- Boomers are having their last dance in charge.
- Gen X leaders are stepping up to replace the last of them.
- Younger leaders are taking charge of politics and corporate giants such as Boeing, HSBC, and Costco.
As a member of Generation X, I would say that it’s not going to be much better.
Just look at, say, Elon Musk as an example of the kind of people from my generation who get to positions of influence.
Most GenX are the product of the Neoliberal era, so have interiorized the whole “lookout for numero uno” idea of how to be in society and whilst commonly aware of things like Climate Change, they’re usually unwilling to inconvenience themselves for the sake of fighting against it, quite the contrary even (just look at how well SUVs sell), and similarly when it comes to Consumerism, they seem to be the most prone to wasteful consumption (the kind of people who replace their mobile phones every year or two).
In summary, Gen X generally are more well informed than Boomers but even less principled than them.
Gen X here, too.
DeSantis is younger than me.
That’s all I’m going to say. Gooooooooooo Millennials and Gen Z. PLEASE.
Once they hit our age they’re be equally shit. The only thing that makes us endearing is that we are a forgotten generation for the most part. No power. No numbers. But fuck me have we got influence.
I was born right on the border of Millennial and Gen X. Tory leader Rishi Sunak was younger than me.
Generation really doesn’t matter. Greedy cunts rise to the top and always will.
Today’s horrible influencers are tomorrows horrible leaders.
I was born in the 1990s and teenage me thought that the future would be awesome because people like me would be in power.
By now, people my age and younger have reported back, become politicians, celebrities, journalists or otherwise people with more power than me, and said “nah, we are pretty much the same as our parents were, some of us are awesome and some horrible”.
The type of people who seek power probably won’t change generation to generation… But the voters are changing rapidly as boomers die and millennials/zoomers replace them (far more progressive overall)… The voters will force the change, not the small percent that seek their own glory (ie the list you have there)
Millennials will become the largest voting bloc, and Gen Z tends to follow their lead. I predict the next decade is going to see some massive changes in governments.
The movement we see in the right, the coalition of ultra capitalists, nationalists, and evangelicals is the death throes of the GOP as we know it if they’re not successful in seizing power in the way they’re trying right now.
Probably a product more of age than of generational specificity.
You get used to your comforts, you probably have investments, you’re consumed by trying to get ahead enough so that you don’t have to die at your job, just in a nursing home what takes all of your money.
Gen X myself, and maybe an outlier, but I’ve probably become more radical as I’ve aged rather than the other way around. I’ve been stuck being poor for decades before finally “making it”, and that has really driven home the awareness of how fragile it all is. That, and just general omnivorous reading that includes a lot of depressing scientific literature regarding climate change. It’s terrifying.
I vote for the left (I would have happily voted for Sanders), support local measures and politicians that lean towards social policy and move towards things like green power, etc.
So yeah…not necessarily a thing you can just pin on a generation, though each generation will have some stronger proclivities than others in certain areas. The millennials will have to watch out, they’re next to fall for circling the wagons to protect whatever they might have, hate on their gen’s billion- or trillionaires.
We won’t be next because no one will be. Prove me wrong. Good fucking luck. You won’t acknowledge what must be done.
It’s almost like these generational names aren’t a monolith and have been divided up arbitrarily!
You could just as well replace these names of the generations with the astrological signs of the zodiac, that would be just as meaningful. It’s bullshit.
Elon Musk as an example of the kind of people from my generation
Elon’s an Afrikkkaner fratbro social media junky with $200B to his name. That’s just not the lived experience of most Americans.
Most GenX are the product of the Neoliberal era
They’re nostalgic for the 90s, because it was a time of relative abundance. They’re not all Chicago Economics School trade globalists with a hard on for abolishing the minimum wage and privatizing social security, because none of them stand to benefit from any of that shit.
they’re usually unwilling to inconvenience themselves for the sake of fighting against it
You’ve got a selection bias. The GenXers who fought the fiercest got crushed the hardest. Prisons are choke full of social revolutionaries who got swept up in the 90s/00s Law and Order era. Hospital wards are full of GenXers pumped full of opioids to treat work-injuries and heavy metal poisoning. Morgues are full of GenXers who died in the service sector job filling lunch orders during COVID or were wiped out in the AIDS epidemic before it was treatable.
