The best Demography Studies books: Reddit reviews

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I suggest reading A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America.

It goes over a lot of detail on this subject. How they took plurality power of the government in 1982, majority in 1992, and even now, still hold 2/3s of all government positions such as federal senate/house members, governors, and state house/senators (that number may have been lowered in the 2018 election, but they still hold the majority).

That we find it horrifying that the rich have too much control with the money in this country, yet, if you look at it, the Baby Boomer generation controls 70% of the disposable income & wealth in this country.

They're a generation which changed laws to help the young when they were young at the expense of their parents. They changed the laws to help the middle aged when they were middle aged at the expense of their children and parents (e.g. wanting to get rid of the estate tax when their parents generation started dying, and no way to declare bankruptcy for student loans anymore). And now that they're old, laws are being changed to help the old at the expense of the young (not so surprisingly, a lot of state government problems are due to pension issues, which just so happen to grandfather their generation into the huge pension payouts causing all the issues).

Baby boomers also didn't have to compete with women or people of color when it came to jobs or forging a prominent place in society. My boomer father talks often about how at the age of 18 they could get good, family supporting jobs by just walking into places off the street. I'm Gen-X with a millennial son and luckily I have parents that understand how different their reality was from the one kids are facing today.

A few years back a book was written about boomers called A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. I heard the author interviewed and it was hard to argue some of his points.

He does it because it’s self serving and he doesn’t care how it affects others. He is a sociopath. One of the books I’ve been reading over the holidays is A Generation Of Sociopaths. It looks at how policy is shaped through the lens of generations past and present. It argues that the baby boomers, as a generation, are sociopathic. That they’ve created huge costs on other generations for their own benefit, and how the politics and policy that most of us here know it, is a stark contrast to the politics and policies of previous generations. Some for the better, but mostly for the worse. It’s an interesting read and I recommend it. It provides an original viewpoint as to why politics and policies are shaped the way they are in present day.

Law student checking-in. A valley girl in my 1L crim law class thought that a husband kissing his sleeping wife on her cheek was sexual assault because she couldn't affirmatively consent while asleep.

Many current law students were born on or after 1995. According to Jean Twenge, this is the cut-off year for "iGen," a new generation of ultra-fragile, cotton ball-coddled servile authoritarian crybullies.

One semester while at a legal clinic, we held a plenary discussion about "what does justice mean to you?" Students were sorted in to groups of 4-5. Every group answered some variant of

>"Justice means social justice. It means recognizing historical wrongdoings, including those perpetuated by the legal system. It means creating alternative legal systems for victims like indigenous people (i.e., lighter sentencing than for everyone else). It means fighting for more equality, we don't have nearly enough equality."

I was the only student to point out that justice doesn't need a modifier. Justice is good enough on its own. It's gotten us this far. My group members disagreed. I was the only person to define justice as procedural fairness + treating like cases alike.

I study at a top 10 law school.

It's partly a human thing, but I think it's gotten especially bad with the Boomers.

If you haven't already, I highly suggest you check out A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

Try to get past the title, since the author tries quite hard to build an objective, data-driven case for how Baby Boomers have stood out in a fairly bad way compared to both their parents and children.

As depressing as it is, I think we should already be something of a case study in what not to do. In particular, how to prevent another generation like the Baby Boomers from forming.

I know the generational shouting is tiring, but I highly suggest y'all check out <em>A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America</em>. Try to get past the title, since the author does their best to make objective statements and observations. They use piles of historical data to work through the medical diagnosis of Sociopathy, and it lines up depressingly well with the Boomer generation. All of that is wrapped up in the context of presenting an evidence of diagnosis to satisfy a trial's 'beyond a reasonable doubt' requirements.

If nothing else, it lays out a great, data-backed road-map for how we've gotten to where we are as a nation, and everything that's gone wrong on the way here. Tax policy shifts, infrastructure neglect, education failings, political party shifts, climate denial, and on and on and on. All within the context of why a large group of people more likely to be sociopaths than any other generation might make those decisions.

