Baby Boomers did not start the fire, but they poured on fuel and fanned the flames

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m50p-XScreM
Attached is a version of We Didn't Start the Fire Lyrics by Billy Joel
The lyrics list events in history starting with 1949.
The events in this song are known in both political and pop culture history.
It is ironic though that the song starts with the Baby Boomers birth years and neglects many historical events prior to 1945.   What does this song say about baby boomers?

The Baby Boom is described as a period in history after WWII when the soldiers returned to happier times to start families.   This boom in population followed a generation of kids through out their lives.   These children born between the ages of 1946-1961 became known as the little darlings of dollars to products and companies that wanted to market to them for profit.

The earliest baby boomers came of age in the 60s when Civil Rights was breaking free and they pushed the free love movement and made Woodstock at thing.    The later baby boomers came of age in the 70s disco era of sex, drugs and rock and roll became more mainstream.    Gay men were still in the closet and a minority and their young adult lives existed in the political landscape of Nixon, Roe vs Wade and Oil spills.    They started getting serious about life in the 80's at work and started having kids.  Their kids being born between the ages  of  1980-1995 will become known as the millennials 20 years later.    1975 was around when the oldest boomers started working and 2005 was when the oldest boomers started retiring.   The youngest boomers started working in the 80s and will retire in 2025.    The generational cycle sees their exit from the workforce between 2005 and 2025 when their children are entering the workforce from 2005 to 2020.

It can be said that this song by Billy Joel was an anthem of baby boomers.    Their lifestyles to defy normal and convention with  a 'screw you' or 'screw the man' like mentality of rock anthems.
Truth be told a song about historical events in politics and pop culture could be written in any generation.  The world has been turning since it's inception over 2,000 years ago and there have always been mini fires and events that stand out in memory.

When looking back on this generation and the generation they raised one can argue that while the baby boomers did not start the fires, indeed it has been burning since the world's been turning. But the baby boomers did add fuel to it and fan the flames which tells us a little more about why we are where we are in 2019.

How did they make things worse you ask?

Growing up in the turn of the century, these kids grew up in the sprawl of the suburbs.
The height of prosperity for American families.   The tumultous times of the Great Depression and WWII were over. Better times were ahead and kids were showered upon. 

Coming of age in the 60's these children who knew nothing but good times took to the Civil Rights Era to ensure good times for all colors and embraced the Free Love mantra of peace, love and rock and roll and wanted to have fun.  The mustang was introduced and these kids were loving life.

When they started working and earning money in the 70s they knew disco, politics was just getting interesting when politicians started seeing what they could get away with.  Some got away with it, some did not.   These good time kids fell into whatever pop culture gave them and embraced the all mighty marketing dollars that catered to them. 

The 80's came and more suburban sprawl grew, their families started and they were starting to get into middle management in their careers.   As you enter adulthood health care cost are expensive, These middle managers must have thought the price of health care was so expensive and did not want to pay for it so they pushed the release of HMO's and employee subsized health benefits for their families. The good time kids were now raising kids.   Having grown up in good times themselves, they wanted to show their kids good times.   However it seems the good time kids did not know how to confront the negative of child raising and explaining the bad times. Many books about child rearing came out and new methods of parenting starting becoming popular. 
Youth sports started to not keep score, there were no winners and losers and everyone got a trophy.
Why teach your kids how to lose respectfully in team sports and the quickest way to get rid of a tantrum is if everyone wins. 
They must have thought they were helping their kids be happy about playing sports and being part of a team.      These good time kid baby boomers were getting their employee to pay for health care cost and raising happy kids, or so one thought, right? And the mini vans were created for them, they were on top of the world.

The 90's ushered in their children becoming school aged kids, tweens and teens and some of them became leaders at their corporations making bigger decisions. 
The 90's also ushered in the start of school shootings and  increased corporate mergers, acquisitions and take overs.    I jokingly call this corporate era the time of, 'if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em'  when lesser companies bought bigger companies and market share started getting condensed.   You were no longer competing with competitors honestly with integrity to make good products like their parents generation, you were buying them up, trying to cut cost and make more money for stock holders which you tried to divy up amongst your own employees. 
Meanwhile their kids at home were growing up and starting to introduce their lack of respect, discipline and their inability to accept failure into society as problems.  The Education systems were dropping Home Economics and Shop Classes that taught life skills and trades because they were too gender specific and kids could be more than a housewife or a mechanic which these programs were stereotyped to produce.  They started removing the Ten Commandments from public schools so people who did not go to Church were not offended, or perhaps it made them feel less guilty for not having religion and they wanted more separation of Church and State.

The century turned and their kids were starting to enter college. And the dot com's were starting to boom.
Some of the boomers fenagled bills with the Government to get college scholarships for their kids (i.e, the Louisiana TOPS scholarship that conveniently became under funded in 2015 when the baby boomers kids were out of the college years).   School shootings persisted. the rise in non career oriented degrees were happening and tuition cost started on their upward trend and student loans became the norm and were increasing.    The height of the millennials in college was many of them electing the first African American President of the United States to prove they were not racist.   
Voting based on race and gender was starting to take shape without thinking about qualifications but voting on Hope. 
Their college years persisted during this tenure and they started to enter the workforce when they also wanted to vote for the first woman President of the United States.     During this tenure of Obama we also saw established companies shuttered not able to rebound from the 2008-2009 recession,  These companies shuttered were lead by baby boomers in the c-suite driving companies into the ground. 

Which takes us to now, boomers are driving companies into the ground so they can retire as millionaires from dying companies.  Their kids are entering the workforce and demanding not just change to fit their way,  but change that is not for the better, it is change that makes one lazier and lesser.   We have a generation of kids who cannot accept loss so bad that they are still angry about an election 3 years later that their candidate did not win.     These kids do not know how to communicate in the workforce and their inability to apply thought and knowledge had lead companies to change their infrastructure and softwares to systems where they just push buttons letting a computer do all the work.   I have many examples of the millennials lack of workforce etiquette but I have already rambled too much on this entry for examples.

So how do we fix it?
We get back to basics. 
Respect, discipline, honesty, integrity and most importantly family values.
And less materialism.

To be continued .......