Come on all you Millies* and Zizzies* – admit that you don’t really want the Boomer Remover* to remove us Boomers. It’s true that, in theory, Covid-19 likes Boomers more than it likes you, but who ya gonna hate on if we’re not here? How sucky would it be to lose all the bad girls and boys just like that? Imagine the emptiness in your lives. Wouldn’t the world be a lonely ol’ place without us.
But, don’t despair, you know how theories don’t always survive the foray into the real world? Well, Covid-19 is a bit like that. There’s no guarantee that Boomers are the ones who will actually get the bug, and conveniently die, leaving all their ill-gotten gains to the much more deserving Millies and Zizzies. It might be a nice thought, but we didn’t do all that hard work of stealing your futures, just to go and conveniently pop off. Hell no, we didn’t earn our black-hearted reputations just to turn around and be that obliging.
However, you can take some reassurance from the fact that your lives wouldn’t stay empty of someone to hate on for long, should we Boomers boom-off en masse. There are plenty of unethical, greedy, and vile Millies and Zizzies, too, who would take about five minutes to fill the ‘bad’ gap left by the Boomers. Being an opportunistic arsehole is not limited to one generation.
Don’t get me wrong, being a Boomer is great. What’s not to like about being financially secure as we get older, and the good times to be had with that. It was great when we were young, too. We rode the wave of socialism that gave us security and a leg up; and then we rode that wave into neoliberalism, which told us to be mean and greedy and only care about ourselves, and to amass our fortunes. Yep, being a boomer is great. We were in the right place at the right time.
If you want some of what we Boomers have, then stop voting neoliberalism into government. Admittedly, the world was changing when we started down that track, and New Zealand had to change with it. What we changed it to, though, was an ‘all about me’ economy. As neoliberalism does, it encouraged us to only think of ourselves, and to grab whatever we could, however we could, to replace that security and leg up that socialism once gave us (socialism tends to get a bad rap, but there are varying degrees of it, which look nothing like the stifling practises of past communism).
To be fair, politicians, corporations, and marketers were smarter than the majority of us Boomers. We didn’t really get what they were doing to us, until it was entrenched. Then we started getting told that what we thought was a good thing was actually a bad thing. I always secretly wanted to be a bad girl, but never quite had the courage. Now, I find that I’ve achieved bad girl status, just by doing what I thought I was supposed to do. Who’da thought that following the rules was going to make me so bad? It’s kinda awesome.
The great neoliberal sell was, and still is, tax cuts. “More money in Kiwis pockets”, the sellers of neoliberalism cry. Oh, what a sweet sound. Who can resist? They sort of forget to list what we lose on the other hand, though, with fewer taxes to pay for public services. We get sold the line of “why should we pay for anyone else?”. How can a (cunning) appeal like that to our meanness of spirit be ignored? What is really meant, is why should those with lots of money, regardless of how it’s come by, have to spend any of it helping those with less money? Like making free University education available. What does it matter that our best and brightest may end up only being chosen from those whose parents are wealthy? Let’s cross the ditch to our Aussie cuzzies, too – bet they’re now regretting having more money in their pockets from tax cuts, at the expense of funding cuts to the rural fire service.
In Boomers defence …..argh, who am I kidding? There is no defence. We’re bad. We may not all have been directly responsible for the way the world went wrong – in fact, some of us have never stopped trying to make it right – but we all benefited from it. Including Millies and Zizzies, who are rampant consumers, too, and can expect their turn at being the baddies. So, don’t wish us Boomers to be gone – we are your role models on how not to care about successive generations’ whining and finger pointing. There’s much we can teach you about that.
Or – here’s another thought – stop voting neoliberalism into government. And many of us Boomers (those of us whom the Boomer Remover doesn’t get), will stand shoulder to shoulder with you on that.
*Millies = Millenials
*Zizzies = Gen Z
*Boomer Remover – a trending meme from Millenials and Gen Z, which refers to Covid- 19 killing more people over 60, than younger people.
Header pic by: Daniele Levis Pelusi
A B'Old Woman 
Love this. Hearing another tag line that speaks to exclusion or worse, annihilation, makes me sad, though. Still, I can’t worry about it too much. It’s my birthday today (yesterday for you) and I’m happy to be alive and wish we could all quit blaming – or looking to cast blame – to make ourselves feel better. So, you’re spot on. Radicalism doesn’t really cut it.
