An interesting demographic-based survey conducted April 9-13, 2018 purports Baby Boomers Made Millennials Lives Worse.
Beset by big college loans, inheriting two wars, and facing an uncertain future of work, a majority of millennials say baby boomers have made things worse for them — and a lot of boomers agree, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.
If it persists, the generational divide could turn into political rivalry as the generations compete for limited tax dollars — millennials seeking government help as automation takes hold, and boomers insisting on promised levels of Social Security and Medicare.
This ties in nicely with the upcoming pension crisis and healthcare-related issues as well.
Screwed Generation
- Consider Obamacare. It was purposely designed to make millennials overpay for healthcare. Millennials subsidize boomers who are better off financially.
- When I went to the university of Illinois, tuition was $250 a semester. One realistically could have worked summer and part-time jobs to pay for an education. Now kids are graduating from college with mountains of debt and no way to pay it back.
- Social security is projected to be bankrupt by the time millennials can collect. Benefits must drop.
- A pension crisis looms. The boomer solution has been to kick the can down the road, always raising taxes. Those tax hikes go nearly 100% to pension funding. What do millennials get out of it? Nothing!
- Millennials are likely to be the first US generation in history that is no better off than their parents, if not worse.
Payback
Within a decade Millennials will be running the country and they may not exactly be sympathetic to the pension plight of boomers.
For discussion of the pension crisis and possible millennial payback options, please consider Global Pension Gap Expected to Hit $400 Trillion: US Leads the Way.
Reader Replies
Reader Tengen commented: As a Gen X’er I’m not terribly fond of any current American generation, including my own. We all played a part in this acrimonious society we see today and nobody made much effort to stop it. Seems unlikely history will be kind to any of us, at least on a generational level.
I replied: Absolutely – Anger should be directed at the Fed, at Bush, at Obama, at Congress, and at warmongers.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but boomers are in charge of Congress, the Fed etc, and have been for years.
Most likely, anger will be misdirected, but boomers will be the target.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Well said. But, let’s face it, “Hate The Boomers” is one of today’s popular games. Right along with “Toxic Masculinity.”
In a capital-based system like ours, one dollar = one vote. Whether you show up at the booth or not, you vote. Whatever you put into your mouth is a vote (even if you grow it yourself), whatever job you work at is many votes. Those votes are tallied by corporations and collated and passed to the politicians as orders, not requests, because those corporations use your vote/dollars to put the politicians in place that suit their needs.
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket.
I notice Mish blames Obama (the best Republican president since Clinton: just ask the drug companies), but not the deregulation practices of others that shifted our votes into the hands of those with the most dollars (my trickly share came through the Reagan military: “yay! pay raise again!”).
That’s fine. It was eventually going to happen anyway: the Boomers just sped it up while chasing drywall mansions and cocaine (generously supplied by the CIA). It’s as well played as the IranContra distraction itself was. That story was happily displaced by Lewinsky, so that it didn’t go investigating how every politician (on both sides of the aisle) was in the pockets of illegal and legal drugs, failing banks, realtors and weapons.
By letting the confusion and distractions wash over us, the ‘norm’ has shifted to the point that we expect confusion and disinformation to be all we get (anyone up for another Netflix binge of Route 66?), and our only choices are to engage in commerce and vote for a sanctioned candidate while getting sicker, dumber and tattooed with our Endless War unit badges.
It’s a free market: as long as you forget that it’s your grandchildren’s souls on the market.
Looking at data from the Roper Center on the 2016 election of the 18-29 year olds 55% voted for Hillary Clinton and 36% for Donald Trump. of the 30-44 year olds it was 51 to 41. Would a Clinton administration have been better for millennials? Seems to me a lot of them loved Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton in the primaries. As bad as the Boomer presidents have been, they haven’t killed 60,000 millennials in the Middle East the way the Greatest Generation did to boomers in Vietnam…and those people used a draft.
Most of the restrictions are due to earthquake safety and utility availability, but just about every square inch of building land is being built on where I live. There are scrapers, build outs, conversions of retail to housing, etc. There is also a town a few miles away with much lower housing costs, care to wonder why?
@themonosynaptic
There is a very simple test for whether development is being restricted artificially or not: Is the sale price of the final units higher than the cost of erecting them?