Losing doesn’t mean you weren’t fighting. It just means you were outnumbered, outspent, and outmaneuvered. For every Kamala Harris or Ron DeSantis who climbed up through the bowels of the system to live in its head, there are thousands who got crushed under its feet.
Gen X generally are more well informed than Boomers but even less principled
The folks you’re seeing are simply the ones that made themselves useful to the ruling class. One thing the GenX crowd was right about - the Revolution wasn’t televised. It was a war fought and lost in the back alleys and the boiler rooms and the darkest cells of solitary confinement. If the GenX capitalist class is looking extra cynical, that may be thanks to all of their relatives and neighbors they had to stack up like cordwood to reach these heights.
Honestly, given the money Gen X has, Gen Z would mostly probably do the same.
While some of our actions can be directed by principle, mostly it’s just shrinking income.
I wish we could raise wages AND use them to embrace Buy It For Life items, all while subsidizing public transportation etc etc.
But now it’s lack of money that holds Gen Z back, not principles, in my opinion.
Gen z understands that the rich are the cause of their poverty, not immigrants or libs or other poor people. That’s a big step in directing action in the right direction.
Fair, though I wonder how much of it is real change and how much is our information bubble. Hopefully mostly the former, but I absolutely do hear all those “fuck immigrants” and “I’m to blame, I just gotta work harder” attitudes around.
Yeah… I guess it’s more like, millennials were the first generation to have a majority get it, and Gen z is even better about getting it… But it’s still not 100%
I’m Gen-X and I barely feel in charge of my own life, much less the direction of the nation.
Considering the nature of linear time, I dont know what the alternative could be.
I would vote for a vampire, mummy, or other deathless creature.
Biden is actually the first and only president from “The Silent Generation”
(Side note: Trump, Dubya, and Bubba were all born in 1946)
Within two months and one week of each other.
Huh, that’s interesting.
It’s also possible that Gen X will be skipped over the way the Silent Generation was skipped.
Kamala is the youngest possible Boomer (born in 1964). If she wins and serves 2 terms she’ll be out in 2032. At that point Gen X will be between 52 and 67. People might want a candidate younger than that.
I damn well hope so. As an elderly old man, I’m exhausted seeing technically illiterate and wildly socially backwards old men in charge of most parts of our political apparatus.
Time for people who know the internet isn’t made of fucking tubes. Or that climate change is on top of us, in the process of burning/melting those things we need in order to live.
The funny thing is that the “tubes” metaphor isn’t actually all that bad. Whoever suggested that metaphor to Ted Stephens knew what they were talking about. But, he didn’t actually understand what they were saying, so he looked like an idiot when he tried to use the metaphor to explain why an email was delayed.
You know how in school they say “one day one of you will be president.” Well for Bidens generation all of them were wrong except his teacher
We could all die in some catastrophic event
God I hope so.
The great leveling🤙
Kick the Boomers out!
Glad the boomers are on the way out. As a Gen X’er, not sure we care enough to take charge.
It’s cool you’ll get like four years then we millennials will take over.
Please be kind. We’re exhausted and broken.
and it hurts now to get out of bed.
And to be in bed
You guys are ok with us. Z seems cool too
Millennials seem cool. They called bullshit on a lot of stuff that X just shrugged at and tried to slack our way around. I don’t usually know what Z is saying but they seem to at least have moved in a less overtly toxic direction, and they put weak but real taboos on stuff like bullying that no prior generation did.
It’s all good. I’m gonna go let myself into the empty house and make a PB&J now.
Watching helplessly for 40 or 50 years while your parents’ generation destroys everything will do that
I’m just trying to exist in peace. That already feels like an impossibility.
