Last of 2009: Drunky, you're Unfair to Some Boomers

If you're a Boomer, and you're thinking this, sadly, you're right. I'd like to share this, my last last last blog entry of 2009. To my Boomer-aged mentors, sorry guys, what else can I say? 'Boomer' is a demographic, not an individual.

So. Yes, I posted a number of rebuts in this wormtongue's blog, but it didn't get interesting until a few olds agreed with me. You can search for the replies yourself.

Drunken Economist says in response to User1769803:
To Rick Brazitis and User1769803. I'm glad that you guys decided to raise your voices in this debate.. but of your generation I find that you guys are the exception and not the rule. I wish there were more like you, then we wouldn't have this problem.

In fact, in any other generation it would not even be considered to sell your kids down the road for short term gains. Oh, and then once you've thrown a bunch of them under the bus, ask for more as Don is obviously doing here because he's 'disturbed by a trend'.

We really need more of the OLDER Boomers, not the Clinton/Bush/Pelosi aged ones to raise their voices and to call your peers out.

We need those of you who with the resolve of the ones who didn't 'chickenhawk' out; who SERVED despite objections. But how many of you will step forward (again) to help take our country back?

I have a Boomer friend, with a mortgage, and a family, with uncompromising ideals like that. And despite the fact that he basically trained a bunch of youngs like us to wire up your world, he's now cast off.

User1769803, I'm taking your entreaty as a New Year's resolution for 2010.

But this is America. Now Land of the Oversimplification and home of the Ad Hominem. And these blogs are sound bytes on the 'net.

We may be divided by various things but it all amounts to hypertribalism.

The Geeks / Hackers / IT Castoffs of any age are my tribe. My teachers and my students.

And folks like Don and Vivek Wadhwa are messing with my tribe -- in the most disingenuous of terms.

[From We Owe It to Our Kids to Get Over the H-1B Hang-Up | Blogs | ITBusinessEdge.com]

I'd also like to thank Dolores for expressing this sentiment. I could not have said it better myself:

Dolores says in response to POed Lib:
As a boomer myself, I would have to say that Drunky has a point. I noticed some things in my birth cohort as I grew up: a tendency towards narcissism, a devil-may-care attitude towards long-term consequences, and a focus on short-term self-fulfillment vs. long-term social good. A lot of these tendencies are well manifested in the modern business world that brought us outsourcing and the vast overuse of guestworker visas (and many other stocking-stuffers as well). As I write this, articles all over the world are trumpeting the final filling of the yearly H-1B cap as a sign of an improving economy. We might well ask, 'for whom?' as they sure as hell are not hiring Americans in America just yet. Anyone with a more cautious, apprehensive mind had only to run the numbers, their population vs. ours, the salary differentials, the different cultures (our tradition of fair play and political correctness, which is not widely shared), and all the other elements in the great equation of the American economy to see that opening the doors of our labor market to the whole wide world was even stupider than playing Russian roulette with multiple turns. The toxic effect on America's middle class, the welfare of our children, our infrastructure, and all those pesky rights we worked so hard to establish, is so blatantly obvious to anyone with even a slight sense of numeracy, that it boggles the mind to see all the articles arguing in favor of the flat world phenomenon. What are those authors smoking? Yet the bleating goes on, led by the pied piper himself, Vivek Wadhwa. If extraneous workers finally go home, he paints it as "America losing talent" - never mind that most of them were nothing special, and that America has boatloads of displaced talent who could step up any day. The practice of "good enough" IT (leaving more money for executive bonuses) and of considering employees as "human resources" vs. "human beings" comes straight out of narcissisting thinking, too. What needs to happen is that the steering wheels of America need to be taken away from the dadaistic and nihilistic unbelievers in anything and given back to Americans. One wonders how great the wreckage has to be before they will let go.

[From We Owe It to Our Kids to Get Over the H-1B Hang-Up | Blogs | ITBusinessEdge.com]

In closing this last post, I wish you all Happy New Year and an end to the 'Naughty Decade'. I remain your Drunky.

Prost and Salud,

Mentok out.