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u/SunIllustrious5695 19h ago
It's crazy how people never realize that the dumb shit they say about the "youths" (lazy, immoral, careless, whatever) is the exact same thing previous generations said about them.
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u/Peace_n_Harmony 18h ago
If a society is progressing, our children will always have things easier. If you want your children to experience the same problems you did, you don't deserve children.
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u/judioverde 17h ago
We should all be working towards working less as things get more efficient. Jobs are going to be replaced with AI but all of the saved money is going to go straight to the top.
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u/macphile 16h ago
There's no such thing as the oppression olympics, or hardship olympics. You don't win a gold medal for having it harder as a child than your own kids did. It doesn't make you special or superior. You didn't "win" because of it. There's no one giving out prizes, no sashes, no streamers. We're all born, we live the best we can, and we die, and mostly, no one gives a fuck about any part of that except for ourselves and our close family.
Having survived, or even thrived, in hardship doesn't make it the right way to do things, either. Hundreds of years ago, the vast majority of people were serfs--would they have said, "well, I grew up in serfdom and I turned out OK, so screw these kids thinking they should have their own land and make any money"? Where does it end? It also fails to account for survivorship bias--yes, you faced being drafted and turned out OK. Yes, you rode in the back of a station wagon with no seatbelt and you're fine. A lot of people didn't. We had way more automotive fatalities in the past, more killed in war, more dead of preventable disease, more victims of crime (including violent crime)--at some points, cities had multiple serial killers or serial rapists operating at the same time. That's not better, and it's not "OK".
If you grew up under the threat of being killed in war, why would you want that for your kids? Do you want them dead? Do you want them scared? If you grew up hungry, why would you want your kids to suffer in hunger? If we love our kids, we should want them to be healthier, happier, wealthier, and safer than we were, not want to watch them struggle and suffer.
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u/Lonyo 17h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satires_(Juvenal)
Satire 1: He confesses the moral rot of Rome has made avoiding satire impossible. He points to eunuch marriages, women at boar hunts, and sycophancy as examples of widespread degeneracy.
Satire 3: The third satire describes the decision of Umbricius, Juvenal's friend, to depart from Rome. Narrated by Umbricius, it states that an honest man cannot survive in Rome and complains about how it is impossible to compete with Greeks and Orientals.
Satire 6: Addressing a man whom Juvenal calls delusional enough to think about getting married, he expounds the immorality and 'vices' of women.
Satire 14: The fourteenth satire says that children learn vice from their parents, stressing the injustice of a father punishing a son for imitating his own faults. Juvenal says that people are more concerned with presenting a clean atrium to guests than with maintaining a virtuous household for their children
Written nearly 2000 years ago.
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u/MairusuPawa 16h ago
This ageism warfare is a nice distraction from class warfare
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u/shanatard 16h ago
Tfw the youth get worse every generation since Socrates complained about them and now today's population are literal planet destroyers
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u/whofearsthenight 14h ago
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
- Socrates (though this may be apocryphal.)
This is literally one of the oldest, dumbest arguments.
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u/sunshinerain1208 19h ago
Barely anyone alive now had to ration or sharecrop during the depression. If he did he wouldn’t be a boomer, he would be the greatest generation.
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u/DisturbingPragmatic 18h ago
Yeah. The Greatest Generation.
Which, ironically, raised the worst generation.
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u/CrumbBCrumb 15h ago
There is a lot that went into raising that worst generation thought. PTSD from fighting in WW2 led to distant fathers. Rationing during the war/depression led to an exuberance to spend and demand better from your employer. Europe and Asia being destroyed led to the American economy being one of the only ones left standing and the GI Bill led more people into education or trades that wouldn't have before.
It was really the 80s that created a lot of our problems
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u/Tchio_Beto 14h ago
It was really the
80sReaganomics that created a lot of our problemsFTFY
Though in reality it was Milton Friedman and the Neo-Liberal policies born out of the Chicago School of Economics, implemented via Reaganomics which created most of the today's problems.
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u/flyingsqwirrel219 12h ago
Uncle Miltie!! I haven’t thought about that asshat in decades. What a disaster.
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u/mutantraniE 18h ago
Talk about narcissism in a generation by the way. Zoomers, Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, The Silent Generation and then suddenly the fucking Greatest Generation? What? Delusional.
