social contract – The Portly Politico

Pickup my newest release: Leftovers IV! Get 80% off with promo code ham!

Want to play the sax? Read my ultimate guide to getting started for under $350.

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Tim Dillon’s favorite generation—the only generation to “grow older but not wiser“—seems permanent. The ubiquity of Boomerdom in all aspects of American life for over seventy years gives the demographic cohort the veneer of eternity, a massive, limitless generation that will never die—and never stop working.

Dr. Fiancée and I are both the children of Boomers, and our parents very much represent the good Boomer traits of hard work, diligence, self-restraint, etc. They possess some of the more benign aspects of Boomerism, like a love of buying random trinkets at Target, but they aren’t mired in the soulless consumerism that infested so much of their generation. In other words, “Not All Boomers Are Like That.”

But, goodness, a lot of them are like that: temperamental with service professionals (doctors, waiters, administrative assistants, airline attendants, and anyone else who provides some kind of service); pennywise-and-pound-foolish; extravagant in their self-indulgence, but miserly in the extreme; gluttonous for public services, without any regard to the social contract; and (I strongly suspect) fearful of death.

They also absolutely refuse to leave the workforce, while simultaneously refusing to adapt to new economic realities. I’ve read that Millennials (my generation, which is not exactly rose-scented, either) are aspiring Boomers, which is true: we’ve spent most of our disjointed careers trying to appease the vagaries of Boomer corporate leadership in the oft-vain attempt to build decent lives for ourselves. We grew up suckling at the teat of Boomer largesse, only to have the bottle stripped away in early adulthood; many of us (and I would partially include myself in this analysis) have been striving to get back to the relative ease and luxury of our childhoods ever since.

Granted, I know how the Boomers will respond, because I have written on this topic before. I get it; it’s not nice or even fair to have your entire generation called out (believe me, as a Millennial, I know: apparently, all of our problems stem from wanting to put avocado on our toast, not the fact that we started our careers during the Great Recession and have endured repeated economic downturns). But before you go post a rant on Facebook about how “entitled” my generation is (a bit rich, but the Boomers aren’t exactly known for their introspection), let me say something positive:

Boomers—we need you.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

A few weeks back I wrote a post entitled “Boomer Rant,” the inspiration for which was a piece by Erin over at Existential Ergonomics called “The Boomer Mentality,” which detailed the grasping materialism and petty shallowness of the various Boomer caricatures she and her boyfriend experienced during a visit to Yellowstone National Park. Both Erin’s lighthearted post and my more strident polemic about that larger-than-life generation generated a stream of comments from outraged Boomers, all of whom played the part of victim well. As I noted in my post and in multiple comments, “Boomers are either the heroes or the victims of their stories—they are never the villains.”

What was interesting in the resulting discussion was the lack of any concept of a social contract existing between one generation and the next. That broken and/or missing social contract was the heart of the complaint both Erin and I brought in our respective posts: where is the sense of obligation—and even just empathy—to the plight of Millennials, et. al.? Not a single Boomer commenter—even the ones that do not fit the negative Boomer stereotypes—would come out and say, “You know, you’re right—the Millennials and Gen Xers and Zoomers have had and will have it harder than us. We had our own struggles, but we enjoyed pretty good economic conditions for most of our lives.”

That failure or unwillingness to acknowledge the struggles of younger generations makes any sense of social contract impossible for the Boomers. Remember, these are people who are gleefully boasting about how they will not leave their children anything, taking out reverse mortgages and blowing their fortunes (and pensions and Social Security payments) on RVs and casinos and luxury vacations. Meanwhile, they’re the same people that complain about how expensive spaghetti noodles have gotten and will penny-pinch on stupid things, like the water bill—the living embodiment of “penny wise and pound foolish”—or their own children. They’re the generation that tips 10% on a $500 tab.

Again, my point with this hyperbole is not to Boomer bash, per se, but to note the very concept of a social contract between generations—an implicit understanding of the obligations of each generation to the other that has existed in some form in every society in every age—is dying, if not non-existent. That does not bode well for the future of the nation. Indeed, it breeds radicalism and desperation.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.