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A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
In his "remarkable" ( Men's Journal ) and "controversial" ( Fortune ) book -- written in a "wry, amusing style" ( The Guardian ) -- Bruce Cannon Gibney shows how America was hijacked by the Boomers, a generation whose reckless self-indulgence degraded the foundations of American prosperity.
In A Generation of Sociopaths , Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.
Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.
Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.
In A Generation of Sociopaths , Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.
Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.
Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.
430 pages, Hardcover
First published March 7, 2017
1127 people are currently reading
10645 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Cannon Gibney
2 books48 followersBruce Cannon Gibney is an American venture capitalist and author. He was one of the first investors at PayPal. His first book, A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, was published by Hachette in 2015.
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August 19, 2017
If you are going to read this book, something you have to keep in mind is that the author is an extremely wealthy and successful investment banker and venture capitalist. Throughout the book, he fails to see that what has actually caused the problems in America that he points to in the data such as the decrease in savings rate, increase in cost for college, failure to address environment change, and discrediting of science are people exactly like himself. He uses broad generalizations about cherry-picked quotes from a single book on psychology to support random points, basically saying that anyone who exhibits any of these behaviors to any extent must be a "sociopath". He depicts young people's desire to avoid going to war in Vietnam as a selfish thing, as though wishing not to be in the military for a war you didn't sign up for somehow makes you a bad person. I should go ahead and just keep my mouth shut, even if I don't want to be there? Why should someone else determine for me that I might go die in a war they're not fighting in themselves, especially one more about politics than any real safety concern for my country? It is human nature, not just the nature of one generation, to wish to live freely, make choices about whether or not to be sent off to potentially die, and to protest when it affects you personally. He depicts sexual promiscuity and the use of illegal drugs as "sociopathic" behavior - surely just because this can be a symptom of sociopathy doesn't mean that every single person who engages in this behavior is a sociopath. He even states himself that he holds more "conservative" values on this front - did you ever consider this may affect your views on that behavior? People engaging in promiscuous sex and using LSD might conflict with your own personal values, that's your decision. However, those actions didn't cause or even predict the issues with our country today, and to draw some kind of line between that and calling every person who engaged in that behavior a sociopath is insane. There were plenty of cultural influences going on that created those movements beyond just being a selfish sociopath as the author likes to think. Funny, considering the author talks about a resistance to living in reality and fact as a quality of sociopaths. He sounds exactly like what he is, a conservative, old, Christian white man blaming Hippies just because he doesn't like them.
Overall, I do believe that our country has declined in many areas since the 1970s, but I don't think it's the fault of an entire group of normal people responding to the culture and society they find themselves in. The real creators of this reality are the extremely wealthy (like our author), who make up the majority of lawmakers and the ones who make decisions such as cutting tax rates, going to war, and whether or not to support and subsidize education. The average person can only look at this reality and decide how to make the best of it for themselves and their families, and it's unfair to characterize the rise of the influence of the wealthy as the decisions of an entire generation. The contribution of the average person was in deciding who to vote for, this is true. However, when you look at the world today, corporations and the wealthy have an even more extreme amount of influence than they ever have. This is the real trend line we should be looking at as we look for who to blame for where we find ourselves today.
One last note, I am not a Baby Boomer. I am a Millennial, and I think this is the rantings of a wealthy person trying to spread the blame onto everyone instead of those like himself. I have so much more I could say about this book, but overall it sounds like blatant bullshit from a conservative man who wants to blame more open sexuality and liberal values instead of the few who actually caused the problems.
Overall, I do believe that our country has declined in many areas since the 1970s, but I don't think it's the fault of an entire group of normal people responding to the culture and society they find themselves in. The real creators of this reality are the extremely wealthy (like our author), who make up the majority of lawmakers and the ones who make decisions such as cutting tax rates, going to war, and whether or not to support and subsidize education. The average person can only look at this reality and decide how to make the best of it for themselves and their families, and it's unfair to characterize the rise of the influence of the wealthy as the decisions of an entire generation. The contribution of the average person was in deciding who to vote for, this is true. However, when you look at the world today, corporations and the wealthy have an even more extreme amount of influence than they ever have. This is the real trend line we should be looking at as we look for who to blame for where we find ourselves today.
One last note, I am not a Baby Boomer. I am a Millennial, and I think this is the rantings of a wealthy person trying to spread the blame onto everyone instead of those like himself. I have so much more I could say about this book, but overall it sounds like blatant bullshit from a conservative man who wants to blame more open sexuality and liberal values instead of the few who actually caused the problems.
October 10, 2022
I'm a Boomer and I think we should face a reckoning, but I was disappointed in this book. I wanted it to be better. For one thing, it's a rant, which is not helpful. And it's way too long. He's all over the place. What's needed is some genuine economic analysis and some precise history.
I have since researched my own version of this book. If Hillary had been elected, I would have proceeded with writing it and seeking a publisher. But the Trump mess was just too distracting and noisy for such a book to get the attention it needs. I'm back doing research and preparing a book outline.
I have two Millennial children who, BTW, are in their 30's now, not their 20's. They are wonderful people who like to help others, as are all their many friends whom I've met. So, let's take a look at some of their challenges. Buying a house. Paying off college debt. My tuition when I went to Berkeley was $212 per term. Boomers, at least where I live, got first dibs on the cheapest real estate. So it pisses me off when Boomers don't own up to their failings and try to project their shit on to younger generations. I guess we were called the Me Generation for a reason.
And let me add that it was my generation that gave up on the working class and the political reckoning has come...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...
and
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...
===========
Another marker of membership is the 9.9 percent in wealth distribution, at least in numerical terms, of an individual’s generational cohort. According to Census Bureau data, individuals who made the mistake of being born in the early 1980s----Millennials---will have an average net worth 25 percent lower in inflation-adjusted dollars than people born in the early 1950s had in the 1980s, when they were the same age. Meanwhile, those fat and happy baby boomers, now in their sixties and seventies, have seen their relative share of the wealth double.
Homeownership is another feather in the cap of those who succeed in the 9.9 percent game. While the median homeowner has a net worth of $195,400, the median renter has $5,400. That’s not just because rich people buy homes; it’s because buying (the right) home makes people rich. Some research suggests that homeownership has become such a central part of wealth formation that it may account for most of the increase in wealth inequality.
From 1989 to 2019, wealth for those age 55 to 64 increased by 9.2 percent. Whereas, for 65 t0 74 it was a huge 72.4 percent increase and for those 75 and older, even higher, almost 77 percent. All the age groups below these were in negative territory.
A ruse that helps perpetrate this situation...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have since researched my own version of this book. If Hillary had been elected, I would have proceeded with writing it and seeking a publisher. But the Trump mess was just too distracting and noisy for such a book to get the attention it needs. I'm back doing research and preparing a book outline.
I have two Millennial children who, BTW, are in their 30's now, not their 20's. They are wonderful people who like to help others, as are all their many friends whom I've met. So, let's take a look at some of their challenges. Buying a house. Paying off college debt. My tuition when I went to Berkeley was $212 per term. Boomers, at least where I live, got first dibs on the cheapest real estate. So it pisses me off when Boomers don't own up to their failings and try to project their shit on to younger generations. I guess we were called the Me Generation for a reason.
And let me add that it was my generation that gave up on the working class and the political reckoning has come...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...
and
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...
===========
Another marker of membership is the 9.9 percent in wealth distribution, at least in numerical terms, of an individual’s generational cohort. According to Census Bureau data, individuals who made the mistake of being born in the early 1980s----Millennials---will have an average net worth 25 percent lower in inflation-adjusted dollars than people born in the early 1950s had in the 1980s, when they were the same age. Meanwhile, those fat and happy baby boomers, now in their sixties and seventies, have seen their relative share of the wealth double.
Homeownership is another feather in the cap of those who succeed in the 9.9 percent game. While the median homeowner has a net worth of $195,400, the median renter has $5,400. That’s not just because rich people buy homes; it’s because buying (the right) home makes people rich. Some research suggests that homeownership has become such a central part of wealth formation that it may account for most of the increase in wealth inequality.
From 1989 to 2019, wealth for those age 55 to 64 increased by 9.2 percent. Whereas, for 65 t0 74 it was a huge 72.4 percent increase and for those 75 and older, even higher, almost 77 percent. All the age groups below these were in negative territory.
A ruse that helps perpetrate this situation...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
March 5, 2017
This was a fun, fascinating - and somewhat depressing - read, offset by the author's witty humor and thorough research. With such a bold title, I was curious how Gibney would make the case. As he sees it, it's not that every Boomer is a sociopath, but rather that as a generation, the Boomers have overseen a series of personal and policy choices that have systematically benefited themselves at the expense of the younger generations in a sociopathic manner. After finishing it, I'm convinced that the Boomer generation took things off the top and are responsible for much of our country's tepid grow and ballooning debt.
The first third of the book is a brief history of the a Boomers from birth to Vietnam, and Gibney lays out the case that the America the boomers inherited, while still deeply flawed (conditions of blacks and women, anyone?), was essentially great and getting better. By 1965, when the first boomers were graduating from college, the country had widespread prosperity, voting and civil rights, and a bright future ahead of it. Then what? Gibney argues, the boomers.
I was less persuaded by some of his data on the personal characteristics of the boomers, but the policy data is just stunning, and the case Gibney makes is hard to refute: from the late 1970s forward, most major fiscal policy choices benefited the boomers at the expense of others. California's Prop 13 (and similar property tax caps in other states) have permitted long-time property owners (e.g. Boomers) to avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes, and those rates must rise overall and be collected from newer (e.g. younger) homebuyers to make up the difference. That's right, the boomers living across the street from you may be paying 1/4 the property taxes you are for the exact same house. And Gibney nails it: it's an inter-generational transfer from the young to the old.
Much of the rest of the book is a topic-by-topic breakdown of how the boomers have reaped inter-generational transfers at every turn, in education, environment, science and research, pensions, and perhaps most critically, Social Security and Medicare. The former, Gibney explains, is actually as a legal matter a form of insurance and NOT an entitlement - it was intended to be for the truly destitute, not to help pay for a winter home in Boca Raton. And as Gibney explains, little wonder our
boomer politicians have had no interest in reforming it - the well won't go dry until the mid 2030s when most boomers will be dead. As for Medicare, Gibney notes that the average Medicare beneficiary's annual costs were close to $12,500 in 2015 and will rise roughly $1k per year. And of course, because the boomers had the lowest savings rate of any generation, many will be heavily dependent on these programs and steadfastly refuse reform. Was it a mere coincidence that about the only policy issue Clinton and Trump (both boomers) agreed on during the election was no reform of these programs?
Gibney's case is strong in other policy areas as well. While public university tuition was essentially free for the boomers, it now averages around $13,500 for today's students, and student loans (for the young) have made up the difference at a rate that is now double our country's credit card debt. And whereas the boomers came of age at a time of high inflation that made whatever few loans they had easy to repay, our era of essentially flat growth means younger borrowers get no assistance in paying down their huge loan burdens. What have all these loans paid for? Unsustainable guaranteed pensions for tenured boomer professors, leaving budgets so tight that the next generation of scholars remain adjuncts making near minimum wage and without any pension whatsoever. Gee, thanks.
