[Ratmagiclady]

Wow, Mikemike: 'Conservative' denial and projection on parade, you.

The only worries I have about violence in the streets is when people like you run out of denial and need to take the scapegoating more physical. In spite of all you claim, the money just isn't where you say it is.

[seacapt]

Mike I mean this sincerely.It would be wise for some of you Gen Xs to ask some of us boomers and our parents for some advice on how to build , fix or manufacture something. This country is failing because it produces very little but software and BS anymore. Sorry but somebody other than illegal aliens need to get their hands dirty. Yeah we need techies but we need welders too and for goodness sake not everyone can get paid for ideas . Somebody has to build something.
Mike I know nothing about your personal history but an awful lot of us boomers busted our asses in attempts to make a better life for your generation. I started a family late and still am busting my ass for my kids and I worry about the world GenX is shaping that they will have to step into in a few years.
I frequently agree with your ideas on economics and you sound like you are working with a good plan for personal sucess but give us geezers a break. Lots of us worked to support your generation.

[Ratmagiclady]

Mike I mean this sincerely.It would be wise for some of you Gen Xs to ask some of us boomers and our parents for some advice on how to build , fix or manufacture something. This country is failing because it produces very little but software and BS anymore. Sorry but somebody other than illegal aliens need to get their hands dirty. Yeah we need techies but we need welders too and for goodness sake not everyone can get paid for ideas . Somebody has to build something.
Mike I know nothing about your personal history but an awful lot of us boomers busted our asses in attempts to make a better life for your generation. I started a family late and still am busting my ass for my kids and I worry about the world GenX is shaping that they will have to step into in a few years.
I frequently agree with your ideas on economics and you sound like you are working with a good plan for personal sucess but give us geezers a break. Lots of us worked to support your generation.

I do think they shift the generational blame, if not reckonings of the generations, a lot anyway, Seacapt, It's really actually about class and money and the obvious, actually. MIke's trying to find something else to blame. 'Boomers' were always anyone born between the war and like 69... But they seem to keep moving the categories anyway.


If the terms have any meaning, it's kind of like the Boomers were born with this idea of 'infinite expansion,' and the Gen-xers are the disaffected ones raised with that idea but found ourselves pretty quickly running into the constrictions and limitations that *just don't make sense to the 'boomers' and 'greatest generation folks that made them,' and someone's been trying to label and define a 'Generation Y' for twenty years, but it's not even working.

But, there's kind of these competing intergenerational myths: Boomers saying, 'It's all so easy, if you don't do well, you just aren't working for it, get a job... But, oh, not here. We need everything cosigned, borrowed on, and cross-checked and verified in triplicate. What do you mean 'better living through chemistry' means you have a pre-existing condition?' Gen x's 'cynicism' kind of came of being raised on the notion: "You can do anything! It's just a matter of working for it, but... not in any particular 'this' circumstance. Never Jam Today.'

There was that whole idea, 'GenXers are just born lazy, if they're poor,' but that's nothing new about anyone, is it? Generationally, it was all about frustrated idealism. *Then* the ''whatever' bit came along.

[GeneV]

Mike I mean this sincerely.It would be wise for some of you Gen Xs to ask some of us boomers and our parents for some advice on how to build , fix or manufacture something. This country is failing because it produces very little but software and BS anymore. Sorry but somebody other than illegal aliens need to get their hands dirty. Yeah we need techies but we need welders too and for goodness sake not everyone can get paid for ideas . Somebody has to build something.

Gee, I find more to agree with you about every day.

[mikemike]

'Boomers' were always anyone born between the war and like 69

Boomers were hatched 1945 - late 1960s (67, 68)

Generation X were born between the late 1960s -1980/1981

Generation Y are people born between 1981-some point in the 1990s which is still disputed

The next generation which came after Y is really defined by growing up in a world where computers, the internet, cell phones, DVDs, etc always existed

I was born in 1983 so I am really generation Y and if I had to identify the most annoying trait of my peers I would say its the conflation of effort with achievement. I was a TA so I had to deal with a lot of people who would complain that they "tried really hard" and they didn't think the grade they got was fair. I had to explain to them that the grades they received were 100% objective and the reason they got marked off was because they arrived at the wrong answers (this was for math courses, I really feel sorry for english graders). In the workplace now it seems to be the attitude that showing up everyday entitles them to a raise or promotion.

[shooz]

In the workplace now it seems to be the attitude that showing up everyday entitles them to a raise or promotion.

Didn't you say you were the one that vetted them for hiring?

[magkelly]

I predicted it in 06.
Nothing has really changed, except it's gotten more likely.
Republicans don't like America,

You could say the same thing of the democrats. Neither party has the best interests of America in mind at this point. At this point I really hate that we have mostly a 2 party system thing going on. I wish some of the other smaller ones could big enough to really compete with them. They both need to GO, IMHO.

[Nesster]

Mike, you are our eldest's age just about exactly. Your time was at one point known as the baby bust, as birth rates went down and schools were decommissioned, only for schools to soon run out of space due to what was called the echo boom.

