How Do We Make The Old People Pay?

The Boomers will keep doing it to us until they die.

Earlier this week an especially incisive commentator characterized the Baby Boomers as

indisputably America’s most selfish and terrible cohort. They broke the country beyond repair and are still sucking out the last bits of blood on their way out the door. They fucked everything up, stuck us with their awful music, commodified nostalgia to an extent that is still almost incomprehensible, valorized avarice and self-regard to the point where they are now aspirational attributes, and won’t even die without draining whatever tiny shreds of hope and dignity remain to the nation, all the while wondering what we’re so upset about because everything seems fine to them.

Now the Washington Post asserts that “the generation that was born into some of the strongest job growth in the history of America, gobbled up the best parts, and left its children and grandchildren with some bones to pick through and a big bill to pay” is “what’s wrong with America’s economy.”

I guess it’s good that we’re finally acknowledging the scope of the problem and identifying the party responsible for it, but I think we need to hurry up and figure out a way to shake loose all their ill-gotten gains before they are able to make their final exits. Or at least before they start celebrating their 70th birthday. God, that’s going to be insufferable. I can already hear Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along The Watchtower” playing over footage of helicopters flying over Vietnam and then cut to some old fucking hippie who made millions of dollars selling his granola company to General Mills talking about how “we changed everything, man.” You know what? Maybe I’d be happier if they just all died. They’ve dug us a hole so deep there’s not really any amount of money we can get from them that would help us fix things anyway. Let’s just bring on the ULTIMATE BIG CHILL. (The big chill of death, I mean.) It’s the only thing that will shut them up.