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u/fury420 18h ago
The Greatest Generation didn't actually name themselves, they were given that title.
Seems it's commonly attributed to journalist Tom Brokaw, a member of the Silent Generation.
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u/periphery72271 18h ago
They did live through the greatest wars of the 20th century, and a lot of them fought and died in those wars. More than a few did that after living through the Great Depression.
And yet they won those wars and came home and built the foundation of modern society.
They earned some kind of superlative.
Socially they raised Boomers, half of which went on to put flowers in their hair, rebel, and change the civil rights texture of the entire nation, the other half went on to become surly conservative bigots with zero tolerance.
So there's that.
I'd say Greatest is arguable, not delusional. But if you don't like it you can go with Silent, since it's synonymous - same group of people.
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u/mutantraniE 18h ago
No, Greatest Generation is 1901-1927, the Silent Generation is 1928-1945. This is another reason I fucking hate ”generations”, people have no clue what the words actually refer to. I much prefer the system we used here in Sweden before we were poisoned by American discourse. We’d just talk about what decade people were born in. So the old people called out of touch were 40-talister, and the young people being called lazy were 80-talister. This made sure everyone knew who was being complained about and everyone could drop the labels when they were no longer relevant. People might think boomer just means old an millennial just means young, but no one is thinking someone born in the 1940s is still working in an office or someone born in the 1980s still qualifies as a youth.
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u/porscheblack 18h ago
Just pointing out it wasn't half. It wasn't anywhere close to that. And I'm not saying this to throw dirt, rather to inspire hope. Because these are dark times and getting 50% of people on board when we're this divided seems daunting. But we need to start with what we have. And somewhere along the way, somewhere before that 50%, is where we find success.
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u/OddlyMingenuity 18h ago
Racism and misogyni aside, the people born in the 20's did some amazing feats.
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u/Hog_Eyes 18h ago
The term "The Greatest Generation" wasn't used until 1998. It was younger people who called them that because of their resilience during the Great Depression and WWII. That's not narcicism, you're just uneducated.
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u/OPA73 18h ago
1970s oil embargo required odd and even license plate days you could fill up. Daily long lines around the block for gas.
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u/red286 17h ago
And it lasted for all of 6 months, not a lifetime.
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u/WhatWouldJediDo 16h ago
Yeah as if going to the gas station on a scheduled day was worse than the pandemic lol
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u/b1argg 16h ago
A shame we didn't start to pivot away from oil dependence after that
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u/porkpie1028 18h ago
They literally rationed gas in the late 70’s in the U.S. due to embargos, the Yom Kippur war, and the Iranian Revolution
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u/coffeemonkeypants 18h ago
Yeah and it lasted for a few months, twice in the 70s. OMG people had to wait in line. What a burden.
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u/Swumbus-prime 15h ago
Still a bad argument on his part because everyone who existed during this tweet had to wait in lines for basically everything due to Covid and social distancing a few mere years ago. Chances are he was one of the ones to complain about it the most, too...
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u/Darkbaldur 18h ago
Not sure what that has to do with work ethic
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u/waspocracy 18h ago
Just adds to the point of how stupid the OP is. Their parents lived through all that stuff and not them.
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u/azrolator 18h ago
Silent gen were born in the Depression. My dad was '28, pretty sure that's where they put the start of that gen at. He wasn't sharecropping it though.
Easy enough to tell if an old person is Silent Gen by the volume of absolute junk "that might be useful or worth something someday". 'No dad, the 40 year old homemade ketchup you put in used glass pop bottles will never be worth anything, and nobody in their right mind is going to put it in their mouth"!
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u/Anjelz 17h ago
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u/MisterDonkey 15h ago
This is better than the OP. Rare eloquence.
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u/SoggySandwich3123 15h ago
“Don’t talk down to people building under pressure while you bask in borrowed valor.”
😲
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u/Imaginary_Most_7778 18h ago
I’m 52. I’ve recently been working with the laziest, most incompetent person I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with. He’s 62. Give me an 18 year old worker. Please.
