It is generally acknowledged that the Baby Boom generation (of which I am a member) has been the most successful, socioeconomically speaking, in the history of this planet, and the prospects for the generations following to match or surpass us are not looking good. As a confirmation of the disparity, I recently read that while Baby Boomers make up approximately 20% of the current US population, they possess more than 50% of the wealth.
In speaking with others of my generation, I have come to realize that very few Baby Boomers have even a modicum of insight as to how that success happened. The typical pabulum that I get from my peers is that they got their education and worked hard, implying that it should be no different for the younger generations.
To be fair, I can see several historical and sociological factors that would lead Boomers to think this way. First of all, many of our parents pounded into our heads from an early age that going to college was the key to success. Some things just don’t change from generation to generation! In fact, when Boomers entered the work force en masse during the 1970s, we were the largest new worker cohort in the history of the country, and approximately 30% of us had a college degree, up from, at most, 10% for previous generations.
However, despite our educational advantages, the 1970s was a disastrous time economically for everyone, but especially for those entering the workforce, and those permanently leaving the workforce, due to retirement or disability. We were plagued by two recessions, two huge oil shocks, and stagflation. Engineering as a career was absolutely dead. Add the extremely challenging geopolitical environment both at home and abroad, and we experienced an era when it was virtually impossible to get ahead solely through one’s education and hard work.
I was able to sidestep much of this, at least socioeconomically speaking, even though my dad had suddenly and unexpectedly died at the age of 42 in mid-December 1969. That’s because I spent the first three years of the 1970s finishing college, the next four years in medical school, and the final three years of the decade as an Internal Medicine resident. In those days, the cost of living, including college and medical school could be handled without too much difficulty, and the pay as a medical resident was sufficient for me to have a very nice apartment in Brooklyn, while also being able to save some money. As such, I didn’t enter the “real” workforce until the middle of 1980.
The timing for me was near perfect! Beginning in the middle of 1982, the greatest economic boom in history launched, and due to significant gains in the areas of racial equality and women’s rights, all groups participated. In fact, every quintile of household income set a record in all but two or three years of this boom, peaking in 1999.
Given that the 1980s and 1990s were in the wheelhouse of every Baby Boomer’s working career, I could see where the attitude would be that getting an education and working hard would lead to success. Extrapolating this thinking to the younger generations, it would make sense for Boomers to believe that the younger generations, having an even higher percentage with a college degree, just need to keep working hard and they will also achieve the same level of success. However, there are several major flaws in this thought process.
Some of it stems from the fact that the Boomers were the first “me” generation. It resulted in an inability to see the world from other than a personal bubble that was easily filled with nonsense. One of the things that has been completely missed by the Boomers is that Gen X, which is currently in its peak earnings years, has not, and never will catch up to the Boomers in terms of wealth accumulation.
Carrying this train of thought further, one might ask the following questions: (1) Are Boomers smarter than the generations that followed? I’d say no, except for people born between 2005 and 2020, who were permanently damaged by the Covid response. The extent of the damage won’t be known for another decade or two, since that cohort has not entered the workforce as yet. (2) Did the Boomers work harder than the generations that followed?
While every generation believes that the younger generations are overrun by lazy bastards, it’s not true. The reason for this misconception is that the tools available to each successive generation to help them work more effectively (and generate more wealth) evolve from generation to generation.
In order to explain the success of the Boomers, one has to look at the economic environment within which each generation lived during its working lives. The wealth creation of the 1980s and 1990s was not because Boomers were so great; it was because we operated in an economic environment that was conducive to success at a level that had never been seen before. That economic environment can be described in one word: Reaganomics.
Very recently, the word meritocracy has come back in vogue. What I can state with near certainty is that the era when meritocracy reached its zenith in this country was during the 1980s and 1990s, and it was largely due to an economic environment that promoted it. Since the end of the 20th century, those favorable conditions haven’t existed, other than during the years 2018 and 2019.
From the foregoing, it should be clear that most Boomers put the cart before the horse when it comes to explaining our generation’s success…and our children are paying a heavy price for this lack of insight. What has been particularly difficult for Millennials is that their childhood occurred during the greatest economic boom ever, only to enter the workforce beginning in 2000, when everything changed, and not for the better.
Having not been taught the real reason why the Boomers succeeded, the younger generations do not understand (and actively resist) the efforts by the Trump administration to reestablish the economic environment of the 1980s and 1990s. The only taste of it occurred in 2018 and 2019, when household incomes in every quintile finally broke through the records previously set in 1999, but it was overshadowed by the Covid disaster, which distorted everything.
As mentioned earlier, the term meritocracy has been resurrected, but what is really being put forward is credentialocracy. They are not the same. If they were, the younger generations would be doing just fine, socioeconomically speaking. We live in a country where having more initials after one’s name imputes greater intelligence, superior level of achievement, and higher ethical standing. More than anything, the disaster known as the Covid response taught us otherwise, in that the best and the brightest made everything much worse than it would have been had we done absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, this lesson has not penetrated most peoples’ personal bubble; at least not yet.
To make matters worse, our so-called educational system has cheapened the value of a credential, while charging higher and higher tuition to obtain it. In fact, our educational system rewards teachers, not for how well the students they teach perform, but by how many post-graduate credits and degrees the teacher obtains.
To me, this credentialing madness reached the height of perversity and insanity when it became clear that the CDC’s recommendations for protecting children’s health with regard to school closings, social distancing, masking, and “vaccine” mandates were dictated to the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky (who has MD and MPH credentials) by Randi Weingarten, head of the largest teachers’ union (who has a JD credential). This is backwards, and tremendous damage has been done. Want more? Despite the fact that uptake of the Covid shots has dropped to around 5%, it is my observation that among the highly educated, uptake is several times higher. Are the best and the brightest in the process of self-immolation?
Clearly, we need to decouple meritocracy from credentialocracy, and we must return to a state in which meritocracy can flourish. This will require unlearning the progressive garbage that’s replaced critical thinking over the past 55+ years, and an economic environment that fosters individual initiative. Otherwise, we’re done, and you might as well stick a fork in us now.
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