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Rampant ageism

AnonusAnonus
in General
Maybe it's because I haven't tried to get a concrete job lately, but I find the unquestioned disdain for Boomers and apparently now Gen Xers troubling

Comments

  • BeeBee
    Boomers are kind of literally the reason you're going to have a lot of trouble getting a job.
  • AlirozAliroz
    edited 2017-07-28 01:12:40
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    Bee said:

    Boomers are kind of literally the reason you're going to have a lot of trouble getting a job.

    Yeah, because 
    1) Automation
    2) The fact that almost all of the world's economically largest three-dozen-or-so nations (not counting the United States) were pretty wrecked after WWII, leaving America the dominant economy of the world, ended up giving the Boomers a generation of American economic dominance that can simply never be reclaimed.
    3) Outsourcing

    are all the fault of Baby Boomers.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2017-07-28 02:54:20
    Steady erosion of benefits, protections, regulations, and social safety nets.  Toxic corporate culture that has long since ceased to display any notion of responsibility or good will to its own workers.  For-profit privatization of key sectors, and entrenchment of the ones that already were.  An overarching disdain of anyone who happens to get fucked over, via Calvinist principles taken to sociopathic extremes.  And a continuous public support and normalization of most of this as it happened.

    I mean this is the shit that was broken before we got out of school, and the core of it was when I was in diapers.  So yes, this was squarely on the Boomers -- the people who grew up as beneficiaries of the New Deal, then dedicated their lives to making sure they would be the last.

    Oh, and we've all seen demographic breakdowns of which groups voted overwhelmingly for Trump.  You can blame him in very large part on Boomers too.
  • AlirozAliroz
    edited 2017-07-28 02:54:23
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    You're probably right, and I hate you for it.

    I want to blame history, economics, innovation, anything other than people as a whole.  I don't want to think that way of my fellow man.  Because if the problem is people, then, well, dang, there's nothing you can do about that.
  • CrystalCrystal
    Munch munch, chomp chomp...
    Nah, there is plenty you can do on the individual level, even if such acts aren't that easy to qualify and measure. I know you've done well for getting me more interested in and sympathetic to Mormons and continue to keep thinking about it. I mean, that's just the easiest example for a variety of reasons, but I can't agree personally in general, or just from my getting to know you. It's difficult, but not impossible, and I feel you're more articulate than you think (slash not as bad or whatever as you think you are about your weak spots).
  • AlirozAliroz
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    It's just... if we were in their shoes, would we have done any better?  Would we be any better?  Will we do better by the next generation?
  • BeeBee
    edited 2017-07-28 03:14:57
    The problem isn't people.  It's cognitive dissonance.  You have a generation that grew up with incredible benefits and support, but don't really realize how much their own success was boosted by those things because all they remember was the hard work (which was very real).  People are likely to turn their stories into self-centric personal dramas.  This isn't even unique to politics -- you see it in everything from law enforcement to workplace ethics.

    This is why my dad got into medical tech on army education and works for the state in an undermanned job where he does the work of three people, but votes for people who slash federal hiring and soldiers' benefits.  Or why my uncle screams all the time about illegal immigrants despite his father having been one (but it's okay because he worked hard!), or screams about Obamacare despite relying on its Medicaid expansion (but that's okay because he's a veteran!).

    I've watched my dad go from Rockefeller Republican to borderline Tea Party -- but a lot of that is because he works for a transparently broken government department riddled with recent scandal and he's tired, depressed, and increasingly isolated.  At the same time, my mother's gotten more liberal because when she finally got laid off and had to take unemployment it wasn't anywhere near what she was expecting, and the networks she formed during that time blew her mind open.  People are shaped by their experiences.  You, and your struggles, have to be a part of that.
  • vtkvtk
    embrace the confusion
    People say I'm too old to play in the ball pit. That's ageism.
  • BeeBee
    There's always Dashcon.
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