Free people will continue building on their lots, until adding another unit will cost more than they can sell the unit for. Not sure which Bay Area town you live in, but do you honestly believe hiring some dude outside Home Depot to slap up another 1000 square foot shack of a standard equivalent to the current building mass, would cost what current units are selling for? And if not, why aren’t the dudes outside Home Depot hired in to start building already?
Numerous points have reiterated that it wasn’t (just) the boomers. As a boomer, my great-grandparents approved the Constitutional Amendment permitting the income tax. My grandparents’ generation passed the New Deal. My parents’ generation was responsible for the Great Society. It’s true that boomers did nothing to stop it, but the process to the end was already well under way.
The problem is not the Fed, and it’s not Government. The problem is that the people in general have little knowledge and understanding of history, and that, unfortunately, includes the media. How many people understand that we are simply repeating a well trodden historical path to destruction? We saw it in ancient Greece, and ancient Rome. We’ve seen it numerous times in South American and Africa.
In a democracy, politicians get elected by making people dependent on government. No politician was ever elected by saying “I won’t do anything for you. I’ll balance the books, and keep the necessary services going, but I won’t solve any of your problems. Those are yours to deal with.” So, politicians promise things, and sometimes deliver. In the process they spend more than they have, and they spend more all the time, until the country is bankrupt. Then the people riot because they aren’t getting what they were promised.
So your argument is that really well educated people (i.e. professionals) who can get a job anywhere and currently have jobs in CA are so stupid that, not only don’t they move to a tax paradise like Alabama or Kansas, they can’t even figure out how to vote in their own interests. There is another explanation for their voting habits – Occam’s razor would lead us to the conclusion that they know exactly what they are doing both in their choice of places to live and their voting habits.
The median salary at Facebook is $250K. There is a reason house prices are high in the Bay Area, it is because people can afford to buy them, and in my town new apartments are being built at an accelerating pace – they are pulling down 1300′ sq ft houses on a 1/2 acre and building 10 unit modern apartments. Whoever is commenting about developers suffering from NIMBYism needs to recheck the facts on the ground.
+10000 for Spooner. I have been saying what you wrote for years. The only way to change the system is if nobody votes. But then to paraphrase Emma Goldmann, “If not voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
We have met the enemy and they are us.
I love when people call the government “they” or “them” or something. Like “Don’t blame me, blame the government – they’re the ones taking your money.”
The whole of the governed *are* the government. The *people* are the government. When 1/3 of your check disappears every time you get paid that’s your neighbors taking it from you – standing protected behind the full force of those they’ve hired to carry guns and told to arrest you at best, or kill you at worst if you choose to disobey or resist.
To paraphrase Spooner, if you register and vote in this system you support the outcome – regardless of whether or not you voted for the guy who gets elected. Why? Because you agree to the system and thereby you consent to the consequences.
We’d be better off in the long run if more people decided not to vote at all. It’s pretty hard to claim you have the “consent of the governed” if only a handful show up for an election…
Sounds good to me hmk
Actually we have the best government money can buy. One way to stop this crap is to limit them to one term only like 6 years for each and then have all campaigns publicly financed. That way legislative decisions won’t be based on what will get them reelected by pleasing their financier money masters and instead make make decisions based on what is best for the country. An organization called the convention of states is something people should look into. They are advocating a push for a constitutional convention to address this .
We get and deserve the gov’t that we vote for. If any of these problems are going to be fixed we will need gov’t that is not run purely by money. Why are we still killing people in the Middle East after 25 years of war (undeclared). Why do we have the most expensive health care system, yet 30-some other countries have greater longevity? The big money doesn’t want those problems fixed. They benefit from them.
Blaming the boomers? We weren’t even born when virtually all the “social legislation was passed. I turned 21 in 1969. Social Security and all the big welfare legislation were passed long before any of us were able to vote.(Voting age was 21 back then). Boomers did not get into “political power” until the late 70’s. By then all the welfare and SS programs were BEYOND terminating. So you youngsters need to find another whipping boy.
Boomers are an abstract concept of “those people”. Real cuts to SS mean mom and dad are moving in with them. They’re not going to cut SS. Millennials think Boomers make their lives worse because we won’t vote in a guaranteed job program or a debt jubilee. I’m not worried.
“Also, as seen by the Flynn Effect, they are one SD smarter than their grandparents (that would be most of us on this board) on average.” Smarter or more leftist indoctrinated? If they were truly smarter, they wouldn’t love Bernie Sanders so much.
