The Great Boomer Die Off -or- It Can't Come Soon Enough

[dales]

• 1.20.99 Vol 35/ Issue 02


Long-Awaited Baby Boomer Die-Off To Begin Soon, Experts Say


WASHINGTON, DC—After decades of waiting, the much-anticipated mass Baby Boomer die-off should finally commence within the next five to ten years, Census Bureau officials said Monday.

"I am pleased to announce that it won't be much longer now," Census Bureau deputy director Arthur Clausewitz said at a press conference. "According to our statistics, by 2009, we should see the Baby Boomers start to die off in large numbers. Heart attacks, strokes, cancer, kidney failure—you name it, the Boomers are going to be dropping from it."


Clausewitz said the Great Boomer Die-Off should hit full stride in approximately 2015, when the oldest members of the Baby Boom generation—born during the last days of World War II—turn 70.

"Before long, tens of millions of members of this irritating generation will achieve what such Boomer icons as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Timothy Leary and John Kennedy already have: death. Before long, we will live in a glorious new world in which no one will ever again have to endure tales of Joan Baez's performance at Woodstock."

Despite his enthusiasm, Clausewitz cautioned that the Great Boomer Die-Off will not be without its downside.

"Our nation must steel itself for one vast, final orgy of Boomer self-obsession as we are hit with a bewildering onslaught of magazine pictorials, hardcover coffee-table books and multi-part, Motown-soundtracked television specials looking back on the glory days of the 1960s," Clausewitz said. "But once this great, final spasm of nostalgia passes, the ravages of age will take its toll on boomer self-indulgence, and the curtain will at long last fall on what is regarded by many as the most odious generation America has ever produced."

Clausewitz also noted that the cost of caring for the elderly and infirm of the nation's largest demographic group will be enormous.

"The selfishness that has been a hallmark of the Boomers will continue right up to the very end, as they force millions of younger Americans to devote an inordinate amount of time and resources to their care, bankrupting the Social Security system in the process," Clausewitz said. "In their old age, the Boomers will actually manage to take as much from the next generation as they did the previous one, which fought WWII so that their Boomer children could have Philco TVs and Davy Crockett air rifles."

The Great Boomer Die-Off will have its greatest impact, experts say, in the economic sector. The funeral industry is expected to enjoy a $700 million surge in profits, a result of the inevitable onslaught of lavish, Big Chill-themed memorial services. Many industries, however, will likely suffer from the die-off, including the manufacturers of sport-utility vehicles, home jacuzzis and hair-replacement systems. The financial sector will also feel the hit, as it is forced to fill some 400,000 high-paying stockbroker and corporate-banking jobs, held for decades by ex-hippies.

"It's not exactly clear how, but for the past 40 years, this generation has managed to keep the spotlight on itself," Brown University history professor A. Thomas Raymond said. "The era-defining flower children of the '60s, hedonistic disco-goers of the '70s, BMW-driving yuppies of the '80s and graying private-investor homeowner parents of the '90s all have one thing in common: They're all Boomers."

"It takes a staggering amount of effort to keep oneself the focus of an entire society for one decade, much less four, but the Boomers somehow pulled it off," Raymond continued. "Thankfully, though, their reign will soon come to an end. It's just too bad so few of them died before they got old."

[RayThom]

Well, it's about time. All these old farts are really putting a drain on the system.

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

[oldr_n_wsr]

I should have died many times over.
I am grateful I didn't.
Others may have a different opinion on that.

[Bicycle Bill]

We boomers are also the ones who put aside the cars for the bicycles; forced auto manufacturers to add such radical safety ideas as shatter-proof glass, seat belts, crumple zones, and air bags and make cars more fuel efficient (less fuel burned = less particulate matter in the air ... and your lungs); and pushed for things like clean air, clean water, minimum standards for foods and medicines, safety standards (fire retardancy, for example) for clothing and other consumer products, and the elimination of known toxic chemicals (DDT, dioxins, and herbicides such as parathion and 2,4,5-T) in non-essential applications.  Cancer is no longer the death sentence it once was; many childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, diphtheria, and whooping cough have been all but eradicated; and advances are still being made against diseases (Zika, AIDS, SARS, even Legionnaire's Disease) that weren't even a blip on the radar screens back when Woodstock was going on — all of which resulted, on the whole, in making ourselves and our children healthier and even more long-lived, with an added side-effect of improving the latter years of our parents and grandparents as well.

So we boomers are not quite as ready to shuffle off this mortal coil as the "The Onion" — and yes, this is an a fine example of Trumpian "alternative facts", complete with a dummy dateline, run in the Onion — would have you believe.  In fact, at age 62 I am technically at the tail-end of the Boomer generation, and I feel just fine.  You ain't getting rid of us that easily.

-"BB"-

[oldr_n_wsr]

At 58 I am even further out on the tail. When did they declare the boomers to be "over"? 1964?

[RayThom]

Ah, Woodstock -- I sort of remember it well.

It was me, my friend Brucie, and the girl down the street, Patty Moon-glow, who never made the trek to that venerable, musical shrine to be. I was later told that everyone in Delaware County under the age of 25 were in attendance, bringing the total number of music lovers at the venue to a staggering 17.4 million. (This number was later, and horribly, under-reported by all the fake news organizations as one million strong. Sad.)

Baby boomers... the worst scourge on America, and genesis to the current administration in the White House.

"Turn on, tune in, drop out"... very few listened to the good doctor, and we got what we deserved. Sigh.

[BoSoxGal]

There was a piece on TV or radio the other day about the extraordinary number of boomer protesters from the 60s who are now Trumpanzees. Selfish pricks with no principles, IMHO.

[Guinevere]

Boomers ended in 1964.

GenX next, until 1980.

Then the Millennials, until 1997 or 2000.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/us/baby-b ... ast-facts/


My Swede is a Boomer (I'm GenX), so please, lets take it easy on promoting the dying, please.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Thanks Guin. That's what I thought.

I'm GenX

you Young'un



My kids are millenials.

[BoSoxGal]

I'm pretty sure RT was only kidding, Guin. Didn't see anybody really promoting dying of anyone else, boomer or otherwise. That said, love like there's no tomorrow because there really isn't one promised to any of us!

[Joe Guy]

Sung to the tune of the chorus of 'We are the World'....

We are the aged, we are the boomers
We are the ones who made the world this way
And we're still living
There's a noise we make when
Our bowel movement arrives
Then we all get on with our day
So joyfully

One more time!!!

We are the aged....

[RayThom]

... My Swede is a Boomer... so please, lets take it easy on promoting the dying, please.

That's just plain silly. If people could/would start dying due my promotion of it I'd be working for the CIA or the Democrats and raking in Million$ a day.

Then again, some years ago I wished our old mutual friend and/or nemesis, omar, dead and look what happened to him. However, If Lord Dampnut makes a move to reduce my SSI maybe I'll start honing my special powers.

Booga, Booga'...

[dales]

Then again, some years ago I wished our old mutual friend and/or nemesis, omar, dead and look what happened to him.

I knew omar IRL.........he died even before he hit fifty.

SAD