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New office crisis: Boomers won't leave!
Dan Drezner
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Kai Ryssdal: How you feel about the economy right now might well depend on where you are in the pecking order, generationally speaking. To use a personal finance term here for a second, financial horizons -- that is, the time any given person has left to work and save -- can vary widely. And in light of the great stock market crash of 2008, everybody's reassessing their economic future, including commentator Dan Drezner.
DAN DREZNER: The financial downturn has left all sorts of casualties in its wake: more unemployment, depressed wages, and greater economic uncertainty. But I'd like to direct my angst at a different target -- the baby boomers.
A hidden effect of this crisis is that, in the workplace, as in popular discourse, they simply refuse to get out of the way.
To understand my lament, you have to realize that the oldest of the baby boomers are on the cusp of retirement. For younger generations, this should be a cause for relief. For decades, Gen X-ers like myself have had to hear the standard declarations about the uniqueness of the baby boomers. Maybe they were not the Greatest Generation, but they were the ones who glorified the whole idea of generational identity. For decades, Gen X-ers have had to hear complaints about our political apathy, our popular culture, and our musical tastes.
We have suffered many of these critiques without complaint. Why? Because so many of us worked for so many of them. They were the bosses of the business world. And they were supposed to be retiring very soon, but the recession has changed all that.
In 2008, U.S. workers aged 55 to 64 who had 401(k)'s for at least 20 years saw their retirement balances drop an average of 20 percent. A recent YouGov poll showed two-thirds of this generation have not made the necessary adjustments in their financial planning. This is not a recipe for leaving the workforce anytime soon.
What does this mean for the rest of us? Younger workers who expected promotions when the boomers cleared out are going to have to stew in their own juices. With this job market, looking for a better opportunity elsewhere is not in the cards. Which means that Gen X-ers are going to have to listen to baby boomers doing what they do best -- talk about themselves.
Office politics across the country are going to get a lot nastier. Of course, it could be worse. Generation Y not only has to deal with the boomers, they have to cope with people like me complaining about them.
Ryssdal: Dan Drezner is a professor of international politics at Tufts University.
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Baby Boomers... sigh... the problem is they don't even know how clueless about today's world they are. And then they think we Xers are the problem. And on the rare occasion they see merit in one of our ideas, they naturally take all the credit for it. While they mess up their own lives with their rigid workaholism, they ridicule us if we maybe want to work hard while also pursuing a more balanced and psychologically healthy lifestyle so we don't end up with all the depression, heart disease, cancer and general mess they specialize in glorifying as the fruits of supposed professional "success". Meanwhile, it's true - they won't get out of the way. And the big problem is they won't let anybody but another boomer into their jobs, especially the good ones. Turns out that now they don't trust anybody under 48 either.
Baby Boomers - thanks for all you've accomplished - you really have done a lot of great things. But please, please realize it's no longer 1975, 85, or 95 and let some of us in on the action - we may not go about it exactly as you did, but we're not the lazy, incompetent idiots you think we are. And if you disagree, I can only hope and pray that reality teaches you some hard lessons - and when you do, you won't be able to justly blame it on us "whiners" - all you'll have to do is look at your own cocky faces in the mirror.
So Boomers of the World - thanks, and please pass the baton. We're ready to run our leg of the race, whether you think so or not.
I don't see why I should be expected to step aside and hand my hard won job over to someone else just because they are younger. But at age 62, 4 years before full retirement: 4 years before I wanted to retire, the department has re-engineered itself in a way that functionally eliminates my position and demotes the two other workers who are over 50. Everyone else is being promoted. This had absolutely nothing to do with performance: strictly salary and age. What surprised me is how readily the younger workers acknowledged that age was the main (and entirely acceptable) reason for this happening. It will be interesting to see, as they themselves age, whether in 12 years these same individuals will happily step aside for their younger colleagues. What's next? Will young people expect us to hand over our better homes and larger savings accounts to them, simply because they decide it is their time?
