To your readers from X, your thesis on Boomers has been a long gestating gnawing that has finally taken bite. My parents were at the end of what you call the Silent Generation, what we called here in America, the greatest generation. They were the children of Italian immigrant, my grandfather from Catanzaro Calabria and my mother primarily Sicilian. They worked hard, had few educational opportunities, and while my mother is alive, will leave nothing of monetary value when she's gone.
I am at the beginning of Gen X, a few years removed from the Baby Boomers, and I am circa 1966. I joined the military after school, worked incessantly (what you might call grind culture), took every assignment I could get to move up until one day I was CEO. I worked exceptionally hard and no one gave me anything. I most assuredly will do better financially in life than my own son, a chiropractor, who barely makes more in 2025 than I did in 1990, yet he has a US dollar eroded by inflation, that for every $1 I earned then, he needs to earn $2.45 now. Home prices alone, and the idea of a 50 Year Mortgage, this is another unsustainable brick on the road to demise of Western Civilization.
All of this said, and the Boomers were more lucky than incessantly evil. They played the game that was before them to be played. They rode a wave of prosperity that was born on the backs of the deaths of 70-85 Million worldwide deaths in World War 2 and the explosion of goods, services and technologies that the war machine developed (shout out plastics, shout out PFAS, , microwaves, TVs and advanced manufacturing). I don't begrudge the Boomers for the wealth, I begrudge them for the attitudes that are tearing about the fabric of society that matter to me: faith, family, respect for all life, decency. They took what was good and replaced with abortion, destruction of the family and pervasive drug use (shoutout Boomers, yeah!)
My favorite part of being CEO is working with the younger generations and getting to know them as people. Conditions are harder for them when i left the military and started my family, but many of them embrace the ideals of faith and family again. I hope my anecdotal views aren't wrong.
The world is different than it was half a century ago. The conditions are not the same, the playing field is not level, the headwinds stronger. The next generations will adapt, perhaps AI will give young families a chance to work less and earn enough to not scrape by. My faith requires me to pray and hope for the best.
I don't blame the Boomers for their old ways or the bootstrap mentality, that thinking was baked into American DNA long before them going back to how this country was colonized and settled.
One thing I think about is just how different our world is from theirs on a fundamental level. The technology gap alone means we're basically living in a different reality. Their version of hard times and our version aren't really comparable, and a lot of them just don't have the frame of reference to see that. Maybe it's malice, maybe it's just ignorance.
And honestly, would we have been any different if we were dealt the same hand? If buying a home was easy, if the economy rewarded you, it's hard to say we wouldn't have made the same choices.
Boomers may very well be the worst generation in our eyes, and maybe that's valid, they didn't set the generations behind them up for success. But in their eyes, they did their part. They were left to figure it out themselves, the conditions they were given worked out for them, and they didn't have handouts or help. So naturally they believe we can do the same. Do they understand that our conditions aren't the same as theirs? No, and that gap in understanding shows. But for me the bigger problem is the political and corporate machinery that created these conditions in the first place.
Well written and solid points throughout, I agree boomers have been a big part of the problem, but in my eyes that problem starts with the government and the systems that shaped them and that they continued to feed.
Although I agree with some of these things, as a member of gen-z who despises his generation I completely disagree with you: I am mortified that I am going to have to live my life in whatever system people of my age or millennials and younger are going to create. I too am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the hippies from the sixties, but it is also far too premature to believe that future generations will not similarly mock our proclivities to life online. We still have the rest of our lives to make our own mistakes, so we should be less quick to judge.
Although economic reasons for a dramatic decline in birth-rates could be one possible explanation, I am not convinced that this is the case, or at least the main reason. There have been far more brutal economic conditions in history and human beings still spawned offspring to continue the species after they shuffled off their mortal coil. It would not explain why gen-z is statistically even having far less sex than any other generation on record long before they have to worry about paying bills, and that this is seemingly only ever-increasing. There must be some other reason that is not properly understood. As for 'gen-z works and studies harder' you should not fall into generalities on both ends, especially given how rare it is to find members of gen-z who do something as simple as reading and writing. I find this to be a very strange judgment indeed given that all sorts of professors or TAs in departments across the board are openly saying that they are drastically lowering the standards for academic excellence.
