Sunday, April 3, 2016

Young People vs. Boomers. Help Requested

What do young people think?  


Young people will be voting in this election.   Young people are different from boomers.

I know more people my own age than I know young people, and they are strange to me.  They will be voting in this election.

New Hampshire College Students meeting Hillary 
Young people really like Bernie compared to Hillary.

Young people text each other a lot.

Young people like and use Instagram.

Young people at the table at the restaurant in a college town were sitting together and every one of them was looking at their own personal smart phone.

A young person who just finished a prestigious Masters program in IT said that graduates went to New York if they wanted to get rich within the system and they went to the Bay Area if they wanted to revolutionize the world.   25 of the 40 people in her graduating class moved to the Bay Area.

Young people know what IT stands for without thinking.   (Information Technology.)

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Young people don't think much about Social Security or Medicare.

Young people think hard about the cost of college.

Young people will likely be alive in 50 years and boomers will not be.   It will be their world in 50 years so they have a right to help decide who will lead the country now.

A request for help:   Please help me expand and improve this post.   Comment below or email me with additional differences between young people and boomers.


Response to my request:  A comment by Bob Warren, who turns 89 this month.   Pointing at his fellow residents at an assisted living place Warren said "none of us are thinking about the future anymore.   We're stuck in the past.   Nobody over 75 should even get to vote anymore.  We don't have a future so why should we be picking the leaders for the future.  The America-of-the-future isn't our country."



Peter Sage introduction of a Guest Comment:

Peter Sage's response to the Draft threat
Peter Coster reads this blog from Virginia.  He is at the front end of the Baby Boomer wave, born right as WW2 ended and young adults celebrated a post-war reality by getting pregnant.   Peter Coster was the result of that reality.   Peter's own reality in the "young adult" world is dominated by the war in Vietnam, immersion in school while being under threat of federal government arrest, prosecution, and sentencing to potential death.  Intelligent guys from middle class homes had ways of avoiding that fate.   Here is Peter Coster's story:

Guest Comment from Peter Coster

I am a Boomer. Born in 1946. I turned 21 in 1967. What was I worried about? Getting killed. 2 guys from my Little League team - dead. On guy from my fraternity - dead. One guy from my high school class - dead. All died in Vietnam. That's what I was worried about. I didn't worry about money or saving the world. I worried about saving my ass.

One year, I think it was 1966, the hawks in the government decided that there were a lot of kids in college, who probably shouldn't be there, just to avoid the draft. So, one Saturday the entire male college population of the US went to their respective college and took a test. If you flunked the test, you were drafted and could die. Talk about pressure. There was even a prep test booklet with a picture of a helmet on the front. Scary.

Anyway, smarter heads prevailed as it was pointed out that music majors or art majors or majors like that would probably not pass, yet they still belonged in college. The end result was that all the tests were discarded. Nothing happened. Zero. But, for a time, all the males were under the gun.

That's what Boomers went through. There were a couple of ways to avoid the draft. One was to say you're a Communist. They other was to say you were gay. Nobody I knew ever took that route. (what if they made you prove you were gay? No thanks.)

There were 2 other ways: One was to go to Canada. Supposedly, there were lots of American women up there waiting for you. "Girls say 'yes' to boys who say 'no' was a common phrase. The other was the National Guard. But, you had to know somebody to get in. I got lucky. I knew somebody and happily joined. 100% of the guys in the NG were there to avoid the draft. Don't let anybody tell you differently. I was in the Massachusetts Guard, the so called Yankee Division. As long as Ted Kennedy was our senator there, he wasn't going to let his boys go anywhere near Vietnam. Got my vote forever.

In 1969 the Guard doubled their drills every month. Instead of one weekend a month, it became 2. The second weekend was dedicated to riot control. Lots of protests in the streets that had to be controlled. Who were these rioters? College kids, mostly white, middle classed, suburban types. Now they are Boomers.

I think it wasn't until the early 80's that us Boomers started to think about money. Then we did it with a vengeance. I don't know if that was typical, but that was my experience.
So, now we worry about taxes and IRA's (gotta cash in at 70 1/2) and all that. We don't worry too much about war because we won't have to fight. But back then, it was a scary time. And it influenced our lives.



1 comment:

Peter C. said...

PS. To all you late bloomers out there, it was the Boomers who got rid of the draft. You're very welcome.