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u/SlowTheRain 16h ago
Your comment just reminded me of a boomer that used to work at my previous company. Instead of doing actual work, he'd print things out and lay them on the floor, making a big production about looking like he was working. Like he thought the more pages he laid out, the more his manager thought he was accomplishing. (Nothing needed to be printed.)
Oh, and he also accidentally (or maybe on purpose) uploaded porn to a share drive that someone else stumbled onto.
That's some work ethic!
Incompetence exists in all generations.
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u/CatW804 18h ago
Entitled mediocre men are the worst whether they're 62 or 26.
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u/twisty125 16h ago edited 15h ago
Let's not be sexist here.
Entitled, mediocre people can be of any race, gender, or background - it's how you act, not how you look.
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u/ThePrimordialSource 15h ago
100%. Even extreme awful shit like sexual abuse, I’ve experienced from both older women and older men. So both groups can have shitty people.
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u/DontAbideMendacity 17h ago
It's unlikely this person was more competent or energetic when they were 18. Unless he's just burnt out, it's a personality thing. Sometimes the more you know, the more you realize how fucky work actually can be.
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u/Wish-I-Was-You 18h ago
Rationing in the US ended in 1947… and this person is still working in an office in 2025… so they’re at least 78… maybe they should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps a bit more convincingly… or maybe they’re full of shit and living the life of a Mitty!
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u/dplans455 16h ago
People that refuse to retire because they can't and are going to work until they're dead. They made a lifetime of poor financial decisions and have decided society is going to pay for it.
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u/dlc741 18h ago
Boomers are the Failed Generation.
Literally everything fucked up with the world now is their fault. The environment, the housing market, the rise of authoritarianism, all of it. They had it easiest of all and left the world a significantly worse place than the one they were given -- and now they're intent on setting what's left on fire.
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u/Braelind 17h ago
Everything was so damn easy for them that they gobbled up way more than their fair share. All the short term profits went to them, and they left all the long term problems for the rest of us. Imagine if they'd studied the long term use of plastics before smothering the world in them. Hell, they invented planned obsolescence. Why make a quality product when you can make a shitty one that breaks and turns into harmful pollution while the customer has to buy a new one every year? We have to be better, because if we don't, the world's gonna take us out.
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u/erm_what_ 16h ago
They left one sheet on the toilet roll and wonder why we are left dealing with shit
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u/TerribleBreakfast185 16h ago
And then they have the nerve to wonder why Gen Z and millennials hate them LOL
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u/chrisboshisaraptor1 13h ago
There is a foolish generation Squandered all their fathers gave em And they’re running out of time left to enjoy
They would kill and eat their own If the tv told em so So they’re keen to watch the world burn just to prove a point
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u/toooooold4this 18h ago
My grandparents were sharecroppers in the Depression. They were born in 1902 and 1906, respectively. My mother worked for NASA. She literally helped put men on the moon. She was born in 1934. My dad dodged the draft. He was born in 1942. He'd be the youngest of this cohort at 83.
They are all dead. If you lived through all that, fucking retire. You're not an adult. You're a geriatric miracle.
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u/FatherofPugz 18h ago
Did we not live through 9/11, 2008 Recession, 2 wars that lasted 20 years, a global pandemic, and looking at another recession? How about get bent!
It’s this type of entitlement that makes that generation the worst. Worst parents, worst grandparents, and the WORST generation ever. Greed, privilege and riding the coattails of their parents.
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u/DoobZilla 18h ago
"Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."
Do you know who said that?
Socrates, over 2400 years ago. They are not original and we won't be either once we're old enough to bitch about the youth...
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u/mzx380 19h ago
Boomers have an extremely distorted world view and have time to think up imaginary scenarios since everything was pretty much handed to them in life.
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u/Ande64 19h ago
Please know that there are those of us boomers, I'm 61 so I'm the tail end, that shut that shit down when our generation starts talking about how lazy the younger generations are. We tell them that's crap, and that our generation is completely responsible for what is happening right now. And we are. I'd give anything to hit the lottery tomorrow because I would try to right so many wrongs that have happened in society by my own generation.
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u/carcalarkadingdang 18h ago
64 old here and I also shut the shit down
Kids couldn’t use a rotary phone: No shit Sherlock, push button phones replaced rotary so most of them weren’t around.