Gibney makes a similarly persuasive arguments about science research, infrastructure investment, and stewardship of the environment. In sum, despite what the polemic title might suggest, this book is data-heavy, vast, and very well researched (with roughly 50 pages of endnotes). And it's the statistics that make Gibney's argument so enlightening. I had no idea that Boomers made up 79% of the House of Representatives in 2008 as the financial crisis unfolded, that Al Gore got his early wealth from a land deal selling oil extraction rights to Armand Hammer, and that consevative Reagan raised taxes on capital gains (before boomers had stock portfolios), liberal Clinton cut top tax rates (once boomers were high earners), and supposedly small-government Bush II passed Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefits that largely benefit boomers and was the single largest expansion in Medicare. It seems that our country makes bi-partisan concessions only when it benefits the Boomers. The book is chock full of these anecdotes and statistics and regardless of whether you ultimately agree with Gibney's argument about the boomers being sociopaths, it's a terrific read for this reason alone.
So are the Boomers sociopaths, like Gibney says? I'm not sure I'm convinced they are, but I'm wholly convinced that the Boomer generation mortgaged our country's future for their present consumption, and Gibney lays out a persuasive case that the Boomer generation should be held responsible for the mess it created. For anyone under the age of 50, this should be essential reading, although it's likely to leave you pretty bitter!
Overall, a fun, informative, and thoroughly researched read.
The first third of the book is a brief history of the a Boomers from birth to Vietnam, and Gibney lays out the case that the America the boomers inherited, while still deeply flawed (conditions of blacks and women, anyone?), was essentially great and getting better. By 1965, when the first boomers were graduating from college, the country had widespread prosperity, voting and civil rights, and a bright future ahead of it. Then what? Gibney argues, the boomers.
I was less persuaded by some of his data on the personal characteristics of the boomers, but the policy data is just stunning, and the case Gibney makes is hard to refute: from the late 1970s forward, most major fiscal policy choices benefited the boomers at the expense of others. California's Prop 13 (and similar property tax caps in other states) have permitted long-time property owners (e.g. Boomers) to avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes, and those rates must rise overall and be collected from newer (e.g. younger) homebuyers to make up the difference. That's right, the boomers living across the street from you may be paying 1/4 the property taxes you are for the exact same house. And Gibney nails it: it's an inter-generational transfer from the young to the old.
Much of the rest of the book is a topic-by-topic breakdown of how the boomers have reaped inter-generational transfers at every turn, in education, environment, science and research, pensions, and perhaps most critically, Social Security and Medicare. The former, Gibney explains, is actually as a legal matter a form of insurance and NOT an entitlement - it was intended to be for the truly destitute, not to help pay for a winter home in Boca Raton. And as Gibney explains, little wonder our
boomer politicians have had no interest in reforming it - the well won't go dry until the mid 2030s when most boomers will be dead. As for Medicare, Gibney notes that the average Medicare beneficiary's annual costs were close to $12,500 in 2015 and will rise roughly $1k per year. And of course, because the boomers had the lowest savings rate of any generation, many will be heavily dependent on these programs and steadfastly refuse reform. Was it a mere coincidence that about the only policy issue Clinton and Trump (both boomers) agreed on during the election was no reform of these programs?
Gibney's case is strong in other policy areas as well. While public university tuition was essentially free for the boomers, it now averages around $13,500 for today's students, and student loans (for the young) have made up the difference at a rate that is now double our country's credit card debt. And whereas the boomers came of age at a time of high inflation that made whatever few loans they had easy to repay, our era of essentially flat growth means younger borrowers get no assistance in paying down their huge loan burdens. What have all these loans paid for? Unsustainable guaranteed pensions for tenured boomer professors, leaving budgets so tight that the next generation of scholars remain adjuncts making near minimum wage and without any pension whatsoever. Gee, thanks.
Gibney makes a similarly persuasive arguments about science research, infrastructure investment, and stewardship of the environment. In sum, despite what the polemic title might suggest, this book is data-heavy, vast, and very well researched (with roughly 50 pages of endnotes). And it's the statistics that make Gibney's argument so enlightening. I had no idea that Boomers made up 79% of the House of Representatives in 2008 as the financial crisis unfolded, that Al Gore got his early wealth from a land deal selling oil extraction rights to Armand Hammer, and that consevative Reagan raised taxes on capital gains (before boomers had stock portfolios), liberal Clinton cut top tax rates (once boomers were high earners), and supposedly small-government Bush II passed Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefits that largely benefit boomers and was the single largest expansion in Medicare. It seems that our country makes bi-partisan concessions only when it benefits the Boomers. The book is chock full of these anecdotes and statistics and regardless of whether you ultimately agree with Gibney's argument about the boomers being sociopaths, it's a terrific read for this reason alone.
So are the Boomers sociopaths, like Gibney says? I'm not sure I'm convinced they are, but I'm wholly convinced that the Boomer generation mortgaged our country's future for their present consumption, and Gibney lays out a persuasive case that the Boomer generation should be held responsible for the mess it created. For anyone under the age of 50, this should be essential reading, although it's likely to leave you pretty bitter!
Overall, a fun, informative, and thoroughly researched read.
March 8, 2017
I read an ARC provided by Hachette Books that was written before Trump had won the Republican primaries so there may be edits made by Gibney in response to the election.
I'll clarify my biases at the outset by saying I'm a Canadian Millennial (born in 1988) raised by Silent/Lost generation parents (born during WWII) so I wasn't raised by Baby Boomers.
This is not the first time I've seen Baby Boomers called sociopaths and I think it's an understandable response to the labels put on Millennials who are frustrated with a system that they feel unable to cope with or change. I can only imagine Baby Boomers who feel they don't fit in with the stereotypical Baby Boomers will be able to read this without taking such personal offense as to be unable to assess the arguments made in the book. I'm not sure who the book is for, if most people who would be swayed by the arguments have already been swayed by them.
I don't have a strong background in economics so while Gibney's economic arguments do not seem terribly flawed to me, I do think there are issues with the social statements. 'Sociopath' as a clinical definition is much more complicated and controversial than presented in the book. The anti-establishment behaviour that hallmarked the 60s is not necessarily an indication of anti-social, narcissistic behaviour on the part of Baby Boomers. The behaviour is pretty normal for most generations, but there were more Baby Boomers acting that way and the aftershocks of WWII allowed for more anti-war sentiment. The behaviour of youths in the 1920s is very similar (anti-war, more drug usage, more sex) but we aren't calling the Greatest generation sociopaths for it.
The behaviour examined in the book is not just the behaviour of Baby Boomer home owners and voters, but specifically the Baby Boomers in positions of power and influence - which means white and male. Change a few parameters and you could change the book title to 'A Generation of Sociopaths: How White Male Baby Boomers Betrayed America' which would probably be too extreme to push through a major publishing house but would be a social as well as economic argument, and much more interesting.
I'll clarify my biases at the outset by saying I'm a Canadian Millennial (born in 1988) raised by Silent/Lost generation parents (born during WWII) so I wasn't raised by Baby Boomers.
This is not the first time I've seen Baby Boomers called sociopaths and I think it's an understandable response to the labels put on Millennials who are frustrated with a system that they feel unable to cope with or change. I can only imagine Baby Boomers who feel they don't fit in with the stereotypical Baby Boomers will be able to read this without taking such personal offense as to be unable to assess the arguments made in the book. I'm not sure who the book is for, if most people who would be swayed by the arguments have already been swayed by them.
I don't have a strong background in economics so while Gibney's economic arguments do not seem terribly flawed to me, I do think there are issues with the social statements. 'Sociopath' as a clinical definition is much more complicated and controversial than presented in the book. The anti-establishment behaviour that hallmarked the 60s is not necessarily an indication of anti-social, narcissistic behaviour on the part of Baby Boomers. The behaviour is pretty normal for most generations, but there were more Baby Boomers acting that way and the aftershocks of WWII allowed for more anti-war sentiment. The behaviour of youths in the 1920s is very similar (anti-war, more drug usage, more sex) but we aren't calling the Greatest generation sociopaths for it.
The behaviour examined in the book is not just the behaviour of Baby Boomer home owners and voters, but specifically the Baby Boomers in positions of power and influence - which means white and male. Change a few parameters and you could change the book title to 'A Generation of Sociopaths: How White Male Baby Boomers Betrayed America' which would probably be too extreme to push through a major publishing house but would be a social as well as economic argument, and much more interesting.
July 11, 2019
Boomers.
What does that word bring to mind for you? Your kindly parents or grandparents? Yourself and your friends? Or a generation of people who have eaten up big at the societal table and skipped the bill, leaving their children to wash metaphorical dishes for decades?
In case you haven’t guessed from his inflammatory title, Bruce Gibney sees Boomers as the latter – A Generation of Sociopaths who have broken the social contract, pulled every ladder up behind them then plundered their nation for their own benefit.
I apologize to any older readers out there (I know you’re not a monolithic generation and many of you fight the good fight for social justice and equity) but he prosecutes a powerful, terrifying case, in a book that is mostly very engaging.
Gibney looks at falling taxation rates, failing infrastructure, increased college fees and many other areas of economic change (and stagnation) in the USA over the last few decades and makes a pretty strong argument that since Boomers became the largest voting block in their nation they have had a malevolent influence on government policy.
Sadly this influence has been used to ensure that at each stage of their lives Baby Boomers have been able to make changes to American society that have enriched them at the expense of younger generations and broader society.
In Gibney’s eyes these changes have made the USA weaker, less fair, more poorly educated and far, far less wealthy than it should have been. Even worse, the size and power of the Boomer electorate has meant that undoing some of these ruinous changes has become nearly impossible.
A prime example of this is retirement benefits. Gibney notes that even though everyone knows retirement social security in the USA is doomed - that after the boomers retire it will collapse in the 2030s leaving nothing for younger people – nothing can be done. Any change to retirement rules is viciously fought by Boomer-led interest groups, and it is simply political suicide to attempt reform.
These attitudes are also evident here in Australia. Much like in the USA, Australian politicians are largely beholden to Boomer interests. A proposal to trim back some rather ridiculous tax breaks on shares during the 2019 election became a huge issue here, led by a subset of retired boomers who couldn’t bear to be parted from tax refunds they were receiving on tax they hadn’t paid.
Anyway, Gibney doesn’t pull any punches, and he won’t make many friends among people who were born between 1945 and 1964. He does take care to note that he isn’t referring to all boomers, but he argues that boomers as a whole (and everyone else) will need to be taxed pretty hard to undo the damage decades of neglect have inflicted on the US.
The scale of what needs to be done is truly epic. Hell, just fixing the nation's tumbledown bridges, potholed roads and decaying train lines will cost countless billions.
Overall, Gibney prosecutes his anti-Boomer jeremiad in a convincing and engaging way, and aside from his labored focus on the clinical definition of sociopathy and a fondness for obscure ten-dollar words (seriously, keep a dictionary handy) A Generation of Sociopaths is an illuminating, if often depressing read.
Four near-bankrupt retirement funds out of five.
P.S: I personally know many boomers who aren’t sociopaths, who are stellar, socially minded people. I love you guys. Let’s get together and beat the selfish people from both our generations.
What does that word bring to mind for you? Your kindly parents or grandparents? Yourself and your friends? Or a generation of people who have eaten up big at the societal table and skipped the bill, leaving their children to wash metaphorical dishes for decades?
In case you haven’t guessed from his inflammatory title, Bruce Gibney sees Boomers as the latter – A Generation of Sociopaths who have broken the social contract, pulled every ladder up behind them then plundered their nation for their own benefit.
I apologize to any older readers out there (I know you’re not a monolithic generation and many of you fight the good fight for social justice and equity) but he prosecutes a powerful, terrifying case, in a book that is mostly very engaging.
Gibney looks at falling taxation rates, failing infrastructure, increased college fees and many other areas of economic change (and stagnation) in the USA over the last few decades and makes a pretty strong argument that since Boomers became the largest voting block in their nation they have had a malevolent influence on government policy.
