OK Boomer: Class War Not Generation War

Boomers, aka Baby Boomers, are the generation born 1946 to 1964. As a generation they’re often blamed for the awful state of the world, especially for destroying the housing market, job market, and environment. Boomers are also resented for their alleged privilege. And finally, judgmental attitudes towards those who have economic struggles are labeled as a boomer mentality.

Meanwhile, Millennials and Gen Z are said to be victims of the Boomer generation.

There are at least five reasons why this discourse is both inaccurate and counterproductive.

I don’t want to give too much of the video away by listing the five reasons here. But I’ll just say that blaming boomers diverts attention away from the real source of our environmental and economic woes, which I argue are primarily caused by capitalism. Also, the typical discourse casting boomers as privileged villains, and casting Millennials and Gen Z as their impoverished victims, as well as the discourage around generational conflict in general, all have the effect of stifling class consciousness.

If we want to spread awareness of the need to abolish capitalism, and if we want to build the organization and working class unity that will give us the power to abolish capitalism, then blaming boomers hurts our cause, and so does the typical discourse about Millennials and Gen Z.

This video will go into all of this in more detail: discussing the five reasons we should stop blaming boomers.

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0:00 Introduction
1:59 Part 1: Making the real problem invisible
5:51 Part 2: Working Class Boomers
10:29 Part 3: Rose-colored glasses
11:29 Part 4: Mislabeling the state of mind
14:47 Part 5: Stifling class consciousness
16:17 Wrap-Up
17:42 Outro

SOURCES

Recessions graph 1775-1943 (US)

Comparing Millennials and Boomers at same age for poverty, unemployment, debt, wealth, income (US)

Age 65+ still working (OECD countries)

Reasons for not retiring (US)

Poverty rate for 65+ compared to general population (OECD countries)

MUSIC CREDITS

Lacrimosa: Requiem (Mozart)
Sweet Lord (TW$) – I bought the license
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Lil Skies Drum Loop (Jasx on da track)

VISUAL CREDITS

dashu83
cookie_studio
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karlyukav

Avocado toast meme by Instagram user badtastebb

Know Your Meme page for avocado toast meme

"At least that's what I think.... What about you?" inspired by T1J

KEYWORD SEARCH TERMS

Boomers, Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, generation, generational conflict, class conflict, generation war, class war, class struggle, class consciousness, working class, capitalist class, bourgeoisie, bourgeois, bougie, boujee, capitalism, socialism, socialist, video essay, LuckyBlackCat, Lucky Black Cat

► My YouTube channel means the world to me. I long for a world where we maximize wellbeing rather than maximize profit, and this channel is my attempt to contribute to our creating this brighter future. Any support you can give sharing videos or telling people about my channel is greatly appreciated.

[LuckyBlackCat]

How do you do, fellow kids?







Oh, hello there person who clicked Read More. I just want to say I make my videos with the hope that they can make a contribution to our collective struggle to make a better world and brighter future, so any support you can give sharing my videos or telling people about my channel is greatly appreciated.
Also have a nice day.

[beeinthehive]

Let's change it to "Okay, bourgeois".

[beebalmbadil]

It’s impossible to work a wage slave job and not meet struggling Boomers who have things a million times worse because of the health concerns about aging and difficulties getting PTO and benefits. The ones I have met don’t talk about it ever— they just endure. I’m glad you’re making space for this in Internet discourse here. Anti-elderly sentiments are dangerously analogous to “the weak deserve to suffer and die” of fascism

[AWorldtoWin]

Lucky nails it again!

My parents are boomers and so are most of their friends--growing up I saw the whole gamut of class and income among them. Some of them were able to retire comfortably, but plenty are still working and struggling to pay off their mortgages, loans, medical debt, student debt, etc. well into their 60s and 70s now.

And yeah, I've gotten plenty of earfuls from crotchety boomers over the years about how easy us darn kids have it these days, but I have also heard many empathetic stories from them as working class people, even living through the so-called "golden age" of American capitalism. Golden for whom? Certainly not for those doing backbreaking work (sometimes literally) and struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile economic system.


Thanks for another insightful video, Lucky.

~Melody

[awesomedez]

A millennial cosplaying a boomer cosplaying a millennial. Class-ception!

