Yes, I Blame Our Elders for a Lot of Millennial Issues

So I wrote a post last week basically saying our parents generation, and not millennials, were the "most entitled." For obvious reasons, that is a controversial statement, and this was no exception.

A reader sent me some email on this piece, and they did not agree with me very much:

“True entitlement is allowing the reasonable minimum wage that Baby Boomers enjoyed when they were our age to deteriorate.. It's about letting our institutions rot because you wanted a tax cut. It's about not pushing an increased minimum wage that kept up with inflation... I hope those tax cuts were worth it. Where millennials are at is entirely predictable once their parents embraced the poison of Reagan-conservatism”

I resent that. Especially the part “Baby Boomers enjoyed when they were our age to deteriorate”. Each generation must fight for their rights. Take for example the last election. Where the hell were the "millennials" that allowed Republicans to gain control? Where are they now in supporting unions and workers rights?

Are you saying somehow your own parents have done this to you?

Sure seems like you are!

Yes, I am, though not quite in the way the writer suggests. I absolutely do think today's conditions for younger adults are mostly the fault of the boomers, though.

First, to the point of millennials needing to fight for their own rights. Yes, but no. Yes, they should vote more. Everyone should vote more, and yes, to a large extent, 2010 and 2014 happened because of young people staying home. First though, millennials pretty much vote at or above the levels we saw from people of their age in times past (more so in Presidentials, average in off-years). Second, they did vote at higher than normal levels in the Presidential election. It just seems the older folks were more determined to deny them their ideals than they yet understood they needed to be determined back. I won't defend sitting home, but they have out-performed many other generations in the last two elections, and probably will vote more in the future, like most generations do as they age.

My point though gets at a more basic point- our parents voted for short-term personally convenient policies that screwed up our economy badly for their children. Millennials did not vote for Ronald Reagan to bust unions, cut taxes, and cut regulation. Our parents and grandparents did. We didn't even vote for George W. Bush to fund a Medicare Prescription Drug program and two wars on the credit card, while de-funding the regulatory state. Our parents and grandparents did. We certainly didn't put Newt Gingrich in power to curb Bill Clinton's power, and for that matter (and by our own fault), did not vote to put John Boehner's failure Tea Party House into office in 2010. Our parents and grandparents did. The policies these imbeciles governed with, from the tax cuts to the de-regulation, to not enforcing trade law with foreign nations or protecting our unions, all lead to this point.

This is not to absolve completely younger Americans for sitting out elections, or to say that the older generations don't care about today's youth. Not at all. It's to say that the rightward lurch our grandparents began with Nixon, and that took off with Reagan, Newt, and Dubbya thanks to our parents voting for them, took us to here. It took us to an economy that isn't favorable to young, interchangeable workers. Economic conditions are a product of long-term voting habits. The habits of the last 30 years were for Tea Party goals and aspirations. They got them. We got this. So that uncle that wanted Carter out badly, or who wanted Dubbya's $600 tax cut for themselves, well, they didn't help matters much.

Obviously i'm not talking about everyone either. I'm not talking about my parents who have been voting Democratic, or people like them. Not everyone wanted Speaker Newt. Not everyone wanted Bush 2.0. Certainly a lot of people didn't want Boehner, or more locally, Corbett. To those who didn't want those people, you're not who i'm talking about. For those of you who think Ronald Reagan was good for America- take a look at the young in America today, because the decisions of 25 and 30 years ago are shaping us now.