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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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When I graduated from high school in 1971, I looked at my peers and was certain there would be big trouble when we started running the world. But Drezner missed the real problem. Baby Boomers are driven by greed and short-term self interest. If you push us aside because we're in your way, you're no better. Edge us out because you have a better way to achieve the common good.
j m, agreed--but I would point out that I and several other "boomers" here have already pointed out that it is completely idiotic to refer to "boomers" and "generation xers" as "you" and "we." As if a twenty-something account manager, or a fifty-something director, at a financial concern, were in any way the same as people of the same age working at a non-profit, or jobless, or working-class, or in any number of other situations. It is equally ridiculous to assert that one or the other generation is "defensive" or "whiny." As mentioned, although I've seen much more whining from generation-xers in the media than from boomers, the only time I've seen any such whining has been in media like this. I've never seen it in person. Today I went to work among 20-somethings, 30-, 40-, 50- and 60-somethings. Today, as they have for all the months I've worked here, no-one referred to their generation as a monolithic group, or referred to it at all.
The idea that I was responsible for this mess is absurd. All I've done is work honestly, without cutting corners, for decades. All you've done, I bet, is do the same, albeit for a shorter amount of time.
This is nonsense.
And I still want to know: after I retire, am I supposed to starve to death? Or are the complainers going to support me?
These claims of Gen'Xers being entitled seems overly defensive to me. Isn't the experience of a 20-year field veteran worth something? Some of the Gen'Xers are 40 and still waiting for upper management positions. The condition is worse in the nonprofit sector, where some of the boomer generation run organizations with no middle management and plenty of support staff - many of whom have no retirement benefits, are less likely to have health care, and are often contracted workers.
This model is not only shortshighted for the nonprofit field, it endangers a younger generation by prohibiting them from saving for their own futures. Is it entitlement to want to provide for your family, or be taken seriously in the workplace - for your ideas, not just your grunt work? Some boomers may have lost their retirement savings, but a lot of younger individuals don't even have the opportunity to save for retirement, much less lead in the workplace. The Boomers' contribution to this conversation needs to move beyond a knee-jerk "those damned kids" response to a more multi-generational vision of the workplace.
I'm in my early 50's and thought this piece was LOL funny. I was not looking forward much to retirement anyway, so a big drop in the 401k simply confirmed the need to stick around a bit longer. Hooray!
I work in an office with people all ages from 19 on up. There's room for all of us, and each is judged on their ability and enthusiasm, not by the date we appeared on earth.
And the only thing better for us baby boomers than talking about ourselves is to hear someone else do it! Thanks, Dan!
To quote Dan Drezner, "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."
Boomers may "talk about themselves" but Gen-Xers have a problem with entitlement. Gen-Xers are not entitled to a Boomer's job.
This current economic crisis is only the most recent disservice my parents generation has brought to our country. In Bill Bernstein's 2004 "The Four Pillars of Investing" he discusses the 2001 tech bubble implosion and says historical evidence points to the next bubble in 20 or so years. But then puts in a caveat: that he wouldn't put anything past the baby boomers. 8 years later and we are in a waaaaay bigger mess.
So what has this generation brought us?
1960’s
-Cultural upheaval in the 1960's. Both good (desegregation, civil rights) and bad (the beginning of moral ambiguity)
1970's
-STDs take off as monogamy becomes an arcane.
-Roe vs. Wade. Regardless of which side you are on, no one thinks abortion is positive thing.
-Divorce rates climb as the me-first generation decides that, "It's not you, it's me."
1980's
-"Greed is good",
-lotteries initiated around the country as a unspoken tax on the poor and desperate
1990's
-Escalating national debt
-American corporations begin outsourcing as much as they can in order for a few at the top to get a little richer.
-Those companies that can't outsource, merge. How else would one grow their company by 50% without doing any work?
2000's
-Tech bubble
-We stand by as Rwanda and Darfur turn into nightmares, yet oust a dictator in an oil-rich country.
-Real estate bubble
-Capitalism
-Reality TV
And looking forward…
-Enormous national debt
-Nationalized financial system
-Higher tax rates
-A retiring generation with no retirement savings
-An 80 year-old Madonna still on tour.
+1 to Jessie X, the first comment (at the bottom) on this post. Boomers have a role in this crisis, but it is not the one they are taking at the moment. As Jessie X describes, they need to step into the role of wise elders. But at this point even the aging Silents (born 1924-1942) are having trouble stepping into this role. Boomers: we need your help cleaning up this mess!
Boomers don't realize the space they take up. They command attention in the media, are ubiquitous in the public sphere and - here's what they forget - they ARE IN POWER. Anyone born and raised by them knows this in a way their parents, the largest demographic in US history, can easily forget.
As for charges of whining and selfishness, I find this bizarre. Yes, Drezner implies serious generational character flaws, which should be taken with a rhetorical grain of salt. However, in reply, some Boomers charge that the product of their own political and personal aspirations, the next generation, is pathetic. What an unreflective self-indictment!
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