Sadly this influence has been used to ensure that at each stage of their lives Baby Boomers have been able to make changes to American society that have enriched them at the expense of younger generations and broader society.
In Gibney’s eyes these changes have made the USA weaker, less fair, more poorly educated and far, far less wealthy than it should have been. Even worse, the size and power of the Boomer electorate has meant that undoing some of these ruinous changes has become nearly impossible.
A prime example of this is retirement benefits. Gibney notes that even though everyone knows retirement social security in the USA is doomed - that after the boomers retire it will collapse in the 2030s leaving nothing for younger people – nothing can be done. Any change to retirement rules is viciously fought by Boomer-led interest groups, and it is simply political suicide to attempt reform.
These attitudes are also evident here in Australia. Much like in the USA, Australian politicians are largely beholden to Boomer interests. A proposal to trim back some rather ridiculous tax breaks on shares during the 2019 election became a huge issue here, led by a subset of retired boomers who couldn’t bear to be parted from tax refunds they were receiving on tax they hadn’t paid.
Anyway, Gibney doesn’t pull any punches, and he won’t make many friends among people who were born between 1945 and 1964. He does take care to note that he isn’t referring to all boomers, but he argues that boomers as a whole (and everyone else) will need to be taxed pretty hard to undo the damage decades of neglect have inflicted on the US.
The scale of what needs to be done is truly epic. Hell, just fixing the nation's tumbledown bridges, potholed roads and decaying train lines will cost countless billions.
Overall, Gibney prosecutes his anti-Boomer jeremiad in a convincing and engaging way, and aside from his labored focus on the clinical definition of sociopathy and a fondness for obscure ten-dollar words (seriously, keep a dictionary handy) A Generation of Sociopaths is an illuminating, if often depressing read.
Four near-bankrupt retirement funds out of five.
P.S: I personally know many boomers who aren’t sociopaths, who are stellar, socially minded people. I love you guys. Let’s get together and beat the selfish people from both our generations.
July 11, 2017
3.667 stars. Repeating, of course.
I first heard about this book from a friend who heard an interview with Bruce Cannon Gibney on NPR. I listened to the interview, which featured talk about how the Boomers were sociopathic due to their high exposure to television, lead (paint, fuel, et. al.), hedonism (drug culture, sex culture), and often just rode on the coattails of their parents' generation for all their claims about civil rights, etc. Compelling arguments. The thing is, this book is really more of a primer on the state of economics. In other words, not exactly what I was anticipating. However, as a primer, it's pretty successful at laying down the foundation of our present crises in a convincing argument, with the back drop of sociopathic behavior being the driving force in all of the choices of those in power. As a rich hedge-fund manager, Gibney, is surprisingly agnostic in his approach to civic financial reform. He's pro-tax--though, those taxes extend onto everyone in his "prescriptions," though he makes great efforts to ensure Boomers bear the brunt of the blow. He's pro-government in infrastructure, science, and R&D spending. He's also excitedly pro-education reform in a way that abandons the kind of dumb approximation that EVERYONE SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE NO MATTER WHAT--investment in schools is necessary in Gibney's world, but the emphasis on a liberal education shouldn't be so aggressive, and should embrace trade skills, etc. In other words, he makes convincing moves in his financial suggestions, as well as his diagnosis of Boomer sociopathy.
But here's the rub: his whole argument is (as he even defines it) to Other the Boomers in order to rally the pro-social younger generations living the wake of extremely failed Boomer policies. The problem is easy to see: it makes the assumption that everyone but Boomers act pro-socially, with sacrifice and civic duty. There are some mild signs in some of the data he presents regarding saving behavior of more recent generations, egalitarian moods of the youth, etc. But this glosses over a stark reality of the ever-presence of conspicuous consumption, rampant narcissism, and obsession with fame/money that afflicts Gen X-ers and Millenials. In other words, I think he's a bit too optimistic of the prosocial appearance of our contemporary culture, but it's underlied by a vain and shallow vapidity that seeps with anti-intellectualism, and a rejection of the power of free speech. Even further, he sweeps under the rug that the parents of the Boomers were extremely repressive, and ultimately failures at mitigating the changing society to raise pro-social children. He's okay to ignore so many of the faults of the "Greatest Gen" for the mere fact that they built a great infrastructure and handled the economy well. A bit unconvincing. But, ultimately, I think this is because they're mostly dead and the Boomers are old enough now to know better.
Further, sometimes it's hard to align with Gibney when he's hardset at presenting himself as neither left or right--he creates false equivalencies, acting at times as an apologist for the right while magnifying dubious actions from the left to suggest they're both as bad as one another. He has a particular bone to pick with Bernie who seems to have been a complete failure for Gibney for the simple fact that the rhetoric of "break up the banks" wasn't backed by totally rigid, set policies (ie. he thought Bernie to be a bloviator because he didn't have legislation in hand to break up the banks...). He also tries to paint Nixon and Reagan as these almost leftist-ideals. To be fair, they both were not the level of shit the GOP represents now. And it's hard to pigeon Nixon as "pro-social" in total. But perhaps it's a strength of Gibney's premise that Nixon comes out looking pro-social in contrast to the politicians we're left with today.
Beyond those quibbles, the book does have value--it presents a lot of data in interesting ways that made me question a lot of my understandings, especially about tax policy and how revenue is generated/distributed. Squarely, to afford the luxuries of today, taxes need to go up on everyone. Even if Gibney refuses to believe it, I think Bernie presented the closest image to what Gibney "prescribes" to fix our crumbling infrastructure, schools, employment, wages, etc. A worthwhile book, just be ready to suspend your ability to buy wholly into the idea that EVERYTHING is the Boomers' fault. It just mostly is. I'll be thinking about this one for a long ass time if not until 2030/40 when the Boomers finally cede power to us.
I first heard about this book from a friend who heard an interview with Bruce Cannon Gibney on NPR. I listened to the interview, which featured talk about how the Boomers were sociopathic due to their high exposure to television, lead (paint, fuel, et. al.), hedonism (drug culture, sex culture), and often just rode on the coattails of their parents' generation for all their claims about civil rights, etc. Compelling arguments. The thing is, this book is really more of a primer on the state of economics. In other words, not exactly what I was anticipating. However, as a primer, it's pretty successful at laying down the foundation of our present crises in a convincing argument, with the back drop of sociopathic behavior being the driving force in all of the choices of those in power. As a rich hedge-fund manager, Gibney, is surprisingly agnostic in his approach to civic financial reform. He's pro-tax--though, those taxes extend onto everyone in his "prescriptions," though he makes great efforts to ensure Boomers bear the brunt of the blow. He's pro-government in infrastructure, science, and R&D spending. He's also excitedly pro-education reform in a way that abandons the kind of dumb approximation that EVERYONE SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE NO MATTER WHAT--investment in schools is necessary in Gibney's world, but the emphasis on a liberal education shouldn't be so aggressive, and should embrace trade skills, etc. In other words, he makes convincing moves in his financial suggestions, as well as his diagnosis of Boomer sociopathy.
But here's the rub: his whole argument is (as he even defines it) to Other the Boomers in order to rally the pro-social younger generations living the wake of extremely failed Boomer policies. The problem is easy to see: it makes the assumption that everyone but Boomers act pro-socially, with sacrifice and civic duty. There are some mild signs in some of the data he presents regarding saving behavior of more recent generations, egalitarian moods of the youth, etc. But this glosses over a stark reality of the ever-presence of conspicuous consumption, rampant narcissism, and obsession with fame/money that afflicts Gen X-ers and Millenials. In other words, I think he's a bit too optimistic of the prosocial appearance of our contemporary culture, but it's underlied by a vain and shallow vapidity that seeps with anti-intellectualism, and a rejection of the power of free speech. Even further, he sweeps under the rug that the parents of the Boomers were extremely repressive, and ultimately failures at mitigating the changing society to raise pro-social children. He's okay to ignore so many of the faults of the "Greatest Gen" for the mere fact that they built a great infrastructure and handled the economy well. A bit unconvincing. But, ultimately, I think this is because they're mostly dead and the Boomers are old enough now to know better.
Further, sometimes it's hard to align with Gibney when he's hardset at presenting himself as neither left or right--he creates false equivalencies, acting at times as an apologist for the right while magnifying dubious actions from the left to suggest they're both as bad as one another. He has a particular bone to pick with Bernie who seems to have been a complete failure for Gibney for the simple fact that the rhetoric of "break up the banks" wasn't backed by totally rigid, set policies (ie. he thought Bernie to be a bloviator because he didn't have legislation in hand to break up the banks...). He also tries to paint Nixon and Reagan as these almost leftist-ideals. To be fair, they both were not the level of shit the GOP represents now. And it's hard to pigeon Nixon as "pro-social" in total. But perhaps it's a strength of Gibney's premise that Nixon comes out looking pro-social in contrast to the politicians we're left with today.
Beyond those quibbles, the book does have value--it presents a lot of data in interesting ways that made me question a lot of my understandings, especially about tax policy and how revenue is generated/distributed. Squarely, to afford the luxuries of today, taxes need to go up on everyone. Even if Gibney refuses to believe it, I think Bernie presented the closest image to what Gibney "prescribes" to fix our crumbling infrastructure, schools, employment, wages, etc. A worthwhile book, just be ready to suspend your ability to buy wholly into the idea that EVERYTHING is the Boomers' fault. It just mostly is. I'll be thinking about this one for a long ass time if not until 2030/40 when the Boomers finally cede power to us.
May 20, 2017
Man oh man this is a long and dense book. But I kept reminding myself that hating on Baby Boomers is a marathon not a sprint.
In this book we learn that the primary division in politics since about Proposition 13 hasn't been Left vs. Right -- it has been Baby Boomer vs. all other generations and Baby Boomer vs. decency and Baby Boomer vs. the good of America and Baby Boomer vs. Earth.
I'm cool with that. I think Baby Boomers suck because there are at least three classic rock FM stations in any major market. But it turns out they are responsible for everything bad that has happened since the voting age was lowered to 18.
Mr. Gibney (by the way, who was Peter Thiel's roommate, and who therefore must have a few interesting tales to tell) gives his anti Baby Boomer arguments a bit more thought than I do. He even uses some small portion of his VC gains to buy as much of America's government-generated data as he could, pop it into Excel, and make a bunch of charts accompanied by plain English explanations.
I admire his commitment to his thesis, even starting chapters with quotes from the DSM V, which may offend the more delicate reader. But then again if you can get past the early chapter that cheerfully attacks the popular views of the Vietnam War -- that grain of sand responsible for each beautiful pearl of a grizzled hippie -- the rest of the book should be smooth, if tiring, sailing.
Speaking of commitment to his thesis, I read an interview with the author in The Huffington Post and I found myself slightly disappointed in Mr. Gibney. First of all, he passed up a wonderful opportunity to comment on HuffPo, probably the most perfect embodiment of sociopathic Baby Boomer business practices on the Internet. Second of all, when pushed on whether all Baby Boomers are sociopaths he hedged and said something like it's the white, upper middle class ones. I believed in you, man.
I get it though. You want to live in the Bay Area and you can't have people egging your Tesla.
Even if the arguments overreach a bit, there is a ton of very good information in this book. And it provides a useful lens for looking at issues.
For example, recently there was a viral article about how some real estate investor said that millennials can't buy houses because they are buying avocado toast and lattes. Having just read this book I can list a bunch of policies that maybe have more of an effect on why a younger generation can't buy houses than what fruit they have for breakfast. To wit: Prop 13, mortgage interest deduction, reduction of estate taxes, a very generous tax basis when inheriting a house, property exchange transactions with tax benefits, higher tuition and student debt, inability to discharge student debt in bankruptcy, NIMBYism that reduces creation of new housing, lack of investment in infrastructure that makes commuting difficult, a regressive gas tax that also makes commuting difficult. The book makes a compelling case that the timing of many of these policies are timed specifically to benefit Baby Boomers at the expense of younger generations.
