THEY WOULD BE RIGHT TO KICK YOU TO THE CURB OF HISTORY

I’d like to preface this essay by acknowledging a particular bias. I love young people. I love being around young people. And the less young I get, the more I love young people. I love their energy. I love their passion. I love that they step into life looking with wonder at the long road ahead, relatively unburdened by the twists and ruts laid behind.

I’ve always loved young people. Even when I was a young person–though I didn’t realize then that that was one of the attractions of my chosen profession. I entered a career that guaranteed ready access to young people. I entered the field working mostly with the first batch of Millennials (with some of the last remnants of my own generation, Gen X thrown in). I loved my MIllennials, even though the particular group I was working with at the time were not necessarily the best representatives of their particular cohort. I thought they were “the bomb!”

And I love my Gen Z kids! I love their empathy, their passion, their open mindedness. In many ways, Gen Z and their empathy really are what we Gen Xers thought we were with our apathy. In fact, Gen Z is the best of all the generations I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with.¹ Furthermore, when it comes to this most recent generation, I have nothing but apologies for the world that we are turning over to them. It’s fortunate that Gen Z is the best of the generations so far. With the existential global problems that Boomers, and now my own Gen X, are passing on to them–they have to be.

That’s why I have exactly zero tolerance for Boomers or Gen Xers who insult the qualities of Gen Z. I’ve seen these young people decried as lazy snowflakes, aimless, rude, unable to deal with real life, disrespectful, and unwilling to work. Clearly, according to the critics, our nation is doomed if left in the hands of the weepy Gen Z.

This should come as no surprise. Every generation is hypercritical of the youth succeeding them. We Gen Xers were dismissed as lazy, apathetic, slackers, inspired to do nothing but live in our parents’ basement and play video games. Maybe it’s only right and natural for the current generation to suffer the slings and arrows of the preceding. Social norms set standards of deference that younger generations rarely show to the older.

Yet, in this case, when I see Boomers or Xers defame Millennials and Gen Z, I can’t help but feel that never has an older generation been less deserving of deference from the younger than Boomers–the jury is still out on Gen X.

Education

Their grievance starts with the very schools your generation has consigned them to. In the late eighties and early nineties, prospective teachers like myself learned about the latest research on learning and teaching. We had all of the knowledge necessary to advance progressive education. With the right investments, we could have given MIllennials and Gen Z inspiring and needs fulfilling schools and classrooms with expansive curricula. Classes could have been small, the curriculum inquiry based, emphasizing critical and creative thinking. Such a system could have produced the most educated population in history and brought forth a golden age of scientific and cultural innovation.

Unfortunately, these innovations developed during a time when Boomers were rising to political influence. When it came time for the Boomers to usher in the next stage of modern education and make the necessary investments for advancing the nation into the twenty-first century…

…Boomers chose to pocket that money and advance themselves.

Instead of meaningful and inspiring progressive education, Millennials and Gen Z were herded into overcrowded classrooms organized around Neoliberal policies of privatization and objective measures. Students, instead of being educated, were trained to fill in bubbles on mind-numbing tests. School priorities shifted from maximizing student potential to raising meaningless test scores.

This, to my mind, constitutes the greatest intergenerational theft of all time.

This neglect translates into higher education. Boomers, for the most part, benefited from highly subsidized higher education. They were the most highly educated generation in history up to that time. So educated that education became a bedrock standard in our society. Tertiary education, by the 1980’s, was no longer something someone did for self-fulfillment. It was a necessity if one wanted to thrive in a post-industrial society–created by Boomers, but we’ll get to that later.

Instead of paying forward the benefits they received, Boomers decided that they preferred the tax cuts. Public funding for higher education was cut or not adjusted for the increased demand. Boomers told Millennials and Gen Z that they are on their own to get the education and certification necessary in today’s economy. Because of Boomers, Millennials are currently buried in debt. Gen Z can look forward to the same fate. Boomers on the Supreme Court wouldn’t even allow another Boomer in the White House to provide much needed debt relief.

The Economy

Speaking of the economy, today’s market is very much the manifestation of Boomer decision-making. Yes, deindustrialization and global outsourcing preceded Boomers coming of age. Yet when it came time for Boomers to leave their mark, they yet again privileged their own pocketbooks.

Boomers came up during the golden age of the American Working Class. Their fathers may have worked on the floor of the local mill, but they were often still able to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle.² They had secure union jobs with decent pay and benefits. They enjoyed social safety nets and life subsidies so they could afford a home in the suburbs, a car, and save money for college. Dad was able to retire with a pension, so when Boomers started their own lives they were unburdened by parents who could no longer work.

When it came time to pay it forward, Boomers voted for cheap plastic goods and…yep, you guessed it…tax cuts.