I used to feel much the same way until someone I respect gifted me this book so I gave it a read. By the end I was convinced of the thesis, the baby boomers were an especially shitty generation. They cut their own taxes and stopped making maintenance investments in things like infrastructure and education, all while decrying the sorry state of our roads and schools. The death of unions, lower property taxes, public education disinvestment all benefited the boomers to the detriment of everyone else.

The Bell Curve should be required reading at every single university. Universities should lose federal funding if they don't require it and test to ensure people have read it.

Also, good book on subject:

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

>In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.

>Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.

This question gets people RILED UP. Darling, in America we have no class system, you know that. :P

There's a very interesting book that's now pretty dated but gives a solid foundation on this topic called &quot;Class&quot; A guide through the American Status System by Paul Fussell. Read it for an eye opening look into how it is!

He points out that things like no white after Labor Day and similar strictures (I was raised to believe that patent leather is not worn by polite society, or that pierced ears on children are vulgar, for example) are part of a class system that places people with nothing but time to drift around the globe in search of sport and leisure at the top. So naturally you wouldn't wear white after Labor Day as you're now in moving on to Eden Roc and tennis season is over or whatever :P

However that's high WASP preppy. That's not the only kind of "wealthy" there is! Plenty of people who are genuinely mind bogglingly rich wear flashy clothes and have diamond encrusted watches and so on.

Fussell also points out that there's a class that's beyond class: artists and the children of movie stars, the hyper-wealthy service class people (like let's say "energy workers" who work with the stars) or trustafarian types. Those people wear ironic brands and pad around first class cabins in bare feet with no bra (the book was written in like 1983).

Fascinating read.

I am reading through this

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

Right now, and it would disagree fully. There a number of trends associated with the boomers and how they lived their lives, things such as drug use, premartial sex, teenage pregancy, etc that spike up with the boomer gen when compared to generation before and after. Is it really hard to say that they are a bloc with coherent political positions when as soon as they came into power they elected the first true neoliberal president, Reagan, and haven't looked back for the last 40 years?

I heard a very depressing theory on the "Talking Politics" podcast a few months ago. The idea is that equality within a society can arise only during and after a destructive force such as that presented by the Second World War. Without such such destruction, the "natural" forces of politics and human nature will inevitably result in those with more resources exploiting the system for their own ends to become richer.

EDIT: It was Walter Scheidel, <em>The Great Leveller</em>.

Sure. But because of the big sort, I would wager a bet that a significant number of us live in deep blue places. In those places, the DSA really does matter a lot more than the figures suggest for city council, school board, state rep, or whatever local office, most of which have a reasonably material impact on your life.

Furthermore, the median user of r/neoliberal is probably as likely to have a friend that's friendly toward the DSA as they are likely to have a friend that's friendly toward the GOP.

Currently reading this, https://www.amazon.com/dp/031639579X/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1

I thought I was going to read it and find it to be too inclusive, of all Boomers, but it's more an interesting analysis of what chain of events led to a generation of people that contains a large number of sociopaths, and they basically infected their entire generation with their ideals.

Nope. Boomers still in control. From about 1980 to probably 2025. Those fuckers aren’t going to give up their power to bleed this country dry until they’re in the ground. And they have the numbers to do it.

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

Read this book about the boomers by a boomer. I couldn’t get through more than 2 pages at a time without wanting to go all dexter on the entire generation.

Nah, their generation is something special. The WW2 generation built this country and gave us things like civil rights, the boomers, since they took power in 1994 and to a lesser extent since 1980, have been all about aggrandizing their selves...This book lays it out.

There is a book on that generation showing how they used their voting power to benefit their own interest by screwing future generations. A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

Not directly about Trump, but if you want insight read Fussel's book on Class. Still mostly accurate even though it came out in the 70s iirc. https://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253

Class in the US is only somewhat related to money. It mostly has to do with preferences and cultural attitudes that are very hard to shake once they're ingrained as the default for a person at a young age.

