This is misleading. Shortly before Nixon was elected only around 20-25% of very young voters identified as republican, but then Nixon talked about ending military conscription. And it was old people who voted Reagan, despite having voted overwhelmingly for FDR years ago: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980
You are forgetting that it was boomers who were behind the major progressive movements that happened during the 60s and less so the 70s.
It happens in almost every country, except the ones where a huge abrupt rightward shift happened. Young people have good politics, then some of them get rich as they get older and figure out their position within the system and eventually just retire so they're not even part of class struggle any more and only care about their 401ks, or they just simply compromise and they forget about them. Then they also get spooked by change in general and especially social change so they become socially conservative. Of course this mechanism doesn't work when society is falling apart but it worked for boomers because there was huge economic growth and living standards increased so they had less reason to doubt the system.
If you really wanna try to find something inherent about boomers you can try, but you won't find anything significant, and it's definitely not lead poisoning or whatever. It's the same processes that could make zoomers and millennials or any other generation every bit as reactionary in the future. As someone who lives in a country with a severely aging and decreasing population I can tell you old people just suck and refuse to help, but there isn't enough young people to counteract them. Young people are needed. They are the ones who have the energy to do good things and the ones who are give a shit about changing things.
The greatest gen voted for Obama twice, boomers didn't. To boomers credit polling has shown them to be far less racist than the gens preceding them by a very large margin, where as younger gens while being less racist than boomers, it is by a smaller margin than boomers vs silent, and the greatest gen. The data repeatedly shows a person's ideology sifts very little from the first election they voted in, that's when they develop their politics, and it changes very little. Boomers don't have a populist bone in their body, the banks and wall street didn't send me off to war, D.C. did, and what have unions ever done for me except drive up cost of products, and take money out of my check, I got to where I am all by myself, is their mind set, and always has been, it is vastly different mindset from the greatest gen, although it is similar to the salient gen.
The data repeatedly shows a person’s ideology sifts very little from the first election they voted in,
This is definitely very, very wrong.
that’s when they develop their politics, and it changes very little.
Seriously? Have you met a European? Do you know what happened to the May 68 communists? Or hell, even here, the people who were fucking stepped over by a tank protesting a military dictatorship in a university are now overwhelmingly in favor of putting police into universities and pretty much everywhere else. People's politics change massively. If they didn't the world would be a better place. It's not as easy to gauge in the US because any attempt to gauge them by most polls would just be a binary choice between republican and democrat, which isn't a good indicator either. And if you off handedly ask boomers they will just retcon their ideology either way to make themselves look more consistent.
This generational nonsense is fun as a meme but it's a really silly mode of analysis. I swear sometimes people just try to find almost metaphysical reasons why boomers are somehow uniquely and inherently evil because they don't want to think they might turn that way too. But that's how it is. Politics aren't just something that happens to you when you're 18. They're something that develops and changes according to your position in society.
Off the top, again every single demo in the U.S. Has become more liberal on social issues as they have aged, from criminal justice to sexual liberation, the lone exceptions are abortion which has remained flat for the past few decades, and if you consider gun control a left wing policy (I don't) support has declined. In your previous comment you stated boomers are responsible for progressive policies in the 60s, the oldest boomers in 1970 were 22. They promptly became Atari dems at best and reactionary at worst. When they finally started getting elected to Congress they immediately used their power to remove populist dems from banking and finance committees, and got to work gutting new deal regulations on banking and Wall Street. Here in the U.S., boomers were very progressive on race issues relative to the rest of the population, this is true, however they have never had anything but disdain for unions, and thought things like anti-trust were stupid. The boomer mindset at least here in the U.S. Has never been concerned with concentration of capital, at any point in their lives.
Boomers were people born post-WWII. So they basically started at 1945. The oldest boomers in 1970 were 25 and that was the main mass of these movements. And despite societal pressures, a lot of boomers have moved the OTHER way on social issues. Like, again, you brought up Reagan, but it wasn't boomers who voted for Reagan, it was silent gen and greatest gen, which, again, was a vast regression for them. Again, not anything unique to boomers.
[OTHER way on social issues] not even remotely close. From same sex marriage, to marijuana legalization, to criminal justice reform etc EVERY generation has become more liberal, countless polls have demonstrated that. And politicians have responded in kind. Biden wrote the most draconian crime bill decades, it was signed in to law by Clinton. The most comprehensive criminal justice reform bill in decades (First Step Act) was introduced by Rep. Doug Collins a Republican, not from the liberal North East, not from the liberal great lakes region, not from the West coast, but from the dirty South state of Georgia, and signed in to law by Trump.