Highly recommended, especially if you ever wondered why the generation that made such a big deal out of celebrating the dawning of the Age Of Aquarius is so intent on calling Millennials spoiled brats.
In this book we learn that the primary division in politics since about Proposition 13 hasn't been Left vs. Right -- it has been Baby Boomer vs. all other generations and Baby Boomer vs. decency and Baby Boomer vs. the good of America and Baby Boomer vs. Earth.
I'm cool with that. I think Baby Boomers suck because there are at least three classic rock FM stations in any major market. But it turns out they are responsible for everything bad that has happened since the voting age was lowered to 18.
Mr. Gibney (by the way, who was Peter Thiel's roommate, and who therefore must have a few interesting tales to tell) gives his anti Baby Boomer arguments a bit more thought than I do. He even uses some small portion of his VC gains to buy as much of America's government-generated data as he could, pop it into Excel, and make a bunch of charts accompanied by plain English explanations.
I admire his commitment to his thesis, even starting chapters with quotes from the DSM V, which may offend the more delicate reader. But then again if you can get past the early chapter that cheerfully attacks the popular views of the Vietnam War -- that grain of sand responsible for each beautiful pearl of a grizzled hippie -- the rest of the book should be smooth, if tiring, sailing.
Speaking of commitment to his thesis, I read an interview with the author in The Huffington Post and I found myself slightly disappointed in Mr. Gibney. First of all, he passed up a wonderful opportunity to comment on HuffPo, probably the most perfect embodiment of sociopathic Baby Boomer business practices on the Internet. Second of all, when pushed on whether all Baby Boomers are sociopaths he hedged and said something like it's the white, upper middle class ones. I believed in you, man.
I get it though. You want to live in the Bay Area and you can't have people egging your Tesla.
Even if the arguments overreach a bit, there is a ton of very good information in this book. And it provides a useful lens for looking at issues.
For example, recently there was a viral article about how some real estate investor said that millennials can't buy houses because they are buying avocado toast and lattes. Having just read this book I can list a bunch of policies that maybe have more of an effect on why a younger generation can't buy houses than what fruit they have for breakfast. To wit: Prop 13, mortgage interest deduction, reduction of estate taxes, a very generous tax basis when inheriting a house, property exchange transactions with tax benefits, higher tuition and student debt, inability to discharge student debt in bankruptcy, NIMBYism that reduces creation of new housing, lack of investment in infrastructure that makes commuting difficult, a regressive gas tax that also makes commuting difficult. The book makes a compelling case that the timing of many of these policies are timed specifically to benefit Baby Boomers at the expense of younger generations.
Highly recommended, especially if you ever wondered why the generation that made such a big deal out of celebrating the dawning of the Age Of Aquarius is so intent on calling Millennials spoiled brats.
May 20, 2017
More of a polemic than a fact filled critique of the baby boomers. this book ignores larger historical trends to meet the author's thesis of baby boomers as a generation of sociopaths. There is an entire chapter dedicated to the anti-scientific tendencies of boomers as if it was something novel ignoring that many of the most successful technology companies of the last 40 years were created by them (Microsoft and Apple) and the trend towards anti-scientific thought tends way before this generation (See: The Scopes Trial). To lay Neo-Liberalism on solely the boomers is to ignore the fact that the architects of Neo-Liberalism like Hayek and Milton Friedman were not baby boomers and the policy makers who made it happen (Reagan, Thatcher, Jack Kemp, etc.) were not either. If the author had a proper sense of historical trends, this would be a much more effective critique.
March 8, 2017
I am not actually going to read this one, because I feel like I could have written it. If you have any doubts about the validity about my perpetual rant against Baby Boomers, this might make interesting reading.
Instead of a review, I am adding my current message to our Democratic Party Leadership.
I was appalled by
"POLITICS - CONGRESSIONAL MEMO - For Democrats, Being Out of Power Has Its Perks,” By EMMARIE HUETTEMANFEB. 12, 2017, The New York Times.
What if anything does the House Leadership care about? Certainly not being in power to effect policy beneficial to those we purport to represent. How can we feel good about ourselves after the 2016 election? We seem to be in complete denial of our culpability in the election of the arrantly rebarbative Trump. How can Speaker Pelosi claim she “knows how to do this” after the shellacking we have taken over the past eight years?
Our government is not “broken”: it has been working as it was designed to. We are not divided: we have a consensus. The (Baby Boomer) consensus is that we are going to have great benefits (Social Security and Medicare) for Baby Boomers and the elderly (the age cohorts with the LOWEST rates of poverty) protected by the Left, we are going to have a strong defense (bipartisan consensus), and we are not going to pay for it (tax increases blocked by the Right). The concomitant squeeze on discretionary spending has militated against any succoring (infrastructure, research, education, training, etc.) of those left behind by (mostly) technology and (somewhat) globalization.
We have done nothing significant to address poverty and income inequality. Shame on us! Does Speaker Pelosi really think that protecting my Social Security and Medicare benefits is going to win back a 45-year-old laid off manufacturing worker?
The problem is not how we “message” or communicate with voters. The problem is our arrant failure to listen to those who need help. We ignored them. Trump spoke, however falsely and maliciously, to them.
It would be “progressive” to “make the deal” and trade cuts in the rate of growth of Social Security and Medicare for tax increases, and free up some discretionary spending.
We have lost badly over the last eight years and I see no sign that our senescent leadership has learned anything. We laughed at the Republicans for having seventeen Presidential candidates: we should be weeping with envy. I like Ms. Clinton and “banged the lever down hard” when I voted. Still she was a weak candidate and we had no practicable alternatives.
It is just one more sign of our selfish corruption that our senescent leadership is refusing to step aside and make room for the next generation.
I will not be contributing (much) until I see some sign that the Democratic Party has come to terms with its culpability in the election of the arrantly rebarbative Trump.
I will be standing with Planned Parenthood. I will be looking for opportunities in the nonprofit sector. Promulgation of LARC (long acting reversible contraception is the number one thing we should be promoting. Sell it to conservatives as the best way to reduce social spending longterm. (You are still talking to Isabel Sawhill?)
Instead of a review, I am adding my current message to our Democratic Party Leadership.
I was appalled by
"POLITICS - CONGRESSIONAL MEMO - For Democrats, Being Out of Power Has Its Perks,” By EMMARIE HUETTEMANFEB. 12, 2017, The New York Times.
What if anything does the House Leadership care about? Certainly not being in power to effect policy beneficial to those we purport to represent. How can we feel good about ourselves after the 2016 election? We seem to be in complete denial of our culpability in the election of the arrantly rebarbative Trump. How can Speaker Pelosi claim she “knows how to do this” after the shellacking we have taken over the past eight years?
Our government is not “broken”: it has been working as it was designed to. We are not divided: we have a consensus. The (Baby Boomer) consensus is that we are going to have great benefits (Social Security and Medicare) for Baby Boomers and the elderly (the age cohorts with the LOWEST rates of poverty) protected by the Left, we are going to have a strong defense (bipartisan consensus), and we are not going to pay for it (tax increases blocked by the Right). The concomitant squeeze on discretionary spending has militated against any succoring (infrastructure, research, education, training, etc.) of those left behind by (mostly) technology and (somewhat) globalization.
We have done nothing significant to address poverty and income inequality. Shame on us! Does Speaker Pelosi really think that protecting my Social Security and Medicare benefits is going to win back a 45-year-old laid off manufacturing worker?
The problem is not how we “message” or communicate with voters. The problem is our arrant failure to listen to those who need help. We ignored them. Trump spoke, however falsely and maliciously, to them.
It would be “progressive” to “make the deal” and trade cuts in the rate of growth of Social Security and Medicare for tax increases, and free up some discretionary spending.
We have lost badly over the last eight years and I see no sign that our senescent leadership has learned anything. We laughed at the Republicans for having seventeen Presidential candidates: we should be weeping with envy. I like Ms. Clinton and “banged the lever down hard” when I voted. Still she was a weak candidate and we had no practicable alternatives.
It is just one more sign of our selfish corruption that our senescent leadership is refusing to step aside and make room for the next generation.
I will not be contributing (much) until I see some sign that the Democratic Party has come to terms with its culpability in the election of the arrantly rebarbative Trump.
I will be standing with Planned Parenthood. I will be looking for opportunities in the nonprofit sector. Promulgation of LARC (long acting reversible contraception is the number one thing we should be promoting. Sell it to conservatives as the best way to reduce social spending longterm. (You are still talking to Isabel Sawhill?)
October 23, 2019
Always be wary of rank and petty-seeming generalizations, some wise-acre always said. I can't remember who that was right now, but that wisdom is applicable here.
That's not to say the entire book is a wash. Blaming an entire generation for all kinds of shit is enticing and easy, especially when you have science supposedly backing you up. Like the more successful The Corporation, Gibney tries to form a psychoanalytic analysis of the entire titular generation using contemporary psychoanalytic tools in a fun and witty way.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up very well and quickly degenerates into bleary-eye-making economic data and discussions which sink the whole damn thing. There are certainly not a few interesting ideas here, if one can sidestep the awful generalization. Most notably, the shift from a mildly successful socialist US in the immediate wake of WW2 to a staunchly stupid US, the discussion of religion's effects on things, and the rise of alienating technology and a culture of selfishness. Unfortunately, none of these things can be directly credited to only the Boomers, for they persist in all generations of society, Also, for every Boomer that avoided, say, serving in Vietnam for selfish reasons, there was a Boomer who didn't. And not all Boomers were/are drug addicts. And. And. And. See, that's the problem with generalizations: all the exceptions.
That's not to say the entire book is a wash. Blaming an entire generation for all kinds of shit is enticing and easy, especially when you have science supposedly backing you up. Like the more successful The Corporation, Gibney tries to form a psychoanalytic analysis of the entire titular generation using contemporary psychoanalytic tools in a fun and witty way.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up very well and quickly degenerates into bleary-eye-making economic data and discussions which sink the whole damn thing. There are certainly not a few interesting ideas here, if one can sidestep the awful generalization. Most notably, the shift from a mildly successful socialist US in the immediate wake of WW2 to a staunchly stupid US, the discussion of religion's effects on things, and the rise of alienating technology and a culture of selfishness. Unfortunately, none of these things can be directly credited to only the Boomers, for they persist in all generations of society, Also, for every Boomer that avoided, say, serving in Vietnam for selfish reasons, there was a Boomer who didn't. And not all Boomers were/are drug addicts. And. And. And. See, that's the problem with generalizations: all the exceptions.
March 17, 2018
Such a great book. I've always wondered what exactly happened to the baby boomers in my life. For awhile I thought maybe it was the time they spent under school desks during the Cuban Missile Crisis that fried their brain. Obviously life is more complex than just one moment in history.
George Carlin nailed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTZ-C...
My Grandparents were into books and science. My parents (baby boomers) not at all. Same with my husband's parents and a good amount of my friend's parents. Education, being well-rounded just wasn't on their radar. The only baby boomers I get along with are readers or artists; otherwise, it's virtually impossible to have a conversation with them. I watched them ruin the church I grew up in. I watched a lot of what this book details. I was dumbfounded by the Evangelical spiral that a lot of people in my life got caught up in... It's like reason went out the window when that happened. My Grandparents were not addicted to t.v. and I could go over to their house and it wouldn't be on. I'm not sure our t.v. was ever turned off.
