Stand On Shoulders or Dig a Hole

Whenever I travel, or play pickle ball or most anywhere for that matter, I like to engage in conversations with people younger than me. The reality is most people are younger than me, wow, that’s depressing.

Recently I was visiting with a successful young lady who manages a team for the company for which she works. At one point, she asked me who old I was. When I told her, I got the feeling her next question would be, “did you fight in the Civil War?”

For the record, I did not, nor WWI or WWII thank you very much.

Then she said, my generation stands on your generation’s shoulders. Which is kind of like saying, “how was it farming with a horse”. Well in all fairness, one of my uncles still had his farming horses when I was little even though he was one of the first in the area to buy a tractor. I probably should not have told her the farm I lived on was very poor, no running water, and I went to country school. Instead of old, I prefer to think of myself as an excellent fine wine from an earlier vintage.

Anyway, as bright and talented as she is, she is wrong about the generation thing. She and most everyone else who are younger than boomers are not standing on our shoulders, they are trying to dig themselves out from the hole we dug. And the hole we dug is very deep.

I have written about this, but look at the per capita share of the federal deficit in 2000 compared to today. Every child born in America has a federal debt of about $112,000. That’s insane.

Every American in their 30’s or 40s for that matter have a financial responsibility for debt they had very little to do with. During the second Bush Administration, taxes were cut twice and we declared two wars. That’s beyond stupid and immoral. It’s like peeing in your pants because it feels good and than make someone else wear the pants, in this case, younger generations. Trump cut taxes in his first Administration. HIs corporate tax cuts enabled corporations to have the cash to buy back their own stock reducing the shares making the rest of shares, owned primarily by wealthy people, increase in value. The federal deficit under Trump went up almost $8 Trillion. So essentially Trump and his Administration put all Americans in more debt so he and his billionaire buddies could get richer.

When I went to college in MN, if a student worked a 1,000 hours a minimum wage he/she could pay tuition room board at a pubic state university. Today, if you work 1,000 hours at minimum wage, your homeless. That is the reason today’s graduates have so much student debt. It is also why it taking longer and longer for people starting out to buy their first house.

In the 60s and 70s, worker were expected to work for the same company their whole careers. Today, most every corporate worker knows they could show up in the morning and be laid off in the afternoon. Yet many employers complain there is no employee loyalty. Well buddy, it works both ways.

Every wonder what happened to corporate pension plans. In the 80s, and 90s corporate raiders bought companies, gutted the pension plans, then sold what was left over of the company. Many times, I had client whose pension was reduced or ended in the time it took to read a letter saying what happen to the pension. Some of the very wealthy who some Americans worship today made their money legally stealing from workers.

When my mom was born women could not vote. When I was in college, women fought for health care rights. Today women are fighting for rights they have lost. Women’s rights should be going forward, not backwards. And for the record, anyone who tells any of my granddaughters what she can do with her body has to go thru me.

The US has the most expensive and inefficient health care in the world. Our per capita cost of health care is significantly higher then the next closest country, Switzerland and almost twice the cost of our neighbor to the north, Canada. Many in my generation do not want socialized medicine, but Medicare recipients pay about 15% total Medicare costs, workers pay about 35% and the rest by taxpayers. We have socialized medicine, we are just bad at it.

My father had polio, barely survived it and was crippled the rest of his life. Now we have a leader of the CDC who thinks vaccines are a hoax. Whose dumber, him or the baby boomers who supported him.

Against overwhelming scientific evidence, many in my generation think climate change is not happening. In fact, many boomers supported the current President and Administration which cut the budgets for NOAA and NWS which are the US’s two leading tools to study, plan for and hopefully mitigate the effects of climate change. That’s the equivalent of planning for cancer by firing all the oncologists.

I could go on but you get the picture. Baby Boomers dug the hole following generations have to climb out of. Not me personally, or many I know in my generation. But it happened on our watch.

We cannot go backward and undo the damage we have done. But we can go forward and help fill the hole we created. And for my young friend(s), I am sorry. I will do my best to be your advocate.

I have been told more than once I have accumulated some wisdom. Hopefully that is true. I would hate to think I have been around this long and gotten dumber. That would be really sad, but it does seem to be the case for a lot boomers.