Baby Boomers were not always old

Baby Boomers were born between 1945 and 1963.  Those not already retired will soon be doing so.  

Prior to the Millennials, the Baby Boomers were the most numerous generation ever.  The Boomers have dominated the workplace for decades, and their retirement is resulting in a smaller, less experienced workforce.  The youngsters of the Millennial generation are still learning and still coming up to speed as they fill in the gaps made by the loss of the Boomers.  The young replacements will have to learn and gain experience on-the-job, in the workplace, as the Boomers did before them.

Before the Baby Boomers – the World Wars

World War II was a war of ideology and conquest, as Germany, Italy, and Japan sought huge, dictatorial empires with whole populations subjected to slavery and persecution as inferiors.  World War II had been preceded by the growth of Communist and Fascist ideologies in the 1920s and -30s, after World War I ended in 1918.  

World War I was the last of the age-old conflicts among kings and emperors.  With the end of serfdom, noblemen, the emergence of human rights, and the growth of the Industrial Age in the 1800s, freedom and economics had become the dominant factors for the world’s population.  The devastation wrought by those wars brought down the kings who had instigated them.

The world when the Boomers were young

The Baby Boomers were born into the post-World War II world.  With the defeat of the aggressors, Germany, Italy, and Japan, men who had spent the war years defending America left military service ready to return to a normal life – as were the women who had spent the war years working in factories to build the weapons to fight that war.  

Those survivors of the war quickly began the new families which wartime had prevented.  So many children born within a short few years became known as the Baby Boomers.

For the Boomers in the 1950s, Saturday mornings were filled with cartoons on the TV:  Tom and Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Yogi Bear, and Might Mouse:  “Here he comes, to save the day, that means that Mighty Mouse is on the way …”

Color televisions were expensive and rare until the 1970s.  There was no cable TV.  The family’s black-and-white TV was connected to an antenna on the roof, and three channels were available:  ABC, NBC, and CBS.  The FCC required that every TV program broadcasted had to be viewable by children.  Popular weekly TV shows included Westerns, such as the cowboy Roy Rogers, who had two six-guns, in holsters on each hip; every boy wanted a set of pistols and holsters just like Roy’s.  Many TV shows, such as Wyatt Earp, The Lone Ranger, Cheyenne, Maverick, Sugarfoot, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Rifleman, and Zorro were Westerns, as were many movies.

Movies were only available at movie theaters, and most theaters only had a single screen.  Favorites included Westerns with actor John Wayne, such as McLintock, Eldorado, Rio Bravo, and War Wagon, and James Bond movies, starring Sean Connery, starting with Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger.  Movie ratings were unheard of before about 1970, when industry censorship restraints began to be lifted.  Parents – the World War II generation – suddenly had to decide whether a movie was appropriate for their Boomer children to see before taking them to the theater.

The Boomers started their first jobs in the 1960s.  They walked into workplaces dominated by the men who had fought in World War II.  Every generation starts out as the naïve youngsters who seem so ignorant to the more experienced older generation.  Like the Millennials now, the Boomers were no exception.

Men?  Where were the women?  

Women in those years – i.e., women born before WWII – were generally at home raising the kids, as had been true throughout all of history.  

It was expected as the norm that any woman in the workplace – mostly secretaries and sales clerks – would leave her job as soon as she got married, or pregnant.  

Men had careers.  Women cared for the home and the children.  At most, women had part-time or temporary jobs.

That changed during the Boomer years.

Many Boomer women, like Boomer men, went to college.  Their goals included a career.  That attitude met a lot of resistance.  WWII veterans still dominated upper management, and were still convinced that women not only should be at home, but would be at home if they could.

The Draft

Another tradition that ended in the 1970s was the military draft:  with the end of the Vietnam War, drafting men into mandatory military service, which had begun during the Civil War (1861-65), finally came to an end.  

College deferments had allowed potential draftees to delay service until after graduation.  With the end of the draft, deferments ended as well.

The 1960s and early 1970s were also the time of the Hippies – a time of wild, rebellious, live-for-the-moment lifestyles that included hallucinogenic drugs.

The Boomers grow up

By the middle 1980s and with the retirement of the WWII generation, the Boomers were dominating the workplace.  

Daycare became common enough that women routinely returned to their jobs after a child’s birth.  As more Boomers filled managerial jobs, women’s’ careers survived pregnancies.  Some of the Boomer managers were women, and some of those managers were sometimes pregnant, speeding social acceptance.

Sadly, divorce also became common for the first time, as Boomers passing age 40 discovered that relationships are far more complex than they seemed at 20 years of age.  Divorces had been extremely rare and difficult to obtain prior to the 1960s, but the laws restricting divorce were slowly revised, and divorces became virtually routine.  

Prior to the Boomers, men generally worked for the same company until they retired.  “Job-hopping” was generally frowned upon and viewed with suspicion.  Managers demanded some degree of assurance that an employee was dependable for the long term.

The Boomers were the first generation to routinely be on the lookout for a better job, and to readily switch to a job that was more interesting, had better working conditions, better pay, and better benefits.

Job benefits

The range of employee benefits radically increased during the careers of the Boomers.

401k and IRA programs were introduced in the early 1980s.  Prior to that, token savings plans were the most any employer offered.  Unlike a 401k, there was no matching money from employers.  

Discount brokerage had begun in the early 1970s, and for the first time the average person could invest in stocks, via their 401k programs as well as by actually buying stocks.  In contrast, now most working Americans have stock investments in one fashion or another.  

That fact has had a political impact:  left-leaning politicians can no longer paint corporations and their investors as “greedy capitalists”, since most families now depend on economic, capitalistic growth to increase their own well-being, both now and for their retirement.  

Increasingly, people are realizing as a result that capitalism is part of freedom, and that socialism is destructive to them personally and to the economy as a whole.  

Boomers retire

As the decades of Boomer careers draws to a close, Boomers to one degree or another have built up a level of savings never before possible.

Some who do not understand have asked why Boomers have so much money.  Incredibly, some even seem to imply that being so successful is “unfair”.  Most never realize that a rising economic tide lifts all boats, including their own.  

The accumulated wealth of Boomers has taken 45 years to build.  The same will be true for the Millennials and for any future generation.

It is impossible to know how much of that wealth will be used up during retirement.  

More people are living into their 90s.  Their savings, which seemed so substantial when they were 65, may not last through 25 or 30 years after retirement.  Boomers who planned poorly or have already spent their savings must now live supported by their children.

Boomers are also now reaching the age where medical costs are increasing.  A single life-saving operation can be expensive enough to wipe out any reasonable savings.  

Boomers legacy

Boomers have lived during the most peaceful era in human history.  They have generally had long, productive, and happy lives, and are the most affluent generation to date.  Most should be able to pass along some of that to their children, who will hopefully have learned how to be responsible and successful in their own lives, jobs, and finances, and who will build on what came before them to be even better than their parents.

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