 Boomers, also known as baby boomers. If memes and viral tweets are to be taken as a guide to reality, as they absolutely should, then it would seem that boomers are the generation that everybody loves to hate. Millennials hate them. Gen Z hates them. That other generation hates them. And the generations that came before them, the silent generation, the greatest generation, well, they're mostly dead, but that doesn't stop them from hating boomers. They probably chillin' in the grave. Just hate and boomers. All day every day. The sins attributed to the boomer are well-known. They destroyed the housing market, destroyed the job market. They enjoyed decades of economic prosperity, and then had the gall to judge the youth who struggle in the economic wasteland that boomers have created. The ice caps are melting, the sea levels are rising, the planet is warming, the future is doomed, and boomers get the blame. As a meme and a joke, this anti-boomer stuff can be fun. It's good for a laugh. And I used to think that's all it was that nobody really took it seriously, because as an actual political analysis, it's garbage. It's basically just daddy issues disguised as political analysis. But it seems a lot of people have fallen for it. They look at the state of the world and think the boomers are to blame. Where's the critical thinking? Clearly the education system has failed. Personally, I blame the boomers. So, dear viewer, you've seen YouTubers get canceled before, but none of them have had such a cancel-worthy take as the boomer apology that I'm about to unleash. So get ready for the video that will end my whole career. As I discussed the five reasons we should stop blaming boomers. Memes that say boomers destroyed the economy or the environment might be good for a laugh, but the ones laughing hardest are the capitalist class. Laughing at us because we blame boomers, while they, the capitalists, don't even get noticed, let alone blamed. For most people, the capitalist class does not exist in their political analysis. The capitalist class has become invisible, and we help keep them invisible every time we pin the blame on false enemies, such as boomers. Viewing the world through a lens of generational division is a substitute for viewing the world through a lens of class division. Boomers are imagined as a pseudo bourgeoisie, and Gen Z and millennials are imagined as a pseudo proletariat. It's like an off-brand, low-grade imitation of class analysis. Whenever we blame boomers, we take the focus away from where the blame truly lies. And I would argue, and will argue, that that is capitalism. Economic recession is not a result of boomers making reckless selfish decisions. It's a result of an economic system that has cycles of boom and bust built into the way it operates. You can see this cycle of boom and bust in this timeline of business cycles in the United States from 1775 to 1943. A timeline like this for any country in the world would look similar, because recessions happen over and over and over again. It's just the nature of capitalism. Now, you can argue that the great recession was caused by reckless selfish decisions by people in the finance sector, and you'd be correct. You can also argue that climate change is the result of reckless selfish decisions across multiple economic sectors. And again, you'd be correct. But these reckless selfish decisions were not only made by boomers, but by people of multiple generations. More importantly, these reckless selfish decisions are enabled by capitalism. They are encouraged and incentivized by capitalism. Capitalism encourages, even demands, that economic actors put profit first. It places profit above all other concerns. What other concerns might these be? Oh, I don't know, just like whether or not a person lives or dies, or whether they have a home to live in, or food to eat, or whether the human race has a planet to live on that supports the survival of our species. You know, little things like that. If you ask me, that's a pretty bad way to run an economy. I don't know, I'm just saying. Somehow this is a radical controversial idea. Climate change and the destruction of the environment in general are a very predictable result of an economic system where the costs of harming the environment are externalities. And therefore, the cheapest and most profitable methods for doing business are often the methods that are the most harmful to the environment. These are inherent features of capitalism and not something that boomers or anyone else has control over. Over the last few decades, wages have stagnated and inequality has increased. And this is the result of social and economic factors. Two of the major causes are neoliberal globalization and increased automation. And both of these are the result of businesses trying to maximize profits by minimizing costs. In other words, there are predictable results of capitalism. This is nothing new. It has gotten worse in recent decades, but the reason for this is not because of boomers. It's because advances in technology have made it easier and cheaper for businesses to automate or to move capital overseas. So, blaming boomers for the economy or climate change is not only wrong and inaccurate, but it also takes focus away from the capitalist system that is the real cause of our problems. Another feature of anti-boomerism is the weird assumption that boomers are, if not rich, at least comfortably middle class. You