This sums up the lack of empathy, once I was excited to give my mother a donation of a pig through a charity in Africa that would help two families. My Mother was pissed that I would waste money on charity. My parents also told me that I couldn't go to college and not to bother. Luckily I got scholarships and got the hell out of there on my own merit because my mother spent most of our money on "collectibles" and gifts while my Father hid the rest. I even paid for my own violin lessons in high school and gave my mother $500 of my own hard earned money. Anyway...This book describes so many people I used to know...and for whatever reason (or reasons found in this book) theirs was a slow mental death into a life of no empathy and television addiction. Maybe it was lead poisoning after-all. That's how Beethoven went out. I grew up surrounded by incredibly selfish people.
George Carlin nailed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTZ-C...
My Grandparents were into books and science. My parents (baby boomers) not at all. Same with my husband's parents and a good amount of my friend's parents. Education, being well-rounded just wasn't on their radar. The only baby boomers I get along with are readers or artists; otherwise, it's virtually impossible to have a conversation with them. I watched them ruin the church I grew up in. I watched a lot of what this book details. I was dumbfounded by the Evangelical spiral that a lot of people in my life got caught up in... It's like reason went out the window when that happened. My Grandparents were not addicted to t.v. and I could go over to their house and it wouldn't be on. I'm not sure our t.v. was ever turned off.
This sums up the lack of empathy, once I was excited to give my mother a donation of a pig through a charity in Africa that would help two families. My Mother was pissed that I would waste money on charity. My parents also told me that I couldn't go to college and not to bother. Luckily I got scholarships and got the hell out of there on my own merit because my mother spent most of our money on "collectibles" and gifts while my Father hid the rest. I even paid for my own violin lessons in high school and gave my mother $500 of my own hard earned money. Anyway...This book describes so many people I used to know...and for whatever reason (or reasons found in this book) theirs was a slow mental death into a life of no empathy and television addiction. Maybe it was lead poisoning after-all. That's how Beethoven went out. I grew up surrounded by incredibly selfish people.
April 15, 2018
It's easier to criticize than to create...and this is definitely the former.
I read the first 75 pages and skimmed the rest but it was filled with so much bullsh** and lies of omission that the book makes for well referenced but not well researched pseudo non-fiction. While the author gets the point across that there has been a general selfishness in the economic and political arenas for some time, he fails by attributing it only to Boomers. One could easily argue (and probably make a better and more coherent case) that this phenomenon is more appropriately a white, primarily protestant phenomenon that launched with rise to power of Bill Graham and other televangelists, but "White Protestant Sociopaths" doesn't quite have the ring to it that "A Generation of Sociopaths" does.
Where to start - how about the link between formula feeding and sociopaths. Yes, he did that. The hypothesis is that post war moms didn't want to breast feed so they used formula, formula may have had traces of lead which can lead to developmental disorders, therefore the formula created sociopaths, noting that sociopathic behavior is most egregious in those born from 1946-55. Nevermind that formula feeding represented less than 50% of infant feeding up until about 1955 and didn't actually peak until the mid 1970s. Don't let facts get in the way of a sensational hypothesis.
Or maybe it's the children were more well behaved when we could beat them angle. Yes, this point was also made early on although not in so many words. The author laments Dr. Spock's book on child rearing as being too soft on children, but also failing to note that rates of abuse have continued to drop significantly with each new generation...
Constantly referring to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) definition of sociopaths. There is no DSM definition of sociopaths. This is some pretty good sleight of hand propaganda. The DSM recognizes antisocial personality disorder, which the author seems fit to swap for sociopath too many times to count. While elements of ASPD are part of being a sociopath, they are not the same thing.
Overall sex shaminess. "(sexual) revolution was against traditional order, one hostile to carnality outside of the bounds of heterosexcual marriage". Umm ok. I'm not even sure where to start. I guess if your human history starts with the Temperance movement then yes, the sexual revolution was against "traditional" order.
On divorce. Noting that Boomers divorce more than other generations because of selfishness. Some of that may be true but it also ignores disenfranchisement of women throughout history. I guess the rates of divorce increasing couldn't have anything to do with liberalization of divorce laws, and women being allowed to have their own bank accounts and credit cards.
Those are just a few of the easily refutable/argued points that jumped out. There were many others.
I read the first 75 pages and skimmed the rest but it was filled with so much bullsh** and lies of omission that the book makes for well referenced but not well researched pseudo non-fiction. While the author gets the point across that there has been a general selfishness in the economic and political arenas for some time, he fails by attributing it only to Boomers. One could easily argue (and probably make a better and more coherent case) that this phenomenon is more appropriately a white, primarily protestant phenomenon that launched with rise to power of Bill Graham and other televangelists, but "White Protestant Sociopaths" doesn't quite have the ring to it that "A Generation of Sociopaths" does.
Where to start - how about the link between formula feeding and sociopaths. Yes, he did that. The hypothesis is that post war moms didn't want to breast feed so they used formula, formula may have had traces of lead which can lead to developmental disorders, therefore the formula created sociopaths, noting that sociopathic behavior is most egregious in those born from 1946-55. Nevermind that formula feeding represented less than 50% of infant feeding up until about 1955 and didn't actually peak until the mid 1970s. Don't let facts get in the way of a sensational hypothesis.
Or maybe it's the children were more well behaved when we could beat them angle. Yes, this point was also made early on although not in so many words. The author laments Dr. Spock's book on child rearing as being too soft on children, but also failing to note that rates of abuse have continued to drop significantly with each new generation...
Constantly referring to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) definition of sociopaths. There is no DSM definition of sociopaths. This is some pretty good sleight of hand propaganda. The DSM recognizes antisocial personality disorder, which the author seems fit to swap for sociopath too many times to count. While elements of ASPD are part of being a sociopath, they are not the same thing.
Overall sex shaminess. "(sexual) revolution was against traditional order, one hostile to carnality outside of the bounds of heterosexcual marriage". Umm ok. I'm not even sure where to start. I guess if your human history starts with the Temperance movement then yes, the sexual revolution was against "traditional" order.
On divorce. Noting that Boomers divorce more than other generations because of selfishness. Some of that may be true but it also ignores disenfranchisement of women throughout history. I guess the rates of divorce increasing couldn't have anything to do with liberalization of divorce laws, and women being allowed to have their own bank accounts and credit cards.
Those are just a few of the easily refutable/argued points that jumped out. There were many others.
April 6, 2017
This is the book I would have written. I've been discoursing about the Boomers and their drive to ruin all things - and then blame the young - for years now. The only things I would have omitted, or at least trumpeted the FACTS as opposed to the liberal rhetoric bandied about like an expensive joint, are these:
1. Aggressive policing works. Stop-and-frisk nabs criminals off the streets and is a huge success. This has been proven by research (that the author chooses to ignore because it blights his liberal bent.) Broken windows policies work. Too bad facts are things lefties hate since they love crime so much... especially crime committed by people of color.
2. The wage gap has been debunked. But this author crows to the mighty heavens the $0.78-to-a-man's-$1.00 myth as if it were gospel. Omit this falsehood or explain the facts: Women make personal choices which affect their pay grade, such as educational majors and having children; women choose jobs that are safer, yet pay less than dangerous jobs overwhelmingly chosen by men; women take more vacations, are absent from work more frequently, and are shooting themselves in the foot by engaging in entitled activities such as "me-ternity" to get time off from work. I shouldn't HAVE to review or remark on these facts, but since everyone apparently still believes this farce, I must.
3. Feminism was, and is, a Boomer phenomenon of utter entitlement. The author completely ignores this in favor of bashing white men every chance he gets. (Another aspect of liberal stupidity is, of course, self-hatred.) Racism is, by any other name, still racism. Though a review of the pure facts does point to the truth that many white men did have some advantages, feminists use these as cudgels to bludgeon white men of any generation into submission. If anything, one could argue that "male privilege" is actually a manifestation of gynocentrism: the reason why men went to work, absented themselves from the home, the care and feeding of their children, and the loving caretaking of their wives was to work hard and provide the finances to support that very same family. Feminism has done its best to dismantle this fact and reframe it as "oppression," and this has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere. The author does us all a disservice in failing to point out that second- and third-wave feminism came about as a result of Boomer entitlement and sociopathy. He missed a great opportunity... likely because he was too afraid to step on too many toes already mashed by his assertions. Quite cowardly.
Otherwise, I heartily recommend this book to everyone, Gen X like myself and younger, so as to get perspective on why things are so "fucked up" today. Sure, blame us, a little. But we're not the ones who have squandered the future. We get the blame after Boomers have dumped on us... but it's obvious that today's policies came about and were carved in stone long before I was born in 1975. We are the lost generation. Now we're here to clean up this frat party. It's going to be a long, tough job...
1. Aggressive policing works. Stop-and-frisk nabs criminals off the streets and is a huge success. This has been proven by research (that the author chooses to ignore because it blights his liberal bent.) Broken windows policies work. Too bad facts are things lefties hate since they love crime so much... especially crime committed by people of color.
2. The wage gap has been debunked. But this author crows to the mighty heavens the $0.78-to-a-man's-$1.00 myth as if it were gospel. Omit this falsehood or explain the facts: Women make personal choices which affect their pay grade, such as educational majors and having children; women choose jobs that are safer, yet pay less than dangerous jobs overwhelmingly chosen by men; women take more vacations, are absent from work more frequently, and are shooting themselves in the foot by engaging in entitled activities such as "me-ternity" to get time off from work. I shouldn't HAVE to review or remark on these facts, but since everyone apparently still believes this farce, I must.
3. Feminism was, and is, a Boomer phenomenon of utter entitlement. The author completely ignores this in favor of bashing white men every chance he gets. (Another aspect of liberal stupidity is, of course, self-hatred.) Racism is, by any other name, still racism. Though a review of the pure facts does point to the truth that many white men did have some advantages, feminists use these as cudgels to bludgeon white men of any generation into submission. If anything, one could argue that "male privilege" is actually a manifestation of gynocentrism: the reason why men went to work, absented themselves from the home, the care and feeding of their children, and the loving caretaking of their wives was to work hard and provide the finances to support that very same family. Feminism has done its best to dismantle this fact and reframe it as "oppression," and this has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere. The author does us all a disservice in failing to point out that second- and third-wave feminism came about as a result of Boomer entitlement and sociopathy. He missed a great opportunity... likely because he was too afraid to step on too many toes already mashed by his assertions. Quite cowardly.
Otherwise, I heartily recommend this book to everyone, Gen X like myself and younger, so as to get perspective on why things are so "fucked up" today. Sure, blame us, a little. But we're not the ones who have squandered the future. We get the blame after Boomers have dumped on us... but it's obvious that today's policies came about and were carved in stone long before I was born in 1975. We are the lost generation. Now we're here to clean up this frat party. It's going to be a long, tough job...
March 17, 2017
This was a refreshing, novel, and robustly researched book. Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room - the title is a tad too provocative, and even the author doesn't seem to think all that many boomers are literally sociopaths. Think of it as a way to frame a generation's choices, actions and behaviors. And in that sense, the book cuts through the exhausted (and exhausting) left/right ideological tropes like a knife through butter. Instead, Gibney contends that the real problem with American policymaking over the past thirty years has been choices made by a generation in charge that only cares about itself, and so has pursued policies of borrowing, consumption, instant gratification, and abject disregard for the future.
