Millennials and Baby Boomers played against each other (US)

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MaxE
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27 Mar 2019, 6:06 pm

Most of what I want to say is only really relevant to the US, so I apologize if others feel left out.

I have come across a lot of articles proclaiming a war between Millennials and Baby Boomers. After giving this some thought, it has occurred to me that some elements within our political culture stand to benefit from such a war.

Despite many well-know exceptions, I think I am still safe in saying that Millennials and Baby Boomers are the two age groups most likely to vote Democrat. Meanwhile, the Tea Party movement and its associated right-wing movements are largely the domain of Generation X. Consider the most prominent members of the Tea Party movement, they are mostly Generation X. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Mike Pence, Sarah Palin, etc. are all Gen-X for example. Anything they could do to get their political enemies to fight each other will benefit them in the long run.

I could go on at length about bad feelings between "Boomers" and Gen-X, but I think it's clear that Gen-X has always resented the Baby Boomers and has long worked to reverse any effect the Baby Boom generation has had on US society. I also don't think they hold much respect for Millennials either.


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shlaifu
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27 Mar 2019, 6:20 pm

Hmm... But looking at current wealth distribution, it's boomers taking everything they can and millennials losing out big time. Sure, eventually the boomers will die, the gen xers will gain wealth and at that point maybe millennials will have paid off their student debt ...


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ASPartOfMe
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27 Mar 2019, 6:55 pm

Generation X is considered people born between the mid 60's and early 1980's. Mike Pence was born in 1959, Barack Obama 1961, Sarah Palin on the borderline 1964 the rest are probably Gen-X.

No manipulation needed. Older generations believing younger ones are ungreateful spoiled brats who are going to ruin everything they worked hard to build, and younger generations believing older generations are out of touch and in the way of the inevitable progressive change that their generation is going to impletent has been going on forever and will go on forever.


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TW1ZTY
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27 Mar 2019, 7:08 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Generation X is considered people born between the mid 60's and early 1980's. Mike Pence was born in 1959, Barack Obama 1961, Sarah Palin on the borderline 1964 the rest are probably Gen-X.

No manipulation needed. Older generations believing younger ones are ungreateful spoiled brats who are going to ruin everything they worked hard to build, and younger generations believing older generations are out of touch and in the way of the inevitable progressive change that their generation is going to impletent has been going on forever and will go on forever.


That is 100% true.



techstepgenr8tion
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27 Mar 2019, 8:07 pm

Doesn't exactly support your suggestion...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 ... nerations/

Image


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MaxE
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27 Mar 2019, 8:29 pm

To give some perspective, I don't consider people Mike Pence's age or younger to be proper Baby Boomers. That group, in my experience, does trend way more conservative and are more properly aligned with Generation X. You may have heard the term Generation Jones:

https://timeline.com/generation-jones-baby-boom-923270cb2010

If you insist on lumping them in with the Baby Boomers, then it definitely skews the numbers in a different direction.

I could give a number of reasons why this is so BTW. Here is a quote from the article cited above:

Quote:
Today, an older Baby Boomer once again occupies the highest office of the land, not that we had much choice, considering both candidates’ ages. Donald Trump earned 53% of the vote among the over-45 bloc. (Only 39.5% of voters aged 18–44 voted for him.) But while older Baby Boomers skew Democratic, younger Boomers have tended to vote more Republican than the average. Partisanship varies widely within established generations, especially among Baby Boomers. In other words, it doesn’t make sense to conflate all Boomers with reformed hippies. Many of them never were.


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27 Mar 2019, 8:59 pm

Generational cut-offs are arbitrary. I myself am at the younger end of the millenials, but probably have more in common with the post-millenials than the older millenials.

People don't realize how old the millenials are, the oldest of us are in their mid-late 30s.

As for the generational war, old people and young people has conflicted since the beginning of time. Pretty soon the millenials will be pissed off at the post post millenials (who are just being born).


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shlaifu
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29 Mar 2019, 7:00 pm

Except that the boomers are living longer than any generation before them. That may upset the eternal cycle of intergenerational disdain a bit, because Millennials have a good chance of being close to retirement before they inherit anything. That creates a bit of a problem, for the housing market and with regards ti who actually makes the political decisions during most of a millennial's lifetime.
Our generation (and I'm an old millennial) is not looking towards finally getting to have a say in how we live our lives and structure our societies any time soon.


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