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Happy birthday! Yeah, we all look to cast blame, but the reality is that if we are brutally honest with ourselves, we liberate ourselves.
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Looking at the previous comment—Happy Belated Birthday! There must be a gathering of Boomer Aries women here, as my birthday is coming up this Monday. I’ve been thinking of what my 24-year-old self would be saying to my 64-year-old self: probably nothing nice, as I would have been shocked I let myself go so badly, hehe. Though I am glad I’ve managed to land on my feet at this point of my life. Being poor and hungry is even less agreeable in old age than it was when I was a college student.
I don’t think members of Generation Z have much to boast about, since so many of them bought into the ‘make it cheaper and faster’ ethic of the 90s and 2000s. A 59-year-old friend saw his well-paying job as a technical writer for a global tech company vanish after they decided to move the offices to Ireland, which offered the company massive tax breaks. He was even forced to train his successor, a fresh-faced Generation Zer in Dublin who was willing to work at half my friend’s salary. Then, after discovering no one wanted to hire him because he was “old,” he ended up taking a cashier’s job at a big-box retailer, at less than half the pay he used to make. Age discrimination, in my opinion, was a much bigger “Boomer remover” than COVID-19.
That said, there are a lot of members of the Boomer generation who have a lot to answer for, starting with Butterscotch Pudding Face in the White House and his many supporters in the US. Also the ones who insist on traipsing about town when our city has been on lockdown/quarantine for the past three weeks. They grouse that “you’re making too big a deal out of this” and “well, if I catch it, I catch it, it’s fate/nature/act of god.” My Boomer brethren and sistren, it’s not about you, it’s all our friends and family members with chronic illnesses and compromised immune systems and everyone else in between. Think of the future and the greater community, and stay home! And to those of you who still try to make this world better, thank you!
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Absolutely!! I’ve never felt freer. 🙂 But still need to suggest others look to other views – just as you’ve done. :
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Yes- we don’t need to agree with other points of view, but it’s to our benefit to know them. Without doing that, we can’t know our options.
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Happy upcoming birthday! Mine isn’t until early October – the most common week in the calendar for birthdays, I believe – lol!
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Happy upcoming birthday! Mine isn’t until early October – the most common week in the year to have a birthday, I believe – lol! I think my forty years younger self would have been quite pleased that I finally got bolshy, even if my body doesn’t stack up as well as it used to – haha. However, she would have also wished that I had a few more kick-arse adventures to write about, I reckon – lol!
That’s an awful story about your friend. Such a waste of wisdom and knowledge. Good point about age discrimination being a bigger Boomer Remover than Covid-19. Younger people don’t realise that this will happen to them, too, but at an even younger age than it has happened to Boomers, if they don’t get political about stopping rampant neoliberalism.
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Thank you! I have hope for the Millennials, who came of age during the Great Recession and are quick to see the rising inequality in the current system. There are some who believe in the outdated merit system, that ‘as long as you’re smart and a hard worker, you’ll succeed’—I always want to say, “How quaint!” when I read these self-help articles which tout this—or worse, the ‘I’m getting mine before it all runs out.’ But I think so many of them have been hurt by the gig economy and the lack of real opportunities open to them, they’re willing to take it down, something Boomers couldn’t bring themselves to do as they entered their 30s and decided paying taxes and taking care of the poor was a bore.
My friend finally aged out of the workplace and is able to collect Social Security and whatever’s left of his pension. Ironically, this has left him in a much better place, financially and emotionally. There’s something vampire-like about the current economic system. The faster you can get out of it (via an old socialist idea, the old-age pension), the better off you are personally.
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True – the Millenials may be the ones who turn things around, having the benefit of being able to observe and experience the big fail that the current system is. Plus, they’re coming of age where they can have real clout, as opposed to just being unhappy about it.
A system without social security is doomed, as it is unstable. People may not like paying taxes, but taxes enable security and stability, and it’s from that foundation that we can flourish. I, too, know of someone who has recently aged out of the workforce, and is much better for it with her pension. I know of someone else coming up to it, who will also be in a better place once getting her pension. Not every Boomer did okay, especially those who ended up as single parents.
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