Don’t know about you, but I’m out here slackin’ away.
As an aging millennial, I am surprised by how the process of time works.
Like you spend your life acquiring skills and using your knowledge in an ever expanding cornucopia of experiences.
Then followed by a gradual decline to be left only with your memories of who you once were. But then you realize you were only a small part of the existence of others, and ultimately the universe. Yep, the thought of faculties diminishing over time is enough to put the one into an extensional crisis.
Yup. This is a wise time in your life to start your estate planning, medical directives, etc. Find yourself a good lawyer for this. I’m sure the cost varies by location and practice, but mine was only about $1,500 US.
heck no. millenials can have it.
And that’s how you can tell a real Gen Xer
Even if Harris were Gen X, this would be premature.
checking the average age of the House, the Senate, and the Gubernatorial slate
Awww…
…yeah, they’re going to jump from five baby boomers straight to millennials next change of the guard, and like, whatever, man: we acclimated to disenfranchisement thirty years ago…
At least you got to enjoy coffee and cigarettes
This headline makes me incredibly happy.
Kamala was born in the last year of what is considered boomer, but still a step forward to Biden’s silent generation
At least she’s under the retirement age!!!
Retirement age is 55. She is 59.
Retirement for her is 67.
I think it’s like 65 or 70 in the US.
Holy fuck it’s 67. We’re fucked
You should have known this at 13. Oh, public education. 🤦♂️
When I was 13 the retirement age was not 67 bud
If you were taught retirement age was 55 when you were 13 you must already be retired or thought you were very close to retirement. It hasn’t been 55 since the early 80s.
The full retirement age in the United States varies depending on the year of birth:
- For people born in 1960 or later, the full retirement age is 67.
- For those born between 1943 and 1954, the full retirement age is 66.
- For those born between 1955 and 1959, the full retirement age gradually increases from 66 and 2 months to 66 and 10 months.
However, individuals can start receiving Social Security retirement benefits as early as age 62, though benefits will be reduced for early retirement. Conversely, delaying retirement beyond the full retirement age can increase benefits until age 70.
Generational cohorts care more about events that shaped you in life rather than birth year
Gen X isnt much better tbh. They grew up during the golden age of the boomer era where society had not started to breakdown yet. Some of them may have progressive views, but I bet it won’t be until millenials are in charge that we start to see meaningful change. Gen Z will really get into progressivism I bet.
People raised with the same ideas as their parents/friends/society aren’t going to magically change just because they come from a younger generation. When Millennials start coming into power, there are still going to be Millennials on both sides of the political divide. The Republican ones will likely be just as insane, if not worse than the Boomers or the Gen Xers. It’s not like Millennials are just magically going to all be progressive and everything changes. Any of them getting into politics are going to become part of the mainstream political culture and internalize their political beliefs as they learn from their elders. The Right is much more organized about maintaining their ideas and pushing their beliefs, that’s why they work so hard to suppress the other side.
Millennials aren’t going to be the savior you think they are. Like, I want to be hopeful, but I see a lot of Millennials my age just acting scared. They’ve finally gotten some stability, they’ve finally gotten some comfort, and they’re incredibly loss averse. I see a bunch of people my age bought a house in the suburbs posting in the neighborhood Facebook group every time there’s a loud bang “did anyone hear that noise? What was it?” with people lamenting about how the neighborhood is going downhill.
Ten years ago, millennials were pissed the fuck off and were ready to burn shit to the ground. The ruling class gave them just enough to be scared of losing it.
Can we stop making assumptions of an entire group based on some arbitrary rule? The people that will get to power is based on the population that votes for them and not when they were born, start voting in primaries, supporting candidates that match your values and going out to vote for them during election and you might just get what you want.
As a millennial, I think I can speak for all of us and say we’re OK with Gen Z taking over early, they might still have the emotional capacity to effect lasting change.
That’s really the answer to any of the “Generation ___ will save us”. It’s not generations, it’s age. If a generation takes over earlier it will be more far looking and less fearful. If it doesn’t, it will age into being the same mess all the others have been.