I write this as President Trump has proposed a budget with huge cuts to NIH medical and scientific research, education, and efforts to fight climate change, and no changes whatsoever to entitlements for people over 65 (i.e. Boomers). The Boomers, of course, were the only age group to vote for Trump over Clinton, and so it's not at all surprising that he would reward their loyalty with no cuts to Social Security and Medicare but huge cuts to basically everything anyone under the age of thirty should care about (research and development, education, climate change). (btw- in one chapter, Gibney cites to a number of studies that show that Boomers are much more suspicious of science and rationality and much more inclined to trust their feelings than other generations. Trump's budget sure shows it...)
In the second half of the book, Gibney exhaustively documents how in a range of policy areas - taxation, debt, education, environment, infrastructure, science, etc. - the Boomer generation has ignored long-term benefits in favor of short-term gains, leaving America economically less well off than it should have been but for the Boomers' short-term consumption-oriented choices. The fact that Boomers have saved less, spent more, and shifted the costs from themselves to future generations will leave anyone under the age of 50 pretty angry.
Gibney's argument is damning, well researched, and explains a lot that neither left-wing nor right-wing ideologues can fully explain. How else to explain a Democratic president (Clinton) cutting welfare, massively expanding the prison population, and cutting regulation of banks and a Republican president (George W. Bush) running up huge deficits by expanding benefits to seniors (Medicare Part D) while massively (and temporarily) cutting estate taxes (that primarily hit the Boomers' parents estates)? The common denominator is that these choices were good for Boomers.
Gibney is also really funny - his prose is sharp and biting, but laugh-out-loud funny. If you want a totally unique take on why America has gone off the rails, this is it.
I write this as President Trump has proposed a budget with huge cuts to NIH medical and scientific research, education, and efforts to fight climate change, and no changes whatsoever to entitlements for people over 65 (i.e. Boomers). The Boomers, of course, were the only age group to vote for Trump over Clinton, and so it's not at all surprising that he would reward their loyalty with no cuts to Social Security and Medicare but huge cuts to basically everything anyone under the age of thirty should care about (research and development, education, climate change). (btw- in one chapter, Gibney cites to a number of studies that show that Boomers are much more suspicious of science and rationality and much more inclined to trust their feelings than other generations. Trump's budget sure shows it...)
In the second half of the book, Gibney exhaustively documents how in a range of policy areas - taxation, debt, education, environment, infrastructure, science, etc. - the Boomer generation has ignored long-term benefits in favor of short-term gains, leaving America economically less well off than it should have been but for the Boomers' short-term consumption-oriented choices. The fact that Boomers have saved less, spent more, and shifted the costs from themselves to future generations will leave anyone under the age of 50 pretty angry.
Gibney's argument is damning, well researched, and explains a lot that neither left-wing nor right-wing ideologues can fully explain. How else to explain a Democratic president (Clinton) cutting welfare, massively expanding the prison population, and cutting regulation of banks and a Republican president (George W. Bush) running up huge deficits by expanding benefits to seniors (Medicare Part D) while massively (and temporarily) cutting estate taxes (that primarily hit the Boomers' parents estates)? The common denominator is that these choices were good for Boomers.
Gibney is also really funny - his prose is sharp and biting, but laugh-out-loud funny. If you want a totally unique take on why America has gone off the rails, this is it.
January 22, 2019
I read this book and Bob Woodward's "Fear" back-to-back and that, all told, that took me about 5 months to finish. It turns out that reading about something that is not surprising at all and that you agree with 100% is incredibly boring and tedious. At the end of the day, there's nothing all that new or interesting in either of these books. To summarize both books: the Baby Boomers are a bunch of entitled pricks that don't realize how they good they've got it and rose to prominence on all the investment that previous generations made and then turned around and reduced taxes on themselves while insisting that future generations continue to pay for their entitlements. This generation of entitled fucks stays in power on the basis of their numbers and the fact that younger generations are too busy eating Tide pods to vote and that, ultimately, resulted in the election in the boss stage version of the Boomer generation, Donald Trump. Trump amps up everything that makes up the Boomers up to 11. He thinks he's a genius even though he doesn't even understand how government works and everyone around him murmurs to each other about what an idiot he is. He talks a big game about how he's "in it for the small guy" when really he's just in it to line his own pockets. And he and his cadre of hangers on are all about screwing over future generations. If none of this sounds surprising to you, join the club. I suppose reading both of these books helps as a bit of catharsis, but that's about it. After reading both of these books about a group of humans that are collectively vampiric, I've decided to read a book about fictional vampires (Justin Cronin's "City of Mirrors"). That should be a lot more enjoyable.
November 19, 2018
This book is a fascinating and important study of how the Baby Boomers inherited a debtless, generous and left to center government and turned it into a neoliberal enterprise on the credit cards of future generations. The author is very careful at not denouncing boomers as individuals but critics them as a generation that made foolish economic and political choices in total disregard for long term consequences. It really focuses on the ''Boomer Agenda'' that started in the late 70's but really picked up steam in the 80's and 90's when the people born between 1945 and 1964 were enjoying full unchallenged power at all levels of government. Exploding deficits, financial deregulation, cuts in infrastructures and education, steady flow of money in healthcare and overpopulated prisons are all issues scrutinized and explained in that perspective.
''Feelings would be the great enabler, allowing Boomers to undermine the whole edifice of fact and reason in favor of personal truth, expedient and final. Henceforth, if the science of climate change commanded reduced consumption or other sacrifices incompatible with sociopathic desires, it would be denied. If basic accounting held radical and permanent tax cuts entailed a corresponding reduction in services Boomers enjoyed, Boomers would create a parallel reality furnished with a more convenient set of books''.
This book is a wake up call to civil duty and government reform
Important read for anyone born after 1970.
''Feelings would be the great enabler, allowing Boomers to undermine the whole edifice of fact and reason in favor of personal truth, expedient and final. Henceforth, if the science of climate change commanded reduced consumption or other sacrifices incompatible with sociopathic desires, it would be denied. If basic accounting held radical and permanent tax cuts entailed a corresponding reduction in services Boomers enjoyed, Boomers would create a parallel reality furnished with a more convenient set of books''.
This book is a wake up call to civil duty and government reform
Important read for anyone born after 1970.
January 3, 2018
Yikes.
To label an entire generation of people as sociopaths is irresponsible, not to mention a nauseating practice of pseudo-psychology...which is a shame because there is something important to say about the selfishness of the baby boomer generation.
Perhaps if the writer (and his editor) discarded the first five chapters, we, the readers, could have a credible argument against the boomers. Unfortunately, however, Gibney paints with the broadest of brushes in the opening chapters and discredits his entire argument.
With that broad brush, he smears an image of the boomer family- comprised of a hard-working, WWII vet father, a stay-at-home-Dr.Spock-reading mother, and two spoiled, unspanked, TV-watching children. Gibney doesn't give an inch in either direction, if you were white and middle-classed this was your life in the late 50s/ early sixties, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. As a white, middle-class millennial (b. 1989) with two boomer parents (b. 1952) I can say with confidence that neither my mom or my dad grew up in the suburbs, or with a mother who read Dr. Spock, or with a father that could afford a television set. This is not an attempt to defend them as they both voted for Trump and think only of themselves when in the polling booth but, for Gibney to say that the Boomers are this way because of x,y, and z is reckless, wrong, and only serves to discredit all of his well researched data in the subsequent chapters.
His mistakes don't stop there. His arguments regarding the Boomers and the Vietnam War are incredible. Gibney, a Gen Xer and venture capitalist, adopts the tone of a war hawk. War is inevitable he says more or less, and the Boomers were just a bunch of whiny babies for not doing their duty and diving headfirst into a foreign war. He goes on to list how many American wars were worse than Vietnam War and to say if the Boomers would have just submitted to participating in it, well, America would be much better off. His position in this matter is the actual stance of a sociopath and for the rest of the read I was not sure who exactly was the sociopath- the Boomers or the Gen Xer blaming everything on the Boomers? But he doesn't stop there. No, he continues to prove he is the true sociopath in Chapter 10: Indefinitely Deferred Maintenance. In a passage about decaying American infrastructure, these are actual sentences he writes: " One probable explanation is sloppy and sentimental thinking. It used to be understood that for every mile of tunnel builders expected a certain number of men to die. Today, there's an expectation that building should be free of human cost, with the result that projects are slower, costlier, and have redundant precautions that often do not work." WHAT!? I guess boomers (and society in general) are being too sentimental about human life and we should expect to lose a few good men whenever we want to expand a lane on the highway. This man is a legitimate sociopath and any argument he makes against the Boomers is just an argument about himself.
But Damn, there is something to this idea. The Boomers are selfish and they are numerous and they are systematically impeding future generations' progress. It's a shame this man was the one to write a treatise against them. He nullifies every good point he makes.
To label an entire generation of people as sociopaths is irresponsible, not to mention a nauseating practice of pseudo-psychology...which is a shame because there is something important to say about the selfishness of the baby boomer generation.
Perhaps if the writer (and his editor) discarded the first five chapters, we, the readers, could have a credible argument against the boomers. Unfortunately, however, Gibney paints with the broadest of brushes in the opening chapters and discredits his entire argument.
With that broad brush, he smears an image of the boomer family- comprised of a hard-working, WWII vet father, a stay-at-home-Dr.Spock-reading mother, and two spoiled, unspanked, TV-watching children. Gibney doesn't give an inch in either direction, if you were white and middle-classed this was your life in the late 50s/ early sixties, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. As a white, middle-class millennial (b. 1989) with two boomer parents (b. 1952) I can say with confidence that neither my mom or my dad grew up in the suburbs, or with a mother who read Dr. Spock, or with a father that could afford a television set. This is not an attempt to defend them as they both voted for Trump and think only of themselves when in the polling booth but, for Gibney to say that the Boomers are this way because of x,y, and z is reckless, wrong, and only serves to discredit all of his well researched data in the subsequent chapters.
His mistakes don't stop there. His arguments regarding the Boomers and the Vietnam War are incredible. Gibney, a Gen Xer and venture capitalist, adopts the tone of a war hawk. War is inevitable he says more or less, and the Boomers were just a bunch of whiny babies for not doing their duty and diving headfirst into a foreign war. He goes on to list how many American wars were worse than Vietnam War and to say if the Boomers would have just submitted to participating in it, well, America would be much better off. His position in this matter is the actual stance of a sociopath and for the rest of the read I was not sure who exactly was the sociopath- the Boomers or the Gen Xer blaming everything on the Boomers? But he doesn't stop there. No, he continues to prove he is the true sociopath in Chapter 10: Indefinitely Deferred Maintenance. In a passage about decaying American infrastructure, these are actual sentences he writes: " One probable explanation is sloppy and sentimental thinking. It used to be understood that for every mile of tunnel builders expected a certain number of men to die. Today, there's an expectation that building should be free of human cost, with the result that projects are slower, costlier, and have redundant precautions that often do not work." WHAT!? I guess boomers (and society in general) are being too sentimental about human life and we should expect to lose a few good men whenever we want to expand a lane on the highway. This man is a legitimate sociopath and any argument he makes against the Boomers is just an argument about himself.
But Damn, there is something to this idea. The Boomers are selfish and they are numerous and they are systematically impeding future generations' progress. It's a shame this man was the one to write a treatise against them. He nullifies every good point he makes.
April 17, 2017
Filled with misconceptions and fuzzy math, read this holding my nose then threw it away. First of all he writes this using data that is bogus. There are a lot of bogus studies out there. Because an "expert" gathers the info does not mean it is correct. Case in point would be the data that was gathered at Cold Spring Harbor, NY that begot THE BELL CURVE a book that speaks of some races being genetically inferior.
Anyway, the forward and the intro kept repeating that the boomers are pigs. In the first chapter I read that most boomers were raised in households ala Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed. Hello, that was fiction and was criticized for being very unrealistic. If you want to know how it was for the masses read THE WAY IT NEVER WAS.