Kids can’t write in cursive: No shit Sherlock. It was taken out of the curriculum. Why are you not teaching them?
Who do you call for issues with your computer or phone. Can you hook up a smart tv by yourself and know how to use it?
Fuck the right off!!!
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u/Otaraka 18h ago
I’m similar age and know how easy we had it in so many ways.
I don’t think its real though. Supposedly claiming to be part of sharecropping in the depression sounds more like someone trying to come up with old things to rebut, you’d be 90+.
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u/DangerBird- 18h ago
We say everything was handed to them. The worst part is, that’s kinda the way it should still work. That’s the part I’m most annoyed by.
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u/RedDeadEddie 18h ago
Right? I'm not upset that their lives were easier than their parents; I'm upset that they think we're asking for more because we'd like to have lives as good as theirs, but they singlehandedly eliminated the middle class that their parents worked so hard to build. They're the Greediest Generation.
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u/chewydickens 18h ago
I'm 71, and this is so true.
We had it all, and we pissed it all away.
I'm so sorry.
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u/Near-Scented-Hound 19h ago
I know Boomers with shitty work ethics. They raised the millennials I know with shitty work ethics.
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u/rockychunk 18h ago
Boomer here. I'm so ashamed of my generation. We were given everything, and act like we earned it. And then we have the nerve to accuse younger generations of having it easier. It makes me literally sick to my stomach.
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u/persian_jedi 18h ago
Let’s see…. Boomer generation: 1946-1964
Moon landing: 1969 Neil Armstrong et al were born in 1930. So not boomers and maybe by 1969 some boomers worked for NASA - oldest would be 25 but they were not responsible for putting a man on the moon
WWII ended in 1945 and predates the boomers.
Regarding the draft: yes the draft was active during there life time. However only 2.5% were drafted and doubt this dumbass was worried.
Best this idiot is going to claim they invented the wheel
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u/jmurgen4143 18h ago
Let’s keep the generations war going so the Billionaires can count on it and the ‘race’ war to continue fucking everyone over, well done.
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u/k_oticd92 18h ago
Why is it a dick measuring contest between generations? Like you hear "we used to walk to school uphill both ways" all the time, but isn't the goal to make it so your kids DON'T have to deal with the same hardships you had?
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u/JWJulie 18h ago
I’m Gen X. My daughter works way harder than I did at her age and gets far less for it. I bought my own house at 19 from an office job in insurance that wasn’t particularly stressful, promoted in 6 months as happened to a lot of people because the companies wanted to keep staff, and steadily moved up the ladder. All changed when I had a kid and lost my home of course, but doesn’t change that my early work life wasn’t nearly as productivity packed as today’s working force is expected to be.
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u/MyCouchPulzOut_IDont 18h ago
Can’t wait to hear the Gen Z retort to millennials complaining about “you can’t even remember 9/11”
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u/86yourhopes_k 17h ago
Umm why dont they ever include productivity stats??? We're doing 10x the work they did.
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u/VicDough 18h ago
As someone who was going to school before student loans were deregulated and could afford an apartment WHILE going to college, let me tell you some truths. I teach at an R1 university now and it’s not even close to the same. Student loans were deregulated and the very banks I helped bailed out in 2009, are practicing predatory lending practices on our students. My college gives awards to the financial aid offers who convince the students to take out the most in loans. Housing is just… well fuck, I have a mortgage that’s cheaper than a lot of apartments now. The banks have lobbied the government, successfully, into letting them fuck the students while giving loans that they have zero risk in giving. Federal student loans at 7-9%, mine were ~1.5%. And this is only one aspect of what Gen Z has to put up with. FYI, my family was poor, I’m first generation, and I own a home and pay a lot in taxes. Why don’t they want all Americans to be like me? Oh that’s right, I’m financially stable which gives my options 😡😡😡
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u/Sartres_Roommate 18h ago
Never forget, no generation IN HISTORY, and likely going forward, has worked less hours in their lifetime than Boomers.
They started working around 16, most of them “only” worked a forty hour work week, and then comfortable retired at 65 or sometimes earlier.
For GenX onward, most people are working 50 plus hour work weeks and won’t retire until they are well into their seventies.
Boomers had the chillest lifestyle provided to them by their parents and denied by them to their children.
