BABY BOOMERS HAVEN’T EARNED OUR RESPECT

Now here’s an interesting article:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/8138868/Why-I-hate-the-baby-boomers

My wife and I had an interesting discussion with a Baby Boomer the other night - my father-in-law. He took my wife and I to task over the fact that we don’t answer the phone every time it rings. Oh, he was quite upset. When HE rings, and he knows we’re in, he expects us to pick up the phone every time. You see, whenever anyone rings HIM, he ALWAYS answers the phone. ** sigh**

So not only have the Baby Boomers shagged up the economies of the Western World with their greed, they now have the gall to tell their offspring how to live their lives.

My wife explained patiently to her father, that we have caller ID, so we can see that a call is “Private” or from India, or Malaysia. This usually means it’s from an oversea call centre and it’s a junk call. Curiously enough, we ignore these. I added that we are vindicated when callers from these sources don’t leave messages. If they really wanted to speak to us, they’d leave a message and politely ask us to call. Given the regularity of these junk calls – as the children of Baby Boomers all know – it’s no wonder we screen our calls.

Then my wife ramped up to full throttle: “And Dad, I am NOT going to drop everything to answer your call when I am putting my children to bed. I am NOT going to drop everything to answer your call when we are sitting down at the family dinner table to eat. And I am NOT going to drop everything to answer your call when I am watching my favourite TV programme that might not be repeated.”  My experience is this is typical demanding-of-respect behaviour of the Baby Boomer generation, at the same time missing how we have to live our lives. Now I'm not saying that every Baby Boomer is like this, or that there are no progressive Baby Boomers. But, it's curious how many stories around my peers have similar stories to ours. So, for those with enlightened parents of the Baby Boomer generation, you're going to have to forgive what you see as, my generalisations.

You know, when the Baby Boomers were growing up, they had free health care, free education, free eye care, regular pay rises and job security. Housing was much more affordable, as a much lower proportion of the home income. Mysteriously, that all vanished from the eighties onward.

Actually, it’s not mysterious at all - the Baby Boomers got greedy. They bought into the spin of the right wing hacks of Regan, Thatcher, Muldoon and Roger Douglas – and sold our future down the river. On the promise of tax cuts, they voted in monetarist governments who sold our assets, and mortgaged our futures. Oh yes, the Middle Class Baby Boomers got their little tax cuts – but so did the rich. As a consequence, all those free services had to go out the window to pay for tax cuts to the wealthy. We are still paying for that massive shift to the right, even today, and we’re STILL falling for the same old right-wing spin. I think this New Zealand election poster parody, above, sums it up just right.

Baby Boomers were bought cheap with “crumbs from the rich man’s table” [Luke 16:19-31]. They were sold tax cuts by right-wing parties, so those parties could justify tax cuts for their already-wealthy business financiers. But those tax cuts had to be funded somehow. And thus the Baby Boomers ushered in a new age of consumerist selfishness combined with job hardship. Some Baby Boomers say, “Don’t blame us, blame the governments.” Well who the hell voted in those governments? The Voting Fairies??!!!! So, yes, I do blame you!

As a result of that shift to the right, the children of the Baby Boomers have to work longer than their parents, harder and more efficiently under the watchful, critical eye of dictatorial corporations. Conversely, the directors of these corporations are free to award themselves unfettered pay rises each year, freed from the tempering influence of strong trade unions:

"NZ rich-poor gap widens faster than rest of world"
"Wealth gap widens to 30-year high"

As I wrap up my thoughts to you, I realise I actually share something with the Baby Boomers (apart from their damn genes). Our parents have this old fashioned view that respect should be earned – and I subscribe to that! Yet, when I was growing up, it was clear that while they SAID respect was earned, for them respect was in fact DEMANDED of us. Look at the demanding from my wife’s father, in the example above. As for me, did anybody else cop “Respect your elders and betters!!”? I lost count of the times the Old Man roared that one at me.

So, here’s the thing that really irks me about the Baby Boomers: we have to work harder, longer, under greater pressure, with less job security, and for less pay in real terms. We have to pay for things our parents got for free, our homes cost more of our take-home pay, and we have to fund our own pensions. Yet, the Baby Boomers still have the GALL to demand our respect.

Frankly, with the way we’ve been left in the lurch, the Baby Boomers don’t deserve the respect of their children. They haven’t fucking earned it.