The economic legacy left to Millennials and Gen Z by the Boomer generation is a history of wage stagnation and benefit cuts. Pensions, with their guaranteed incomes, are things of the past. If they are lucky, Gen Z can look forward to trying to live off of their 401ks. If they are not lucky…well…that’s on them. A lifetime of work doesn’t guarantee security just because you didn’t die. There’s always the wonderful “gig” economy.

Private sector unions are virtually non-existent, leaving Millennial and Gen Z workers to the privations of their employers. Boomers decry the unwillingness of the young to dedicate themselves to their jobs. The young, on the other hand received a lesson on the value of work during the Pandemic when they learned that their often Boomer boss didn’t really care if they lived or died so long as they were producing. This generation is not only expected to work for flat wages, no benefits, increased hours, decreased vacation days–and they are expected to be grateful!

Millennials and Gen Z may be a lot of things. They are not fools.

Melting the Planet

If robbing young people of their educations and their economic opportunities weren’t enough for two generations to kick your cohort to the curb, there’s also the fact that Boomers are handing over a melting planet. If there’s anything that Millennials and Gen Z might find unforgivable it’s the fact that Boomers, in their greed, chose through their actions and their inaction, to set the planet on a course of inhabitability. The young will figure out how to survive…

…or not.

It’s not like Boomers and Gen Z didn’t know. We learned about global warming while Boomers were trying to get to first base in the back seat at the drive-in. By the time Boomers started getting their management promotions and their first forays into elected office, Global Climate Change resulting from Global Warming was a well-established scientific certainty. Yet Boomers continued to argue about it. Debated it. Did next to nothing to actually resolve it.

Meanwhile, Boomers are now entrenched in the higher echelons of power. There they are actively and intentionally blocking any prospect for Millennials and Gen Z to enjoy life on a temperate planet like the one on which humanity evolved. At this point, when we are feeling the brutal consequences of a planet turning against us, we can barely achieve even the most bare bones reforms.

If there is one single contribution defining the Boomer generation it is that they padded their own air-conditioned nests and let the Earth burn for their own grandchildren. If there is one single contribution for which the Boomer generation will be reviled throughout history, if there is a history, it is that they sacrificed their own legacy to satisfy their gluttony.

As a card carrying member of Gen X myself, I used to admire that knot of the 60’s generation who took to the streets demanding an end to war, to the nuclear umbrella. My heros were those who marched for the rights of the marginalized from the Mall in Washington DC to the streets outside of Stonewall. And I admit to a certain fascination for the hippy philosophy eschewing materialism and the constraints of modern reason for a more poetic and empathic connectedness with nature and the beauty of humanity. Of course, I still love the music!

For me, cultural contributions from the Port Huron Statement to Dylan’s lyricism are part of my moral canon. When I think of the Boomers, I want the nostalgia of the 60’s youth movements. When I was coming up, the flower children were buying houses and sending their own kids to school. They were just beginning to rise to positions of authority in society. I had every reason to hope that they might challenge the rising tide of conservatism and actually enact some of the idealism they embodied in their youth.

For the most part, however, they didn’t.

They bought into the system. They became company men and women enamored with the cheap plastic junk being pumped into the market by exploited third world labor. Instead of railing against archaic and puritanical norms, they shifted their ire to bemoaning environmental and labor protections. They scapegoated immigrants and reviled the poor…then moved into gated communities and set up HOAs!

Look, I understand that the bulk of this essay is composed of sweeping generalizations about four different generations. Clearly the socio-historical realities are far more complex. But when Millennials and especially Gen Z look at their own prospects in the world created largely and most immediately by Boomers and now increasingly Gen X, how can we demand respect and deference from the youth?

Young people today have too much going on to be enamored by the nostalgic music, poetry and what turned out to be shallow platitudes coming out of the late 20th century. They are running in place on the pointless treadmill that is the neoliberal political economy, buried in debt, facing economic stagnation on planet at the verge of ecological collapse. For Millennials and Gen Z, gray hair is nothing deserving of respect or deference. It’s a scarlet letter signifying myopia and narcissism.

When the time comes, and the young take over the seats of authority, they will be justified in treating Boomers, and quite possibly Gen X, with the same level of disdain and disregard as the older generations have treated them. They will be justified in casting us aside with nary a thought, because that’s exactly what we’ve done with their futures.

But I’ve been working with Millennials and Gen Z almost my entire career. From what I know about these young people as a cohort, they won’t cast us aside. That’s not who they are. They are better than us.

Notes

1. Look, this essay is not going to get into deep analysis of the details. I’m talking in generalities and broad sweeps here. If that’s not your thing, might be a good idea to stop reading now. I know it’s more complicated than that, and not every Gen Zer is empathetic and cool, and not every Boomer sucks. ↩︎
2. If they were white ↩︎