see this in the old economy Steve memes that used to be popular. They show a guy's high school yearbook photo from like 1975. And the text is always about how easy he had it back in his day, like this one, got my dream job by responding to a classified ad. Okay, so I know there are boomers like this, but less burial. We've all seen plenty of boomer cashiers working at grocery stores and fast food restaurants. We've all seen old economy Steve in his 50s working at Walmart or even begging for change on the corner. And check out this meme. Becomes homeowner at 22? Tell sons generation it's lucky because it can afford $200 smartphones. Many boomers did not own a home by their 20s. Many have never owned a home. And millions who did own a home lost it when the housing bubble burst after the financial crash of 2007. Sorry, Steve. But still, these memes do point to economic trends throughout society. A Pew research poll found that millennials have higher levels of student debt, poverty and unemployment, as well as less wealth and less income than boomers did at the same age. Overall, the economic situation for the working class and so called middle class is worse than it was 40 years ago. Jobs are more precarious, competition more intense. Entry level jobs often expect you to have at least a bachelor's degree, if not more, and yet tuition rates have skyrocketed, as have housing prices, as has debt. And meanwhile, wages have stagnated and benefits have been slashed. So yes, boomers are more likely than younger generations to be financially comfortable or even rich. But is economic privilege really the typical boomer experience? Is it typical for black or indigenous boomers? What about single mothers or disabled boomers? What about immigrant or refugee boomers? What's typical for them? And this is not to ignore all the white male boomers who also have financial hardships. That's right, even old economy Steve. Now, don't get me wrong, I like memes about old economy Steve. They're a fun way of commenting on our ever worsening economic situation. I'll show you one that I think is perhaps the best one of all. I love that. No bottom text required. Just retires. For working class millennials in Gen Z, the idea that you'll be able to retire by age 65 seems pretty unlikely. By that age, good chance you'll still be an unpaid intern. But there are boomers in this situation too. According to statistics from the OECD, in the UK about one out of nine people over age 65 are still working. In Canada and Australia it's about one out of seven, and in the U.S. about one out of five seniors still work. If you look at the average for the 37 countries that are in the OECD, about one out of six people over age 65 are still working. Now for some of these people they work because they want to. No problem there. But often that's not the case. Provision Living did a survey of 1,032 Americans over age 65 who are still working. Six out of 10 of those surveyed said they continue to work because they need the money. 47% of working seniors want to retire completely. They're sick and tired of working, but can't afford to stop. Another 20% want to reduce their hours. That's two-thirds who either want to stop working or to work less, but can't. And although most boomers can retire by age 65, many are facing retirement with guttage pensions, low savings, and the constant fear that this money won't be enough to get them through the last and most vulnerable years of their life. This is supposed to be their golden years, but feels more like a golden shower. According to statistics from the OECD, the poverty rate for those 65 and older is about one out of eight in Canada. In the UK it's about one in seven. And the United States and Australia almost one out of four senior citizens are in poverty. In all of these countries except Canada, poverty rates for seniors are actually higher than they are for the general population. They always say okay boomer, but never are you okay boomer? Even though the economy has gone downhill in recent decades, I think it's like pretty messed up to look back at capitalist society 50 years ago and think, wow, what good times. Why? Just because people had a steady job and a social safety net with fewer holes? Have we allowed our standards to get so low and our imagination of what's possible so crushed that we honestly think this is something to aspire to? Let's be real, capitalism has never been good. To look at any period of capitalism with rose-colored glasses is to overlook the ugly brutality, alienation, and coercion that are inherent to the system, even when it's at its best. Or to make the point through an old economy Steve Meme lived through the golden age of capitalism felt more like a golden shower. That's right, that's my second golden shower joke in one video and if you don't like it you can piss off. So I think I should acknowledge that boomers are not innocent victims of the meme war against them. To the contrary, in the culture war between generations it is the boomers who fired the first shots. Those shots came in the form of various opinion pieces across mainstream media accusing millennials of being lazy, self-obsessed, entitled, coddled, fragile, oversensitive snowflakes, who carelessly sabotage our own future, one piece of avocado toast at a time. And as Gen Z came of age shots were fired at them as well. There's no doubt that many boomers are annoyingly judgmental. Many of them fail to realize how