The Boomers dying off might change things merely because they were a huge generation and X is a small one, meaning the average age of a voter should be going down.
The difference is that Millennials seem to be disproportionately tired of responsibility while Boomers hoarded it. What sort of Millennial wants to go through the effort of maintaining a home owners’ association or of showing up at town halls to complain about new developments? Just give us some mtg cards and a runescape membership and you can have the White House.
Abrogation of responsibility is still messy selfishness, but it’s easier to work around for people who do want to be productive. Those in power are more than old enough that Millennials not replacing them in large enough numbers means reasonably middle-aged Zoomers get those positions instead.
I can guarantee you there are Millennials happily ruling over petty little fiefdoms. No generation is universally petty dictators or lazy gamers. The same sort of assholes are born again and again, just waiting for their chance.
Sure, I’m not denying that, but what matters in a democracy and even a corporation isn’t the purity of each generation, it’s the relative fraction of different groups. Going from 60% petty dictators to 20% is far more important than going from 20% to 0%, especially when it’s just one demographic among several.
Millennials aren’t better people, they’re just younger, with currently less opportunity to lord over others than people 30 years older have. But as they rise into the ones with the power, they’ll be the same humans we’ve always been.
I agree, and since most of us didn’t start our careers “on time” due to the absolute destruction of the economy in 2008, and also being most of the military strength during GWOT, Gen Z can take charge.
Just don’t short us too badly, maybe throw us a little bone here and there. We will happily take it since our Boomer parents were so massively shitty to us.
The boomers grew up in the “Golden age”… Gen x is the boomers first round of kids… Born from hippy free love and mistakes… Then the boomers grew up, got divorced, and started their millennial “real” families… Gen x caught the shit end of the boomer stick for sure, and it fucked them up as a generation… That and the fact that they caught a lot of the boomers pig headedness, probably because they had far less access to information than millennials.
Luckily they’re a small and mostly insignificant generation that won’t ever be able to prop up the old oligarchy parties the way the boomers have been able to.
Luckily they’re a small and mostly insignificant generation
Fuck you buddy. You’re right, but still, fuck you.
I’m Gen X and I can tell you from experience that that is mostly accurate.
We’re the generation that was born, came of age, and entered the workforce when Boomers were still far from retirement age and hording all the good jobs. We had to all go to university to study for the leftovers.
It was the generation after us, that second round of kids that you talk about, that came of age and started going to University right around the time that Boomers began to retire, leaving all these well paying jobs for them to pick up now that us X’ers had already settled on the crappy jobs.
The tech boom of the 90s would disagree with you. Millennials hadn’t finished puberty yet so they weren’t taking the jobs, and boomers were still astonished by the concept of electricity. And since the computer industry was new, it wasn’t like anyone was going to college for it yet.
Millenials might just make it, but if Gen Z is actually like what it looks like, leadership positions everywhere are going to skip a generation.
Said every generation ever.
Warm bodies outnumber the dead, news at 11.
you’d think so, but boomers had it so good they hardly ever die. the amount of stress they left the newer generations while not giving a fuck themselves made them likely to outlast some millennials let alone xers.
I’ll take your comment at face value and see it as a comment on the theory that ‘there’s more people alive today than have ever lived’.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead/
However that seems not to be true. The dead are more numerous. However they are unlikely to vote (unless the republicans find a way).
I do appreciate this clarification. Granted it wasn’t my intent, as I was more focused on modern history.
But hey, learn something new every day!
No I didn’t read that in your comment, but found it too interesting a tidbit not to share !
Took way too long. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.
I’m fully in support of Kamala, but she’s not Gen X. Close, but no cigar. She was born in 1964.
I can’t tell if she looks young for her age, or if she looks super young compared to everyone else on stage wirh her
Probably a combination of three things. First hate ages you terribly, example Laura Loomer, Alex Jones. Second she is a child compared to Biden/Trump. And third and finally as clichè as it is black dont crack
Also, and this is a biggie, she didn’t have kids. Kids harvest your life force in order to grow.
