When we hit 35, we posessed 21% of the nation’s wealth. Millenials nearing that average age possess just 3% of the nation’s household wealth.
So says a fascinating volume noted below that broke upon the scene almost three years ago.
It has been alleged in various quarters that our bid for personal freedom ended up destroying the institutions and restraints that made freedom safe and possible.
The book containing those charges is Boomers: The Men and Women who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. (Sentinel, 2021)
I’ve only scratched the surface and so cannot make a good case for or against Andrews’s dire thesis. But, being a Boomer, I’m certainly interested in exploring her less than throroughly rosie exploration of the civilizational contributions — or desecrations — of Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Heffrey Sachs, Sonia Sotomayor — Boomers all, and all, among others, scrutinized in this book . And, of course, of millions of others (including, as I’ve indicated, myself), will have to examine our own consciences and our sense of our own contributions or divigations.
To mention just one person:
Camille Paglia has always interested me, a flashy Boomer contrarian. I don’t hear much about her lately.
But I agree with those who admire her for resenting the over-elevation of pop culture and the denegration of academia — and, with critic/observer Michael Brendon Dougherty’s mordent aside about “the naivete’ of a generation that thought the worst effects of free love could be handled tidily by penicillin.”
But Dougherty concedes, “If Boomers are going to die with nearloy three-fifths of our nation’s wealth (which apparently Andrews’s book maintains), “we had better find a way to be written into their last wills.”
I’m one Boomer who doesn’t expect to reap that bonanza. So I know no one will be interested in finding their way into my will.
Not a post-Boomer soul.
19 Cent Notebook 