Tag: baby boomers

Baby Boomers – Are They Dead Yet?

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AKA: Trickle Down Theory And Other Fairy Tales

“When I was your age, I *worked* and *saved* for school, a home and a jacuzzi. You lot are spoiled and lazy. Get a job instead of complaining all day.”  – Baby Boomer Logic

Trickle Down Theory – If you reward the most successful members of society (corporations & the rich) via tax breaks and friendly laws, the subsequent benefits will reach all sectors of life. The benevolent Successful Class will reinvest their savings, create more jobs, grow their companies and spend money in your local coffee shop. They’re gonna make it rain y’all!

This experiment started in the 80s and is as flawed today as the initial opposition expected. THIS IS GRADE-A BULLSHIT. Today’s politicians claim that begrudging this unbalanced system is Class Warfare (OH NOES). It’s warfare alright, but Class has nothing to do with it. It’s Generational Warfare.

That’s right, blame old people. I fucking said it. Baby Boomers are currently in charge – from leaders of major corporations to influence-peddlers to most heads of state, they echo their Boomer values: pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and work for your own success. Solid idea. However they forgot one crucial detail: opportunity. They grew up in an economic paradise :  the post-war world in the 50’s was a time of cheap higher education, affordable healthcare and a veritable buffet of jobs. University didn’t cost a limb, you didn’t need 3 years slaving at Starbucks to pay off tuition, nor did the title of Head Barista seem like the only career option in a world where teens and seniors competed for the same damn job. Boomers literally tripped over employment options after graduating, and once you worked for The Company, The Company took care of you. A small town nobody could become a Big Shot, and quite often that is exactly how it went. Kudos. Hell, with opportunities knocking on your door like Jehovah’s Witnesses, even a complete moron could become President.

Boomers developed a misguided belief that their success came purely from their hard work, business savvy and innate superiority. Never experiencing the hardships their Nazi-killing parents endured during the Great Depression, they developed a sense of entitlement from their overblown exploits in a Time of Plenty. Nobody did me favors, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. There’s a good fucking reason they’re called The Clueless Generation. They grew up in Paradise but convinced themselves it was a Trial by Fire.

What did they do with their bounty? In their capacity as CEOs & Presidents & VOTERS, they made it harder for upcoming generations to attain the same heights. They spent their entire lives believing in their personal prowess and grew a selfish streak we are paying for to this day. Imma get what’s mine bitch. They took their misguided self-confidence and built barriers for others. They used their positions of power and influence to reshape the law to benefit ONLY THEMSELVES. Cost of education skyrocketed, so enjoy your crippling debt. Tax laws were remoulded to favor the Top and squeeze the Middle, so we bail them out after they lose OUR money. The MAJORITY of wages stagnated and the needs of corporations superseded the national interest of every country. This self-centered philosophy is why 99% of the planet is suffering through an unrelenting recession. It is now harder than ever to move from one economic class to the next (class mobility), unless you’re heading downwards.

But their argument remains – If they could do it all on their own, so can you. With fewer opportunities. And less education. Oh and fuck health insurance, privacy and basic freedoms (SOPA anyone?)

I cannot wait for this generation to go extinct.

Kevin O’Leary Is A Massive Tool – A Brief Treatise On Class Warfare

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In case you haven’t heard, or live in Bumfuck Nowhere, the Toronto chapter of the Occupy movement begins on Saturday October 15, the aptly named Occupy Toronto, ready to set up camp on Bay Street. There will be ordinary citizens both young and old taking a stand against unchecked corporate power, possible G20 flavoured police activity, and a few hipster douchebag drumcirclers doing their thing no matter what the occasion.

But most of all, there will be tools like Kevin O’Leary, distorting and oversimplifying the motives of the movement, displaying either a complete ignorance of facts or full knowledge of facts which are in his interest to suppress. Either way, you’ll hear the same baseless assertions – that it’s just a bunch of lazy mooks blaming the successful class for their woes, or suburban hippies with no coherent agenda, left wing ‘nutbars’ inciting class warfare, etc. Here’s the video, because this is a multimedia blog mofo.

Kevin O’Leary is accustomed to talking down to employees, or intellectuals who prefer the high road, so he resorts to name calling instead of addressing facts.

Fortunately I’m none of the above, and as a standup comic I can match his maturity level and then some.

This walking pile of man-shaped waste named Kevin O’Leary holds a position that is essentially based on supply side economics, often called Trickle Down Theory. The idea is simple – give tax breaks and perks to the most successful, aka the rich and corporations, because these are entrepreneurs and innovators who will use the extra money to reinvest in their businesses to create more jobs, more revenue, more consumption and consequently more money that will flow into the economy and trickle down to everyone. They’re gonna make it rain.

Except that’s not exactly what happened in the real non-theoretical world. Trickle Down economics has been the backbone of economic policy in the US and UK since the conservative revolution of the 80s, and in the past 30 years it created the massive income inequality and corporate abuse that eventually lead to this global recession. The rich have gotten richer, middle class incomes stagnated, and the poor got a whole lot poorer. There’s a reason it’s not called The Giant Wad Of Cash In Everyone’s Pocket Theory. And unlike Fact-Free O’Leary, here’s some data to back up my words bitch.

Baby Boomers like Kevin O’Leary lecture the world about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, because that’s how they made their millions. They forget or don’t even realize that they grew up in a postwar booming economy, when jobs were plentiful, higher education was affordable and Reality TV didn’t exist. They ‘battled’ their way through paradise and emerged with a sense of entitlement that extends their greed into everyone’s lives. They used their financial clout to infect the political system, bend it to their will, and created an economic climate where the barriers to attaining the same riches become increasingly insurmountable. The proof is in your $400 pudding – when the top 1% control the bottom 99%, something isn’t right.

Corporations innovate and do great things, but that doesn’t mean they are above the law. That’s the core demand of this movement, and there’s nothing nutty about it.

Asshole.