A Brief Comment by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
Let me start this one with a few words from the late, great American satirist George Carlin.
Are millienials and other younger generations supposed to care about the health care for greedy, self-aborbed people like this?
“A lot of these cultural crimes I’ve been complaining about can be blamed on the Baby Boomers. Somethin’ else I’m a little tired of hearin’ about. The Baby Boomers. Whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy:
“These people,” George continues, “were given everything. Everything was handed to them. And they took it all! Oh, they took it all! Sex, drugs and rock & roll, and they stayed loaded for twenty years and had a free ride, but now they’re staring down the barrel of middle age burnout and they don’t like it, they don’t like it so they turn self-righteous and they wanna make things harder on young people! They tell them to abstain from sex, “Say No To Drugs.” As for the Rock & Roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago… so they could buy pasta machines and Stairmasters and soy bean futures… You know somethin’… they’re cold bloodless people, it’s in their slogans, it’s in their rhetoric; “no pain, no gain” “just do it” “life is short” “play hard” “shit happens” “deal with it” “get a life.” These people went from “do your own thing” to “just say no.” They went from: “love is all you need” to “whoever winds up with the most toys wins.” And they went from cocaine to Rogaine.”
That just about summed it up for this post-Second World War baby boomer generation, which I am a less-than-proud member of by the way, at the time George spoke those words in 1994.
And as growing numbers of this self-absorbed generation of conspicuous consumers and polluters enter their senior years, the ‘me, myself and I’ blubbering only gets worse.
Now, all of a sudden, after decades of voting in governments that promised them tax cut after tax cut at the expense of public services, a recent poll suggests that this same give-it-to-me-it’s-mine generation of fuckers is now worried about what is going to happen to their health care in their old age.
What? This top-heavy generation of panpered, aging shit that voted for governments that cut taxes and gutted social services is suddenly wondering what is going to happen to their social services????!!!!
“Baby boomers are getting increasingly antsy about the availability and quality of health care as they age,” says a Globe and Mail report that newspaper published this August 18th.
According to The Globe report, quoting a poll commissioned by a doctor lobby group called the Canadian Medical Association, the baby boomers – the most self-absorbed generation of people that has ever plundered the resources on this planet and about the last to grow up getting just about anything it bloody well wanted – is now overwhelming expressing concern that it may not have access to necessary health care services when it needs them.
“Eighty-one per cent of those polled also expressed worries about the quality of the care they will be able to access,” adds The Globe of the poll results. “In addition, the majority of older Canadians … lack confidence that hospitals and long-term care facilities can handle the needs of Canada’s elderly population.”
If this self-serving physicians lobby did a poll on how many of these same post Second World War babies would be willing to have their income taxes raised, I will eat the lap top I’m now working on if it comes anywhere close to 50 per cent.
In fact it is quite likely that the vast majority of these same boomers, and I remind you that I am a member of the baby boomer generation myself, have never given a shit about the soaring costs of post-secondary education for younger people, or climate change or anything else that might not be in their rapidly, running-out-of-time future.
It has, and it will be, until the bulk of baby boomers bite the big bazooka, be about them, and nobody else – the greediest generation on the face of this earth.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views below, remembering that NAL will only post views or comments by individuals who also share their real first and last name.)
Niagara At Large 
Not all Boomers are this shallow.
Some of us take great pride in becoming more and more proficient at their craft, more learned, more empathic, more communitarian for the right reasons and not driven by blind ambition.
Speaking for myself, I only became focused and a true adult, capable of making a worthwhile contribution both to my field and my community, well into my fifties.
And I would venture to guess that I am not alone.
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I see you feel very strongly about this issue. Being a baby boomer myself I am proud to say that I have yet to grow up. I’m still anti authority. Still want to give peace a chance. Still weary of corporate interests at the expense of the good of the population. While I’m at it, I paid for my education on my own, paid for my house on my own. Continued my schooling after I graduated knowing more knowledge would come in handy. Worked two and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. Hell in my 60’s I had two jobs.
So now let’s get down to the real problem. Corporate interests became overwhelmingly corporatism after this generation of MBA’s came on the scene. It isn’t the baby boomers that command billions of dollars to influence governments. It isn’t baby boomers that represent corporations who want lower and lower taxes for themselves. And while I will admit the baby boomers command greater wealth, it generally comes about from years of work and accumulation and not a reduction in personal taxes.
I too long for the days when one could get work and when the government subsidized employers so those who recently graduated could gain some experience. I feel for the young who have large educational bills while working at less than desirable jobs, if they can get jobs at all. And while I generally agree with your sentiments, I would like to know the stats that prompted you to pen this article.
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Career change and re-training after the bottom fell out for me in a manufacturing sector job when I was 50. After 30 months without a paycheck, I’m just grateful to have a job at all, and one which I actually happen to enjoy most of the time. I’m hoping for some resemblance of seniors’ benefits someday, but I’m not in a hurry to retire either, so long as health permits. I’m no Woodstock rock festival burn-out, but George Carling definitely makes some valid points. I’ve seen some seniors who are better off than ever before and seem to be the ones who do the most griping. Looking at the demographics, and the diminishing support to the social structure by our increasingly unemployed and seemingly going nowhere 15-25 year olds, 83,000 in the Toronto-Hamilton area alone, (ref. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2014/09/08/civicactions_plan_for_unemployed_youth_warrants_strong_business_and_government_support_editorial.html) it seems inevitable there will be “cuts” in the works, so it will be we baby-boomers again expected to make the sacrifice. I’d be happy to see the Canada Pension Plan survive, along with some basic entity of Old Age Security. Sometimes RRSP’s have to be used to survive lower income years, and are not the most ideal retirement vehicle in these changing times.
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My parents were poor (we ate squirrels & rabbits when my dad was laid off), I was the first in my family to graduate high school (my parents never had that luxury), had to work to pay for my education & worked my ass off 12+ hour days & nights, weekends & holidays missing Christmases & family celebrations to pay for my home & any luxuries I did attain. Nobody handed me any freebies nor was I pampered. I remember getting a spoon (free from a soap box) as a Christmas gift from my grandmother – whoopee!
Like Gerry, I am not ashamed of being a boomer & while I believe in living life to the fullest as you only go around once, I wish the same for subsequent generations. They have it really tough. School debts from rising tuitions, jobs as scarce as hen’s teeth & degrees that really aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. These symptoms are the result of the corporate greed. I don’t think the average boomer is all that evil. For once I disagree with Carlin as I was never the “sex, drugs & rock & roll” type but hard working & straight laced….actually quite boring when I think of it! Bugger!
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