I happened to run across an article published on the website Vox earlier today, with the cutesy title “How the baby boomers – not millennials – screwed America”, penned by one Sean Illing, containing an interview with a Bruce Gibney, who attempts to make the case in the ridiculously-titled screed “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America”.

…sorry for the run-on sentence, but I just had to get that out! ;-)

Illing makes his bias known by extracting this pearl from Gibney and using it as his tagline:

“The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it.”

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I’ll admit to belonging to the much-maligned generation of “boomers”, albeit I’m what’s referred to as a “trailing boomer” – a moniker carrying with it the implication I barely got in. Dunno, but after reading Gibney’s description of the socioeconomic havoc wreaked by my age-based cohort, maybe I’ll start calling myself a “leading X’er” instead! Speaking of Generation ‘X’, are they even mentioned in this interview? Yes. Once. At the end.

Hmmmm… How does one skip an entire generation, (1965 – 1984), now known as Generation ‘X’, when assigning blame for the litany of ills so aptly described by Mr. Gibney? Easy, especially when you happen to be a f*cking member of that generation – a generation now casting furtive glances around the room instead of staring straight into their snowflake’s, er, ah, uh I meant their children’s faces, (yup, those darned millennials), and explaining why mommy and daddy were apparently neutralized as a potentially-potent voting block from the mid-1990’s onward…

OK, OK, back to the article. Our dear writer, Mr. Illing, chafes at the millennial cliché:

We’re spoiled, entitled, and hopelessly glued to our smartphones. We demand participation trophies, can’t find jobs, and live with our parents until we’re 30.

I guess I’d chafe too, but let’s face it, we all know people – lots of people – who fit this description. Exceptions don’t warrant a cliché, but the general rule sure as heck does!

…boomers, according to Gibney, have committed “generational plunder,” pillaging the nation’s economy, repeatedly cutting their own taxes, financing two wars with deficits, ignoring climate change, presiding over the death of America’s manufacturing core, and leaving future generations to clean up the mess they created.

Well, let’s unpack this, shall we? No hard evidence regarding tax cuts or plundering is given, other than a vague generalization about the government’s addiction to grotesque levels of borrowing used to finance wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To be clear, I’m not – repeat, not – a fan of deficit spending, nor was I one of those flag-waving idiots who bought the whole “…weapons of mass destruction…” line of bullsh*t proffered by then President George W. Bush almost two decades ago. Now, with that out of the way, let’s move on to another of Gibney’s whines:

Our public education system has steadily degraded as well, forcing middle-class students to bury themselves in debt in order to get a college education.

What? Conflating the poor quality of public education systems with Tyler’s decision to take on a six-figure loan to attend UCLA to pursue a degree in English literature?

Nope, not going to swallow that one either, nope, not at all…

Sure, the quality of public schooling isn’t what it was – and I’m as deeply disturbed by those declines as Mr. Gibney is, but how does one link chronically under-performing public school systems with Aiden’s/Meridith’s/Austin’s inability to comprehend the compounding effect of interest or to be able to perform a simple return on investment calculation when deciding whether or not to pursue a bachelor’s degree with limited earning potential?

Hey, wait a minute… Did I just prove Gibney’s point? Nooooooo! ;-)

Of course, we get the expected dose of ‘crumbling infrastructure’ and ‘climate change skeptic’ complaints thrown at us too:

…we can think of the climate as an asset, which has degraded over time thanks to the inaction and cowardice of the boomer generation.

Wow, this guy must be really p*ssed off about those triple-digit temperatures in San Francisco back in June! Inaction? Let’s pause for just a minute and talk about the proliferation of electric cars, solar arrays, wind farms, light rail and the simple fact a barrel of oil was above $140 not that many years ago. …excuse me while I go fill up my SUV.

Gibney’s whinging continues:

…dealing with these problems has simply been irrelevant to the largest political class in the country — the boomers.

…then Mr. Illing lobs this one over the plate:

So what’s your explanation for the awfulness of the boomers? What made them this way?

Gibney points his bat at the outfield fence, and whammy, it’s outta the park!

I think the major factor is that the boomers grew up in a time of uninterrupted prosperity. And so they simply took it for granted. They assumed the economy would just grow three percent a year forever and that wages would go up every year and that there would always be a good job for everyone who wanted it.

Yeah, right, and we’d all like to live happily ever after too.

Fact check – between 1965 and 1985 there were four periods of recession, (the time frame when “leading boomers” would age from their early 20’s to their early 40’s), according to Gibney’s own GDP source cited in the article. So much for the uninterrupted prosperity theory. Between 1965 and 2015 the average rise in real GDP was 2.96%, which is frighteningly close to the 3% figure Gibney cites. Sure, there were years with negative growth rates, and years with growth rates higher than 3%, but the fact remains that over a fifty – yes fifty – year period, (right up until the present), the average growth rate was a hair below that magic 3% figure. So much for the bad assumption about GDP growth theory. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, wage growth averaged just over 6% between 1960 and today, with the steepest decrease occurring in March 2009, during – not surprisingly – the so-called ‘Great Recession’. In fact, there were only two periods of decrease – one between 2000 – 2002 and the other between 2008 and 2010. So much for the long-term wage stagnation theory.

Ooops, three strikes and you’re out Mr. Gibney!

Urged on by Mr. Illing, Gibney uses broad brushstrokes to paint us nasty boomers as feckless, entitled, live-for-today, know-nothings. I beg to differ. The microprocessor was invented on our watch. The jet engine was perfected on our watch. Men went to the moon on our watch. Internet protocols were invented on our watch. Oral contraception was invented on our watch. Survival rates for various forms of cancer skyrocketed on our watch. Selfish behavior or selfless endeavors? You decide.

Illing needs to chill out about living in his parent’s basement and Gibney needs to “…get bogged down in an ocean of numbers and data…” before his next interview…

My point? No single age-based slice of citizens are to blame for anything – and, if you subscribe to Gibney’s notion, everything – that’s wrong with the country. Rather, we find ourselves in this admittedly dire situation due to selfish behavior traced to multiple age-based demographic slices – the last of those born into the so-called Greatest Generation, most certainly the Baby Boomers and yes, even those darned ‘X’ers!

All three cohorts have had a hand to play in the systematic pillaging of America so aptly described by Mr. Gibney.