Every generation, in the past 30 years, in the U.S. has become more liberal on social issues. It's a snap shot, of a corner of the globe that debunks your claim that people become more conservative as they age, it does not debunk your claim that people's politics change depending on their station in life, something I don't disagree with. Boomers grew up enjoying a comfortable life in no small part due to the work unions put in before they were born, and the new deal regulations that prevented monopolies, cartels, banks gambling with their deposits, and policies that encouraged long term viability instead of short term profits. They did not experience life before those changes were made, younger generations are now experiencing the results of Boomers actions to bust unions, and gut regulations, and they are more economically liberal as a result.
it does not debunk your claim that people’s politics change depending on their station in life, something I don’t disagree wit
You disagreed with it like 2 posts ago. People do get much more conservative as they age, being conservative isn't set in stone and the same thing across all societies, it is a relative position compared to the current circumstances in society.
They did not experience life before those changes were made, younger generations are now experiencing the results of Boomers actions to bust unions, and gut regulations, and they are more economically liberal as a result.
I'm gonna ignore the use of "economically liberal" here lol but I can assure you that most of the younger people you are talking about who will earn a decent sum of money and then retire will change their tune. It's sadly what happens. Not all of them of course. But a lot of them.
[change their tune] could be, but because the the Atari, New, Blue dog, and DLC, Third Way dems have been so successful at gutting new deal regulations, lowering the social floor, union busting and privatizing the number of people who "who will earn a decent sum of money" will be negligible, furthermore, I may have not have been as clear as I thought I was. Yes a persons economic conditions often shape a person's ideology, the greatest gen grew up during the depression, boomers grew up during the most prosperous time in U.S. history. The greatest gen voted for Obama (who ran a a Economic populist in 08) in 08 (the silent gen and boomers did not who did not live through the depression did not) the GG was well aware of who the villains were that caused the great depression, and what it would take to fix it. Boomers went though a few minor recessions, and a bit of stagnation, that was blamed on unions/regulations/high taxes but nothing like the great depression. again Boomers do not now nor have they ever had a distrust of finance and big business. They believe their station in life is a result of their own hard work, and not the result of labor battles one before they were born. This mind set is not something that developed as their station improved, it's a mind set they always has because their station was never in dire straits.
This is misleading. Shortly before Nixon was elected only around 20-25% of very young voters identified as republican, but then Nixon talked about ending military conscription. And it was old people who voted Reagan, despite having voted overwhelmingly for FDR years ago: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980
You are forgetting that it was boomers who were behind the major progressive movements that happened during the 60s and less so the 70s.
It happens in almost every country, except the ones where a huge abrupt rightward shift happened. Young people have good politics, then some of them get rich as they get older and figure out their position within the system and eventually just retire so they're not even part of class struggle any more and only care about their 401ks, or they just simply compromise and they forget about them. Then they also get spooked by change in general and especially social change so they become socially conservative. Of course this mechanism doesn't work when society is falling apart but it worked for boomers because there was huge economic growth and living standards increased so they had less reason to doubt the system.
If you really wanna try to find something inherent about boomers you can try, but you won't find anything significant, and it's definitely not lead poisoning or whatever. It's the same processes that could make zoomers and millennials or any other generation every bit as reactionary in the future. As someone who lives in a country with a severely aging and decreasing population I can tell you old people just suck and refuse to help, but there isn't enough young people to counteract them. Young people are needed. They are the ones who have the energy to do good things and the ones who are give a shit about changing things.
The greatest gen voted for Obama twice, boomers didn't. To boomers credit polling has shown them to be far less racist than the gens preceding them by a very large margin, where as younger gens while being less racist than boomers, it is by a smaller margin than boomers vs silent, and the greatest gen. The data repeatedly shows a person's ideology sifts very little from the first election they voted in, that's when they develop their politics, and it changes very little. Boomers don't have a populist bone in their body, the banks and wall street didn't send me off to war, D.C. did, and what have unions ever done for me except drive up cost of products, and take money out of my check, I got to where I am all by myself, is their mind set, and always has been, it is vastly different mindset from the greatest gen, although it is similar to the salient gen.
This is definitely very, very wrong.
