A Commentary by Doug Draper
(A brief foreword by the writer – After a similar version of this commentary ran recently in the weekly spot I am granted in the weekly newspaper Niagara This Week, I received more than a few emails from people identifying themselves as Baby Boomers who told this Baby Boomer that they did not appreciate what I was saying here about our generation.
They were quick to stress that they don’t fit my caricature of Boomers, and I take them at their word that, in their case, it is probably true since I would like to believe that I don’t fit it either. But I was quick to respond to these people who felt wounded by my thoughts that many do fit that caricature and there is the record of Boomers spending themselves and their communities into debt, investing in the greediest of corporate ventures for short-term gain, and using up or despoiling the non-renewable resources we should be protecting for future generations on this planet.
I think that many of my fellow Baby Boomers, who grew up preaching the virtues of peace and love and the common good, know, in the hearts of hearts, that we collectively have a good deal to answer for. Now I will leave the rest to my old friend George Carlin, who was a little too old to be a Baby Boomer, and the words a wrote a couple of weeks back.)
“Here’s another group I can do without, the Baby Boomers. … Whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: “Gimme that! It’s mine!”
– From a sketch by the late American satirist and social critic George Carlin.
Boy, the Baby Boomers sure know how to get attention, don’t they? They – or should I say “we” since I am a reluctant member of that big, bulging cohort – always have, and why shouldn’t we?
The Baby Boomer's Cry - "Gimme that. It's mine!"
Born en masse between the end of the Second World War and the early to mid-1960s, we Boomers took our place as the most populated group of people on this continent, far outnumbering some of the generations that came before and after us. By virtue of our numbers, we became, among other things, the largest block of consumers and the largest block of voters. So why wouldn’t we get the lion’s share of attention from marketers of goods and services, and from our politicians?
Indeed, we Boomer sure did flex some attention-grabbing muscle in the last couple of weeks since Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, discussed the possibility of making millions of us approaching retirement age wait until we’re 67, instead of 65,efore collecting a penny of Old Age Security.
MPs of all political stripes sensed enough anger in Baby Boomer land that they spent a good portion of the first week of February – their first week back to Ottawa following a parliamentary break – debating what will become of these OAS benefits. Newspapers and radio and television newscasts were peppered with columns on the topic, including one carried in this newspaper last week by yours truly. Native people suffering in squalor on poorly serviced reservations and young people struggling to pay their way through school and find jobs can only hope to capture that kind of attention and enough of it, perhaps, to get politicians on the government side to have some second thoughts about messing too much with pensions.
For my part, I got my share of ‘way-to-go’ email following my commentary slamming the Harper and company on their OAS plans. But I also received criticism from readers who wondered why I was being so supportive of a generation of Boomers, many of whom haven’t done a very good job of saving up for their own retirement. They wondered if I had given much thought to the fewer numbers of younger people who are going to be handed the bill for the health care and all of the other senior’s services these Boomers are going to need.
I had to admit that some of these email writers were making a good point and while I was admitting it, I was leafing through a pile of newspapers that had been growing on my desk and a found story in The Globe and Mail that lead with the headline; ‘Older consumers pile on new debt’. It was another in a series of stories I’m sure some of you have read in recent years about people over the age of 45 (most of them Baby Boomers) who’ve gone deeply into debt because, unlike their parents and grandparents who came of age during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War, they have been living and spending well beyond their means.
So now, of course, many of these debt-ridden Boomers are going to have to go on working well into their senior years, meaning they won’t be retiring and making way for younger people who’ve racked up debt going to college and university and desperately a good job.
Compared to many of today’s kids, we Baby Boomers, especially those of us born in the first 10 or so years after that big war, had it pretty good. We came of age at a time of growing affluence and plenty of jobs to pay our way through college and university without going into debt. And there were better jobs waiting out there when we graduated. Many of us got used to having it good and getting what we wanted and the party went on for years.