Gibney may not be demonizing all of the boomers, but he contends that the leaders were unusual. I won't go into history, but I doubt that Gibney has read about the "leaders" who were in power during the industrial revolution who knew that something akin to global warming was possible but since it was in the future they decided to ignore it. What about the Bushes of prior generations who aided Hitler to profit from the war? What about the yellow journalists and the robber barons? etc.
Gibney is the proverbial pot that calls the kettle black. He and his ilk robbed so many with their shady dealings. They, too are part of the problem.
Anyway, the forward and the intro kept repeating that the boomers are pigs. In the first chapter I read that most boomers were raised in households ala Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed. Hello, that was fiction and was criticized for being very unrealistic. If you want to know how it was for the masses read THE WAY IT NEVER WAS.
Gibney may not be demonizing all of the boomers, but he contends that the leaders were unusual. I won't go into history, but I doubt that Gibney has read about the "leaders" who were in power during the industrial revolution who knew that something akin to global warming was possible but since it was in the future they decided to ignore it. What about the Bushes of prior generations who aided Hitler to profit from the war? What about the yellow journalists and the robber barons? etc.
Gibney is the proverbial pot that calls the kettle black. He and his ilk robbed so many with their shady dealings. They, too are part of the problem.
June 16, 2017
From the title I thought this book would be little tongue-in-cheek. Not so much. Gibney takes the definition of Sociopath from the DSM-V and applies it to the Baby Boomer generation. And it is seriously damning. I have certainly had my issues with the Boomers, as any of my friends could tell you, but Gibney takes it to another level. He covers so many topics including the Vietnam war, science, technology, economics, debt, social security, taxes, politics, neoliberalism, and much more. No doubt individual Boomers will hate this book because, as the original entitled snowflakes, they will take it personally. Remember Boomers, Gibney is taking the definition of a psychological condition for an individual and applying it to a whole generation made up of 76 million people. Take a breath. One statistic that stood out is that our government is made up of 86% Boomers. They have control and will continue to until at least 2030. And take a look at our country and the world, at what they will hand down to the next generations. Pitiful. The "Me" Generation has certainly lived up to its name and then some. A good book for those that like statistics, facts, and research applied to long time frames.
March 3, 2020
I tried to listen to the audiobook of "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America" by Bruce Cannon Gibney and tapped out within a few chapters. Gibney's thesis is that the Baby Boomers as a generation have essentially raided America's social welfare programs to benefit themselves while cutting off those programs to others. I was as ready as the next bitter millennial to hear what Gibney had to say, but his research is just...not great.
In the first section, for example, he makes the claim that the Baby Boomers were damaged by permissive parenting and formula feeding. He gives no real evidence for the former beyond just describing what Doctor Spock recommended, and he presents the idea that formula feeding is bad as so obvious that it needs no evidence to support it at all. I have zero desire to get into a debate about how you feed your baby, so don't @ me, but I think we can all agree that if you're going to make the argument that bottle-feeding helped turn an entire generation of people into LITERAL SOCIOPATHS, then you need to show your evidence.
I quit after a few chapters because although Gibney began supplying more support for other claims, that support was flimsy. The whole book appears to be one long, poorly-documented smear job of an entire generation of people. Fascinating topic, bad execution. Don't waste your time.
In the first section, for example, he makes the claim that the Baby Boomers were damaged by permissive parenting and formula feeding. He gives no real evidence for the former beyond just describing what Doctor Spock recommended, and he presents the idea that formula feeding is bad as so obvious that it needs no evidence to support it at all. I have zero desire to get into a debate about how you feed your baby, so don't @ me, but I think we can all agree that if you're going to make the argument that bottle-feeding helped turn an entire generation of people into LITERAL SOCIOPATHS, then you need to show your evidence.
I quit after a few chapters because although Gibney began supplying more support for other claims, that support was flimsy. The whole book appears to be one long, poorly-documented smear job of an entire generation of people. Fascinating topic, bad execution. Don't waste your time.
March 20, 2017
The loathing that Bruce Gibney feels toward baby boomers is a little frightening. And that's probably the most important thing about A Generation of Sociopaths. It's a long book and Gibney lays out his arguments about how Boomers are to blame for everything that is wrong with America. He has some points, to be sure, but it's a bit overdone, and there's no attempt to find any redeeming qualities of an entire generation. Surely we get a little credit for LGBTQ rights and classic rock. In any case, it isn't who or where to lay the blame -- it's that Gibney is not a lone voice. Many of the thirty-somethings today despise the Boomers and I get the impression that not too many of us are picking up on that. We'll have to turn over the reins eventually and it sure would be better for us if the people who take over don't hate our guts. So it's time to engage, acknowledge some (not all) responsibility, and work together to make some changes. I know, easier said than done.
June 11, 2017
Recommended by a friend as a way to explain rise in white supremacy and how seemingly nice people were condoning bigotry against refugees, LGBT, etc
Guess easy summary is baby boomers are selfish and want to keep the whole pie for themselves. Author feels they got this way by being told they were special thus putting individual wants above the needs of others.
Felt this was an oversimplification and he tried too hard to stress his unproven theory. Hard to read so I just skimmed through it.
Guess easy summary is baby boomers are selfish and want to keep the whole pie for themselves. Author feels they got this way by being told they were special thus putting individual wants above the needs of others.
Felt this was an oversimplification and he tried too hard to stress his unproven theory. Hard to read so I just skimmed through it.
January 14, 2024
This book’s title is very incendiary, which is how it caught my attention at the bookstore. This book essentially makes two propositions:
1. Baby boomers are leaving the country (US) worse off for their children and future generations, and
2. The baby boomer generation (mostly focused on white, American baby boomers) is doing this because it is essentially sociopathic.
The first proposition is very likely true based on the arguments and facts laid out in the book. There are so many different types of examples, just to name a few:
1. Boomers rolled back research and development (investing in the future),
2. Boomers enacted deregulation on mass but provided government bailouts for poor, short-sighted decisions,
3. Boomers oversaw the largest divestment in education and placed almost all the cost onto later generations,
4. Boomers chose not to make Social Security, Medicare, and pensions in general solvent for future generations,
5. Boomers enacted tax policy that shifted wealth from prior and future generations to themselves,
6. Boomers failed to protect the environment for future generations.
Really, this list could go on and on, which it does in the book. I think the book definitely makes a strong argument for the first proposition.
The second proposition (boomer generation is sociopathic) is not as clear to me, although as I progressed through the book, I think the case became much stronger. Sociopathy is a charged word for a reason (think of serial killers or people that are incapable of feeling guilt or empathy), and I’m not sure that the book completely convinced me of this idea – rather, I think it makes a much better case for anti-social behavior like choosing expediency over long-term planning, focusing more on the self rather than the fabric of the social contract, etc.
Overall, I think this book is very thought-provoking despite some weaknesses in some of the arguments. We see opinion polling based on gender, race, politics, religion, and education all the time, but age is often not touted in terms of generations. It’s a different way of looking at things and provides a bigger picture and a different perspective.
1. Baby boomers are leaving the country (US) worse off for their children and future generations, and
2. The baby boomer generation (mostly focused on white, American baby boomers) is doing this because it is essentially sociopathic.
The first proposition is very likely true based on the arguments and facts laid out in the book. There are so many different types of examples, just to name a few:
1. Boomers rolled back research and development (investing in the future),
2. Boomers enacted deregulation on mass but provided government bailouts for poor, short-sighted decisions,
3. Boomers oversaw the largest divestment in education and placed almost all the cost onto later generations,
4. Boomers chose not to make Social Security, Medicare, and pensions in general solvent for future generations,
5. Boomers enacted tax policy that shifted wealth from prior and future generations to themselves,
6. Boomers failed to protect the environment for future generations.
Really, this list could go on and on, which it does in the book. I think the book definitely makes a strong argument for the first proposition.
The second proposition (boomer generation is sociopathic) is not as clear to me, although as I progressed through the book, I think the case became much stronger. Sociopathy is a charged word for a reason (think of serial killers or people that are incapable of feeling guilt or empathy), and I’m not sure that the book completely convinced me of this idea – rather, I think it makes a much better case for anti-social behavior like choosing expediency over long-term planning, focusing more on the self rather than the fabric of the social contract, etc.
Overall, I think this book is very thought-provoking despite some weaknesses in some of the arguments. We see opinion polling based on gender, race, politics, religion, and education all the time, but age is often not touted in terms of generations. It’s a different way of looking at things and provides a bigger picture and a different perspective.
Want to read
February 7, 2024“I think the major factor is that the boomers grew up in a time of uninterrupted prosperity. And so they simply took it for granted. They assumed the economy would just grow three percent a year forever and that wages would go up every year and that there would always be a good job for everyone who wanted it. This was a fantasy and the result of a spoiled generation assuming things would be easy and that no sacrifices would have to be made in order to preserve prosperity for future generations. On an abstract level, I think the worst thing they’ve done is destroy a sense of social solidarity, a sense of commitment to fellow citizens. That ethos is gone and it’s been replaced by a cult of individualism. It’s hard to overstate how damaging this is. On a concrete level, their policies of under-investment and debt accumulation have made it very hard to deal with our most serious challenges going forward.”
October 5, 2023
A total echo chamber book for me, but I enjoyed this soooo much. I recommend gifting this book to your parents and all of their friends and discussing it at any holiday get togethers.
April 5, 2017
Beyond the sensational title, Gibney lays out convincing evidence that the fault for America's stagnant growth, poor education, and expanding debt and waistlines lies at the feet of the Worst Generation: The Boomers. Born into a world of great opportunity, they kept it all for themselves. Their parents paid all the bills and, once The Greatest Generation died off, Boomer children now foot the bill.
As they took power in government, their selfishness meant that government policies were made and adjusted to ensure their own (social) security at the expense of anyone else -- especially those who will be stuck on this planet they fucked-up after they finally have the decency to die. Taxes have not been reduced overall as much as re-allocated to non-Boomers. They value "feelings" over logic while fast to hypocritically discount anyone who "feels" differently than they do. Hypocrisy reigns supreme for the Boomer, like those with boners for our Founding Fathers who ignore the fact that Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is "incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes." The bloated debt-filled corpse of the Boomer will rot and stink up this country for years to come.
This book is an exercise in frustration. Page after page of well-researched documented evidence on how the Boomers have fucked up everything from infrastructure to the tax code to the education system. Boomers, as a whole, eschew anything that interferes with their immediate gratification. They're lazy, stupid (the number who believe that the earth revolves around the sun is startling), irresponsible (one of the highest STD rates of any generation), hypocritical, and selfish. The uber-Boomer, Donald Trump, is now in charge, which does not bode well in case you haven't figured that out yet.
Gibney makes clear that the vices and virtues of a generation do not apply to everyone in it. But I've already seen a few #notallboomers! reviews here on Goodreads. By making this comment, these people are spouting their opinion -- their FEELINGS -- on something they either a) did not read or b) did not pay attention to, which in fact puts them in the same sociopathic strata as their peers.
In the end, Gibney provides "solutions" which pretty much boil down to this: never vote for a Boomer again. Remove them from power. Reduce social security and tax breaks that almost specifically benefit this generation, forcing them to repay the debts they've accumulated for their entire lives. But, like most things these days, it feels hopeless.
The book is readable but filled with cold, hard facts. Many of the numbers, budgeting, and financial statistics made my eyes glaze over. "Raised" by Boomers, I don't know how to manage money either.
