[sesuximo]

I wish I were more sympathetic. But this generation:

- had cheap housing for years

- lived through a strong American economy

- had relatively cheap access to education

- had a cheaper tax burden

- many of them have pensions that are paid for by today’s workers

- spent most of their lives polluting the earth and not putting money aside for the cleanup

Not sure what other advantages this generation wants?

[axaxs]

They're called the 'me generation' for a very valid reason...

[cafard]

Because people took Tom Wolfe way too seriously?

[silisili]

Perhaps, but you can see it with your own eyes. I hate generalizations as much as the next guy...but look at the change milenials ushered in. When I was a kid, it was unheard of for companies to have 'missions', nobody cared about recycling or the climate, etc.

As much flak as they get, I think milenials and whatever the gen after them are seem to be way more caring of others than the generations that preceded them.

I'm something like a xenial, so I don't group myself in well with them even.

[cafard]

Having grown up in the boom, when people sang along with Bob Dylan "Come mothers and fathers, throughout the land/And don't criticize what you don't understand/[etc.]", I am skeptical. Many of the boomers were unhappy with their parents' generation, portions of which wanted to--and sometimes did--cut off our hair and send us to Vietnam. A reaction followed, about thirty years later, when we noticed that the parents' generation was dying off, we felt bad about it, and we bought a lot of not very good books about their generation, sometimes called (by authors and publishers with an interest in it) "Th Greatest Generation".

Within the last five years, or at least the last ten, somebody published a book to prove that "The Greatest Generation" wasn't that great, and that it was the boomers who set e.g. the Civil Rights movement going. By most counts, the oldest boomers would have been about 10 when the lunch-counter sit-ins started, so I didn't quite understand this. But the author was a boomer, and I do understand the impulse to think well of one's generation.

As to your points: mission statements strike me as on the whole a crock. I have known boomers who worked very hard to make recycling practical. As for the climate, there is a post somewhere on HN now about the 1970s anticipation of a new ice age: it takes a while for better estimates to make it to the general public.

[atlgator]

And social security. Millennial and younger generations would be wise to plan for retirement without it.

[nly]

I suspect those who save wisely and privately saved for their retirement will see their nest eggs raided by the state if the public social security system collapses.

One of the reasons contributions made in to pensions in the UK are 100% tax free is because nobody trusts a future government not to double dip.

[atlgator]

That's my fear as well. The last wall to topple is a straight tax on capital. Sure, they'll sell it as a tax on the uber rich just like they did with the income tax, but that threshold will drop drop drop until the middle class is paying out on both ends: tax on earned income + tax on everything you have. Every year.

[mbg721]

As a US-er, everyone I've talked to regards me as overly cynical, but I think about Roth IRAs and to some extent all tax-advantaged retirement accounts the same way; that money is a fat target once it becomes politically expedient.

[toper-centage]

Because poor people didn't exist back then?