My Generation

 

In 1965, Pete Townshend of The Who wrote My Generation. Rolling Stone placed the song at number 11 on the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  Repeated throughout the lyrics is the phrase, “Talkin’ ‘bout my generation.”  It was supposedly written in response to the fact that the Queen Mother had Townshend’s 1935 Packard hearse towed off the street because the sight of it offended her on her daily drive through his neighborhood.  The song emphasized the generational differences that created a cultural clash when those from different age groups came into contact.

The Who

I grew up during a great time in our country.  We had just ended World War II.  Our troops came home to a country that had been unified against a common enemy.  Our industrial economic machine, which had manufactured the tools of war, was being returned to more peacetime endeavors.  The Greatest Generation (1901-1927) and the Silent Generation (1928-1945) were about to detonate the Baby Boom (1946-1964).

Returning soldiers had the GI Bill to help them buy a new home and start a family.  Our middle class was on a firm footing.  Almost half the jobs had private pensions which, when combined with savings and investment and supplemented with Social Security, represented the “three-legged” stool of stability for a successful retirement free from financial worries.

This is the first table I found that just calls me "Mature"
Most call the pre-Baby Boom, The Silent Generation.

That generation grew up, got old, retired, and began to enjoy the fruits of their labor.  Somewhere during the generations that followed, things went horribly wrong.  Gen X, Millennials aka Gen Y, and Gen Z members saw corporate greed and public corruption come in to cripple the middle class.  Our financial ship was steered on a course that would virtually eliminate the middle class of our society.  Gone were the pensions.  They had been added to the corporate bottom line to prop up huge salaries for corporate bigwigs and fat cat investors.  Salaries stagnated.  Unions were broken when possible or made ineffective with “right to work” laws.  We were returning to an economic period not dissimilar to the late nineteenth century and its Gilded Age. 

Andrew Carnegie of The Gilded Age

"What is the chief end of man?--to get rich. In what way?— dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must." — Mark Twain-1871

 

Today, 40% of older Americans survive on Social Security alone.  The stable “3-legged” financial stool had been replaced by a pogo stick.  Only 7% of current retirees have Social Security, a pension, and investment income. 

The Republican Study Committee recently released a 2025 budget proposal that would cut Social Security for 257 million Americans and would cut Medicare and the Affordable Care Act while further cutting food assistance for children.  This will make room for new tax cuts that would mostly benefit wealthy Americans.  One of the methods in this proposal is to keep moving the retirement age to force people to work longer before being eligible for benefits.

Herculean efforts were made in the 1960s to bring to being “The Great Society” with aid to education, improved health policies, Medicare, urban renewal, conservation, and the removal of obstacles to the right to vote.  The first decade of the new millennium even saw the implementation of the Affordable Care Act which expanded health insurance coverage to allow for preexisting conditions at affordable rates.  Those were but a couple of bright spots in an otherwise dim reversal of fortune for those who would normally occupy that middle ground between the very wealthy and the poor.

LBJ and The Great Society
1964 with 20% of population below the poverty line

Today, the middle class has been decimated and is now being threatened further with cuts to healthcare, a loss of personal freedoms including reproductive freedoms, attacks on voting rights, and stagnant wages.  Much of this is being accomplished under the smoke screen of threats blown completely out of proportion.  That smoke screen uses the new tools of social media fraught with misinformation, half-truths, and exaggerations and capitalizes on the diminished role of the Fourth Estate, aka the free press.

The intent is clear.  Cut social programs, restrict wages, make good education available only to those who can afford it, and move more money to the coffers of the wealthy.  As of two years ago, the top 1% of households in the US held 31% of the country's wealth while the bottom 50% held just over 2%.  Household income rose by 41% between 1970 and 2000, averaging an annual rate of 1.2%, it has since slowed to an annual rate of just 0.3%. One of the many downsides to this current equation that skews opportunities overwhelmingly toward the elite class of generationally well-off individuals is that it almost assures the future failure of that nation.  Historically, the elite classes, being the only ones afforded a good education or opportunities for advancement, become reliant on a much smaller group for innovation and creativity.  Without technical and social advancement such societies become victims to outside intervention or internal strife that causes collapse. 

Financial inequality is a fact of life. There will always be those who succeed through hard work, smart investment, and a little luck. As a nation, we have always provided a fertile field for financial growth for those willing to make the effort. The only problem seems to be when access to that “fertile field” is not equal and that inequality is the design of others.  The end result is a complete distortion of financial equity and opportunity in favor of a ruling class not willing to relinquish control to something as bothersome as democracy. 

Better for them to promote authoritarian rule disguised as a democratic entity. In that environment, to quote a popular gambler’s expression, “money talks and bullshit walks.”