Steven Brill gives us a booklet-length tome in the May 28,
2018 Time Magazine, p. 32, “How My Generation Broke America”, link.
Note the alternate titles (like “alternative facts”?), “How
Baby Boomers Broke America” (online), or “My generation was supposed to level
the playing field; instead, we rigged it four ourselves”. Cartoon illustrations
by Ross MacDonald.
Born in 1943, I’m a little before the Baby Boomers, but not
much.
We rigged it for ourselves starting in the 1980s with so
much emphasis on short-term profits, which in the age of hostile takeovers,
became virtue. We wanted people to
become more competitive.
But unfortunately a lot of our ingenuity turned to financial
instruments, which tended to have flaws and not be sustainable (sub-prime
mortgages). A lot of us really didn’t
know how to make things.
Then part of us broke of and created a salesmanship culture,
which the rest of us ignored in the world of a do-it-yourself Internet.
Today, there was a court case where parents evicted their
30-year-old son. It gets harder to make
a living if you’re average. But the smartest
and most alert and quick-wittest kids seem to thrive. Look at David Hogg, who
can turn himself into a honeypot to let the worst on the far right drown themselves.
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