Teenager mentality
August 29, 2009
– Comments (3)
John Mauldin is always an excellent read and I love how he compares government choices to how teenagers make choices.
I have often thought that governments behave like undisciplined teens.
But I would have to say that I disagree on with "Reality is staring back in the mirror at the American consumer, and especially the Boomer generation."
Maybe Canada has been different, but unless you were at the tail end of the baby boomers what I have seen is that no generation has every had it better and no other generation has had the magnitude of opportunity for wealth building. I have 7 uncles from 2 to 12 years older then me, my husband has brothers and sisters 10-14 years older and I have a lot of friends in the 10-15 years older age range and in my age range and younger. The difference in lifestyle is enormous and it seems to me the generation behind the boomers have done far more training and worked far harder to develop their skills then the boomers. It seems to me that when I was growing up the adults that were telling me the one thing they wished they'd done different was go to university were far far far more established then my peers with university degrees by the time my peers got to the age of these advice givers. Perhaps this huge decline in lifestyle between generations was more specific to Vancouver as Vancouver has had the highest housing prices in Canada for almost 20 years now. And if so, then I'd say this is a model of what is coming to so many more places because of the housing bubbles, so I'd still disagree boomers are the most disadvantaged, they have had the opportunity to be established and to ride this down turn with existing wealth.
Certainly people of all ages have faced different challenges and some have had more challenges then others those challenges may have limited to completely prevented the ability to embrace the tremendous opportunity, but I tend to think bad choices play a significant role in boomers who are struggling.
RSS Headlines
Fool UK