Chuck Ponzi February 13th, 2007
If anyone knows me, I love to poke around others’ blogs for hours on ends, just reading and reading. Every once in a while, something piques my interest in just a certain way that I think it captures a small part of the zeitgeist. With that said, I think much could be said about a subtle rivalry between boomers and Xers.
Well, subtle in the sense that Xers haven’t been giving the Boomers the chair-over-the head routine.
Just such a post from the
ActiveRain blog shows how clueless many Boomers are about Xer’s interests, or for that matter, even who they are. This was stated by “The Harper Team” associate who blithely posted a blog entry with the original title that appeared to be XXX Adult Market until he/she realized that it perhaps would attract the wrong kind of internet crowd… OK, if you don’t find that funny, you probably won’t find this cluelessness funny either:
Everyday over at The Harper Team, we are interacting with more and more young people looking for their first home. I happened upon a post from The New York Times has a post Young Buyers, Prepared and Fearless and it got me thinking again about Gen X.
This is a great read to help us understand the mind set of Gen X buyers entering into the housing market. These young buyers are not afraid of carrying more debt (they’ve never been through hard times) and they come prepared with a great deal of online research to support their purchase offer.
OK, any Xers out there would probably range between humored and mildly incensed. Have no fear, one of their readers turns it around on them:
It’s funny how most Gen X posts I read always originate from a baby boomer who’s read some book or article on the subject, … often written by another baby boomer.
I have worked with Gen-X in the last year, and I can tell you that none of them were fearless about loans. In fact quite the opposite. I think that a lot of young people are still very conservative and conscientious about their mortgage. Where this generalized notion of fearlessness comes from is unknown to me.
Of course, the ball was so placed, that any kind of response to that blather could be knocked out of the park by a certified imbecile. Really, that’s just stupid talk.
Another poster was a bit more to the point:
“Never been though hard times”
What sort of bullshit is that? Pretty much every GenXer I know believes the overwhelming majority of us will be working until the day we die trying to pay off the soon to be bankrupt social security system, and shameful national debt.
Good job baby boomers overbuilding 55+ condos like confetti in Times Square on New Years eve. You don’t seriously think they will retain value once you guys start kicking the bucket do you?
I wonder who will have to clean up the mess you guys make?
…oh yeah…
Gen X will.
The funniest part of that whole interchange was that the Boomers hadn’t at all realized that they should have been talking about GenY all along, not GenX. The New York Times article was talking about early 20 somethings. Xers are now making their way through the 30’s and 40’s.
I apologize to my boomer readers, but dang that is funny, and like so many Boomers to mix up who they were even talking about.
It all reminds me of a
post over on Mish’s Global Economic Analysis blog some time ago about a realtor who had lost a friendship over a house at the lake. The former friend of the agent was pointing the finger to a shady deal that they had lost the house on the lake, and the agent had gone and bid on the property and was buying it. Two boomers duking it out over a piece of property… man, that just has funny written all over it. One of the most memorable parts of that post was a comment that SenX left:
I seem to have an insatiable appetite for anecdotal housing bust stories. I simply never get tired of reading about the mistakes others have made and the miserable situations they are in. If they are in denial about the trainwreck they are on it doesn’t really diminish my enjoyment of the event. If anything it just heightens the anticipation.
I don’t care for either side in this story. The “lets get a second home on the lake as a weekend house”, child-like, tantrum having, baby boomers or the backstabbing, jilted, snakeoil selling real estate family. I hope we keep getting updates as this mess unwinds further.
The reality is that GenX is coming into their own in many facets, financially, politically, and socially, and that the excesses of the former generation might be enough impetus for us to really solve some of the problems that they left us.
Good Luck, GenX
