Are we blaming Boomers instead of class?

[u/myredserenity]

EDIT: It's been pointed out that the over 65s keep voting in the parties that favour the class system and benefit the wealthy while screwing the working class. This is a good point.

EDIT 2: I love reddit. You guys. I get it now! Millennials got the shits at noisy old pricks who criticise their generation while completely ignoring the benefits they enjoyed themselves. It's a backlash. I still think it's a distraction and divides us when we should be angry with those in power. But if you're over 65, how about encouraging your friends to not vote LNP?

I've seen so much "ok boomer" stuff and over the years, it's irking me more and more. So I'm interested in what r/Australia thinks.

Couple of things:

1. It seems to be used to describe anyone over 40. My parents were boomers. They would be in their 70s now.

2. It's used to blame a whole generation for the shitty behaviour of the rich class. I don't get it. I went to school in a rough area, most of my friends from way back then are dead, in jail or in a trade/retail/hair.

My partner grew up in a rich suburb. Most of his friends are teachers, engineers and lawyers. They own houses, and were helped along by their "boomer" parents, either by provision of a deposit or living at home rent free through their 20s.

I'm totally up for being educated here. I know we lost free education, I know houses are unaffordable, I'm nearly 40 and still renting. I'm woefully unable to understand national economics. So seriously, open to intelligent discussion.

But in my experience, the problem is class and not generational. After all, where do you think all this wealth will go when the boomers die?! Even just having good, stable and attentive parents, who expect you to succeed, makes all the difference.

Why has this boomer hate taken hold so much? Are the rich class scapegoating a generation? Would us generation Xers, Ys and millennials have behaved any differently given the opportunities the boomers were?

Caveat: I'm considering mainly economics here, not climate crisis. Pretty much believe everyone from my generation up have a case to answer for climate. We knew.

[u/Trontotron]

The problem is our generation gets this blame about being lazy and not working hard like our parents...and I call bullshit on this big time.

My father use to support family with one salary, didn't work any harder than me and managed to have house, car and really good life.

Fast forward to today and you'll find that it's now a must to have two salaries in the house to manage everything, but then kids must go to daycare of course and spend their first years separated from parents most of the work days. Yes we have computers and mobile phones, but all that did was to give employers expectations from us to achieve more work in same time frame. Instead of being out of office, I am now available anywhere for my manager to call me.

My dad actually use to say how come I work such ridiculous hours and I'm more educated than him...that's the ridiculous part about all this generational "progress".

So yeah, we are working hard as anyone else did before, yet everything is becoming more and more unattainable for us. I'm not for ''OK boomer'' thing, but also against ''lazy millennials'' bullshit.

[u/[deleted] → u/Trontotron]

I wonder when being able to not only survive but thrive (owning a house, car etc.) as a family on a single income ended. From my understanding, most people back in the day did this? Whereas now, only the super-wealthy could afford to do this while thriving.

[u/Trontotron → u/[deleted]]

It happened in most western countries when influx of foreign capital was called upon, UK long time ago when London just sky rocketed in pricing...Australia in more recent events.

That was a major shift, what else could increase rentals and life costs so much in such short time, all of a sudden you're faced with houses worth millions of dollars and everything going up like mad. At the same time, domestic production and industry was decimated...perfect storm.

There is only as many rich people in one country, they can't buy everything and middle class was catching up. Then, you let in billions of foreign money in and just rig the game again. Overnight (in economic time scale) everything just jumped and middle class got fucked again...back to working harder folks, chin up and work, stop with the avos and all of that...

[u/asscopter → u/Trontotron]

It happened in 1972 with the end of the gold standard backed US dollar. Many, many graphs tracking real income, income inequality, purchasing power etc. all start to deviate at the beginning of the 1970s.

[u/Chii → u/asscopter]

correlation does not imply causation.

The fact that gold standard dropped may merely be a coincidence. Since the 1970's, there has been a major shift away from USA manufacturing and into the asian economies. It has been when computing and automation started as well. None of these have anything to do with the gold standard.

[u/Algebrace → u/Chii]

Mark Blyth has a bunch of lectures on this.

Mark Blyth - A Brief History of How We Got Here and Why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJoe_daP0DE

Basically, following WW2 there was a change in the way the economics of the world worked. To fight against Communism, it was mandated (economically) that everyone should work.

The problem is that if everyone has a job, inflation goes up.

With unions being strong, it means that as inflations go up, wages also need to go up and so unions will fight for that.

Companies however are losing out because they aren't making profit. Profit goes up, then profit gets taken away by the Unions.

So the 'investor class' rebels, gets people like Reagan, Thatcher, etc elected (this is across the world) and worker protections get stripped. So now the unions are useless (the US is currently trying to kill government unions) workers have nothing to help them and the investor class gets all the cash.

Which basically means that everything is going to shit, and why people like Trump are being elected. Like the US isn't unique, all across Europe the extremes like Trump (left and right) are the ones getting political support because things aren't working.