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Comment by creaturemachine | Hacker News Reader

Mmm there's that word again, "given."

I don’t think the boomer generation “earned” cheaper college. That was given to them either by circumstance or by the previous generations. Similarly, post-war prosperity wasn’t something they had earned or worked for.

The contention is that the world left by boomers has less opportunity than what the one provided to them. It’s not entirely true (if you’re black in America, the civil rights movement sure changes a lot for the better), but that’s the argument.

>I don’t think the boomer generation “earned” cheaper college.

Exactly. Later generations simply inherited expensive college after the devastation of Nixon.

If Nixon wasn't stopped, they would have continued until all Americans had been returned to lower opportunity levels equivalent to many minorities before Civil Rights, other than those whose significant capitalist privileges had already been well established before the early 1970's.

EDIT: more rapidly returned to lower opportunity levels

Edit: It's still too easy to underestimate Nixon Youth.

Perhaps just replace it with “had access to”. Or perhaps just focus on the spirit of the statement and not pedantries over word choice.

Can't tell what point you're making, but when my brother left his job at Google our grandmother asked what that was going to do to his pension. As if companies paying pensions was still a thing.

These people grew up when a factory job could support a family of four, and companies hired people with no experience and then paid actual benefits.

Boomers benefited from very generous circumstances. To suggest they earned the postwar economic boom is laughably misguided.

My parents, I guess who were boomers, suffered from crushing debt, divorce, poverty, unstable work. Factory work killed two of my Grandfathers, COPD and asbestosis. But go on, tell us how Google ruined your Brother's future.

Would you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? There are much better ways to honor your grandfathers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>But go on, tell us how Google ruined your Brother's future.

I didn't write or imply this in any way.

My point is that many boomers conveniently gloss over the fact that they benefited immensely from the economic climate of yesteryear, and the common refrain of millennials needing to just tug harder on their bootstraps isn't received well because of it.

Yes, it would be more appropriate to say "not robbed by their employers."

Funny, my pre-baby boomer dad had his pension raided by the leadership of his employer. Employers abusing employees is a tale as old as time.

Indeed. The labor movement in the early 20th century claimed a significant number of advantages for workers, and employers have been steadily chipping away at them ever since. The effect of this has been cumulative, with each generation both never seeing the benefits that were taken from their parents and having new ones taken from them personally. Pensions are long gone, unions are on life support, insurance is a debacle (though somewhat unrelated), wages have stagnated resulting in inflation-driven pay cuts, and the latest trend is to eschew employees altogether and treat everybody as an independent contractor (thus eliminating virtually all benefits).

The boomers also have a pretty strong sense of entitlement. Some would argue that millennial are entitled to feel "entitled".

> Some would argue that millennial are entitled to feel "entitled".

Some of us would argue that is a garbage mentality at the root of the problem.

I would sooner wish to emulate the "Greatest Generation" than the Boomers.

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