much harder it is nowadays just to do basic things like pay rent. They blame us for failing and don't see how society has failed us. But this judgmental attitude is not exclusive to boomers. Just look at the political commentator Ben Shapiro. He's a millennial but he perfectly embodies this so-called boomer mentality. Well the fact is that if you had to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table you probably shouldn't have taken the job that's not paying you enough. That'd be a you problem. Okay boomer. This is why many people say boomer is not an age, it's a state of mind. And I can appreciate that because then we can acknowledge all the people out there who although boomer in age are not boomer in mind. And we can also acknowledge that Ben Shapiro is indeed the biggest boomer of all time. I know shocking. But still to say that boomer is a state of mind is still obscuring things. The state of mind we're talking about here is not boomer, it's bougie. It reflects the class perspective and class interests of the bourgeoisie. In fact the classic meme about millennials being broke because we like avocado toast didn't originate with a boomer. It originated with Tim Garner who is both a millennial and a multimillionaire who made third place in the 2018 young rich list for the Australian financial review. More specifically it comes from something he said when he was interviewed by the TV show 60 Minutes which then went very viral. So you think that young people have now got the prospect of never owning a home? Absolutely when you're spending 40 dollars a day on smashed avocado and coffees they're not working are you of course. That's right Tim being unable to afford a home has nothing to do with the housing market or job market or gentrification or speculation driving up prices or declining membership in labor unions or the increasing passivity of those unions or decline in organized proletariat class struggle or increasing tuition rates increasing student debt or the decline in real wages or increasing inequality. It's those gosh dang avocados. Son of a bitch. This bougie state of mind can infect working class people too and it often does. We judge each other for not making it in a system that is rigged against us. The problem isn't that we think like boomers the problem is a lack of class consciousness and ironically all of our anti-boomer memes are just one of the ways that we stifle that class consciousness from developing which brings us to our memes pinning blame on boomers or talking with the hardships faced by millennials and Gen Z get us in the habit of seeing ourselves and others as being defined by our age and year of birth. And this way of thinking stands as an obstacle to seeing the far more powerful and meaningful significance of class. Not only does it obscure the fact that most boomers are working class it also obscures the fact that some millennials and Gen Z are in the capitalist class. Right now somewhere out there there are boomers being evicted by 32 year old landlords and fired by 22 year old managers. Millennial landlords be like okay boomer time to get the fuck out. Whatever our differences may be working class people of all generations have the same class interests. We are all exploited and oppressed under capitalism and we would all benefit immensely from creating socialism. Now just a quick note because I don't want to be misunderstood I'm not saying that class is the only thing that matters. I believe we should have an intersectional analysis. We should recognize that people can experience suppression based on their race their gender or because they're trans or have a disability and so on. To accuse boomers of ruining the world is to imagine them as having had the power to shape the world for better or worse. This obscures who actually has this type of power. Primarily it is the wealthiest members of the capitalist class and the political rulers of the state who have this power but even they are not truly in control. Capitalism is the way it is and like players in monopoly the capitalist class and political elites have no choice but to play by the vicious and brutal rules of this vicious and brutal game. The average boomer is as powerless as millennials and Gen Z over the state of the world but we can become powerful if we unite as the working class across generational divides across every divide age, gender, race, religion, nationality, every damn thing. Even Gen X can join in... maybe. If we do this we can use our power to make a better world for ourselves and all future generations. And by the way if you want to organize to help make this happen check the video description for a link to a list of learning resources. So let's stop hating on the boomers. You don't hate boomers. You hate capitalism. At least that's how I see it. What about you? Hello lucky black cat here. Thank you for watching and I hope you will leave a comment letting me know what you thought is a video. If you liked it please click the like button, the subscribe button, and the bell button to turn on all notifications. All this helps my channel very much. If you didn't like the video please let me know by typing okay boomer in the comments, though you probably already did that by now. And I also have a couple of video links on the screen if you want to watch more of my pro boomer propaganda. Anyways thank you very much for watching and I hope you have an absolutely wonderful and lovely day.