The Drumbeat of "Boomers Should Die"

Booing the Boomers

This is tough to hear and even tougher to write about.

The US is now seeing for the first time ever, a shortening of average lifespans. Americans are also hearing for the first time, a mantra repeated through different age groups and it is this, “It’s time for boomers to die.”

It’s a chilling comment to hear, but the sentiment is there for a reason. While it seems like elder hate, maybe it’s more of a ‘right back at you’ response to criticism from the older generation. Boomers are the first generation perceived to be making it worse for future generations. And society is calling them out in a series of articles and online posts…

Medium:

Baby Boomers and Millennials: How Trauma is Informing the Generational Conflict

California Retirement Investors:

Younger Generations Are Frustrated with Baby Boomers

Even the National Institute of Health is concerned about it:

Hostility Toward Baby Boomers on TikTok - PMC

Vox:

How the baby boomers — not millennials — screwed America

CNN:

Will Baby Boomers Dying Off Fix Polarization

According to the Vox article, “The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it.” The accuracy of that stings.

Maybe this is all just unwarranted negative publicity for boomers. Or to quote some of my favorite boomers, maybe “you reap what you sow.”

Younger generations have a negative perception of a generation that is believed to have pillaged natural resources and gradually funneled money upwards until 10% of all Americans own 93% of the stock. While worrying about handing money over to Uncle Sam, boomers won’t acknowledge we’ve been handing it up to the 1%.

Uncle Sam would have been expected to spend the money as America directs. Uncle Sam is comprised of 535 member of congress who have been expected to share how the money is being spent. Uncle Sam would have been expected to provide infrastructure, education and resources. The 1% owe us nothing. We have no expectations of the billionaires, yet they are the people that, over time, we gave all our money to, with no strings attached.

What Do Boomers Have To Do With Billionaires?

Based on laws that allowed for it, every year, the paychecks of CEO’s becomes a higher percentage of what the rest of their employees make. The legalized corporate greed from 2017 to 2020 made most younger Americans disgusted with what they were seeing. The “binge on buybacks” from companies that turned around and asked the federal government for handouts. In 2021 people realized what was happening. But it wasn’t until 2022 that this legalized heist finally became unpopular.

I think the generational rift is this, all of this didn’t happen overnight. It happened over decades on boomer’s watch. Boomers never properly explained why we have always been expected to give government handouts to the rich, but never to the poor. Why Boomers? Why did you make laws that value corporations over individuals year after year until individuals have no value in US society? And individuals are powerless to fight corporations.

I remember boomer’s parents, the silent generation. They were civic minded, they pretended to care about others, they were silent, but as a generation, they didn’t go along with corruption because they thought they may get a cut of the heist.

According to the internet, “The Silent Generation,born between the mid-1920s and early 1940s, is known for being thrifty, respectful, traditional and for valuing stability and security.” I think that’s a fair description. They were also the last generation to trust the American government and the last generation to be described as modest and unpretentious.

A series of Reddit posts has calculated that half the Boomers will be dead in 5 years, and most all will be gone by 2040. It is never a good thing to be part of a demographic that people are publicly calculating when you will die.

So how did we get from a civic minded generation of modest mild-mannered citizens to a generation calculating when their grandparents die?

Not all Boomers are bad and not all Boomers are responsible for the mess we’re in. As a society, how do we start to love the people we hate?

Sure boomers have different opinions of younger generations, but that’s always the case. Throughout centuries, older generations have looked down at younger generations and not liked their clothes, their music, their style, their language, their attitude. But never before have older generations actually wanted younger generations to have it worse than they did. And never before in US history has the older generation set the wheels in motion to screw over younger generations.

*Except maybe in Rome. Ancient Romans routinely criticized the younger generations and called them lazy. We see how that turned out for Romans.

It goes without saying, this notion of bad boomers is directed at white boomers. Because they were the ones who dominated the cigarette ads from the 1960s, all the TV shows, all the radio shows and all the politicians from that era and the next and the next. White boomers held all the cards and had all the power to make or break their nation for their entire adult lives.

In 2023, Americans realized that congress was the oldest it has ever been. Ever. In US history. It was the white boomers that controlled US policy for their generation, and has continued to control every generation since. It’s the white boomers that made the laws in their time, and they are the majority who are still, insanely, still are making the laws today.

With great power comes great responsibility. But it feels like boomers just wanted the power and forgot about the responsibility to each other or future generations. Our last president at the time was the oldest president, and our current president is slated to break that age record to be the oldest president. Boomers got to see the youngest ever US president. Their grandchildren get to see the oldest US president… twice!