Regarding the "sociopath" label, I think that's an inflammatory term used to get the book some attention. I'm not sure how accurate it is, and with my general disdain for the science of psychology (how much of the current qualifications for "sociopath" were formulated by Boomer psychologists?) I don't care. They're definitely short-sighted, antisocial, and self-destructive, which is more than enough condemnation for me.
Frankly, I have a bit of confirmation bias with this one. As you might infer from the sarcastic quotes around "raised," my parents were, um, less than stellar, and I could check off almost every sociological trait outlined by the DSM-V with either of them. When watching Trump "debate" my most common comment was, "It's like having a conversation with my mother."
Because of my personal history, I found myself more interested in the causes than the effects. What made the Boomers this way? Gibney dissects this in an early chapter, boiling it down to television. He writes, "TV's essential characteristics make it the perfect education for sociopaths, facilitating deceit, acquisitiveness, intransigence, and validating a worldview only loosely tethered to reality." It's a strong point, although Gibney isn't bold enough to draw the line from TV to capitalism, the world's truest evil, perhaps because the American dollar has treated him so well. As a rich Silicon Valley libertarian, Gibney is part of the group who will likely replace the Boomers as the next generation to totally fuck us all up.
As they took power in government, their selfishness meant that government policies were made and adjusted to ensure their own (social) security at the expense of anyone else -- especially those who will be stuck on this planet they fucked-up after they finally have the decency to die. Taxes have not been reduced overall as much as re-allocated to non-Boomers. They value "feelings" over logic while fast to hypocritically discount anyone who "feels" differently than they do. Hypocrisy reigns supreme for the Boomer, like those with boners for our Founding Fathers who ignore the fact that Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is "incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes." The bloated debt-filled corpse of the Boomer will rot and stink up this country for years to come.
This book is an exercise in frustration. Page after page of well-researched documented evidence on how the Boomers have fucked up everything from infrastructure to the tax code to the education system. Boomers, as a whole, eschew anything that interferes with their immediate gratification. They're lazy, stupid (the number who believe that the earth revolves around the sun is startling), irresponsible (one of the highest STD rates of any generation), hypocritical, and selfish. The uber-Boomer, Donald Trump, is now in charge, which does not bode well in case you haven't figured that out yet.
Gibney makes clear that the vices and virtues of a generation do not apply to everyone in it. But I've already seen a few #notallboomers! reviews here on Goodreads. By making this comment, these people are spouting their opinion -- their FEELINGS -- on something they either a) did not read or b) did not pay attention to, which in fact puts them in the same sociopathic strata as their peers.
In the end, Gibney provides "solutions" which pretty much boil down to this: never vote for a Boomer again. Remove them from power. Reduce social security and tax breaks that almost specifically benefit this generation, forcing them to repay the debts they've accumulated for their entire lives. But, like most things these days, it feels hopeless.
The book is readable but filled with cold, hard facts. Many of the numbers, budgeting, and financial statistics made my eyes glaze over. "Raised" by Boomers, I don't know how to manage money either.
Regarding the "sociopath" label, I think that's an inflammatory term used to get the book some attention. I'm not sure how accurate it is, and with my general disdain for the science of psychology (how much of the current qualifications for "sociopath" were formulated by Boomer psychologists?) I don't care. They're definitely short-sighted, antisocial, and self-destructive, which is more than enough condemnation for me.
Frankly, I have a bit of confirmation bias with this one. As you might infer from the sarcastic quotes around "raised," my parents were, um, less than stellar, and I could check off almost every sociological trait outlined by the DSM-V with either of them. When watching Trump "debate" my most common comment was, "It's like having a conversation with my mother."
Because of my personal history, I found myself more interested in the causes than the effects. What made the Boomers this way? Gibney dissects this in an early chapter, boiling it down to television. He writes, "TV's essential characteristics make it the perfect education for sociopaths, facilitating deceit, acquisitiveness, intransigence, and validating a worldview only loosely tethered to reality." It's a strong point, although Gibney isn't bold enough to draw the line from TV to capitalism, the world's truest evil, perhaps because the American dollar has treated him so well. As a rich Silicon Valley libertarian, Gibney is part of the group who will likely replace the Boomers as the next generation to totally fuck us all up.
March 15, 2024
Can an entire generation of people be sociopaths? No. Can an entire generation frequently act as if they were sociopaths? Bruce Cannon Gibney says the answer is "Yes!"
The author claims in his lengthy and well-cited book that the voting patterns and political activity of the "Boomer" generation show traits that can be associated with sociopathy in the Diagnotic Statistical Manual (DSM-V). In each chapter he discusses particular sociopathic traits and how they pertain to the mindset of the Boomer collective.
The author discusses such political topics as various as taxes, equity, financial risk, debts and deficits both personal and private, health care, wages, vice legislation, penal code, civil rights et cetera.
The author sees patterns in Boomer legislation and political activity. As they came into their own and started developing equity, they enacted laws lowering taxes on capital gains and interest. As they started to pine for the American Dream of home ownership, regulations on taking high-risk mortgages was loosened. When they were approaching adulthood, the legal drinking age was lowered, and then raised again when it was of little benefit to them. They claim credit for taking on civil rights issues, but many of these issues were before or after their time. They've taken on massive debt during their political reign and these debts are likely to accumulate as they reach retirement age and begin to request benefits. They'll still have the political capital to keep these benefits in place as they age further. When they were young, the penalties for drug use were minor. We now have a prison system full of drug users convicted of non-violent offenses. The infrastructure has seen little maintenance and is in need of overhaul, a cost which will also likely be pushed onto future generations. Their action on the most important issue of their day, climate change, has been highly insufficient and future generations will bear the cost. In the opinion of this reviewer, their sociopathy came to full fruition when a person that has many sociopathic traits was elected as President of the United States.
The author makes many situational cases for a generation acting collectively as sociopathic in nature. They had the size and political will to obtain largely whatever they wished, and they've received their wishes at their demand.
While certainly we cannot simply point to one particular group of people as being to blame, the actions of the most powerful generation have given us many societal problems that they will largely leave as a legacy for the rest of us. Will the Boomers change course and start taking their share of responsibility for current and future problems? Only time will tell.
Disclaimer: This book was provided free of charge for the purpose of review by the fine publisher Hatchette.
Further disclaimer: Any publisher that provides a quality book free of charge will be referred to as a "fine publisher".
The author claims in his lengthy and well-cited book that the voting patterns and political activity of the "Boomer" generation show traits that can be associated with sociopathy in the Diagnotic Statistical Manual (DSM-V). In each chapter he discusses particular sociopathic traits and how they pertain to the mindset of the Boomer collective.
The author discusses such political topics as various as taxes, equity, financial risk, debts and deficits both personal and private, health care, wages, vice legislation, penal code, civil rights et cetera.
The author sees patterns in Boomer legislation and political activity. As they came into their own and started developing equity, they enacted laws lowering taxes on capital gains and interest. As they started to pine for the American Dream of home ownership, regulations on taking high-risk mortgages was loosened. When they were approaching adulthood, the legal drinking age was lowered, and then raised again when it was of little benefit to them. They claim credit for taking on civil rights issues, but many of these issues were before or after their time. They've taken on massive debt during their political reign and these debts are likely to accumulate as they reach retirement age and begin to request benefits. They'll still have the political capital to keep these benefits in place as they age further. When they were young, the penalties for drug use were minor. We now have a prison system full of drug users convicted of non-violent offenses. The infrastructure has seen little maintenance and is in need of overhaul, a cost which will also likely be pushed onto future generations. Their action on the most important issue of their day, climate change, has been highly insufficient and future generations will bear the cost. In the opinion of this reviewer, their sociopathy came to full fruition when a person that has many sociopathic traits was elected as President of the United States.
The author makes many situational cases for a generation acting collectively as sociopathic in nature. They had the size and political will to obtain largely whatever they wished, and they've received their wishes at their demand.
While certainly we cannot simply point to one particular group of people as being to blame, the actions of the most powerful generation have given us many societal problems that they will largely leave as a legacy for the rest of us. Will the Boomers change course and start taking their share of responsibility for current and future problems? Only time will tell.
Disclaimer: This book was provided free of charge for the purpose of review by the fine publisher Hatchette.
Further disclaimer: Any publisher that provides a quality book free of charge will be referred to as a "fine publisher".
October 14, 2019
all reviews in one place:
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu
About the Book: Have your parents ever went “well, in my times” and “when I was your age”? In reference to how little you get and have now? Well, you can likely thank them for that little that you’re getting. This book defines some lines in economy. What makes it grow, what makes it fall. What’s sustainable, and what’s a mere temporary solution, likely made by those who will profit from it, leaving the next generation to find their own way out.
My Opinion: The book is very interesting, but will likely not teach you anything new. I believe my generation, those of us who have witnessed the Great Bubble explode, are likely educated enough by now about the topics and nuances of economy. But it’s still an interesting read. And while in Europe it’s not so easy and simple to define a whole generation of our parents as “baby boomers” due to whole different conditions they had, we can still find similarities.
It’s an interesting book, and I can give it a solid 5 out of 5. Yet, as a disclaimer, I want you to go to the link provided above to goodreads, and see to the lowest ratings. The author chose not to reveal how banks and bankers helped add to the ruin of economy due to himself being one of them. And that has to be taken into equation, even if, in my personal opinion, it doesn’t take away much from the value of the book.
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu
About the Book: Have your parents ever went “well, in my times” and “when I was your age”? In reference to how little you get and have now? Well, you can likely thank them for that little that you’re getting. This book defines some lines in economy. What makes it grow, what makes it fall. What’s sustainable, and what’s a mere temporary solution, likely made by those who will profit from it, leaving the next generation to find their own way out.
My Opinion: The book is very interesting, but will likely not teach you anything new. I believe my generation, those of us who have witnessed the Great Bubble explode, are likely educated enough by now about the topics and nuances of economy. But it’s still an interesting read. And while in Europe it’s not so easy and simple to define a whole generation of our parents as “baby boomers” due to whole different conditions they had, we can still find similarities.
It’s an interesting book, and I can give it a solid 5 out of 5. Yet, as a disclaimer, I want you to go to the link provided above to goodreads, and see to the lowest ratings. The author chose not to reveal how banks and bankers helped add to the ruin of economy due to himself being one of them. And that has to be taken into equation, even if, in my personal opinion, it doesn’t take away much from the value of the book.
August 8, 2019
Man, this book made me resentful. I'm sure I have some Boomer friends (certainly family), and I'll save them the trouble of saying "Not all Boomers!" But this generation really shit the bed for the rest of humanity. The author presents it as almost idiopathic (though the toss-off factoid about sociopathy--and growing up as a Boomer in America--being correlated with lead paint exposure was both humorous and merits more consideration), and I'm not so much interested in the "why?" or "whether?" of the sociopathy diagnosis. But I do resent that a generation that was given more than any other developed the most indulgent victim complex possible, ruining it for the rest of us in the process.
The author suggests that younger generations' attitudes toward one's relationship to society betoken a less sociopathic mien, and that we might remake society in reaction to the atrocious histrionics, myopia, and selfishness of the Boomers. I don't know--hope springs eternal, but I'm not really sure the planet can take much more of Boomer luxuriation.
Anyway, this was good. Entertaining, funny, polemical but grounded in facts. Recommended.
The author suggests that younger generations' attitudes toward one's relationship to society betoken a less sociopathic mien, and that we might remake society in reaction to the atrocious histrionics, myopia, and selfishness of the Boomers. I don't know--hope springs eternal, but I'm not really sure the planet can take much more of Boomer luxuriation.
Anyway, this was good. Entertaining, funny, polemical but grounded in facts. Recommended.
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