Seriously? Have you met a European? Do you know what happened to the May 68 communists? Or hell, even here, the people who were fucking stepped over by a tank protesting a military dictatorship in a university are now overwhelmingly in favor of putting police into universities and pretty much everywhere else. People's politics change massively. If they didn't the world would be a better place. It's not as easy to gauge in the US because any attempt to gauge them by most polls would just be a binary choice between republican and democrat, which isn't a good indicator either. And if you off handedly ask boomers they will just retcon their ideology either way to make themselves look more consistent.
This generational nonsense is fun as a meme but it's a really silly mode of analysis. I swear sometimes people just try to find almost metaphysical reasons why boomers are somehow uniquely and inherently evil because they don't want to think they might turn that way too. But that's how it is. Politics aren't just something that happens to you when you're 18. They're something that develops and changes according to your position in society.
Off the top, again every single demo in the U.S. Has become more liberal on social issues as they have aged, from criminal justice to sexual liberation, the lone exceptions are abortion which has remained flat for the past few decades, and if you consider gun control a left wing policy (I don't) support has declined. In your previous comment you stated boomers are responsible for progressive policies in the 60s, the oldest boomers in 1970 were 22. They promptly became Atari dems at best and reactionary at worst. When they finally started getting elected to Congress they immediately used their power to remove populist dems from banking and finance committees, and got to work gutting new deal regulations on banking and Wall Street. Here in the U.S., boomers were very progressive on race issues relative to the rest of the population, this is true, however they have never had anything but disdain for unions, and thought things like anti-trust were stupid. The boomer mindset at least here in the U.S. Has never been concerned with concentration of capital, at any point in their lives.
Boomers were people born post-WWII. So they basically started at 1945. The oldest boomers in 1970 were 25 and that was the main mass of these movements. And despite societal pressures, a lot of boomers have moved the OTHER way on social issues. Like, again, you brought up Reagan, but it wasn't boomers who voted for Reagan, it was silent gen and greatest gen, which, again, was a vast regression for them. Again, not anything unique to boomers.
[OTHER way on social issues] not even remotely close. From same sex marriage, to marijuana legalization, to criminal justice reform etc EVERY generation has become more liberal, countless polls have demonstrated that. And politicians have responded in kind. Biden wrote the most draconian crime bill decades, it was signed in to law by Clinton. The most comprehensive criminal justice reform bill in decades (First Step Act) was introduced by Rep. Doug Collins a Republican, not from the liberal North East, not from the liberal great lakes region, not from the West coast, but from the dirty South state of Georgia, and signed in to law by Trump.
Every generation, yes. Not necessarily the same generations through time. As an average, again yes, but it's not close to being universal.
Every generation, in the past 30 years, in the U.S. has become more liberal on social issues. It's a snap shot, of a corner of the globe that debunks your claim that people become more conservative as they age, it does not debunk your claim that people's politics change depending on their station in life, something I don't disagree with. Boomers grew up enjoying a comfortable life in no small part due to the work unions put in before they were born, and the new deal regulations that prevented monopolies, cartels, banks gambling with their deposits, and policies that encouraged long term viability instead of short term profits. They did not experience life before those changes were made, younger generations are now experiencing the results of Boomers actions to bust unions, and gut regulations, and they are more economically liberal as a result.
You disagreed with it like 2 posts ago. People do get much more conservative as they age, being conservative isn't set in stone and the same thing across all societies, it is a relative position compared to the current circumstances in society.
I'm gonna ignore the use of "economically liberal" here lol but I can assure you that most of the younger people you are talking about who will earn a decent sum of money and then retire will change their tune. It's sadly what happens. Not all of them of course. But a lot of them.
[change their tune] could be, but because the the Atari, New, Blue dog, and DLC, Third Way dems have been so successful at gutting new deal regulations, lowering the social floor, union busting and privatizing the number of people who "who will earn a decent sum of money" will be negligible, furthermore, I may have not have been as clear as I thought I was. Yes a persons economic conditions often shape a person's ideology, the greatest gen grew up during the depression, boomers grew up during the most prosperous time in U.S. history. The greatest gen voted for Obama (who ran a a Economic populist in 08) in 08 (the silent gen and boomers did not who did not live through the depression did not) the GG was well aware of who the villains were that caused the great depression, and what it would take to fix it. Boomers went though a few minor recessions, and a bit of stagnation, that was blamed on unions/regulations/high taxes but nothing like the great depression. again Boomers do not now nor have they ever had a distrust of finance and big business. They believe their station in life is a result of their own hard work, and not the result of labor battles one before they were born. This mind set is not something that developed as their station improved, it's a mind set they always has because their station was never in dire straits.