I took particular issue with this casual remark: 'The recent interview between Piers Morgan and Nick Fuentes pointed to a deeper, psychological fracture: Younger generations are responding with mockery to the Boomers’ hypocrisy of moral superiority. They’re no longer engaging with measured, reasonable responses, but with a form of defiance rooted in contempt. There is a reason for this sentiment, however disagreeable it may appear.' Although I am not a particular fan of Piers Morgan, you neglected to say what Nick Fuentes and his 'appearance of disagreeability' is: a disgusting holocaust denying little brat with no respect at all to the victims of the Shoah or the Second World War. There are many, many of these youths that truly are this radical on both the left and the right without having a clue what they are talking about, that anyone with common sense can see is profoundly concerning. If people like Mr. Fuentes is even in the slightest representative of our generation, or those who trivialize human rights abuses in the Eastern bloc countries, I will take the boomers any day.
What I am by far the most envious of boomers - or even older generations for that matter - is life without the internet rather than the affordability to own a house, where people actually did things in-person. What I resent the most from boomers is the tendency to create a perpetual childhood for their offspring with or without their consent.
I appreciate the article, but the vitriolic, vociferous demonization of all boomers and to make gen-z completely free from blame I found unfair. It is also important to distinguish boomers from the West with their generation worldwide, which I am sure that not all of this applies.
This I would say is an inherently complicated and difficult subject. I have an aversion to generational stereotyping and letting conspicuous exceptions stand as a substitute for actual experience. Probably because I have been prone to it myself and once indulged in a very similar rant against the narcissistic and selfish greed of the Boomers. Then I have seen all the older people in the food line, talked to elderly neighbors who are struggling and seen my own Boomer parents divorce and go in very different directions: one the way of the selfish narcissist and the other the way of the caring, responsible parent.
I suppose, like any generalization—and I don’t mean “generalization” in the pejorative sense—your summary of the Boomers is impossible to reconcile with the individuals I encounter in real life. Obviously, a few Boomers do epitomize the characteristics you point out, and have become the generation’s figureheads. But how can these few conspicuous individuals represent an entire generation? The truth of the matter is that Boomers are all kinds of people. Some oligarchs and gerontocrats, some living in genteel poverty, some victims of the narcissism and greed of a few assholes, some very creative and enlightened individuals who contribute greatly to society. Also, remember that there is no deficit of selfish, covetous assholes among the Millennials. Indeed, there may be more of these narcissists among your own generation. You should consider freeing yourself from your prejudices before freeing yourself from the Boomers.
Well, if there's one thing we can learn from Boomers, is that generational rebelliousness ends up with stupidity (a stupidity of which we're still paying the price, just look at the nonsensical recent ruling of the Constitutional Court in Italy). I can't see many differences with the grievances of 1968 or
the ones of the Decembrists. The boomers were lucky as they found themselves in the age of maximum wealth in the West. But squandering private wealth won't accomplish anything, I don't see any sort of creative impulse, any real hunger for life. At most, a hunger for an undeserved status, which is the fuel of revolutions. But I doubt it will happen. GenZ is going to be the wealthiest generation ever, as the transfer of capital by inheritance happens around mid-2030s. Most Zoomers know that and are just waiting.
Thanks for the reminder. I wondered if we did. And this Gen Xer plans on helping her Gen Z kids buy that house and if they want it, help care for the kids. I don't need the government to tell me to be a good parent.
Not sure why you have to frame migration as something bad, its not. And those people are just scapegoats by right-wing populists who are mostly boomers 😅
A lot of problems coming from migration can be solved with efficient wealth redistribution, so we should focus on this matter.
