Are Baby Boomers The Worst Generation?

Millennials are the most educated generation in American history — and also the most broke. Millennials hold just 3 percent of American wealth. When they were the same age, Boomers held 21 percent.

The average older Millennial has $15,000 in student loan debt. The average Boomer at the same age? Just $2,300 in today’s dollars. Millennials are paying almost 40 percent more for their first homes than Boomers did. American families spend twice as much on healthcare now than they did when Boomers were young parents.

With these facts, two recessions and a botched pandemic under their belt, the Boomers are their children’s favorite punching bag. But is the hatred justified? Is the destruction left in their wake their fault or simply the luck of the generational draw?

The New York State Writers Institute will host a pair of conversations looking at the generational divide with conservative columnist Helen Andrews and liberal journalist Jill Filipovic on Thursday, February 16th at the University of Albany.

Helen Andrews is the senior editor of The American Conservative, former managing editor of The Washington Examiner, and former associate editor of The National Review. Her recent book is BOOMERS: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster (Sentinel, 2021).

In Boomers, essayist Helen Andrews addresses the Boomer legacy with scrupulous fairness and biting wit. She profiles six of the Boomers’ brightest and best showing how Steve Jobs tried to liberate everyone’s inner rebel but unleashed our stultifying digital world of social media and the gig economy. How Aaron Sorkin played pied piper to a generation of idealistic wonks. How Camille Paglia corrupted academia while trying to save it. How Jeffrey Sachs, Al Sharpton, and Sonya Sotomayor wanted to empower the oppressed but ended up empowering new oppressors.

Ranging far beyond the usual Beatles and Bill Clinton clichés, Andrews shows how these six Boomers’ effect on the world has been tragically and often ironically contrary to their intentions. She reveals the essence of Boomerness: they tried to liberate us, and instead of freedom they left behind chaos.

Jill Filipovic, journalist, lawyer, and weekly columnist for CNN who champions feminism in American politics and culture, is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind ( ‎ One Signal Publishers, 2020).

In Ok Boomer, Let’s Talk, Millenial Jill Filipovic tells the definitive story of her generation. Talking to gig workers, economists, policy makers, and dozens of struggling Millennials drowning in debt on a planet quite literally in flames, Filipovic paints a shocking and nuanced portrait of a generation being left behind. Filipovic shows that Millennials are not the avocado-toast-eating snowflakes of Boomer outrage fantasies.

But they are the first American generation that will do worse than their parents. “OK, Boomer” isn’t just a sarcastic dismissal — it’s a recognition that Millennials are in crisis, and that Boomer voters, bankers, and policy makers are responsible. Filipovic goes beyond the meme, upending dated assumptions with revelatory data and revealing portraits of young people delaying adulthood to pay down debt, obsessed with “wellness” because they can’t afford real healthcare, and struggling to #hustle in the precarious gig economy.

The first conversation will be a Craft Talk at 4:30 pm, in the Multi-Purpose Room at the Campus Center West Addition. A conversation and Q&A will take place at 7:30 pm in the Recital Hall at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center.

Both talks are free and open to the public. The University at Albany is located at 1400 Washington Avenue, in Albany. For more information, click here.