Posted on 12/11/2007 5:35:10 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
(Generation born between 1946, 1964 gets even more influential...)
For America, there really is no getting past the Boomers. They're getting older, but they're also growing more powerful and - unlike the president who influenced their youth - not about to pass on the torch to a new generation of Americans.
America is on its second boomer president, George W. Bush, and the bulk of those presidential candidates eager to succeed him are also boomers. Even Barack Obama, the Democratic senator from Illinois who campaigns on a theme of getting beyond the old political fights, is himself a boomer, born in 1961.
Take a look at the bestseller list and near the top is Tom Brokaw's latest, "Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today." Brokaw once chronicled "The Greatest Generation" that survived the Great Depression and helped win World War II. Here, he reflects on and talks with members of the "Sixties" generation.
Brokaw provides history and context for a generation that just can't get over itself.
But there's another book out that may actually tell us more about where America and the boomers are actually headed.
"Generation Ageless: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Live Today . . . and They're Just Getting Started," was written by J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman.
The title really does say it all.
Smith and Clurman are with Yankelovich Inc., the consumer research company that was among the first to use the term baby boomers in the late 1960s. Their book - aimed at marketers, media buyers and anyone else interested in tracking the boomers - includes data from a 2006 study of 1,023 boomers.
The authors actually break the boomer generation down not by age, but by six segments, everything from Straight Arrows, about one-third of boomers who are "driven by traditional values and religion," to Re-Activists, about 15% of boomers who "are ready to join campaigns in support of social causes."
In between there are Due Diligents who "think ahead and plan for the worst;" Maximizers, the quintessential boomers who "want to do as much as possible and get the most from life;" Sideliners, who are "private, self-contained and undemanding;" and Diss-Contenteds who "see social problems they would like to fix, and their sympathies are with the protesters."
The authors describe boomers as "middle ageless" or "generation ageless."
"Unfortunately, we're still going to die," says Smith, president of Yankelovich Inc. "But baby boomers are the first generation that will enjoy the new experience of getting older. It will give them opportunities in the marketplace." Forever young?
For Smith, the biggest surprise was the boomers maintaining a "very youthful sensibility."
"It's not that boomers will necessarily live a lot longer, they're going to enjoy more years of an active old age," he says. "They're going to transform old age; it will be like a late middle age. It will keep many of them at the workplace."
Smith says industries and advertisers have to adapt. Boomers will have different financial needs and planning requirements compared to their parents.
"You're kind of assuming a standard retirement age and lifestyle, and boomers probably aren't going to do that," he says. "It's probably likely that boomers will need more money to do all the things they want to do after 65. . . . Boomers will demand different places to go, different activities, a different social climate."
Smith says the biggest mistake advertisers make is "to assume that all boomers are alike." But Smith says companies can still find a way to appeal to Maximizers who adore luxury and Diss-Contenteds who remain committed to social causes.
Think Whole Foods, where Maximizers can load up on expensive organic vegetables and free-range chickens while Diss-Contenteds can feel good about themselves while they purchase locally grown produce.
As for politics, well, the boomers aren't going to give up power.
"I think there is a chance we're going to have a lot of boomer presidents in a row," he says.
"I've sometimes described baby boomers as the Star Wars generation, the fight between good and evil, the dark side, with nothing in between. And baby boomer politics have played out this way their entire lives. It has always been a politics of polarization, a crusade on any side. I don't think boomers are going to temper their political feelings as they get older."
If anything, Smith says, the data shows boomers are going to "get re-energized in their political engagement."
Clurman, a senior partner at Yankelovich, says boomers actually agree on about 80% of issues, from trusting their instincts to being passionate about causes.
Not surprisingly, they differ on issues such as religion, the morality of premarital sex and the best way to solve social problems.
"A lot of the goals are the same, but the way you want to solve them, there are these huge, huge differences," she says.
But for Clurman, the most surprising finding was this: Boomers don't want to leave a legacy.
"We don't want to put our name on a building," she says.
"Most Boomers are not thinking about leaving something behind; they want to get something done today," the authors write. For the boomers, apparently, it's still all about them.
bttt
Donald Trump didn't get this message.
Baby Boomer Ping!
As self absorbed as ever.
Gag me with a spoon.
Sideliners, who are "private, self-contained and undemanding;"
Yep, that's me ;)
IOW, many will simply never grow up.
Fred Thompson is pre-boomer, a member of the “Silent Generation”. They are the only generation prior to Gen-X never to have had a president. This is a civil rights issue! We have a moral obligation to elect Fred Thompson and right this historic wrong!
Except it's the wrong generation. Other than that, okay.
And my Dad, too :)
I am a boomer! I feel we should toss all these crazy liberal boomers and RINOS out of office for their shear stupidity! If this is the best boomers can do, they can all go to hell!
FRED THOMPSON (true Conservative Federalist) - NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERIENCE (I’ll do whatever it takes to stop the bastards, include water-boarding) - 2ND AMENDMENT ADVOCATE (arm everyone and the criminals will back off) - SECURE THE BORDERS (starve the bastards out and they will go home) - LAW AND ORDER (enforcement first and foremost) - SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM (the program can’t sustain itself) - DEFEAT THE DEMOCRAT (any fool they put up) – TAX SIMPLIFICATION (choice for the tax payer) - PING!
Diss-Contenteds who "see social problems they would like to fix, and their sympathies are with the protesters."
I'm trying to figure out whether Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson is a Re-Activist or a Diss-Contented.
Rush Limbaugh is a boomer. Don’t dump the baby with the washwater. I’m a boomer, who has been “reformed.” Our contemporay conservatives, i.e. Bill Bennett, Oliver North, etc. and many more are conservative. What’s different than our parents who voted in FDR?
Obama a boomer?
His mother was born in 1942, I don’t think so.
Hmmm. I know a lot of leading edge boomers (I'm trailing end myself) who aren't necessarily saying they want a building, but are sure as heck thinking about how they'll be remembered and what their legacy can be. With the number of human secularists, you know they aren't going to count on meeting their maker as the next stage - they're more worried that Larry King is right and that you exist as long as someone remembers you...
I believe the definition of the Baby Boom is those born from 1946 (end of WWII) through 1964 (the year the Pill became available). His mother would've been 19 in 1961, so he could've been born in 61 which would make him a boomer.
Indeed. The "boomers" are the first generation to grow up under the New Deal, told that there was no problem or need that federal programs and bueaucracies couldn't remedy or satisfy, and that they had a right to expect them to do it. People complain about the "hippies" as if they had just appeared one day out of thin air.
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