While the Boomers are responsible for purposeful acts that made life more difficult for their own children and grandchildren, they started straining the machinery of civilization when they themselves were in school.
The Baby Boom -- as opposed to any birthrate surge known as a baby boom -- officially dates from 1947 to closing dates anywhere from 1960 to 1964. Within that span, the various waves had very different views of the world. The first wave for instance, could go to college, come out with a bachelor's degree, and slide into a good job that might support them for an entire career until retirement. Others might take a different kind of training and find good unionized jobs for similar career security. But the system that developed to process this younger generation was overwhelmed by their numbers by the late 1960s, as the middle of the boom choked the schools and then hit the job market. I was born in 1956. As I approached the end of high school, a bachelor's degree was still a decent ticket to employment. By the time I was in college, students who really wanted to get anywhere with academic credentials were planning for graduate school. And even with that, we had already heard the stories of "PhDs pumping gas."
To get a job, you have to find someone willing and able to pay you. Virtually every high-paying employer had their pick of highly qualified applicants by the mid 1970s, and more kept coming out of the pipeline. A need is not the same as a market. Areas that our species might have needed to work on were not attracting investors. The Boomers followed the money. Consumerism created or enhanced markets and ignored needs.
The Boomers had also grown up with the fantasy that unlimited wealth is not only possible, but okay. Some of us were oblivious and simply imagined stumbling into a fortune and being the cool kind of rich people, who are generous, open-minded, curious, fun, and conveniently well funded. Others were knowingly elitist and ruthlessly competitive, which is what it really takes to be wealthy. Hard work is a small percentage. Focused self interest is the larger part. Feel free to look down on the lowly grunts who merely labor. Maneuver against your peers and near peers, forming and breaking alliances as necessary. Game the system. Take every advantage as you find it. Sportsmanship is for losers.
The apparent prosperity of the 1980s was mostly based on credit and optimism. The recession that ended the decade hit when the bills finally went too far past due. The recovery that made us all feel good in the 1990s happened only because everyone had finally paid their cards down enough to start consuming again. And so we crashed in 2000. Every bad decision was multiplied by increasing numbers of players as the Boom begat Gen X and Gen X begat Gen Z, or however the succession goes. There's always overlap, so there are "generations" that are too young to have been sired by the one immediately ahead of them. But it's safe to say that Boomers stretched the credit and financial systems in the 1980s just as extensively as they had blown the seams on the educational system in the 1970s.
Ultimately, our problems are population problems. Our breeding success combines with our industrialized consumerism with devastating effect. This leads not only to products purposely designed to fail, it makes our own lives cheaper, as the impatient crowd in the queue behind us wants us out of their way.
