Why Gen Z’s 'ok boomer' retort–and the responses to it–are so powerful

Re:Why Gen Z’s 'ok boomer' retort–and the responses to it–ar... by ThrowawayR2 on Saturday November 09, 2019 @04:51PM (#21494634)

I must say, as the child of immigrants, I'm mystified at why "They don’t get that Gen Z is going to be the first generation that has a lower quality of life than those prior." is seen as a valid complaint. Is it some kind of American-only thing?

The country of my forefathers had its cities leveled and millions of deaths in a war and, so those that survived it and the chaotic aftermath (which includes my parents) definitely had a lower quality of life than the preceding generation. And given the way the world is changing, the possibility of it happening again doesn't seem so remote as it once did. I can't recall ever having any certainty of the future being better than the past.

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Re:Why Gen Z’s 'ok boomer' retort–and the responses to it–ar... by anigbrowl on Saturday November 09, 2019 @05:02PM (#21494709)

The last time the US saw across-the-board declines in the quality of life was during the Civil War, so yes. Also, American social scientists fetishize generational differences to an extreme degree, possibly because it allows for easy and relatively non-controversial statistical analyses.

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Re:Why Gen Z’s 'ok boomer' retort–and the responses to it–ar... by weare138 on Saturday November 09, 2019 @05:33PM (#21494926)

The issue is that many of the Baby Boomer generation seem unaware of this fact or just don't seem to care.

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Re:Why Gen Z’s 'ok boomer' retort–and the responses to it–ar... by krapp on Saturday November 09, 2019 @05:10PM (#21494755)

Assuming you're talking about World War 2, the US not only went through that relatively unscathed, but also made a ton of money bankrolling the reconstruction of Europe, Russia and Japan. So yes, it's basically a US thing.

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Re:Why Gen Z’s 'ok boomer' retort–and the responses to it–ar... by masonic on Saturday November 09, 2019 @06:51PM (#21495359)

  the US not only went through that relatively unscathed

Well, sure, if you ignore the over 400,000 combat dead... which was more than double France's losses, and also greater than England's.

Bear in mind that's mostly young men who never saw their peak earnings years, so consider their economic impact as well.

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Re:Why Gen Z’s 'ok boomer' retort–and the responses to it–ar... by krapp on Saturday November 09, 2019 @06:57PM (#21495390)

relatively unscathed.

The rest of the world had their cities burned to the ground, and their infrastructures and economies destroyed. Russia lost millions of people. Japan was victim to the only atomic bombs thus far used in warfare. What the US went through, comparatively, while not nothing, was still a cakewalk.

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