Why Baby Boomer Bashing Is All the Rage for Republicans These Days

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The future is even bleaker for boomers. Older workers have seen the largest proportionate increase in unemployment in the recent economic downturn. They’re also the least likely to be rehired. A worker between 50 and 61 who has been unemployed for 17 months has only about a 9 percent chance of finding a job in the next three months. In other words, if you’re a boomer and you lose your job, you need to start a business—if you’re not too depressed.

Age discrimination isn’t just bad for boomers. Americans can claim Social Security at 62, if they’re willing to take a cut in payments. Between March 2008 and March 2013, 1.4 million more Americans opted for Social Security than expected, many of them people 62 and up who had given up on getting a job. If these early adopters were included in the unemployment statistics, the rate of joblessness in 2010 would have been 10.4, not 9.8, the highest rate since 1983.

With Social Security coffers taking a hit, there’s an obvious social cost to age discrimination. But Social Security isn’t enough for most people to live on, and if you claim it at 62, your benefits are sharply reduced. The long-term costs of boomer unemployment are almost unimaginable. By 2020, millions of people over 70 who haven’t saved the requisite $1 million plus will be hitting the skids. That’s not even taking into account the loss of human capital, combined with the personal misery—an entire class of energetic, knowledgeable, still-subversive baby boomers suddenly feeling like they’re in a bad remake of “Soylent Green.” 

Marginalizing baby boomers is a bad idea for millennials, too. Why? To quote Luntz: We get it. We know what’s the matter with Kansas. We understand that leaning in won’t help women—or anybody. You need us. Any idiot can use the file hosting service Dropbox; it’s about what you put into Dropbox. And, not that it matters, except it kind of does, we’re as hip as you are. Or hipper. (The same friend passed over with the borderline actionable phrase about millennial leadership sang karaoke in England with Annie Lennox, who told him he should have stuck with rock ‘n’ roll instead of becoming an executive director.)

As scholar Martin Jones defined it, paraphrasing post-colonialist intellectual Edward Said, “othering” consists of “emphasizing the perceived weaknesses of marginalized groups as a way of stressing the alleged strength of those in positions of power.” If millennials buy into Luntz’s talking points, they won’t be rebelling—they’ll be toadying to power.

What’s surprising, given their history of political activism, is how few baby boomers are willing to speak out publicly about the discrimination they’re facing. There are several reasons. Boomers who have managed to hang onto their jobs are only starting to become aware of the situation, as, one by one, they or their friends face the terrifying prospect of permanent unemployment, or piecing together part-time work without security or benefits.

For the others, it’s simply fear. Millennial gripes that boomers have sucked up all the good jobs aren’t wrong. But many of us became artists or mountain climbers or ran music stores. We’re facing the same middle-of-the-night terrors as millennials, only we may not get another chance. We could have saved ourselves if only we had bowed down to The Man. Now, even if we’re willing to sell out, it’s probably too late.

For many boomers who followed that proverbial bliss (damn you, Joseph Campbell!) the future is too terrifying to contemplate. Since the recession, median wealth for people 55 to 74 declined by approximately 15 percent. More than 23 million Americans over 60 are now considered economically insecure, and the  Older Americans Act, which provides job training, preventive health care, transportation, meals and protection from financial exploitation, just got smacked down by sequestration, with $40 million slashed from meal programs alone. Medicare costs are certain to rise as a result of these cutbacks, making it a wider target for tea party Republicans.