After watching the #OKBoomer episode of Bill Whittle now this morning, I just wanted to share some thoughts on this from someone on the younger side of the millennial generation with younger siblings in the Gen Z crowd. The first thing I want to point out is that Gen Z seems to be a lot more conservative in general than their older Millennial siblings and cousins. Early data is already showing an increased percentage of savings out of total monthly income as well as a higher desire to own a house. I suspect it is more of this generation that started the #OKBoomer meme.
The origin of this meme is not so much about being ungrateful for the advances that previous generations have made, but rather a dismissal of advise that young adults today get from older generations that simply does not seem to work with the way the world has changed. One reason why I emphasize that this is more of Gen Z in origin than Millennials is that Gen Z sees the people 10-15 years older than them in their mid 30s with mountains of student debt, an apartment instead of a house, and no spouse or kids. They see this as Millennials taking advise that would have worked a few decades ago, but with the cost of home-ownership and a college education rising far faster than wages, the advise no longer works.
On top of this, there is a vague understanding that once upon a time, institutions had some real value. (I am not sure if these things are true, but it is a common perception for people my age and younger). We can imagine a time when you could be reasonably informed about politics from just watching the news, but now we have to double check our sources and look at alternative media to stay informed. We imagine a world where graduating with a B.S or B.A from a university meant that you received a solid education and would make enough money to comfortably support your own small family. Now we see a degree as a piece of paper than can be yours for 8 small payments of $6,999.99 or can be financed for a payment of $450/month for the rest of your life! The value of this piece of paper is that it will get you past the Boomer gatekeepers of good jobs that we will learn how to actually do on the job or from watching youtube videos anyway. We also have that pyramid scheme we all lovingly call Social Security that all working people pay in to, but no one in my generation believes will still be around for us in our retirement. When I spoke to a financial adviser about retirement recently, he showed what my wife and I would need for retirement factoring in our projected Social Security income and laughed and said “a lot of people from your generation ask me to take this out of the projection though because they don’t trust it will be around or something”… I proceeded to ask him to remove it from our projections too.
So when Boomers tell us “you need a college degree for a good job. It’s worth the investment”, we smile and nod, but on the inside we roll our eyes than think “#OKBoomer”. When they ask us “why don’t you just buy a house instead of rent an apartment? I bought my first house when I was 20”, we remember the conversation with the mortgage banker explaining the $200/month Private Mortgage Insurance fee because we don’t have $50,000 for a down payment, roll our eyes and think “#OKBoomer”.
We see that these institutions were great for our parents. We see that they were great for our grandparents. We see that they have now rotted and are no longer great. So when a young Gen Z-er is talking to his mother or his grandfather who has CNN on in the background about how he really just wants to trade school for 2 years so he can make good money as an electrician, but they tell him no, he should go to college, “#OKBoomer” might be the first thing that he says to himself. And as he says that to himself, he might also think that with the swamp of all of these rotting institutions, it might be time to #MAGA.
6 replies on “#OKBoomer From a Younger Millennial”
Regarding a college education. Unfortunately, if you will only owe $56K after college, you are doing well compared with many. A good part of the problem, as with many problems, is government involvement. The government took away the ability to declare bankruptcy and that gave colleges and lenders relatively easy money. Raise tuition? No problem, take out a loan? Another part of the problem is social. “They” told everyone to go to college to make a good living. Has that worked out well? How many jobs really need that college education? Is there another way to assess intelligence that might work better? Do the available jobs make the cost of college acceptable? Here’s how one would be able to tell. Get a private sector loan for the degree in which you are interested. If you cannot pay it off in a few years, it might not be worth getting the degree.
Regarding jobs that do not require a college education. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc were able to make a decent living in the past. I was planning to be an electrician as a fallback position. Unfortunately, many people that do this kind of work have to compete with illegal immigrants. I know two people that shut down their businesses because that could not compete unless they hired illegal immigrants as well. Both parties are to blame in this. Democrats want more voters (whether the illegals vote using fraud now or their children vote as citizens in the future) and short-sighted Republicans want to please the Chamber of Commerce.
Regarding Social Security. Yes, it does closely resemble a Pyramid scheme. I thought so when I was 21 years old. None of us were asked whether or not they could take the money that we and our employers put into social security. It’s depressing to me that this amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars of my money right now, yet Social Security is already running a deficit. Why am I not surprised?
Regarding housing. PMI is not new. I bought my first house in the 80s at age 26 and I had PMI on that loan as well. I think that I paid PMI for at least the first 8 years.
These are not Boomer/Gen X/Gen Y/Gen Z issues. These issues all relate to how much government we should have in our lives. The people that put in place all of these government programs, laws and regulations were not, to my way of thinking, conservative.
I agree that this is not a problem specific to a particular generation. I think the #OKBoomer mindset comes from advise given to those in the younger generations that they know is no longer good advise.
Richard, I couldn’t agree with you more. My father was a dentist, as am I. My children are dentists as well. When I look a the degeneration of every aspect of the profession from my father to my children, it is heartbreaking. I’m talking about more than 50% decrease in salary, a loss of control due to insurance companies, and a huge deterioration in the dentist patient relationship. All due to government intervention and inflation. Thank you for your input
I was born almost a decade before the boomers came on strong. Then as now, there was no free lunch. You had to work for it and actually earn it. Even an education had to be worked for and, by itself, did not guarantee a good living. You actually had to BE SOMETHING and be able to DO SOMETHING that others were willing to pay for. It was not given to you simply because you were so “wonderful”.
The idea is that the more things change the more they stay the same. A few learn from history. Most learn it the hard way.
The next generation must learn the same lessons that was learned by the previous generation all the way back to the first generation. Mostly by encountering reality face front and spread eagle. Then, if you survive, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go back to work earning your living.
It doesn’t get easier. It’s just different.
I agree. I do think that the younger generation does actually have it easier, but listening to a lot of the general advise that they are given will make their lives more difficult. In a lot of cases, a trade school or going straight into a job would be better than paying for 4 years of leftist indoctrination at a university. I think the #OKBoomer meme is really about the path to success that our parents and grandparents took not being there anymore and a lot of Gen Z-ers know they have to find a new path. Knowing this, they get a bit tired and dismissive of continuous advise to follow a path that has been worn out and covered in swamp water.
I remember as a child that the adults around me always asked what I was going to be when I grow up. By the time I was in high school, I decided that what I was going to be didn’t exist yet. So I worked to become a competent generalist in the hard and soft sciences as well as general knowledge.
When I grew up, I became a Biomedical Engineer and then a Software Engineer. Neither of which existed when I was in high school.