Great article Bocchi… but to me, this all comes back to 9/11… and the fact that Bin Laden, has thus far won the war of ideologies. The amount of State instituted financial Inflation/quantitative easing and the like, have left us with what we see.. a breakdown of cohesive culture and scarce possibilities for the you… even myself, I wonder how much longer I have as a late 40’s successful GenX Exec…..
Covid only exasperated the 9/11 issue by a factor of 3 or more.
I have three children, and can think of only making the most amount of wealth I can in the next 20 years, so that they may have a shot, because on their own I am not sure it’s a fair shake.
It’s a different time, and one I think most of the west never anticipated post WW2. The rise of China, and Russia now powerful again..
I’m not a boomer, close, but Gen X here. The boomers are a terrible generation. I’ve seen it up close and first hand for most of my life. That said, they didn’t create the conditions that led to them. The Great War did, the Marshall Plan did, the post war spending and the rapid expansion of technology, transportation and globalization did. They benefited from being in the right places at the right times.
A reset is in order. The only question in my mind now is will this be a bloodless revolution or not?
I genuinely find your Boomer writing interesting, even though little reflects my life’s experiences and observations, even though I am ‘just’ in the that age category. But it helps to resist confirmation bias, for me.
And a very small percentage of people I know aged +62 would nicely fit into the characterisation that you described. Perhaps that applies to the other age groups, that generalisations by nature can be unsubtle.
Though the generation imbalance is clearly real, but an agreeable solution to all appears unattainable. Perhaps a younger generation revolution s the only way to resolve it, and that may be the cycle going forward, when the current younger generations become the older ones.
To your readers from X, your thesis on Boomers has been a long gestating gnawing that has finally taken bite. My parents were at the end of what you call the Silent Generation, what we called here in America, the greatest generation. They were the children of Italian immigrant, my grandfather from Catanzaro Calabria and my mother primarily Sicilian. They worked hard, had few educational opportunities, and while my mother is alive, will leave nothing of monetary value when she's gone.
I am at the beginning of Gen X, a few years removed from the Baby Boomers, and I am circa 1966. I joined the military after school, worked incessantly (what you might call grind culture), took every assignment I could get to move up until one day I was CEO. I worked exceptionally hard and no one gave me anything. I most assuredly will do better financially in life than my own son, a chiropractor, who barely makes more in 2025 than I did in 1990, yet he has a US dollar eroded by inflation, that for every $1 I earned then, he needs to earn $2.45 now. Home prices alone, and the idea of a 50 Year Mortgage, this is another unsustainable brick on the road to demise of Western Civilization.
All of this said, and the Boomers were more lucky than incessantly evil. They played the game that was before them to be played. They rode a wave of prosperity that was born on the backs of the deaths of 70-85 Million worldwide deaths in World War 2 and the explosion of goods, services and technologies that the war machine developed (shout out plastics, shout out PFAS, , microwaves, TVs and advanced manufacturing). I don't begrudge the Boomers for the wealth, I begrudge them for the attitudes that are tearing about the fabric of society that matter to me: faith, family, respect for all life, decency. They took what was good and replaced with abortion, destruction of the family and pervasive drug use (shoutout Boomers, yeah!)
My favorite part of being CEO is working with the younger generations and getting to know them as people. Conditions are harder for them when i left the military and started my family, but many of them embrace the ideals of faith and family again. I hope my anecdotal views aren't wrong.
The world is different than it was half a century ago. The conditions are not the same, the playing field is not level, the headwinds stronger. The next generations will adapt, perhaps AI will give young families a chance to work less and earn enough to not scrape by. My faith requires me to pray and hope for the best.
Really enjoyed this piece, a lot of valid points.
I don't blame the Boomers for their old ways or the bootstrap mentality, that thinking was baked into American DNA long before them going back to how this country was colonized and settled.