Problem was that the party got out of hand. Too many of us drove ourselves and our governments (which Boomers were mostly running by that point) into the red. We ate most of the steak and cake, and left scraps on the table for the young. On top of that, and for a bunch that grew up with flower children and the environmental movement, we sure haven’t done a very good job of protecting and conserving our natural resources for coming generations, have we?
Perhaps, we Boomers ought to spend a little less time thinking of ourselves and pay a little more regard to assisting younger generations with the challenges they face. It may still not be too late for us to grow up.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post in the comment boxes below. Please remember that NAL does not post anonymous comments or comments by people using pseudonyms. Only comments attached to real names work here.)
Niagara At Large 
Good comment here, Doug. The second half of the Baby Boomer generation, of which I am a member, will definitely not have it as good as the first half. I never had the good jobs for life sort of thing, never had a company pension, never had much of anything because of timing … it is those over the age of 56 today that will probably do best and have even better public pensions than those of us under 56, Baby Boomer or not. I truly don’t think I will be able to retire because: (a) I don’t earn enough money to cover our day to day expenses, let alone save; and (b) I don’t have a trust fund to turn to when I am older to enable me to stop working. The reality of the fact many people may not be able to keep working due to health or other reasons, and this needs to be brought to the government’s attention. I pay taxes too. I work the equivalent in hours per week as having two and a half full time jobs. Why am I not able to obtain a good living like the generation before me?
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I was having a nice walk in a nearby conservation area the other day and came across a friendly gentleman in his retirement years. We got to chatting and he told me he had just sold *one of his properties* for ten times what he bought it for. He said he felt funny taking the money, but of course he did. He also said he felt badly for young people today because they will have no chance to build wealth the way his generation did.
During the daily course of their lives, I doubt the majority of Boomers carried any significant awareness of how their behavior as consumers, business leaders, or politicians would affect the grand order of things. But there’s little to prevent everyone from seeing the effects now. Niagara is a great example of what happens to communities – to real people – when sustainability and human values are not the priority.
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Of course you are right on this and the message is a sad reminder that boomers failed to sustain an initial rejection of materialism as the root of happiness. What I find even more sad is the failure of my generation to consistently engage in political life for the common good. In truth, the flower children’s philosophical foundation for freedom and justice was more about personal freedom and a sloppy self-satisfying hope for a general atmosphere of “love”. That freedom, individualistic in nature, could not sustain a commitment to long term efforts on behalf of the planet or the collective good of its inhabitants. I’m afraid it is up to the boomer’s children and grandchildren now to change course and recognize the fundamental limits of growth and to find economic and social value the non-material. Of course we boomers are not dead yet and we are not off the hook.
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I don’t think all boomers are either selfish or unaware of their major influences on today’s society. My parents after the war were not wealthy (how many other people here thought all sheets were made out of Redpath Sugar bags?) and taught me that I could have things only when I earned them and could pay (amazingly) cash for almost everything. I was the first in my immediate family to finish high school and college but was made to pay for it myself. I learned to drive when I was 21 and could afford to buy my own car and insurance. We did indulge in a lot of things no doubt, mine being travel, but only when I could afford it. I have tried to leave a better world for the next generation even though I have no kids. Who wants to live in a cesspool? Maybe I’m still a flower child. It’s sad that young people find it hard to get decent jobs and unfortunately some of this is due to greedy people who can but won’t retire because they want more toys. There are boomers out there who have kept that hippie peace and love paradigm alive but quite a few have not.
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Halverson is spot on. I am just pre-boomer, but understand the huge luck we had in getting jobs readily right out of university and if we paid off any debts, saved some money, were modest and careful in oour expenditures, were able to make a living. My children have a much harder road ahead, as do those of all boomers. Welcome to the 21st century.
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The situation in Canada is worsening. It is not the fault of the ordinary people. They just lived as they felt was appropriate. What is more disturbing is that our politicians were even greedier and pushed us into this social trap. Increase of costs on medical care, retirements and other problems connected to elderly population can be solved only by one means – immigration.