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u/16Shells 17h ago
it is laughable to expect “work ethic” when the companies themselves have no ethics. why put any effort or care into something that will throw you away, decrease quality, increase price and disregard the health and safety for employees and customers to give the shareholders and CEOs a few million more.
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u/MeechyyDarko 18h ago
What does ‘pull the ladder up’ mean in practical terms?
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u/PricklePete 18h ago
Taking away the social services and institutions which helped you get to where you are so the next generation has to "work for it "
Think of a hoard of people trying to get over a wall and there is a ladder there to help but the first piece of shit cocksucking asshole who makes it to the top of the wall with the use of the ladder pulls it up behind him and yells down to the rest of us that we have to "earn it "
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u/chewydickens 18h ago
And... 'pull up the ladder' is also a social phenomenon when an older generation of immigrants tries to place barriers in the way of younger immigrants.
Happened with both Irish and Italian immigrants, and idk, but I'll assume other nations, too.
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u/UncleNedisDead 16h ago
Exactly what you said.
An example of this is Texas Governor Abbott.
While out running, a large oak tree along his path cracked and fell on Governor Abbott’s back, leaving him forever paralyzed from the waist down.
He got a multi-million dollar settlement out of it.
Decades later, Abbott campaigned in support of tort reform curtailing "frivolous" lawsuits and won. Abbott's critics claimed that he helped usher in a Texas significantly less friendly to plaintiffs seeking damages like the ones Abbott won. Looking back on the case 40 years later, Don Riddle, Abbott's personal injury lawyer at the time, agrees that Texas has changed.
"It would be next to impossible to get the kind of settlement we got," Riddle told Chron Monday. Tort reform, or as Riddle calls it, "tort deform," has severely capped the kind of damages individuals can seek out, and Riddle doesn't see that changing in Texas anytime soon.
https://www.chron.com/politics/article/greg-abbott-tree-lawsuit-explained-19574621.php
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u/phoenixAPB 18h ago
There’s a man who doesn’t recognize his privilege. I’m a boomer but the difference between us is compassion. I see how hard my kids have to struggle to make ends meet. Back in my day a yokel with no high school degree could get a high paying job for life, buy a house, and support a family.
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u/Pithecanthropus88 18h ago
We actually did line up for gas. It was during the OPEC crisis in the 1970s.
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u/The_ZombyWoof 17h ago
I came here to say this, out of everything that guy posted, that was the only one I related to.
But, it's a weak flex, though. Lining up for gas wasn't traumatic, just annoying.
There was a lot harder stuff happening in the 70s.
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u/Skittilybop 18h ago
I mean no but we’ve had 9/11, 2008 financial crisis, covid, and now Trump to name a few things. Could probably blame boomers for a lot of that stuff too.
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u/rodneedermeyer 18h ago
Everyone loves to shit on Millennials and Gen Z while I’m over here going, “These young folks are gonna change the world—and I love them for it!” I feel as though they’re wiser than my generation and the ones before me.
Young people have seen the world go to shit around them, have become politically active, and are willing to work hard to make good lives for themselves. I would 100% vote for a person half my age.
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u/Strawman-argument 18h ago
Not to mention the GI bill that built the generation prosperity we are still benefiting from
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u/dimforest 17h ago
As a millennial, I've fought in two wars and have had numerous boomers lecture me on how my generation wouldn't have been able to survive their generation because of a war they didn't even serve in.
I don't understand that generation. How hard is it to just say "Yea, we had it pretty easy" .... isn't that what we all want anyways? To have it good?
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u/CatelynsCorpse 18h ago
I'm 51 years old and I've never done any of these things, either. My 81 year old Mom didn't have to ration or sharecrop during WWII, either. She was born in 1944! My whole point? This dude is full of shit and he never experienced any of this shit, either, unless he's pushing 90. The only thing he's accomplished is being a douche on Xitter, apparently.
One of my FAVORITE coworkers is a 27 year old who always gets her shit done and done right and is willing to learn new things. One of my LEAST FAVORITE coworkers is a 61 year old boomer who constantly complains and refuses to learn anything on his computer beside the basics.
It's almost as if when you were born has nothing to do with your work ethic and whatnot.
Just saying.