One thing I think about is just how different our world is from theirs on a fundamental level. The technology gap alone means we're basically living in a different reality. Their version of hard times and our version aren't really comparable, and a lot of them just don't have the frame of reference to see that. Maybe it's malice, maybe it's just ignorance.
And honestly, would we have been any different if we were dealt the same hand? If buying a home was easy, if the economy rewarded you, it's hard to say we wouldn't have made the same choices.
Boomers may very well be the worst generation in our eyes, and maybe that's valid, they didn't set the generations behind them up for success. But in their eyes, they did their part. They were left to figure it out themselves, the conditions they were given worked out for them, and they didn't have handouts or help. So naturally they believe we can do the same. Do they understand that our conditions aren't the same as theirs? No, and that gap in understanding shows. But for me the bigger problem is the political and corporate machinery that created these conditions in the first place.
Well written and solid points throughout, I agree boomers have been a big part of the problem, but in my eyes that problem starts with the government and the systems that shaped them and that they continued to feed.
Just the thoughts of a Millennial.
Great article!
Although I agree with some of these things, as a member of gen-z who despises his generation I completely disagree with you: I am mortified that I am going to have to live my life in whatever system people of my age or millennials and younger are going to create. I too am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the hippies from the sixties, but it is also far too premature to believe that future generations will not similarly mock our proclivities to life online. We still have the rest of our lives to make our own mistakes, so we should be less quick to judge.
Although economic reasons for a dramatic decline in birth-rates could be one possible explanation, I am not convinced that this is the case, or at least the main reason. There have been far more brutal economic conditions in history and human beings still spawned offspring to continue the species after they shuffled off their mortal coil. It would not explain why gen-z is statistically even having far less sex than any other generation on record long before they have to worry about paying bills, and that this is seemingly only ever-increasing. There must be some other reason that is not properly understood. As for 'gen-z works and studies harder' you should not fall into generalities on both ends, especially given how rare it is to find members of gen-z who do something as simple as reading and writing. I find this to be a very strange judgment indeed given that all sorts of professors or TAs in departments across the board are openly saying that they are drastically lowering the standards for academic excellence.
I took particular issue with this casual remark: 'The recent interview between Piers Morgan and Nick Fuentes pointed to a deeper, psychological fracture: Younger generations are responding with mockery to the Boomers’ hypocrisy of moral superiority. They’re no longer engaging with measured, reasonable responses, but with a form of defiance rooted in contempt. There is a reason for this sentiment, however disagreeable it may appear.' Although I am not a particular fan of Piers Morgan, you neglected to say what Nick Fuentes and his 'appearance of disagreeability' is: a disgusting holocaust denying little brat with no respect at all to the victims of the Shoah or the Second World War. There are many, many of these youths that truly are this radical on both the left and the right without having a clue what they are talking about, that anyone with common sense can see is profoundly concerning. If people like Mr. Fuentes is even in the slightest representative of our generation, or those who trivialize human rights abuses in the Eastern bloc countries, I will take the boomers any day.
What I am by far the most envious of boomers - or even older generations for that matter - is life without the internet rather than the affordability to own a house, where people actually did things in-person. What I resent the most from boomers is the tendency to create a perpetual childhood for their offspring with or without their consent.
I appreciate the article, but the vitriolic, vociferous demonization of all boomers and to make gen-z completely free from blame I found unfair. It is also important to distinguish boomers from the West with their generation worldwide, which I am sure that not all of this applies.
This I would say is an inherently complicated and difficult subject. I have an aversion to generational stereotyping and letting conspicuous exceptions stand as a substitute for actual experience. Probably because I have been prone to it myself and once indulged in a very similar rant against the narcissistic and selfish greed of the Boomers. Then I have seen all the older people in the food line, talked to elderly neighbors who are struggling and seen my own Boomer parents divorce and go in very different directions: one the way of the selfish narcissist and the other the way of the caring, responsible parent.