My God, these insufferable little wimps. If they expect the older generation to "get out of their way," perhaps they should present a viable program that doesn't include mass euthanisia. I recall very acutely feeling the same way about the WWII generation, some of whom are still hanging on and putting us down. They were stern taskmasters, to put it mildly, and Generation X wouldn't have survived a year under their tutelage. They resemble them for their materialism and their striving for position and money at all costs, but the WWII generation had significant accomplishments and a tough time growing up during the Great Depression and through WWII and the Cold War. Can you imagine young people today being faced with a Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear annihalation? How about the Vietnam War? No, they point to 9/11 or the Gulf War and think they've really been in the soup. They are spoiled, indulgent, and devoid of a serious set of life skills. If we are ever going to "get out of their way," they are going to have to grow up and experience that part of life that builds character. I don't see many of them even ready to learn the tough lessons. They expect everything to be handed to them with minimal effort.
Speaking of talking about themselves all the time, Generation X does the so-called Baby Boomers one better. They think about nothing BUT themselves. I've yet to meet one of them who knows anything that went on before 1980, or cares, or who thinks they have to learn a damn thing in this big wide world other than computers and business. The nerve of this twirp telling us to "get out of the way" and "clear out." Why, so your helpless generation can make an even bigger mess of things? So, you're beginning to realize that the worst elements of the older generation ended up in charge. What else is new. The scum rises to the surface, and trust me on this one, you are no different. Maybe if you self-indulgent, naive, shallow little turds learned how to read something you don't find on the internet, how to study longer and work harder so you can take the reins now and then, the aging hippies just might be able to take it easy for awhile. If I were in your office, I'd be very tempted to punch you right in the nose because obviously you didn't have a father who gave you a kick in the pants now and then. Apparently, your Baby Boomer bosses were too kindhearted to give you the sack or perhaps you were canned more than once for your childish attitude.
You know, Boomers were the first generation in history raised with scientific knowledge of immunities, diets and antibiotics. They are already showing signs of longevity.
They might be the first generation to have access to -real-, -scientific- anti-aging therapies. (Just for fun, check out "T.A. Sciences" on the web. They claim to have a scientific anti-aging protocol with double-blind-proven results.)
It would solve the social security crisis, anyway.
Any boomer, who placed his faith in the "system" for a retirement, deserves to be screwed, just for stupidity.
Our parents were screwed over by Reagan in the '80's, just before their retirements. It was a fool not to read the signs of the future.
Daddy Capitalist wants his profit at the end when you have something to steal.
Everyone is now official ally F***ked (401ked).
Every generation is a vast sea of potential, both good and bad and everything in between. And each generation learns, once it has the controls, how unutterably difficult it actually is to run the world. None of the solutions brought forward ever really seem to work the way the idealism that spawned them promised. And none of the big problems that plague the world is to be blamed only on one generation, any more than one generation possesses all the solutions and as well as the will to implement them.
The ultimate generational egoism is to believe that any particular generation will save the world. The world isn't remotely that simple, as it soon shows every generation that comes along thinking it's ready to put it right.
Every generation is a vast sea of potential, both good and bad and everything in between. And each generation learns, once it has the controls, how unutterably difficult it actually is to run the world. None of the solutions brought forward ever really seem to work the way the idealism that spawned them promised. And none of the big problems that plague the world is to be blamed only on one generation, any more than one generation possesses all the solutions and as well as the will to implement them.
The ultimate generational egoism is to believe that any particular generation will save the world. The world isn't remotely that simple, as it soon shows every generation that comes along thinking it's ready to put it right.
I also had to stop in my tracks when I heard this story on NPR. I have to agree with the author of the piece. I also think it's completely unfair that the Baby Boomers ended up being the guinea pig for the loss of pensions and the failed experiment of the 401K. Sure, investing may work over the long term, but what about the generation who has the bad luck of retiring during an economy like we have currently? I also have to concur with a previous poster that indicated that there are only a few Baby Boomers who are willing to share their career insights with us Gen X'ers. I am first to admit that just because I have a graduate degree it doesn't mean that I know everything! I know I have a lot to learn, but if they don't start letting us learn from them, we are likely to make the same mistakes that they did.
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