For the boomers here, a look into how we're perceived by our grown children:
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Colby Cosh: Watching boomers in turmoil is worth a recession
February 24, 2009, 7:30 AM by Kelly McParland
Colby Cosh, Full Comment
With global markets tanking and unemployment soaring, Canadians are pinching their pennies. But as National Post contributors explain in a week-long series, economic doom and gloom is also a chance for change.
Asked to pronounce on “The Virtues of Austerity,” I eventually decided to let my id run amok and take over the column for a day. Let’s face it: The virtues of austerity are the kind we generally recommend solely unto others. We all think ourselves much too well acquainted with them.
For the children of the Baby Boomers, there is a special delight in watching the world economy shake itself to pieces like a two-dollar pram at this particular moment. Our elders, who bought prosperity and nice pensions at our expense and pulled the ripcords on their “Freedom 55” parachutes without leaving any behind in the passenger cabin, are getting it in the neck just when they thought a secure old age, with money for travel and expensive pastimes, was a safe bet. I’m willing to watch my meagre savings suffer from market turmoil in exchange for contemplating the dilemma of those who are now between 55 and 65.
These are people who started their working lives at a time when labour unions were strong, taxpayers outnumbered retirees nearly 10 to one, housing was as cheap as borscht and the basic personal exemption covered most of a living wage. They congratulated themselves on building an elaborate “social safety net” at the expense of their children. Their great numbers have allowed their preferences and superstitions to dominate culture and media. They’re the ones who burned through tonnes of pot and then launched a War on Drugs when they grew bored with it; they drove mighty-bowelled Mustangs and Thunderbirds in their youth, and only started worrying about the environment when they no longer needed a capacious backseat to fornicate in; they espoused and took full advantage of sexual liberation, but were safely hors de combat by the time AIDS reared its head. The first time I see one shopping for dog food, I doubt I’ll be able to suppress a laugh.
As for the younger crowd, it is a quite distinct pleasure to watch their panic and uncertainty. The actually existing danger is not too great, but no one born after about 1980 has much practical experience of severe recession, any more than a 40-year-old knows what a depression looks like. The worst economic event within the memory of the ’80s-born will have been the popping of the tech bubble — a trivial speed bump compared to the conditions of stagflation and wretchedness that became accepted as the norm in the ’70s. There is a certain cohort there whose defining traumas are personal, not economic; they’re children of the age of divorce and the double-income household. If you’re my age, you might know what it was like to go to school in worn-out, humiliatingly generic shoes. If you were born just a bit later you probably had new Nikes every six months — but you also may have only seen your father every six months.
I don’t wish these younger people ill, and I don’t believe that the suffering which lies ahead for some of them is character-building. From what I’ve seen of folks who remember the Depression — lest they be left out of this salvo of rude intergenerational abuse — privation mostly breeds bitterness and fear. But the lesson that economic growth is a contingent accomplishment is one that every generation must learn. Why are young people so vulnerable to preposterous political ideas? Why is it the young, most egregiously, who romanticize poverty, cultural backwardness and unspoiled nature?
It’s because they regard sound money, good jobs and the benefits of the consumer society as unstated axioms; they have no sense that these things must be perpetually fought for, and can be lost in the blink of an eye. Well, they’ll know now. And the knowledge will serve them.
National Post
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