Are Boomers to blame for Millennials' struggles?

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2020

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rationally Speaking returns from hiatus with a look at a clash between two generations: Millennials, and their parents' generation, the Baby Boomers.

Faced with stagnant wages and rising costs of education, rent, and health care, Millennials have a tougher path to economic security than Boomers did. And a growing number of millennial writers argue that their situation is the result of misguided and irresponsible policy choices made by the Boomers themselves.

Are they right? Are Boomers to blame for Millennials' current economic struggles? To answer this question, Julia gets three different perspectives:

Jill Filipovic, author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind,

Joseph C. Sternberg, author of The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole Millennials' Economic Future, and

Patrick Fisher, author of Demographic Gaps in American Political Behavior.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's episode of Rationally Speaking is brought to you by Givewell. There are over a million
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0:33.5	of your donation. This holiday season, give with intention at givewell.org.
1:00.9	Welcome back to rationally speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
1:13.3	I'm your host, Julia Galeif, and in today's episode, we'll be putting the baby boomer generation on trial for their alleged economic crimes against the millennials.
1:19.1	So to back up, I'm sure you know the terms boomer and millennial, but people tend to think of the word millennial as synonymous with a youth. It actually refers to people born between roughly
1:26.3	1981 and 96, which by this point includes people who are pushing 40.
1:32.3	So it's a common misconception.
1:35.3	Boomers, meanwhile, are the Americans born after World War II, so between 1945 and 1964.
1:42.3	You're probably familiar with some of the intergenerational sniping between boomers and millennials.
1:48.5	It started years ago with boomers accusing millennials of being lazy and thinking of ourselves as special snowflakes who deserve participation trophies and buy too much avocado toast so we
2:03.0	can't save for the future things like that and then more recently there have been
2:07.2	responses from a number of millennials saying don't blame us we are in a much
2:12.6	tougher economic situation than you boomers were when you were our age. Our wages have stagnated for decades. We have way more student loan debt.
2:22.3	Healthcare is more expensive. Rent is more expensive.
2:25.3	And, you know, these problems that we're facing are largely the result of policy choices that your generation made.
2:33.3	So this is the claim that I've heard bandied about a lot
	...

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