A year or so ago, the meme OK Boomer hit the Internet. Millennials seem to blame their personal situations on Boomers. They hold a pernicious belief that Boomers have messed up life for everyone. But is that true? Are Boomers to be blamed?
Though not meant as boomer apologetics as boomers are guilty of a slew of things, e.g., disco, but Millennials are in charge and have been for a few years now.
Millennials and Generation Xers are the Decision Makers
Millennials make up the biggest portion of the USA labor force and have for the last five years. Gen X briefly were the majority, from 2013 to 2016. By 2017, there were 266 Millennials and Generation Xers for every 100 Boomers working. Gen Xers had been running neck-and-neck with Boomers since 2008.
By 1994, Gen Xers employment as a percentage of total employment was on the rise and converging toward falling Boomer employment. Millennials employment skyrocketed after 2003. By that time, Gen Xer employment had levelled and held steady.
Boomers peaked in employment in 1997. Their influence has been on the wane for a quarter of a century.
Cultural Changes
Today's culture (codified laws, codes of conduct) reflect Millennials and Gen Xers rather than Boomers.
- Those bail reform laws? those did away with Boomers' tough on crime laws.
- AOC and the Squad are Millennials.
- The Gay Marriage movement and Transgender Movement were spearheaded by Gen Xers and Millennials.
Voting Power
Forces of Demographics Changes in the USA
Likely, the three most important forces of demographics changes in the USA today and why the population of the USA fast approaches majority-minority are these:
- Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
- Roe v. Wade (1973)
- Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
The architects of the Immigration Act of 1965, Emanuel Celler and Philip Hart, were 77 and 53, respectively, at the time of its passage. Both men came from the generation before the Silent Generation (1928-1945).
The same can be said for the Supreme Court justices who signed off on Roe V. Wade, which alleged an implied right to privacy in the Constitution and thus allowed women to kill their unborn babies through licensed medical doctors. The affirming justices mostly were from before the Silent Generation, William O. Douglas (1898), William Brennan (1906), Warren Burger (1907), Lewis Powell (1907), Thurgood Marshall (1908), Harry Blackmun (1908), Potter Stewart (1915).
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was signed into law by President Reagan, who was born one year before the start of the Silent Generation. Reagan's amnesty gave legal residency to three million illegal aliens straight away and quickly led an increasing population of illegal immigrants.
It is hard to see that Boomers are the ones to be blamed for the current state of affairs. Much of the blame belongs upon the generation before the Silent Generation as well as the Silent Generation, Generation X and the Millennials.
If one accepts the Boomer generation definition of those born between 1946 to 1964, though in truth, those born in 1963 and 1964 have more in common with Gen X than the Boomers and if we accept that men and women reach their prime at 30, then Boomers most affected the years 1976 to 1994.
The 30 year olds of the years of the 21st Century, between 2001 and 2022, were born between 1971 and 1992. Men and women of those birth years are Gen Xers and Millennials.
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