I suppose, like any generalization—and I don’t mean “generalization” in the pejorative sense—your summary of the Boomers is impossible to reconcile with the individuals I encounter in real life. Obviously, a few Boomers do epitomize the characteristics you point out, and have become the generation’s figureheads. But how can these few conspicuous individuals represent an entire generation? The truth of the matter is that Boomers are all kinds of people. Some oligarchs and gerontocrats, some living in genteel poverty, some victims of the narcissism and greed of a few assholes, some very creative and enlightened individuals who contribute greatly to society. Also, remember that there is no deficit of selfish, covetous assholes among the Millennials. Indeed, there may be more of these narcissists among your own generation. You should consider freeing yourself from your prejudices before freeing yourself from the Boomers.
Well, if there's one thing we can learn from Boomers, is that generational rebelliousness ends up with stupidity (a stupidity of which we're still paying the price, just look at the nonsensical recent ruling of the Constitutional Court in Italy). I can't see many differences with the grievances of 1968 or
the ones of the Decembrists. The boomers were lucky as they found themselves in the age of maximum wealth in the West. But squandering private wealth won't accomplish anything, I don't see any sort of creative impulse, any real hunger for life. At most, a hunger for an undeserved status, which is the fuel of revolutions. But I doubt it will happen. GenZ is going to be the wealthiest generation ever, as the transfer of capital by inheritance happens around mid-2030s. Most Zoomers know that and are just waiting.
Gen X exists
Thanks for the reminder. I wondered if we did. And this Gen Xer plans on helping her Gen Z kids buy that house and if they want it, help care for the kids. I don't need the government to tell me to be a good parent.
Interesting article!
Not sure why you have to frame migration as something bad, its not. And those people are just scapegoats by right-wing populists who are mostly boomers 😅
A lot of problems coming from migration can be solved with efficient wealth redistribution, so we should focus on this matter.
Great article Bocchi… but to me, this all comes back to 9/11… and the fact that Bin Laden, has thus far won the war of ideologies. The amount of State instituted financial Inflation/quantitative easing and the like, have left us with what we see.. a breakdown of cohesive culture and scarce possibilities for the you… even myself, I wonder how much longer I have as a late 40’s successful GenX Exec…..
Covid only exasperated the 9/11 issue by a factor of 3 or more.
I have three children, and can think of only making the most amount of wealth I can in the next 20 years, so that they may have a shot, because on their own I am not sure it’s a fair shake.
It’s a different time, and one I think most of the west never anticipated post WW2. The rise of China, and Russia now powerful again..
GIA is quaking for sure…
I’m an Atheist mang’- calling them as I see them.
Enlightening, edifying, and entertaining essay. I'm with you, Young Lady. Godspeed
I’m not a boomer, close, but Gen X here. The boomers are a terrible generation. I’ve seen it up close and first hand for most of my life. That said, they didn’t create the conditions that led to them. The Great War did, the Marshall Plan did, the post war spending and the rapid expansion of technology, transportation and globalization did. They benefited from being in the right places at the right times.
A reset is in order. The only question in my mind now is will this be a bloodless revolution or not?
Truly nailed here Alessandra 🎯. The continual print of money around the world has exacerbated the problem between generations.
Whew…why are you so focused on someone else’s wealth? Also, why box yourself into all these categories?
Thank you for your comment, Boomer. You managed to prove my point by exemplifying the thesis perfectly.
You don't need an answer because your question was disingenuous. Speaking of dramatic, you seem to have taken this quite personally. I wonder why.
I genuinely find your Boomer writing interesting, even though little reflects my life’s experiences and observations, even though I am ‘just’ in the that age category. But it helps to resist confirmation bias, for me.
And a very small percentage of people I know aged +62 would nicely fit into the characterisation that you described. Perhaps that applies to the other age groups, that generalisations by nature can be unsubtle.
Though the generation imbalance is clearly real, but an agreeable solution to all appears unattainable. Perhaps a younger generation revolution s the only way to resolve it, and that may be the cycle going forward, when the current younger generations become the older ones.