And yes generations do decide on a lot. For instance, the baby boomers instituted social welfare programs that generation after them paid for, but the programs won't be funded long enough to take care of the next generations? Sounds like the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of Mankind.
One thing that I always found interesting about the greatest generation vs the boomers is the shift in attitudes towards wealth, one's civic duty, etc.
The finance industry is a nice microcosm to study this shift... 40-50-60 years ago banker salaries and the enviability of their jobs were both low. Top grads from the ivies would sneer at their classmates for going into finance over something like the diplomatic corps. Today that's 100% reversed.
I always felt that the "professional services" industry is basically a giant con perpetuated by lazy boomers because it's an easy, optically nice appearing, way to shift money into one's own pocket. Collectively, they've created these upper-income professions that serve little to no value, solely in place to fund "elite" society. The result is that the greatest minds of my generation are wasted in the pursuit of making silly and irrelevant powerpoint decks (Consulting) or rent-seeking in the capital markets (Banking). And look, it's even infesting technology as evidenced by the legion of irrelevant startups. Why work hard at something difficult when you can roll the dice with someone else's pension funds (and if that fails, onwards and upwards to HBS)?
The reason people make a lot of money in any case is because they can eliminate the information asymmetry associated with them delivering value.
In finance the people that are paid well are the ones who can show with clarity that they delivered dollars to the bottom line. Investment bankers show it through the huge fees they earn by winning contracts with companies IPOing etc.
Portfolio managers show it through pointing to their measured performance and showing their AUM gains. AUM x Fees = revenue.
People in big corp have a much harder time showing how their individual production helped the bottom line. Engineers have a REALLY REALLY hard time with this. Those engineers that do are making ridiculous money because of the scale that they can add value.
Do you seriously think its "generations of people" that do stuff to other generations?
The ones making the calls for all those things were the 0.1% then and are 0.1% now, regardless of whether they are 30 year olds or baby boomers.