She’s Generation Jones. So am I (b. 1963)
Damn, they even have her picture on the page 😆
Generation Jones is noted for coming of age after a huge swath of their older siblings in the earlier portion of the Baby Boomer population; thus, many note that there was a paucity of resources and privileges available to them that were seemingly abundant to older Boomers. Therefore, there is a certain level of bitterness and “jonesing” for the level of doting and affluence granted to older Boomers but denied to them
This reminds me of the Xennial generation that fell between X and Millennial. This also sort of shows how little we can really actually equate from these 20+ year generational spans. Really I am just happy she’s not old enough to collect SSI yet.
Hard cutoff dates for generations has always been a stupid concept. Imagine believing that an Xer born in 1980 has more in common with an Xer from '65 than a millennial from '82.
Family context also plays a role. My wife and I are “officially” Xennials, born a year apart in the late 70s. I have a brother seven years older than me, and she was the first born. I skew way more Gen X than she does, to the point where she doesn’t see any point in describing herself as anything other than a Millennial.
Yeah, I was born in 84 but I identify pop culture wise much closer to my step brothers that are 1.5 and 3.5 years older as Xennails than I would my millennial counterparts.
I turn 40 in September. I don’t like it!
The dates for these generations are not set in stone. Lots of organizations use 1965 to 1980 but the US SSA uses 1965 as the start.
People born around the transition points are going to have more in common with each other than with people born earlier in the date range. Especially when you consider families having kids a few years apart but each is apparently a different “generation”.
There are still plenty of us Xers who are complete and utter cunts. Don’t let your guard down.
Every generation has plenty of those - no worries!
Yeah, they’re called “capitalists.”
us Xers
Already I see a lot more self awareness versus the boomers, so it looks like a net positive in any event
Not really, you also see a lot of boomers calling out other boomers.
Yeah, people act like there aren’t progressives and conservatives in each generation. My retired Boomer parents still think a lot of bigoted and reactionary old people are the reason we can’t have nice things. My Silent Generation grandparents were happy to label Republicans as mostly irredeemably evil even when the political zeitgeist favored treating them as intellectual adversaries with earnest beliefs about the best ways to run society for the good of everyone.
And on the other end, the proud boys were a Gen Z / Millennial phenomenon.
It’s true that people tend to become more set in their ways as they get older. OTOH, that sometimes means that the militant socialist just gets grumpy and complains instead of remaining a hopeful activist. It doesn’t always mean that people start becoming right-wing and conservative.
This is such a gen Xer thing to say.
Whatever
Ok Boomer
I guess my joke about the cynicism of genx is getting missed.
We prefer the term “hating on your X”
That is true of every generation. Call it a human flaw.
If I’m not mistaken in gen X is the first generation to become more progressive as it ages
As a Gen Xer, I wish that was true, but in terms of US voting patterns, it isn’t
Dang, you’re right, it’s the millennials that are changing that trend!
I hope it continues into the Millennials’ later years, but I’m feeling cynical about that…
Def. I’ve only gone harder left/prog/anti-capitalist as I grew older.
saaaaame…55 and left as hell
Yup
I didn’t change but the parties shifted for me.
Same. Grew up in a conservative household and shared many of the same views when I was younger. But the more the conservatives have shifted towards hating “the other” the more I’ve realized that was always what they, and their policies, were. They’re just not subtle about it now.
If you’re so confident in your world view, you shouldn’t be afraid of it being challenged, whether by speech, or people being free to be who they are, want to be, or were born into. If it doesn’t harm you, why should you care?
The fact that neo Nazis align themselves with the GOP, Trump,and MAGA, should tell you all you need to know. I’ve never donated to a Democrat’s campaign… Until today.
Tucker Carlson.