“51% of millennials claim boomers make their lives worse.” Who created Social Security and Medicare? Not Boomers. Who allowed government employees to unionize? Not Boomers. Interestingly, a large %age of U.S. Millenials want socialism.
Mish, didn’t we do that back in 1969? Then discover it was the previous generation before that? Ad infinitum, until we come to the real cause – Philosophers – ones who would have been “Socratized” if they told the truth about their bloodthirsty Rulers? Besides, any one of us can just go down to City Hall and get them to change to a rational policy at any one of their meetings, right? And remember all those demonstrations and riots? With all their “outside agitators”? Probably Clowns whose names cannot be spoken? Maybe the “Silver Tsunami” will wash it all away.
Beat me to it. Not sure about “Hypocrisy and selfishness”. I blame purposeful mindfuck. Hanlon had a dull razor
Boomers Hypocrisy and selfishness: link to i.imgur.com
1. Let in millions of immigrants, forcing up property prices so homes and children are unaffordable
2. Raise taxes to fund healthcare, housing, and schools for said immigrants
Repeat endlessly
The Japanese get it:
link to pbs.twimg.com
The majority are complete idiots. I like this blog because the commenters are intelligent. I don’t always agree with everything, but people can make a viable argument to support their positions. Go to a widely posted site like the Washington Post and 90% of the posters believe everything written in the paper. They lack the ability to judge anything for themselves.
The problem is the gov’t will do what the majority wants. And if the majority doesn’t want to do what the government wants, the government will convince them that that’s what they want. And they’re good at it. I include elected officials in the government.
I blame the government. Without the government getting into the loan business, we wouldn’t have had a housing bubble or a tuition bubble. The two biggest hurdles faced by gen x-ers. (Technically it was the FED and GSE’s, which aren’t actually the government, but they’re controlled by the gov’t).
Realist, in places like comments sections, and in the news, you see more division than exists in daily life. One of the great traditions of the US is our tradition that we can freely express our opinions, but while we may disagree, at the end of the day we can get along. I do have some concern about seeing what could be the end of that, but for now I see no signs of the division in the real world.
As for the Millennials taking benefits away from baby boomers, I don’t see that happening. They are very liberal, and tend to think that there is more than enough to go around. Rather, I see them adopting ever more Socialistic solutions, until the system collapses, and that collapse will be what leaves the elderly baby boomers without.
Now, if, as they age, Millennials become conservative, they might become fiscally prudent to save the country, and might adopt fiscally prudent approaches, like slashing benefits to the elderly.
A lot of these things, like warmongering, Prop. 13, Social Security, crazy pensions, were first put in place by the Greatest Generation. The Boomers are just inheriting the benefits of being old.
Millennials are fine. We can worry about student debt, but the median is $13,000 and 75% is less than $29,000 (source: link to brookings.edu). So they will have to buy a Honda Fit instead of an SUV, boo hoo. But let’s look at the numbers who go to University now – in 1970 only 11% of people had a Bachelors level degree or higher, that number is 34% in 2017 (source: link to statista.com). Sure, some are getting degrees in “The History of Raffia Work in Victorian-Era Libya”, but most are well aware that they need to get a real job at the end (remember this is the 35% smart enough to excel at High School). Also, as seen by the Flynn Effect, they are one SD smarter than their grandparents (that would be most of us on this board) on average.
The kids are alright.
Have you read “The New Geography of Jobs”? An excellent book that takes on this question. It was important to me because I’ve got four millennial kids and my wife lamented that they would never be able to afford to live in CA (i.e. would move away and we’d see little of them). It turns out that they all are going to be fine, even in the Bay Area. The illuminating story is of a start up that moved from (relatively) low cost Seattle to the Bay Area and had to pay a lot more for employees, rent, etc. however their business plan that was expected to take several years was condensed into months because of the available talent. In addition, in relative terms housing prices are level from the mid 1990’s when you factor in inflation and the Bay Area GDP growth (i.e. Bay Area housing has always been ludicrous, but isn’t getting relatively worse). Having moved here from London, prices seem manageable anyway.
I think the issue is not so black and white. There is inequality, a lot of millennials are having a tough time while some are doing great. Many cannot afford to live in big cities where they grew up due to rising housing costs and poor leadership. There is an angst in the USA there is no denying it. How will it continue to manifest itself we have yet to find out. I’m still optimistic about the US, if we can learn to look after each other as a nation, learn to accept the difficult solutions we must make, and make legislation that will benefit the nation as a whole things can be better. We got to stop playing the blame game because it offers no solutions. The US has suffered economic depressions and a civil war yet it is still exists. If people want change then so be it just as long as it benefits everyone not just some.
well stated.
