Rich Boomer, Poor Boomer

If there is one thing worse than a Baby Boomer, it's a rich Baby Boomer.  Since the Boomers have become adults and took over the business world, the middle class has shrunk considerably.  According to Bruce Judson, a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management, “In 2007, the percent of total income received by the top 10% of families was 49.74%, or effectively one-half of the nation’s total. This compares to 1980, when the top 10% received 34.63%, or about one-third of all income.”

Another even more disturbing statistic compiled by Judson states that "the top 5% of households grew from $134,800 in 1980 to $220,100 in 2007; an increase of 63%. In contrast, over this 27 year period, the average real household income of the bottom 90% of families increased from $29,800 to $32,400; less than 9%.  The real income among the top 5% grew at seven times the rate of income of the bottom 90% (63% as compared to less than 9%), an extraordinary difference of 600%."

These numbers should surprise no one who studies the Baby Boom generation.  Self absorption and high self worth lead to selfish behavior.  For the same reasons the rich Boomers used their connections and college deferments to get out of serving in Vietnam, they, in their middle life, continued to look out for number one. 

In an April, 2010 poll, the New York Times discovered that the recent Tea Party movement was made up of mostly wealthy and educated Baby Boomers.  While it appears that Tea Party members reside in rural areas, the reality is that the movement is more about rich Boomers being afraid of a President who may increase their taxes and take some of their precious money away. 

As the rich Boomers in the Tea Party movement scream that President Obama is a socialist, what they are really saying is that they are not going to spend one dime of their money to benefit the greater good of the country. 

Didn't the Boomers' civic oriented parents teach their kids anything about duty and service?

The Boomers are Just as Bad "Over There"

In a recent speech to his country, Generation Xer and pragmatic Prime Minister, David Cameron warned his citizens about their spending and consumptive ways.  It appears that the British Boomers are no better than their American counterparts.

In Cameron's speech, he pointed out that Britain's budget deficit is more than 11%.  He went on to say that Britain currently owes $1.12 trillion (U.S. dollars) and in five years will owe nearly double if nothing is done now. 

According to the New York Times, Britain spends as much on interest payments as they spend on education.

While hearing a politician not only speak the truth about his country's situation but berating the improper spending habits of its citizens is beyond impressive.  Although Cameron will most definitely face an uphill battle.  With Boomers still in charge of Britain, Cameron will have a difficult time making the necessary cuts to reduce the deficit since I am sure that British Boomers have the same dislike of sacrifice and pain as their American brothering.

On a positive note, I may have an opportunity to start a new blog called Britain's Worst Generation.

Can I Bring My Chicken on the Airplane?

Boomers love to claim how they change the way things are done.  They proudly espouse how they will do things differently than their parents.  A great example of this change can be demonstrated by pet owners.  Before Boomers started to own pets, most domesticated animals lived in homes or in backyards.  However, when the Boomers started to own pets, they had to do things differently.

All of sudden, pets were everywhere.  If you were eating lunch on a patio, a dog would be at your feet.  When you went to the mall, a pet owner would be walking their dog from store to store.  Then, the real insanity began.  On just about every airplane flight, pet owners now have their dogs sitting under their seat or should I say the seat of the person in front of them. 

It is bad enough that Boomers feel they have the right to bring pets with them to restaurants and department stores, but they also need feel the need to bring their animal in a small confined space with a couple hundred fellow humans.  Seriously!  How messed up is that.  But, don't tell Boomers their pets are just animals.  To Boomers, pets are their new kids.  And, considering how invasive Boomers have been with their (real) kids life, it should be no surprise that Boomers helicopter over their pets as well.  God forbid, they let their dogs stay home and sleep on the sofa.  Boomers need to work and travel and they want to make sure they can spend as much quality time as possible with their domesticated critter.

This blog is dedicated to my wife who had to spend a cross country flight listening to a dog bark during the whole flight. 

Sixty Two and Still Pathetic

After hearing about Tipper and Al Gore divorcing this week, I couldn't help but chuckle.  It was about time the poster children for their generation did what all Boomers seem to do and that is go their separate ways.

