What's wrong with the world? Baby Boomers, according to Millennials
Fewer than 20% of millennials still live with mum and dad.
Do you know what is wrong with the world? Baby Boomers, according to a new poll out of the United States that says Millennials think the older generation has made life worse.
The Axios/SurveyMonkey poll found 51 per cent of Millennials think Baby Boomers have spoiled it for the next generation.
In the same poll, 42 per cent of people from Generation X thought Boomers had screwed up, while only 32 per cent of the silent generation blamed the Boomers.
Baby Boomers themselves were split on the issue, but almost one third agreed they stuffed up.
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Stuff reporters Brad Flahive - a Millennial - and Baby Boomer Michael Daly make the case for and against Boomer bashing.
FOR
Brad Flahive
It's not easy being a millennial, says millennial Brad Flahive.
It's certainly not easy being a millennial. Outrageous student debt, a broken housing market, some of the worst social ills in the western world and a changing climate that could catastrophically impact our infrastructure - it's enough to make one stay indoors and binge on Netflix.
But to do nothing would be out of character for a true Millennial, we try to make things right. It's a burden this generation has accepted, wilfully.
An annual Millennial survey by advisory giant Deloitte shows improving the general health of the planet, and those living in it, sits atop of our generation manifesto.
Millennials are craving stability and flexibility, and have a strong desire to make an impact that matters. Deloitte noticed a strong upward trend to make an impact on a smaller, local level was having a ripple effect on broader markets.
This is in stark contrast to that Baby Boomer-lot who still seem preoccupied with how everyone else is affecting their happiness.
Take a look at the recent political upheaval in Dear Old Blighty - Brexit was a Baby Boomer boo boo. Mind the gap they said, overwhelmingly boomers voted to break up a union that was, on the whole, for the greater good.
Across the Atlantic, it was this same lot that voted Trump out of his wiggy tower and into the White House - good one Boomers.
The housing crisis has been discussed to death, we know they screwed that up. But so skewed is its effect, it can leave one thinking Baby Boomers are sitting in their superannuation strengthened towers readying themselves to ride off into a glorious sunset-soaked retirement, while millennials fight greedy landlords and greedier banks to enjoy a one-bed paradiso above the local chicken shop.
However, perhaps the biggest concern in front of us is the environment.
Now it's a bit unfair to lump that fiasco solely on Baby Boomers, but a significant amount of environmental damage was caused under their watch.
The majority of politicians opposed to action on climate change are Baby Boomers, and it will be the Millennial generation who will bear the cost of this inactivity.
But in true Millennial style, I won't get sidetracked by blaming the Baby Boomers - they also did some things right - I'll just get on with it.
AGAINST
Michael Daly
Michael Daly was young and idealistic once.
I (vaguely) remember being young and full of unrealistic expectations about how easy it would be to solve all the world's problems.
It turned out the real world was far more complicated and messy than a late-teens, early-20s viewpoint might suggest. Despite that, at least according to some people, many things are getting considerably better.
In fact, Swedish physician and statistician Professor Hans Rosling has just - posthumously - published a book he co-wrote setting out that argument.
Called Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, it includes a couple of pages with 16 graphs showing an example of things getting less bad, and 16 graphs of things getting better.
They're worth listing. The bad things Rosling says are decreasing are legal slavery, oil spills, battle deaths, children dying, child labour, countries with the death penalty, deaths from disaster, leaded gasoline, HIV infections, hunger, nuclear warheads, ozone depletion, plane crash deaths, smallpox, the price of solar panels, sulphur dioxide particles per person.
The 16 good things increasing are child cancer survival, the share of people with mobile phones, the share of people living in democracy, share of people with some access to electricity, share of girls of primary school age enrolled, cereal yield per hectare, immunisation rates, share of people using the internet, literacy, the number of new feature films each year, new music recordings annually, national parks and other protected areas, scholarly science articles published, monitored species, share of people with water from a protected source, and number of countries where men and women have equal voting rights.
Sure, that's an international perspective, but it's pretty good proof the boomers and the generation before them - those who grew up before, during and immediately after World War II - got quite a few things right.
Will baby boomers still enjoy retirement when the rest of the population point the finger? Probably.
I accept housing is a big black mark on the Boomers. On this score they've been self-interested, rigid, and have been spouting righteous nonsense, as they became asset millionaires simply because they bought a bungalow in Auckland at the right time. But Millennials seem to be doing more moaning about it than showing much inclination to actually agitate for change.
Maybe that's because there are no feel good solutions. If you want to build enough housing to keep a lid on prices, growing cities are going to have to sprawl. And if you want denser neighbourhoods, be prepared to override the wishes of existing residents who like things the way they are.
Despairing at the continuing conflict in the Middle East? It is grim, but at the same time it's worth marvelling at how much of the world isn't embroiled in armed conflict, and is unlikely to be in any short or mid-term timeframe.
And don't forget, it was the Boomers and the generation before them (the silent one) that stared down the Soviet Union and freed eastern Europe from the yoke of Communism.
On that note, if you're feeling a bit of a soft spot toward the common ownership of the means of production read a bit of history. Hell, just watch The Death of Stalin, and be grateful the generations before you were willing to die so we could keep living in a liberal democracy.
Socially, post-war society has become largely more inclusive, better educated, more open-minded, and healthier. Young people in 2018 are much more free to make their own choices, and have far more options, than their parents and grandparents. And you can expect to live longer.
Oh yeah, thank Boomers for the information technology revolution. Steve Jobs: Boomer. Bill Gates: Boomer. Tim Berners-Lee: Boomer. OK, so Mark Zuckerberg isn't, but given recent events boomers might see that as more of a positive.
Income disparity is growing between the wealthiest and poorest segments of society, but if housing prices had been kept in check that would have been much less of a problem.
We could have done without the global financial crisis of 2007-08, but there's plenty of blame for that to be shared with Gen X. At least the central banks, largely with Boomers in charge, managed to ward off a full blown recession. At least so far.
- Stuff
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