{"id":5558,"date":"2010-09-28T12:06:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T16:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5558"},"modified":"2010-09-28T10:48:55","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T14:48:55","slug":"most-self-indulgent-generation-now-also-most-suicidal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/09\/28\/most-self-indulgent-generation-now-also-most-suicidal\/","title":{"rendered":"Most self-indulgent generation now also most suicidal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Baby Boomers. It&#8217;s always about the frickin&#8217; Baby Boomers isn&#8217;t it? Even if according to demographers I&#8217;m supposed to be one of them, while your prototypical Baby Boomer was indulging in free love, drugs, and all the other 60&#8217;s behavioural abberrations, I was in primary school. I have never identified with that group, and I&#8217;m often struck by how self-regarding members of that demographic can be.<\/p>\n<p>Well, perhaps after a life of unparalleled opportunity, wealth, leisure, and general wallow-in-it-ness, Baby Boomers are starting to retire . . . and also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2010\/09\/28\/baby_boomers_do_the_decent_thing\/\" target=\"_blank\">killing themselves<\/a> in numbers not seen in previous generations:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cAs children, the baby boomers were the healthiest cohort that had ever lived, due to the availability of antibiotics and vaccines,\u201d Idler says. \u201cChronic conditions could be more of a rude awakening for them in midlife than they were for earlier generations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Given the contrast between the Boomers&#8217; passage through life and that experienced by their parents, one might suggest that they simply brace up a bit and get on with it. This might, however, be bad news financially for the following generations who are already saddled with the task of paying for the Boomers&#8217; wastrel stewardship of the global finances, prolonged and luxurious retirements, hip replacements and various other costs and expenses.<\/p>\n<p>It may be, as we look back from a more austere future in which the retirement age has been raised to 85 or so and the elderly &mdash; far from guzzling pina coladas on cruise ships whilst simultaneously occupying badly-needed residential property &mdash; are compulsorily relocated to robot-staffed retirement homes, that we will regard the Boomers as the jammiest generation ever to have lived. Their apparent propensity to top themselves out of drug-addled foolishness, in a tantrum at the &#8220;rude awakening&#8221; of middle age, or simply like mindless sheep because they have seen others do so, will be all the more puzzling.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Baby Boomers. It&#8217;s always about the frickin&#8217; Baby Boomers isn&#8217;t it? Even if according to demographers I&#8217;m supposed to be one of them, while your prototypical Baby Boomer was indulging in free love, drugs, and all the other 60&#8217;s behavioural abberrations, I was in primary school. I have never identified with that group, and I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28,13],"tags":[311,407,319,139],"class_list":["post-5558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-media","category-usa","tag-1960s","tag-babyboomers","tag-demographics","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1rE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5560,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5558\/revisions\/5560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}