If foreigner tries to read the comments here, then one might indeed get that kind of impression. Though, I don’t think the reality in the USA is that gloom.
Overall this article is “so much ado about nothing” if it does not contrast this poll with a similar poll done 20 or 40 years ago (would numbers be really any different? I am really not sure about that…).
I think this article was more of a click-bait article where reader was supposed to make following conclusion – “there is serious risk of millennials politically uprising against boomers”. Next article probably will be “consequences of such uprising will be huge. Buy gold to hedge wisely”.
Tell me which generation is Federal Reserve? Is it a millenial, a boomer or an X-er? The banks screwed us all over and made sure we’d be blaming and fighting eachother while they retire comfortably in their gated communities, worry free for the rest of their lives having done virtually nothing to earn it whatsoever.
well stated
@Realist — Political divide and rule is as old as the Greeks:
link to en.wikipedia.org
People do not like their leaders lying to them, indebting them to others, and diluting their citizenship. Trump tapped into that. Trump also used Twitter to circumvent the popular press, which had never been done before. As President will he ultimately fulfill many of his campaign promises? That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, this administration is entertaining to watch. US citizens also like to be entertained (provided it does not start a major war or impoverish us).
As for whom to blame, I agree with PGP. Human nature and the corrosive effects of time put us where we are, not so much the particular generation who happens to be in charge at the moment. Here’s hoping there are still enough self-correcting mechanisms that the system will eventually right itself.
I’m not a baby boomer but I still see the title of this article as part of a misguided blame-game. The “thing” we should blame is human nature and the quality of the politics that allowed things to get this far. Instead of thinking in intervals of 50 or even 100 years we should look at history a bit more broadly. To prevent the cyclic decline of empires where the generation that endures the final decline is always “screwed” the human race needs to find ways to improve leadership. So far the human race and its “democratic” followers have learned the value of merit in determining who leads them, then subsequently allowed anyone and everyone to vote while generously handing out more and more freedoms. Some would say this is progress but in reality we got an electorate that votes by fashion, the freedom to decide what sex we want to be, the freedom to smoke, get fat and make bad decisions that only end up costing other people. A large uneducated voting pool allows governments and corporations to buy votes (particularly under the Tudor-derived political system followed in the USA) while needed political decisions are stifled in the courts by lobbyists. The blame lies squarely with the political system, or modern democratic culture. Clearly that system is missing some controls, like constant independent auditing. Oversight, not by politicians but perhaps by a constantly renewed group of especially educated people chosen randomly from the greater electorate. Call it a government jury. Without such a control governments will forever corrupt, eventually filling with a clique of self-interested elite professional politicians. Like now and just as governments have repeatedly in the past.
I think other regions of the world are just more “passive aggressive” and hold inside their true feelings. And are more heavily indoctrinated into “political correctness” or “forced niceness”. At least Americans get it out in the open and don’t suppress their polarized feelings. Face it, a lot of the world is facing the same type of nationalism and public vitriol. .Brexit? La Pen who used to be an after thought actually seriously challenging in France? Right wing candidates in Austria, Germany, Netherlands making far more noise in elections then in past? Catalonia?
Spot on. All you can do, in the words of Jordan Peterson, is clean your own room – prepare for what is inevitably coming. I’d say 2040 is wildly optimistic. I’d put the over/under at 2030. Less if people turn to socialism due to a market crash under Trump.
Another way boomers screw millenials especially in California is though NIMBY-ism. “Not in my backyard”. The “I got mine so screw you” mentality. And most NIMBY’s in CA are liberal boomers. NIMBY’s fight and slow down developers that could add apartments, condos and houses much faster in CA. Benefiting millenials by lowering rents and house prices. But then it might spoil liberal NIMBY’ boomers views, or make their inflated house prices fall, so they fight the developers and make it prohibitively expensive and time consuming for developers to add housing supply. And thus keep millenials poor and as indentured servants by having to pay the NIMBY boomers 6 figure state gov’t pensions (via the high state income tax), and massive CA rents/house prices. But the NIMBY CA liberals control the milennials and pull their strings like marionette puppets via indoctrination in the media, schools, hollywood. And also via liberal race and identity politics, that all ensures the milennials keep voting in boomer liberals to run that state and continue to screw them and enrich themselves.