Al and Tipper Gore were the worst couple of the worst generation.  As a mother and Senator's wife, Tipper Gore decided to burn record albums.  OK, she didn't exactly burn albums but she tried to ban them for their content.  It wouldn't be so bad that she warned parents of explicit language on records but when asked who her favorite band was she replied "the Rolling Stones."  Excuse me! The hypocrisy of liking a band that constantly used explicit lyrics about sex, drugs and depravity while telling us we couldn't listen to others like them, made Tipper the poster child of her lousy generation.

Al, had his on problems.  His environmental charade is probably his most egregious.  After Al Gore lost the infamous 2000 Presidential election, he went on a quest to end the world from global warming.  Like his wife, it wouldn't be so bad that he did this but Al also lived a life of hypocrisy as well.  Flying in private jets and living in a huge mansion, Gore probably has one of the largest carbon footprints of anybody in the world.  Gore also suffered from hypocrisy since he berated President Bush for not doing anything to stop global warming, while as Vice President for eight years, he, nor President Clinton did nothing as well. 

So, this is the end of America's worst couple.  Good riddance.  I can't wait until they each write their book about the difficulties of staying married in the modern world.  Blah Bla Blah Bla Blah.

Material Happiness

In the 1960's, for reasons I cannot figure out, the Boomers decided to rebel against their parents.  I guess it was hard for them to live up to the greatness of their parents generation. So, with this burden, the Boomers set out to discover their own morality.

The Boomers tried everything: Free Love, Buddhism, Taoism, Maoism, Christianity, Krishna, Environmentalism, Paganism, Native Americanism, New Age, Black Power, White Power, Feminism, Scientology and many, many more.  However, none of these movements seem to take hold as much as the most powerful ism the Boomers found and that was Materialism.

As the Boomers stopped getting high...who am I kidding....As the Boomers changed their drugs from psychedelic to stimulants and were finally ending their childish games....who am I kidding again....and were moving into the business world, they discovered the joy of materialism.

And, to give the Boomers credit, they got real good at it.  As soon as the money came in, it went straight out.  It didn't matter where the money came from. Whether it was from working, inheritance or government checks, the Boomers spent every dime they could get their hands on.  From the mid-80's to the late 00's, the Boomers bought everything from luxury cars to electric facial masks. 

The consumer marketplace was alive and booming (pun intended).  Consumer product companies found new ways to sell to the Boomers.  Infomercials started to explode on cable television and new malls were opening everywhere.  Then in the late 1990's, the Internet became the ultimate tool to easily buy any product you ever wanted.  And, for the Boomers, it came at a perfect time.  As the Boomers were starting to age, it was more difficult for them to race out every weekend to buy more material.  the Internet let Boomers bask in the joy of materialism without leaving their sofa.

So, here we are in 2010, the Boomers spent all their money and then some.  According to money-zine, "The size of the total consumer debt grew nearly five times in size from 1980 ($355 billion) to 2001 ($1.7 trillion). Consumer debt in 2009 now stands at $2.5 trillion." 

Well, I guess its time to come up with a new ism.  But, I am not worried.  I am confident that the Boomers will find joy in their new religious movement: povertyism.

Have a Nice Day!

In the 1970's, "Have a Nice Day" was written on t-shirts, buttons, posters and bumper stickers.  Along with a smiley face, it became a symbol of the positive attitude the young Boomer generation exuded. The Boomer generation did not like to deal with pain or negativity in any way.  Some Boomers took drugs to remove the pain, while others embraced spirituality as the means to live positively and ignore the pain of living on Earth. 

The book The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale became a mantra for many Boomers.  With his simplistic approach to life, Peale wrote positive verses such as "when someone hands you a lemon, make lemonade."  For many "Christian" Boomers, the combination of Christianity and positiveness of Peale's message was just what they wanted to hear.

As Boomers took over most institutions, positiveness became the culture.  In education, instead of providing negative discipline, Boomers brought in positive approaches developed by people such as Haim Ginot, B.F. Skinner and Alfie Kohn.  No longer would children be punished for negative activities in school.  Through praise and positive thinking, discipline would be achieved.

