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Boomers to World: “My Bad”

The Wall Street Journal reported today that several high profile Baby Boomers are doing something that few in their generation have ever done: stepping back and considering the consequences of their actions: “Boomers to This Year’s Grads: We Are Really, Really Sorry.”

The Journal writes, “In 1969, baby boomers took podiums at college graduations around the country and pledged to redefine the world in their image. Forty years later, they have, and now they are apologizing for it. Their collective advice for the class of 2009: Don’t be like us.”

Some noteworthy examples of Boomer mea culpas:

• Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, 60, told Butler University graduates that Boomers were “self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish.”
• New York Times columnist, author of The World Is Flat (among others), and recent convert to green activism Thomas Friedman, 55, in his speech to Grinnell College graduates, compared his generation to “hungry locusts” who devoured everything.
• Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, 44, criticized Boomers for not being “faithful to our grandparents’ example.”

Normally, we do not like to judge people based on a group identity, though when we look at the surging national debt and at the accrued pension and health liabilities that the United States and Western Europe will have to pay to retiring Boomers in the coming decades, we can’t help ourselves.

To be fair to the Boomers, while they carry much of the blame for the national debt binge that precipitated this crisis, they were also the primary force driving the real boom of the preceding years, as well as the rise of many of the technologies that we enjoy today. If we blame them for the bad, we have to give them credit for the good. (We offered a half defense / half criticism of the Boomers in our prior post Generational Conflict Begins. )

They are also certainly not the only “self indulgent” generation walking the earth today, as the streets are full of teenagers and 20-somethings laden with facial piercings, tattoos, and the ever-present iPod ear buds. The Boomers greatest “sin” is simply their size. Because they were so large relative to every generation that preceded them, their actions had much larger consequences.

At any rate, the sudden rash of apologies can be viewed as just another sign of the generational lifecycle. As a group, the Boomers are entering a new stage of their lives. Their children have started to leave the nest. Their careers have already reached their peaks. They are a little older, a little wiser, and they finally have time to sit back and reflect on a lifetime of constant motion.

The Boomers have always done everything “big.” Their current move to make peace with the other generations will likely be no exception.

Charles Sizemore, CFA

Co-author of the recently-published Boom or Bust: Understanding and Profiting from a Changing Consumer Economy