[sbor]

I was born in 66 making the youngest boomer or the oldest X-er but very much part of the X-ers - if any of this generation stuff means anything. Love your videos, and yes *_capitalism must be replaced._* Raising class consciousness is the mightiest struggle when coming up against ''capitalist realism''. As Mark Fisher oft repeated socialist homily, _most people can envisage the end of the world more easily than the end of capitalism._

[nchz]

It's important to remember that part of colonialist strategy is to pit colonized groups against one another, and sometimes this takes the form of one group getting favorable treatment. There are a number of favors which the American government did for the so-called greatest generation that are essentially pyramid schemes, such as the mortgage interest deduction, or the growth in academic careers following the Sputnik panic. In many cases the boomers are the last to benefit, and even there, just barely. A lot of boomers are on the losing end of that, as evidenced by the incessant ads for the "reverse mortgage" scam. @Yawn mentioned potential inheritances -from- boomers being used as a talking point, reverse mortgage is one reason among several that that ain't gonna happen.

[Voidsworn]

"Even Gen X can join in." This makes me feel called out or something. I guess it's nice to be remembered 😁

[LordLav]

Yep I think you're making a spot on point against buying into 'divide and rule' nonsense. I think it's generally more productive to speak to people's individual material conditions rather than just rant at them and buy into 'generational war'. It's better to talk to your boomer family members about the lousy pension they're getting for all their years of hard work than get into the weeds about many culture war issues they might buy into for example. Although I have to say when it comes to 'culture war' issues I sometimes struggled to not get baited into arguments lol.

Certainly in the UK I'd say any generational differences are really more influenced by relations to material conditions and home ownership than anything else. And of course 'boomers' like any other generation aren't a monolith. But to the degree that there are certain broad generational differences I argue most of that can be attributed to differences in material conditions.

As much as I loath her and her legacy, Thatcher was very clever in the UK and I think realised that if you encourage swathes of the population to 'own their own home' through 'right to buy' it incentivises them to be capitalist in their outlook. And again most people aren't politically aware and therefore their politics is informed more by their current material conditions than anything else. Many in the short term benefitted from this, which is why much of the younger voters of the time voted for Thatcher - which goes massively against the notion that it's only the 'naive young' that vote socialist - in the 80s clearly the youth generally voted for the right wing in the UK.

But imo it's important not to blame boomers for all this. We live in a structure where the overton window of the media in my country took a massive shift to the right in the 80s and the tide was massively shifting towards neoliberalism and away from the 'post-war economy' in the west too. And the right were clever in responding to the direct material conditions of people at the time.

Instead like all situations we have to be prepared to talk and respond to peeps individual material needs and make a convincing case for us all doing that in solidarity and to know who our common enemy is i.e. the structure of capitalism...

[ParadoxHorde]

I genuinely needed this wakeup call to check my ageism

[DJBremen]

You've moved me on this issue, everything you said is true.

[comradevanti]

I got "school of life" flashbacks from these transititions

[nicholaszacharewicz]

You make some great points here.

Intersectional analysis is essentiaI I think. Though it's tricky to not come across as a class reductionist when you look at old (made up) enmities like this one along class lines rather than age lines. I think you managed to do a pretty good job of avoiding that but a whole video about what that kind of intersectional analysis looks like more generally would be great.

Anyway, thanks for another fantastic video!

[beeinthehive]

I always thought this "ok boomers" thing is just another way to divide the Proletarian and draw attention away from those who are truly responsible.

Thank you for this video.

[Aloemancer]

Coming back to say that this really is a good video making an important point, and to replace my old comment with a new one for the algorithm

[Arachobia]

Yeah, I agree. Fun as a joke, but in no way reflective of reality. Especially in a country like mine - South Africa - when most boomers who are not white are in a far worse off position due to growing up under apartheid. The generational definitions tend to be very American-focused anyway

[lnplum]

16:48 PREACH! As a freelancer turned small business owner I went nearly bankrupt trying to run the business without following the rules of capitalism. It's ridiculously hard to try to do the right thing because banks and even the government will punish you at every step for not optimally exploiting your employees. A lot of leftist discourse is frustrating to me because it stops at class war, which tries to make the status quo more comfortable, not actually building dual power to overcome the system itself. You can kill all the landlords and disown the capitalists but if you don't tear down the power structures you're just changing who's in charge.

[TakeV]

Wait, did he say $40 a day on avocado toast? 40?

[williamblack]

I agree and thank you for the much needed analysis of what the real reason for our problems are. Capitalism is our national secular religion. Even the most tepid criticism is considered beyond the pale.

[Libertarian]

FYI, my friend, who appears to be a newly declared anarchist, and in whom’s radicalisation you IMO, have played a significant part, thinks that your new style vids without all the wacky shenanigans, are much better for the sharing of information. Your videos are doing their intended work. Now we want more people to see them.