In the workplace, employees were expected to remain positive and not focus on the negative.  Boomer managers did not want to hear about problems.  When employees focused on negative aspects or problems, they were dismissed or ignored.

So, here we are in 2010.  Let's see where positiveness has got us. 

• Education - The positive approach to discipline in the schools has created an entitled generation.  The young "millennial" generation believes they can do no wrong and expect positive things to just come to them.  High self esteem can be an excellent trait, however, the positive discipline the kids received will ill prepare them for the realities of life in a down economy.
• Business - With no discussion of negativity in business, the problems that have been evolving for the last thirty years have been ignored.  Companies like General Motors and Ford ignored the warning signs so obvious for anyone paying attention. 
• Government - Governments have ignored the reality of an aging society.  Pension pay outs, Social Security and Medicare are currently in crisis.  Yet, these problems did not just come about yesterday.  Many individuals have been warning the government for years and years about these problems, but the positive thinking Boomers wanted no part of such negative discourse.
• Investment - The stock market and real estate bubble can be attributed to positive thinking.  Ignoring the negative reality that a company cannot have a PE ratio of 1,000 and be a good stock was avoided by the Boomer investors.  The unrealistic increases in real estate prices were looked at with optimism.  While some warned of an impending disaster of faulty mortgages, they were discounted by a generation constantly searching for greener meadows.
• Society - Social institutions were affected as well.  Divorce became the norm for Boomers.  If living with a spouse became hard or negative in some way, Boomers bailed and searched for a more positive relationship.  This alone wouldn't be so bad, but divorce has led America to become more economically weak.  With families living in disparate situations, family incomes have declined, savings rates have been reduced and for poor Boomers, the government has needed to prop up many single family situations. 

There are so many other examples of the damage "positiveness" has done, I will need to leave them for future blogs.  However, I think it is safe to say that the power of positive thinking embraced by the Boomer generation has been far more negative to our country.  I guess that would be ironic...don't you think?

$10,000 Pyramid Scheme

When the $10,000 Pyramid debuted on March 26, 1973, who knew the affect a game show could have on a whole generation.  As Boomer college students were getting high and watching the $10,000 Pyramid, some of the more greedy and ambitious ones realized that someday, when they were in business, they may use the concept of the pyramid and take advantageous of their fellow comrades.

Well, their time came in the mid 1990's.  As Boomers were consuming more material goods and living for today, many of them realized that they were now in their fifties and it was time to start thinking about retirement.  The problem, for most Boomers, was that they did not save a dime in their adult life.  According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the personal savings rate in the United States saw a consistent decline from the early 1980's.  While the personal savings rate was over 10% in the late 1970's, by the mid 1990's the rate had declined to around 5%.  In the 2000's, the personal savings rate actually declined so far that by 2005, it dipped below zero.

So, with no savings and retirement just around the corner, the Boomers were ripe for get rich pyramid schemes.  And in the last twenty years, there were many.  One of the largest was the Dotcom bubble of the 1990's.  The greedy Boomer bastards on Wall Street colluded to convince a financially incompetent generation that the traditional metrics to measure stock value were antiquated and investment in Internet based companies led to quick riches.

Some of the more hilarious stories from the Dotcom bubble include:

• Pets.com - According to Wikipedia. Pets.com spent 11 million on advertising when they only made $619,000 in 1999.  I just can't figure out why their stock went from a high of $11 to a low of $0.19.
• eToys - They raised 166 million in venture capital with a business model that had them buy retail and sell retail.  Strangely enough, the stock went from a high of $84 to a low of $0.09. 
• Webvan - With traditional grocery stores having razor thin margins, it seems logical that an online grocery with very high fulfillment costs would be a great idea. Suckering inept and desperate Boomers for quick riches, the stock hit $30 and of course, the stock became worthless since groceries are barely profitable.

While some individuals that started the Dotcom pyramid scheme made out like kings, just about all the suckers that invested in Internet-based stocks lost a ton of money.  As the new millennium began, the Boomers were really in trouble.  No savings and what little they had was lost in the Dotcom bubble.  But, no fear....here comes real estate...and that will be the ticket to a wealthy retirement....or something like that.