Progressives didn’t want Joe Biden as the candidate in 2020. There was an array of progressive candidates who would have made history, we could have had the first woman President, the first Asian president, the first black woman president, the first Jewish President, the first LGBTQ president, but we settled on the white boomer to try and get boomers to go vote. We tried to meet in the middle. And even that boomer, after 4 years of the 2nd lowest approval ratings in US history, was delusional enough to think no one could do the job except him. He could have stepped down at any point during is presidency of abysmal approval and given America what she’s always wanted… a female president. Boomer Biden was the only person in US history that could have single handedly given America its first female president, but in true Boomer form, he clutched power until the very end.

For generations, Americans have made concessions for Boomers, while it feels like Boomers as a generation, have never made concessions for anyone else.

I think the “Boomers should die” angst is directed at the people who thought or still think that a woman’s place is in the home and that the 1960’s equal rights was wrong and the women’s rights of 1970’s were wrong. It is directed at the people who aren’t comfortable with people loving who they love, nor the diversity America has embraced.

Longevity experts have established that people who live in Blue Zones live longer in part because of community. In Blue Zones, older members of society are established as loving, valuable, sage members of society full of wisdom. Ones that you cherish and hope never die.

One of the reasons people live longer in Blue zones is because they not only accept their place in society, but embrace it. They step back and guide the youth. They mentor younger, curious generations. Blue Zone residents understand that respect can’t be forced, it has to be earned.

Boomers were the ones that told us that we’re supposed to look at younger generations and think they lack the intelligence of older generations. But kids now drink water, willfully. They understand the importance of mental health. Sure they are glued to their screens, but wasn’t Gen X glued to their TV’s as children and aren’t boomers now all n their screens too?

The younger generations understand calling out things like toxic positivity and the importance of don’t surrender to your gender stereotype, embrace authenticity. For the most part, they’re smart, funny, civic minded and care about the earth.

Sure, the idiots picked up vapes right after we finally got everyone off cigarettes and talk with inexplicable pauses that seems unwarranted. But they’re good people. If we look at the sum of averages, they’re shaping up to be better than boomers, and even better than Gen X. These youngsters even understand the importance of gratitude with “I appreciate you” to strangers and carrying around gratitude journals.

And if I’m talking about Boomers, I need to address the big fat elephant in the room, Social Security.

When Boomers realized that future generations wouldn’t have access to social security, they didn’t take to the streets in protest, they didn’t change the way they voted, they didn’t sound the alarms, they didn’t vow to make it their life’s work to protect the financial opportunity of future generations. Nope, boomers simply looked at younger generations and said, “you’ll need to start saving.” Boomers basically said to millions of Americans younger than them, “No money when you retire? That sounds like a you problem.”

As a generation, they didn’t fight for their children and grandchildren to have the same access to retirement money as they do. And now there are whispers of social security going away sooner than expected and the generation that repeatedly said, “social security won’t be around for you” realizes it might not be around for them.

“Social Security will only be able to pay 77% of benefits beginning in 2034.” That is 9 years away. Most Boomers will be dead, and that’s how they planned it, for social security to die off around the same time as them. And what they leave for future generations is a big middle finger.

The generation that discouraged artsy fun fulfilling jobs saying, “make sure you get a job with good healthcare.” The generation that was adamant that health care should come from your employer, and never from your government, no that’s socialism. That generation is now upset at the discussion of getting rid of Medicare… the government healthcare plan that they are all on.

According to CNBC, “CEO pay has increased by 1,209% since 1978, compared with an 15% bump for the typical worker over this time period.” 2025, there are more CEOs, but CEOs still make on average 200 times what other company employees make.

The pull yourself up by the bootstraps generation never actually had to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The generation before them did. White boomers never acknowledged the need to help the people without any bootstraps. And now, only a handful of people in the US even have bootstraps.

And I don’t have the time to unpack climate change or global warming, but suffice to say it also happened on boomer’s watch. Sure, the earth has been gradually warming before boomers, but to grasp the impact of global warming over the past 100 years, imagine riding in a car going 50 mph for thousands of years, then all of a sudden your car is now going 5,000 mph and you have no way to slow it down. That is literally the amount of increase in global warming during their lifetimes. And while boomers argue it’s because of cow farts, everyone else thinks it’s because of old farts.

Boomers are like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings. Gollum thought he was controlling power but didn’t realize that power was controlling him. Gollum was a guy full of malice, envy and paranoia. The type of petty guy that would have complained about immigrants stealing his job, even though he’s been retired for 11 years. And if that comparison seems unfair, Gollum was a 587 year old white male with anti-social behavior and an obsession with power.

We thought Americans were dying at younger ages because we eat like crap but maybe it’s because we act like it too.

Boomers, take a break. Stop only voting for other boomers. The obsession with your generation staying in power is killing your relationships with everyone else. Trust the process, remember the silent generation turned over the reins to you at some point too. Let go, enjoy your years left, get to know your grandkids, your neighbors, even the black ones. Boomers don’t need to die, they need to let go.

I don’t know how to bridge the gap between generations, but I think it starts with focusing on loving who we love more than hating who we hate.