ones at the tippy top of society because they have the tools and the know-how to repeatedly do it, and because they feel entitled to have it all..

We thought we would be okay.. Okay works for a while, but not forever. "Okay" is a beloved old car that you keep fixing, but sooner or later you have to just let it go, and get a newer one. Okay is what we have held to for far too many years, and now it's pouring rain, the old car won't start, and we are standing in the driveway, soaking wet, and wishing we had replaced that $#!&*^% piece of junk car a long time ago..

Soon there will be more "room" when the Boomers have passed on. Hopefully, that "room" will allow for truly National Healthcare for ALL, and with that, a society where people are free to quit a lousy job, and when people can start businesses because they do not have to get benefits from an employer. Maybe there will be a more bold and activist group that will emerge, ready to really shake things up, and start to take back from the takers-at-the-top.


I won't be here to see it happen, but I really hope it happens for our country.

[PDJane]

1. It's not room that's needed.

What is needed is the political will to do something about corporate overreach, the police state, and unequal taxation. If we don't push for exactly that, the next generation will have to fight like hell not to be serfs.

[DJ13]

2. Still excellent!

Thank you.

[raccoon]

3. I had to really search for this thread, so kick. nt

[Mojorabbit]

4. K and R nt