As a Gen Xer I’m heartened to see Gen Z stepping up to literally save the world. Seeing the swell in support for Harris and in voter registration numbers, I for once am feeling hopeful. I hope they can accomplish what the forgotten generation couldn’t.
Gen Z reporting in. Above comment’s point was not to generalize an entire demographic as ‘doing good’. & it was a good one. Don’t assume that of us either.
Judging entire groups of people as a monolith is always bad. I’ll add ‘good’ is subjective of an individual’s values. Expect future generations to mock us for what we believe acceptable.
Very good point, and I did not intend to make an argument about generations being different. Generations indeed consist wholly of individuals with their own opinions. On an individual level, age is no better an indicator of personality than your zodiac sign.
In my comment I just wanted to express that, after a long period of dread, I am feeling more hopeful after seeing so many members of the young generation getting engaged and making a difference where I personally feel we failed.
It was also meant to express appreciation and gratitude to those who are getting involved and as encouragement to those who are yet to do so.
Just remember there was leaded gasoline everywhere before 1995, and av-gas mostly still is
Gen Z unfortunately seems to have stepped back on the gender equality front. I hope it shifts back but self-identified feminists are down compared to millenials and misogyny is up. I’d be happy to attribute most of that to economic stress though.
Expect future generations to mock us for what we believe acceptable.
I sure hope so. If future generations aren’t making fun of me for how backwards I am then we’re not progressing.
I’ll caveat that not all changes are ‘good’ changes too. The future generations might not value the things we hold dear, like the jury trial. One day maybe they’ll sadly see that as us wasting ordinary people’s time.
People in the future are not automatically our betters, but our equals, (hopefully) armed with the knowledge of our failings and armed with that of our successes.
I feel like the judge cannon stuff is a very good example of why jury trials are a thing. Corrupt judges are real yo
Yeah. X/Mil cusper here. The elder Gen X are more like Boomers than anything, but have more anger and technical acumen.
Gen X is too small to matter. Millennials are stepping up and will compete with Boomers for a little while until they finally take over. Thing about Millennials though is that it is a very K shaped generation. About half have had decent success and are conservative/liberal and the other half have been absolutely crushed so it’s kind of a mixed bag and as long as the Boomers have any influence not much is likely to change. GenZ is bigger than Millennials though and should be right behind them. They are very different and much more politically radical, on both the left and right. Things are likely to change with them.
There’s apparently 65.2 million Gen Xers vs 75 million millenials. Smaller, but “too small to matter” seems like a really weird take.
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I’m worried about the Alphas and younger Zs who weren’t paying attention until after Covid. The news doesn’t talk about Trump’s laundry list of controversies or extremism. They just yell about the economy and the border and point at Biden.
As usual, they make rationalists look alarmist.
One thing I’m looking forward to with millennial leadership is just people that finally fully understand the power of the internet, big data and what truly distinguishes the information age. If you didn’t grow up with it, it’s hard to grapple with just how much it truly upended … fucking everything. They mostly still don’t understand that a computer can basically read their mind now, just through indirect data gathering and comparing them to all of the other people. We all get that at a more intuitive level, we’ve spent too long around these algorithms and seas of semi-anonymous others.
Of course we’ll be in some quantum AI room-temp-superconductor age by then, so, y’know how it goes. But we should at least have a better handle on the information age problems, so that’ll be nice.
But we should at least have a better handle on the information age problems, so that’ll be nice.
Technology keeps creating new problems. The problems don’t stay still and wait to be fixed.
Not to be contrary, but the problems aren’t technology’s fault. That’s all on us.
Spoken just like the boomers. Heads up your own asses just like them.
65 million X compared to 72 millennial. Wow. Carry on.
Whatever.
Are you ok
Are you?
I am not, but I think that’s unrelated. Mostly. Or not at all.
In an existential sense?
I’m absolutely spiffing, thanks for asking! Yourself?
Adequate.
Fair to middling?
Sufficient to acceptable. Not good—but not bad! I’m… fine.
It’s almost like generational distinction is meaningless and it’s actually about class.
And life stages