What would similar poll done one generation ago reveal? Would the “blaming” between GenX and Silent generation be at the same proportion as it is now between Boomers and Millenials?
It is hard to make any conclusions without that information provided as well to make a contrast.
Or perhaps going back two generations? Wasn’t there a strife between baby boomers and previous generations? Baby boomers were quite different in their thinking than the generations before them – link to wmfc.org
Or back then all generations were living in harmony even though they disagreed with each other?
@ Cocoa: “Since the Dept of Education makes the lion’ share of profit from student loan scam, I would say blame government first. They are out to fleece you like they fleeced us”
Government, finance – what’s the difference, especially given the fluidity of the workforce between the two? Really, a term combing both is more appropriate: “Government-Wall St.”
Government-Wall St. appropriates wealth through a multitude of schemes and the shenanigans are facilitated by a fraudulent monetary system administered by the epitome of a public-private institution, the Federal Reserve.
This is an excellent starting point for a discussion that needs to be had. I could fill the whole comment sections with what would essentially be a blog of my own, but I’ll keep it short. I’ve been saying since 2000 that the politics of the 20th Century was about race, but that as we progress, that will fade away, and the politics of the 21st Century will be about age. As for who to blame, we can start with a famous quote from Pogo (a cartoon character from many, many years ago), who said “I have met the enemy, and he is us”.
We need to go deeper, though. Historically, the lifetime of a Democracy is 200 years or less, and they always collapse the same way. You start with career politicians, who determine that the way to get re-elected is for government to give things to people, and make people dependent on government. That works great, until the resources are gone, and then they collapse, and the end is always bad.
Ben Franklin, when asked what form of government they have chosen, answered “A Republic, if you can keep it”, because he, and the other founders, knew from history how it would end, in time. They did their best to prevent it. Initially Congressmen and Senators were unpaid, so as to prevent career politicians. The Federal government couldn’t levy broad based taxes. It had no power to actually do anything, except the war power, the postal power, and the power to control commerce between the several states.
Little by little, though, we forgot what history taught us, and we slowly chipped away at those limitations placed on the Federal Government. The final straw broke in 1937, when Justice Roberts changed sides in response to Roosevelt’s court packing plan (“a switch in time saves nine”). Since then, we have had a Federal Government with an essentially unlimited power, and since then we have gone quickly down the road that all Democracies take, and we are rapidly approaching the inevitable end.
So, back to the question of who do we blame? My greatgrandfather’s generation for passing an Amendment permitting an Income tax? My grandfather’s generation for the things Roosevelt did to start us down this path? My father’s generation, for the Great Society, the expansion of the welfare state? Our generation, for the massive deficit spending of Reagan, Bush, Jr. and Obama? The Millennials, for complaining, not that we are deficit spending, but rather that we don’t give them enough stuff?
I blame human nature. It was a fluke that this country’s government was created, not by a mob, but by a bunch of scholars, who created the greatest Constitution in all of history. Even their wisdom, however, could not prevent the inevitable end, and they knew it. We have all been very lucky to have lived during this time, but sadly, it will draw to a close before 2040. In the meantime, we can look forward to the politics of age taking over, and each generation points their fingers at the others, as we fight over the diminishing assets our country has left.
Edit – Oops, sorry, I failed to keep it short. My apologies.
It seems some people see millenials as lazy and entitled and there is this narrative they all live at home and drive for Dominoes. This may be the case on the average I don’t know, but my anecdotal experience has not been that at all. I happen to be of the Gen-X. Personally I have met a lot of really impressive millenials. Maybe this is because I run into a subset that are in tech and the investing fields. But the ones I have met are very, very sharp folks. And some are incredibly successful financially at a young age. Since they have so much more info at their fingertips then I did at their age, they seem to ramp up on concepts really fast. Just my limited personal experience, and may not reflect the averages. I have also found the ones I have met to be quite nice people overall.
On average, millennials work more hours and have more jobs than boomers did when they were in their 20s and 30s. Your argument is stereotypes fed to you by lazy boomers who want love engaging in their favorite pastime, which is blaming others for their own mistakes. Millennials only want the same opportunities boomers got. Don’t get us twisted.
