On "The Cult of Me"...

I can't deny that Obama is, technically, of the "Baby Boom" generation... but the article's point that the Baby Boomers are to blame for the woes of America today isn't fully true, in my opinion.

It is MY generation that is to blame, if you ask me... not the generation of my parents.

Obama (being born in '61) falls into the end of the Baby Boomers, and I am early (coming in '68) in the "Me" generation. It is the fault of those born of hippies during the Age of Aquarius that the nation is so far left today, and that the American economy is so far down the crapper. Lest we forget, the "hippies" and "beatniks" were all buying their houses with 5 to 15% down, paying off their car notes inside of four years, and never had more than one or two credit cards with balances that could be paid off in less than six months of regular payments... and all were doing this prior to 1980. It is the fault of those who were born in the 60s and 70s, not the 40s and 50s, that the housing bubble ever grew as big as it did because they kept buying houses (one after another) with no money down and with adjustable-rate mortgages, while they rolled the unpaid balance of their "old" cars into the note of their new ones until the note was so much bigger than the actual value of the new car that payment within 48 months was impossible, and 60- and 72-month notes were routinely being written for cars by 1990, when the value of the car would NEVER be even close to what was owed halfway through the life of the loan. My parents never had a credit card as I was growing up... not until I was out of the house (late 80s) did they get their first (and probably only) card.

When the hardest economic crunch in living memory is the Carter Recession of 1980/81, is it any wonder that the "boom" of the 90s was so taken for granted and accepted as the norm? Our parents and grandparents remembered "tough times", while my generation knew them only from stories and odd habits retained by "old people"... like money stowed in coffee cans, or keeping bacon grease in bowls on the stove.

Now, for the first time in nearly 30 years, the Me Generation is feeling a real crunch... rising unemployment in a soft (almost falling) economy, with the specter of higher fuel prices and even higher consumer prices always looming on the horizon, and the sure and certain knowledge that the Fed is going to raise taxes in the very near future to pay for all the benefits we aren't even getting yet (and probably never will).

The prognosis of the article is sound... but I wanted to say I didn't agree with how the author reached his conclusions. I abhor laziness.