It’s good, cheap fun to blame millennials for the rise of selfies, spending all their money on avocado toast, and ruining brands, but there’s a growing consensus among millennials and gen Xers that it’s the baby boomers who deserve the blame.
Thanks to boomers, loosely defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, millennials face massive college loans (which the current administration is not helping), inherited ongoing wars (which the current administration is not helping), and face an uncertain future when it comes to work. The majority of millennials blame the boomers, but, the big surprise is that according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll, a lot of boomers agree.
The poll found that 51% of millennials (18- to 34-year-olds) blame boomers (51- to 69-year-olds) for making things worse for their generation. Just 13% said boomers had improved things. Generation X wasn’t pleased with the boomers, either. In fact, upon self-reflection, boomers weren’t entirely keen on their legacy either: 30% said policies created by their generation had made things worse, 32% said they had made things better, and 34% that they had done neither.
Read the details of the poll here. And for further evidence of the problem with boomers, check out Bruce Gibney’s book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, which lays out the case that the boomers pillaged the economy, repeatedly cut their own taxes to the detriment of future generations, blew up the deficit fighting and financing two wars, ignoring climate change, putting America’s manufacturing on deathwatch, and leaving future generations to clean up the mess. If you’re looking for a change, though, keep in mind that 66% of millennials either disapprove or strongly disapprove of Trump’s job and really believe in the power of voting, with 77% registered to vote, and not as Republicans.
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