The millenials are the entitlement generation. Most have never left the nest. You reap what you sow. they are the generation where its not their fault. This article makes them a victim. Maybe a victim of a lazy upbringing and a mental lazy education. They do not know what hard work means. Let them suck on the root of bitterness.
People are screwed by not paying attention and learning what politics is all about. The attempted bailout of the teachers retirement via an increase in the sales tax was passed under the guise of being ‘for the children’ as a typical example.
Millennial professionals REALLY get screwed in CA especially. They have to pay the highest income tax in the nation, in some part to fund ridiculously massive boomer state retiree pensions. Milennials can’t afford homes in CA because prices were RE-inflated by the boomers that run the Fed keeping rates at zero for 7 years and buying trillions in bonds to keep rates down. CA home prices are further inflated by prop 13 (keeps property taxes frozen – benefits boomers who bought 20-30 yrs ago, NOT millennials in the market today – so no incentive for boomers to ever sell). So millennials have to work long hours just to never get ahead because they have to pay a huge state income tax and grossly inflated rents/home prices. Yet they still vote unanimously for the Democrat boomers who run the state and keep the status quo the way it is!!! That shows the enormous power of school/media/hollywood indoctrination of CA milennials…keep voting in the people who screw you royally.
It all depends if the “Monkey” was pulling just the low hanging fruit or the whole orchard.
Absolutely – Anger should be directed at the Fed, at Bush, at Obama, at Congress, and at warmongers.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but boomers are in charge of Congress, the Fed etc, and have been for years.
Most likely, anger will be misdirected, but boomers will be the target.
I added Tengen’s comment to the article. Thanks – Mish
Everyone wants to point to the symptoms when the root cause of unfairness and cross generation theft (and associated hate) is sooooo obvious once you look at it from 50000 feet. It’s not “the fed”. They are a symptom. It’s not “the boomers” they (we) are just a symptom/participant, not root cause.
The one and only root cause is that we the people ALL got suckered into accepting fake money as our money supply as if it were real. There. That’s it. Fixed it for you. Nothing else matters. Money represents labor, lives and some portion of our limited time on this planet. Fake money is theft by guile and elite trickery of all these things. The money is fake and corrupt and since money makes the world go around we have a fake debt based economy and corruption at all levels.
Citi’s Chuck Prince laid it all out for us. Listen to his words!! “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated,” Prince said. “But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.” The record hit a dust particle and skipped a track in 2008. But as old patrick swayze told us “we ain’t seen bad yet, but it’s coming”.
Don’t you see? There is NO CHOICE but to be corrupt and to use as much leverage as possible as long as the system is corrupt and rewards this behavior. Why? Because if you don’t do it, your competition will. If you run your business paygo (i,e, honestly) you will grow slowly but if you are competing against someone who leverages up early in the debt Ponzi then you have ZERO chance of competing. He will outpace you at every turn because he’s using the power of fake money (which is essentially unearned labor) when you are trying to play honest using only real labor.
The ONLY way to fix anything going forward is for those who are clearly getting screwed by the fake money system to stop participating in every way possible. Start asking to be paid in silver coins for your private car repair business, or more simply, just take any excess currency you have over and above bills (AKA savings) and covert to gold and silver bullion coins (AKA honest money). DO NOT put your savings into their fake money pension and retirement plans (AKA 401k). I guaran-damn-tee you they will find a way to f— you out of it. Your enemy is less men with guns (we can handle that ourselves) than men with pens. They will sign laws that screw you out of your wealth and force you into a bail in of their debt Ponzi.
This is the summation of 20 years of intense financial and economic study on my part. Tens of thousands of hours invested all to distill what at first seems a very complex thing down into clear and simple terms along with actionable strategy to avoid getting screwed any further. Become your own central banker and tell the money elite they can mow their own f-ing lawn and fix their own g-d car. Stop accepting their fake money as if it were real.
Follow the yellow brick road while wearing silver slippers (the book had silver slippers, the movie turned them into ruby slippers in order to make the truth which L Frank Baum was trying to convey a bit less obvious while also taking advantage of Technicolor technology).
Milennial anger would be better directed at the Fed, banksters, the MIC, etc but Boomers were more complicit in this mess than they’ll readily admit.
As a Gen X’er I’m not terribly fond of any current American generation, including my own. We all played a part in this acrimonious society we see today and nobody made much effort to stop it. Seems unlikely history will be kind to any of us, at least on a generational level.