Us geezers tend to forget what it was to get started in the adult world. Back when I was young, the boomer generation was defined as ending in early 60s, '64 say or even earlier. It's crept up some since. Being at the tail end of this, I remember tons of kids just slighly older than me... and tons of workers just a bit older and more established than me. For the former baby busters, now X'ers, this experience would have been even more pronounced.

We all had our illusions about life and work. I think a lot of the early eagerness comes with the territory, it took me 20 years of work before I started to be realistic about just what is possible for me, and to be truyly comfortable with it all. This will come to most people, I'd wager.

As far as building or maintaining/repairing stuff, I say the blame is with the boomers, square on. It is us who accepted and embraced the throw-away society, the easy credit cheap crap, the materialist luxury dreams...

But this is distressing: we may be in a place where our children (X,Y,Z) may have more meaningful work (debatable) but more than likely less material wealth (offset by virtual wealth?)

But what do we know, we go singing White Rabbit and doing the polarized and hypocritical politics learned during Viet Nam and Watergate...

[GeneV]

I'd say that anything past the early1960s, maybe even 1960, is pushing it for declaring one a baby boomer. The birth rate dropped like a rock beginning around that time. Baby boom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is fairly interesting to see how we change over the years. I could have said and did say some of the things Mike says when I was his age. I was a Republican until Reagan finally showed me the error of my ways, and bucked the aphorism by getting less conservative over time.

[mikemike]

Didn't you say you were the one that vetted them for hiring?

I vet their technical skills and provide my assessment of where within the organization they would fit as well as an opinion of whether or not I think they will be a good fit. I do not make the final hiring decisions. When it comes to current employees, I fill out assessments for the people I manage and am asked whether or not a person who is being considered for a promotion is up to the task, but again I am not the final decision maker. At the end of the day I don't cut the checks and the only person whose salary I have control over is my own.

If I was doing this for a mechanics' shop hiring a new mechanic the questions would start out kind of simple to weed out people who don't know the difference between a crescent wrench and a socket wrench then they would go up to questions about how to rebuild a transmission, how to fix a messed up fender, the differences between working with aluminum and steel, the benefits and trade-offs between different types of suspensions, etc. Trying to identify if this person is someone we need now or someone we may want to remember for the future.

[shooz]

You could say the same thing of the democrats.

No, I'm afraid I couldn't.
Work was plentiful during the ONLY 8yr. Democratic tenure of my life.
Life was hard (IE: I worked hard), but it was good.....
By '06', the lack of jobs, which was growing during Bush's 8yrs., was becoming obvious.
At that point i said it was going to get a lot worse before it's going to get better.
I did survive 12yrs of Reagan/Bush I. It was bad then too.
I predicted a rise in crime, corporate greed, layoffs, problems with wallstreet, etc.
20 out of the last 30 years under republican rule have taken a HEAVY toll on our country.
It could be debated that we are still under republican rule, as many of Bush's policies are still in effect.
So, yes I do feel that republicanism has put has where we are.
It would take at least 20 out of the next 30 years under democratic rule, for us to have any hope of our country again becoming a world leader in the many things we lost under republicans.

[seacapt]

Shooze , the banks were deregulated and NAFTA was signed during the Clinton years. Yes I remember them well . On paper I was making more money but in actuallity taking home less. It was during Willy's reign that I realized That I had to put in an extra 3-4 hours per week to take home what I had under GHWB even though I was making a few bucks per hour more.

[GeneV]

Shooze , the banks were deregulated and NAFTA was signed during the Clinton years. Yes I remember them well . On paper I was making more money but in actuallity taking home less. It was during Willy's reign that I realized That I had to put in an extra 3-4 hours per week to take home what I had under GHWB even though I was making a few bucks per hour more.

Which tax was it that increased on you during the Clinton years?

[shooz]

Shooze , the banks were deregulated and NAFTA was signed during the Clinton years. Yes I remember them well . On paper I was making more money but in actuallity taking home less. It was during Willy's reign that I realized That I had to put in an extra 3-4 hours per week to take home what I had under GHWB even though I was making a few bucks per hour more.

I was taxed significantly higher under both Reagan and Bush I.
Slightly more under Clinton.
Trust me, trying to find a job during the great Reagan layoffs, with a newly disabled wife, was a B I T C H.

NAFTA and the deregulation you speak of were both started under Reagan/Bush I.
CAFTA was started under Bush II, leaves no doubt as what party REALLY wanted that.
Even more deregulation under Bush II.

YES--------The state the country is in was created by republican thinking.
It's republican thinking that's prolonging the recession.

You can doubt it, if you like. But, it will still be true.

20 out of the last 30, says it all.

[seacapt]

Which tax was it that increased on you during the Clinton years?

Gene .as my poor old guy memory serves me GHWB did a bit of a quiet bump to withholding on his way out the door which alot of folks didn't even realize til he was long gone. That increase was then trumped by the tax hike of '93. There was some change in the medicare ? part of FICA and there were also some changes in the income bracketting for withholding. My gross kept going up but the net was pretty consistant.
In all fairness the trend of working more to take home the same did continue after the Willy & Hilly show.

BTW I'm with you on the boomer chronology. I was told back in the day a boomer was born between '45 and '60. I remember a history teacher saying Thank God you guys are the last of the boomers.