I´m not a big fan of it but I have to admit that in our situation, we need more people to keep the economy going. The biggest mistake we have made with our economy was to let speculation and the free market destroy our real estate market. We are now in a very dangerous situation in which one of the main contributors to GDP is increasing f home prices, which is leading to a similar situation as in US three years ago.
You made a good point about young people, indebted from their studies, who cannot live alone, because of the insane prices. They are forced to choose between Renting or Buying while both are highly disadvantageous.
The question is: What can we do now to help them with our immense household debt and overpriced real estate property?
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Linda as a Boomer I feel there is a way to ensure new wealth and opportunity are created in our Province as well our Country so the younger generations can find opportunity to secure their future. I suggest that if there was a industrial masterplan for our Country, all of our Pension Plans would have a direction in which to invest. Autonomy would remain with the individual plans but with the common good in mind trustees of these plans could conferance and move in concert all or a portion of their equity portfolios to strategic investments that enhance our domestic economies. I have encouraged my own trustees to look at possible synergies that investing in Ontario would create the most work while hopefully earning a profit to the plan. Again imagine if all pensions would invest this way. The CPP ,Teachers , Ohmers and all the small Private Plans would certainly make a differance to our youth. It only seems right considering we earned the money to pay for plans here in Ontario.
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Laura, that’s a good question. What can we do, with immense household debt and overpriced real estate being the stark reality? Just about everyone realizes that we have to do something. These problems will not fix themselves. The cost of living is not likely to drastically drop anytime soon – in fact, the problems with oil guarantee that the way most of us live right now is going to get a lot more expensive. And soon.
So, what can we do? For a start: Stop doing things the same way they’ve been done around here for the last 50 years. When it comes to homes, the typical new housing developments around here are … funny – but in a tragic way. Despite the aging population, the cost of child care, concerns around food security, the debt crisis, and on and on and on – developers keep cutting land into tiny, useless lots and building huge single family homes on them. This kind of building doesn’t help us live together better and it doesn’t take into account that almost all of us have aging members of our family to care for, that we want safe, vibrant neighborhoods for our children to play in, that we need to learn how to care for our land and grow our own food, that we are earning less, that more and more people are working from home (or want to), or that if we have to get into a car to do every single thing that we consider part of our life, we are in trouble.
So, what can we do? To start with, we can want different things. For instance, I want to live in a development that recognizes community, quality of life, resource sharing, energy conservation, intergenerational living, and food production as vitally important. I’d love to see some more forward thinking in housing developments around here. I want to buy into something that is actually worth investing in. I don’t want the stale old dream of home ownership (it’s more like a nightmare in a lot of ways). I don’t want a place to put my stuff, I want a rich, sustainable life alongside my neighbors. I want a development that recognizes the simple truth of life – that we co-own our future. Co-ownership models of development reduce resource consumption and debt load. With planning, it leads to the creation of resilient, adaptable communities. We need that, but we won’t get it until we want it.
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Melissa’s comments about neighbourhoods struck me as so relevant. When we bought our home in an old established neighbourhood over 40 years ago, we found ourselves quite the outsiders, as older folk have lived here forever. Recently, I have discovered that many newcomers to this established neighbourhod have felt the same, for over 30 years. Old money/old connections, I don’t know. We have established good friendships over the years, but now must move on. When I look at all the new developments in Niagara (and we’ve looked at dozens, north, south, central and west — there is no sense of community, no parks, no places to walk and muse …. just chockablock houses that, to paraphrase Joanni Mitchell’s song (?) ‘all look the same’. And priced out of this older couple’s ability to consider. So who is moving into Niagara? Not the buoyant young families, as they no longer exist— don’t have the money to buy a three bed-2 bath home for 400,000 or more. Doing two jobs to send their kids to school. Don’t get me started.
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