While I agree with your sentiment, I think you are wrong. The boomers committed a specific crime against future generations and they are unique in their generational narcissism. Obviously, not al boomers are this way. Both my parents were public servants who truly care about the future, but this was not the norm. Boomers were a net conservative generation, which people somehow overlook due to the 1960s, but public polling data paints a clearer picture. If you really want to dig into this issue, read this book with an open mind. It was given to me as a gift, but I went in with similar skepticism as you but after some research I think the thesis is correct. I don't want to punish boomers, I just want them and their shitty ideas out of power.

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America:

> In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations. > > Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off. > > Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

The Iron Law of Oligarchy posits that any political/economic system allowed to run long enough turns into an oligarchy, with resets only happening because of civil conflicts, invasions, collapses and other periods of unrest.

A good book to explore this with historical data is The Great Leveler by Walter Schiedel.

> the word “entitlements” only means welfare for people too lazy to work > don’t touch my social security, SSDI, unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. which are totally not entitlements when I’m using them > also, I still don’t like paying taxes

Recommend reading A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America since what you posted defines the majority of that generation.

I'm just going to leave this book recommendation here

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A Generation of Sociopaths

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Edit: stupid "new" reddit can't deal with it's own link formatting

If you haven't already, I highly suggest you check out A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

Try to get past the title, since the author tries quite hard to build an objective, data-driven case for how Baby Boomers have handled their time in charge of the country.

It's bad here too. A lot of Baby Boomers seem to have no empathy for the young. [I know a few good ones who are friends so have to put up that caveat] An American man even wrote a book about narcissistic Baby Boomers. The lack of empathy for the young is astounding. Gen Xs got a lot of this but I have noticed for the millennials it has worsened.

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

I was ostracized and rejected by Baby Boomer parents who considered us failures for not obtaining the middle class and above and blamed us accordingly so some of this hits home.

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America (yes I know the title is a bit cringy) actually works through this in rather solid, data-backed detail.

Of course any individual has the possibility of being convinced or shifted from their position, but on a large-scale the boomer generation has caused, and are still causing, a LOT of damage due to actions of mass-sociopathy.

I don’t think Americans spend anywhere near the amount of time thinking about class that the British do.

To the extent that we think about it at all, it’s more about cultural norms than income. A good book to read about this is Class by Paul Fussell .

You could get him a nice book as a make-up gift, this will cheer him up no doubt:

"A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America" https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

"In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations."

There's a nice pop-ecology book on this very subject, The Triumph of the City. As you can guess from the title, the author concludes that yes, moving to NYC is a very green thing to do. The book is about the ecological impact of cities in general, but he cites lots of data about NYC in particular, since it's such a prototypical example of city living.

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The ubiquity of mass transit was one major reason of course, but there were other surprising examples, like (IIRC) the piles of trash bags stacked on the curb. The same volume of trash, he argues, generated by a suburb, would be spread out over a much larger area, requiring more garbage-trucks-miles to collect, generating more emissions, etc. Many of the arguments come down to: if you're going to have 8 million people in the first place, better to put them all in one place (at least from an environmental perspective). I'm not qualified to judge the book's arguments scientifically, but it was a fun read, and the arguments at least sounded plausible.

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The author would probably encourage you to get a tote bag for the bodega. :)

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Loss of life is one devastating effect of regular pandemics and economic damage is another. Consider what happens to the economy if pandemics occur regularly. Close association of individuals with different perspectives is <strong>a key to productivity</strong>. Large, dense cities are the most innovative areas, and the most innovative companies are those that bring disparate people together. If cities become ground zero for pandemics, fewer people will probably choose to live in them. And with that will come a decline in national vitality.

Preventing recurrent pandemics is a major public health challenge. To meet this challenge, society will need to act domestically and globally.