Indeed, they are...
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/parenting-family/2010-11-18-boomerloathing18_CV_N.htm?csp=obinsite
I came across that article very (very) randomly (I do not subscribe to anything on parenting -- children are a precious resource, yes, but mainly for food). Anyways, I decided that I, too, am tired of their shit.
It's all about "me", well you know what, who cares?
I guess, ironically (or not, I guess it's more coincidental), this disproves objectivism and other similarly minded philosophies, at least in the manner that I understand them. I am no expert on objectivism or Ayn Rand (mostly knowing her from the works of Rush and the Bioshock video games, though I hear her prose is mediocre at best, and even objectivists dislike her arguments for objectivism, the school of thought she is seen as creating), and I have an outright disrespect for the intellectual dishonesty that is Friedman, but I guess I'm starting to get sidetracked. I understand objectivism as the pursuit of self -- one ought to look out for ones own interests, doing what helps self, not what helps others, and eventually it all works out in the end. Basically it's libertarianism and total free market economics as applied to morality.
So how does this fail us now?
Two ways -- hyper-partisanship and debt.
Hyper-partisanship -- the 60s, the youth of the baby-boomers, can largely be summed up with hippies and anti-hippies, though that doesn't really tell the full story. I mean, after all, youths are prone to activism. But the 60s had many movements who were, well, unsavory. The asshole-ish behavior one usually thinks of when they think of hippies is actually from a group called the "yippies", who protested, and didn't protest anything in particular, they just liked to push the boundaries of civility while doing so, egging police and other crowd controllers to break first and get violent. Basically they were the "adult" equivalent of saying "i'm not touching you" over and over again while holding your finger an inch away from a sibling's face. Technically they are correct, yes, cops should not beat civilians, but god they were asking for it.
Anyways, my point is this is the generation of "I know I'm right because I'm right, it doesn't really matter why". You can see how this might be a difficult situation when compromise is required. And like I said before, there were hippies and anti-hippies (as well as much much more). The anti-hippies didn't need to come out and protest (or at least as much), their work was being done for them, and their existence should be evidenced by any that the first President elected after the voting age was dropped to 18 was Republican Richard Nixon (a moderate, and a favorite of mine, actually, but not the more hippie friendly Democratic candidate). So what happens when these people grow up and run things? Well we get the political atmosphere of the past 5 years. We had a foreshadowing in the 90s when Newt Gingrich shut down Congress, but sanity was restored when people saw how ridiculous doing something like that actually was. So my proof? Bush's last two years, he was a lame-duck President. He couldn't get anything he wanted done, with the exception of TARP (which would qualify under crisis management), and Congress attempted to inch back his policies, despite having even lower approval ratings than he. Under the guise of narcissism, these two years were basically campaigning for the 2008 Presidency. 2008 comes and non-baby-boomer Barrack Obama is elected. Democrats are off-put by his willingness to work with Republicans, Republicans are off-put by his being a Democrat, and most of the voting went along party lines. Some are saying because of the Democratic defeats in 2010 the next two years may end up as just posturing for the 2012 Presidential election, but I hope this is mistaken. Congress remains as unpopular as its been since the middle of the decade, yet people usually love their congressmen.
Debt -- As long as I get what I want, I am happy. Debt is only temporary, take out a to get what you want, and it WILL pay back, and everything will be fine. This is the logic, and it has failed. No generation has more debt (I'm not sure of student loans are taken into account) and this is not really a new phenomenon of the banking collapse.
Politically it's made paying back the deficit impossible under the current political atmosphere. In order to pay back the deficit, taxes must be raised AND spending must be cut. One can actually make the argument that now is not the time to pay back the debt because we are in a recession, but that person would immediately be labeled a Keynesian heretic and cast out. Besides, most of the 2010 campaigns were run on "we are going to reduce the debt/deficit". So there was a perfect opportunity to pledge a dedication to doing this, by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. A compromise was reached, and not only are the taxes being kept as is (that is, not being raised to pay back debt) but there will be more spending (mostly in the form of unemployment benefits).
The atmosphere has two very specific hazards to actually reducing the deficit -- taxes have become untouchable and no one actually wants to cut government spending.
In bad form, I will describe the second one first. Cutting government spending has been the creed of many newly elected congressmen this term, though it will be interesting to see this tested. Every one of them can agree that the government is too big (I'm not going to get in this argument). Every one of them can agree that spending needs to be cut. No one can agree on what needs to be cut. Ideas will pop out here and there "oh, we can cut arts funding" or "maybe we can change social security, medicare, and/or medicaid". The problem is, everyone suggests things to be cut that are not programs that either they or the majority of their constituents do not use. It creates the maze of -- you can cut everything in the government, except what I use. Needless to say, nothing will get cut, and what will get cut, will not be enough to do anything about paying back the debt.
Likewise, taxes have become untouchable. If you ever want to get re-elected, you cannot raise taxes, and if you are desperate to hold or attain office, you should propose tax cuts. With government debt, and especially with the amount the USA has, cutting spending is not enough, unless one plans on reverting to the articles of confederation (talk about founding father's original intent! hah). While tax cuts can and do stimulate the economy, they are horribly inefficient at doing so, they just happen to be a popular option. On average, only about 30 cents per dollar cut is put back into the economy, predictably it's higher for lower incomes and lower for higher incomes (so why are we insistent on upper class tax cuts, oh right, they can pay for PR, campaigning, etc). Reforming the tax code has been proposed as an option for helping to increase tax revenue without raising taxes. The issue with that is, it does so by eliminating tax breaks. Like with spending cuts, everyone who uses a particular tax break finds their particular break absolutely necessary to function. Putting it simply, taxes actually are absolute. If you want to increase the revenue coming in from taxes, you can only do so by raising taxes. In this case, it raises taxes by eliminating breaks, deductions, and the like. The percent you get taxed based on your income stays the same, but the amount you can take off from that initial number will drop, effectively actually raising taxes.
For this reason, tax reform will be very, very difficult to do.
So, I guess that went on a lot longer than I thought it would have. Wow, baby-boomers must really have been wrecking us hard.
"We marvel after those who sought; the wonders of the world they wrought" Rush, Anthem
-- Knuttel
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