According to William Strauss and Neil Howe's theory, the Western boomer generation would be composed largely ofidealistic and egocentric. This generation would be in conflict with Generation X and would sometimes have difficulty understanding the conservatism, homogeneity and teamwork skills displayed by their children of Generation Y. Again, let us emphasize that we are talking here about social typologies bringing together the global traits of a generation. It is not because idealism is a characteristic of many boomers that it concerns all members of this generation. It is easy to find none of the "Y" more idealistic than boomers.
French sociologist Louis Chauvel highlights the exceptional historical opportunity of the members of this generation, in Western countries, and highlights what he considers to be their responsibility for the crisis experienced by subsequent generations.
It is true that baby boomers have a lot of money. They did not experience war and grew up during the "Thirty Glorious Years", this strong period of economic growth between 1945 and 1973. Most boomers therefore did not experience unemployment when entering the labor market. Although they suffered the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, they fell back into growth during the following two decades. The boomers began to take power by gradually replacing the "silent" during the 1990s. At the beginning of the 21st century, they are in power in most economic and political organizations.
Louis Chauvel is not entirely wrong when he says that boomers are responsible for the crises experienced by the following generations. But here again we must be wary of generalizations. The pursuit of success and individualism are values that boomers have placed at the center of the concerns of our current society. They punctuate our lives, for better or for worse. Taken to excess, they rhyme with opportunism, egocentrism, corruption, fraud, waste, and pollution.
It must be acknowledged that the rise to power of the boomers coincides with many crises for which the values they advocate may be responsible. This began with the famous bankruptcy in 2001 ofEnron. Kenneth Lay (1942) , CEO, and Jeffrey Skilling (1953), former CEOs, were charged and convicted on numerous counts, including fraud and insider trading.
Two years later, it is Calisto Tanzi (1938), founder of Parmalat who is accused and convicted in the financial scandal that affected his company. In 2008, Madoff (1938) is charged and convicted of running the most notorious Ponzi scheme in history. Although Tanzi and Madoff should still be considered members of the Silent Generation in terms of their age, their thirst for success at all costs is closer to the sociological type attributed to baby boomers. As we have said before, generational boundaries can be very porous.
In 2008, we witnessed the peak of these repeated disasters that began in 2001, with Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The company's CEO and Chairman of the Board, Richard S. Fuld, Jr. (1946) is considered one of the most hated figures in the world of finance according to the Financial Times. In Switzerland, it is Marcel Ospel (1950) who leaves UBS the same year and who is criticized for his irresponsible and disrespectful management of the bank towards Society.
In 2011, Fukushima reminds us that development at all costs can have irreversible consequences in the long term. Boomers did not invent nuclear power plants and they are not solely responsible for this catastrophe. But the individualistic values of many of them are often contradictory to any notion of sustainable development and are thus realized to the detriment of future generations.
The same year, three years after the financial crisis, we witnessed the boomerang effect with a major budget crisis, the devaluation of the US rating, and the deep concerns about the debt of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). England is not doing any better, and France is surprisingly keeping its triple A rating, even if it is hanging by a thread. Once again, the boomers are not the only ones responsible for this crisis. The problem of public deficits in developed countries goes back several decades. But the thirst for success at all costs and the individualism of many of them have dug the debt abyss even deeper and postponed the problem onto future generations. GW Bush (1946) And N. Sarkozy (1955) can thus boast of having reached records never before achieved in this area.
Just recently, it was Daniel Vasella (1953) which is illustrated with Novartis, by cutting 2,000 jobs, including 1,100 in Switzerland, even though the company is making billions in profits. Egocentrism, when you hold us...
Yet, yet... as much as individualism, the thirst for success and idealism, when pushed to the extreme, can lead to the worst catastrophes, when used wisely, they can produce small miracles.
Steve Jobs (1955), even if he was not the boss you dream of having, changed the lives of millions of people in a few years with his iPod, iPhone and iPad. He took over a moribund Apple, put it back on track and made it, in 14 years, the second largest capitalization in the world. The company owes a lot to the charisma, pugnacity and vision of its boss.
Its long-standing competitor is Bill Gates (1955), the richest man in the world for many years. He is also considered the most spammed man in the world. Bill Gates is known for not having invented anything and for having stolen ideas from everywhere, especially from Apple. But his commercial genius and his alliance with IBM have allowed him to succeed in imposing Windows across the planet. We can hate Bill Gates, but we must recognize that today we are almost obliged to work with him. Like Steve Jobs, his vision, his thirst for success and his pugnacity have been the keys to his success. His idealism takes the form today of his humanitarian foundation, in which he is fully invested and to which he plans to bequeath the greater part of his inheritance.
For better or for worse, the boomers have fundamentally changed the face of our planet. Their exuberance, their thirst for success, their search for pleasure in everything they do contrasts sharply with the silent generation that preceded them. They are the cause of crises as well as of the greatest successes, and their extreme attitudes may explain the chaotic market behavior since the late 1990s.
If they have sown doubt in the economic and political world, they nevertheless possess the keys to restart the whole machine. 43 years after their revolution in May '68, They are now reaching the end of their professional careers and are preparing to live a well-deserved retirement. Their condition has nothing to do with that of the "silent ones": most of them have financial means, are in good health and want to treat themselves. These new baby boomers will undoubtedly represent a pillar of consumption in the coming years, particularly in the health sector.
A boomer investor in the blogosphere (with his millennial son):
In our next article, we take a look at the generation X.
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