Then of course thereвЂ™s the issue of climate change, which theyвЂ™ve done almost nothing to solve. Our public education system has steadily degraded as well, forcing middle-class students to bury themselves in debt in order to get a college education. ItвЂ™s crumbling, and the boomers have allowed it to crumble. The American Society of Civil Engineers thinks thereвЂ™s something like a $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure in deferred maintenance. We used to have the finest infrastructure in the world. TheyвЂ™ve spent virtually all our money and assets on themselves and in the process have left a financial disaster for their children. They habitually cut their own taxes and borrow money without any concern for future burdens. The boomers inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it.

ItвЂ™s roughly 103 percent now - and it keeps rising. I donвЂ™t want to get bogged down in an ocean of numbers and data here (thatвЂ™s in the book), but think of it this way: IвЂ™m 41, and when I was born, the gross debt-to-GDP ratio was about 35 percent. On the economic front, the damage is equally obvious, and it trickles down to all sorts of other social phenomena. Just look around and notice whatвЂ™s been done. Well, the damage done to the social fabric is pretty self-evident.

So how have they broken the country? Bruce Gibney And theyвЂ™ve basically been in charge ever since. They became a majority of the electorate in the early вЂ™80s, and they fully consolidated their power in Washington by January 1995. More importantly, they never experienced the social solidarity that unfolded during war time and that helped produce the New Deal.Д«ut itвЂ™s really the white middle-class boomers who exemplify all the awful characteristics and behaviors that have defined this generation. But I focus on the first two-thirds of boomers because their experiences are pretty homogeneous: They were raised after the war and so have no real experience of trauma or the Great Depression or even any deprivation at all. The baby boomers are conventionally defined as people born between 19. I spoke to Gibney about these claims, and why he thinks the baby boomers have wrecked America.ДЄ lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows. The boomers, according to Gibney, have committed вЂњgenerational plunder,вЂќ pillaging the nationвЂ™s economy, repeatedly cutting their own taxes, financing two wars with deficits, ignoring climate change, presiding over the death of AmericaвЂ™s manufacturing core, and leaving future generations to clean up the mess they created. ThatвЂ™s the argument Bruce Gibney makes in his 2017 book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. You know the punchlines by now.Д«ut is the millennial hate justified? Have we dropped the generational baton, or was it a previous generation, the so-called baby boomers, who actually ruined everything? We demand participation trophies, canвЂ™t find jobs, and live with our parents until weвЂ™re 30. WeвЂ™re spoiled, entitled, and hopelessly glued to our smartphones.

The world after the boomer are dead