(Not So) OK, Boomer (Anymore).

Traps'RUs

HobbesianVille

In my opinion, one of the more insightful columnists writing about the passing parade in greater Lotuslandia is Jody Paterson.

A couple of weeks ago Ms. Paterson's blog came back to life and, most recently, she wrote about how her generation, which is also mine, has no stories about how bad things were in their youth.

You know, those stories about playing hockey with frozen hunks of dung and/or going to school in a shoebox.

And why is that?

Because, as Ms. Paterson points out, we who grew up on the tail end of the post-war boom actually had it really, really good back in the days of yore:

"...It struck me the other day that the Boomer generation that I'm part of just might be the first generation in Canada whose own stories will instead be of how good they had it compared to their grandkids. 

Let me tell ya, kid, back in my day we had houses for people. We didn't even have a word for homelessness, and you camped for fun, not because it was that or nothing. We burned through natural resources like there was no tomorrow. (Turns out that last part was true.) 

Back in my day, we made real money, and if we hit a bad spell, could fall back on employment insurance that actually covered most of a person's bills. We had doctors. Weather was just weather, not an ominous portent of end of days..."

I would add that we of a certain age also had a good post-secondary education available to us at a cost of almost nothing at all.*

The larger point?

There really was a concerted class levelling that went on in these here parts back in the '60's and '70's that expanded possibilities for everyone.

Which brings me to a recent piece in Jacobin by David Moscrop, whose stuff I also have a lot of time for, about how the majority of Canadians these days don't trust, essentially, anyone:

"...Beyond political and media institutions, social cohesion is also thin in Canada — and trending downward. In March, Ipsos found that “only 30% of adults say most people can be trusted against 70% who believe that you can’t be too careful dealing with people.” Once again, the data is conditioned by education and income level — those with more education and income trust one another more..."

So.

Why is that (part deux)?

Well, Mr. Moscrop, who is a young guy, thinks that in large part this is because folks today have lost or will never see any of those nice, and truly important, things that we Boomers had when we were young:

"...Polite Canadian society encourages the wringing of one’s hands about low trust. It makes for good columns and think pieces, fascinating TV and radio, and endless polls and reports. Evidently, all of this fretting is for nothing, because the arc of trust is bending toward its antithesis despite the consternation of elites. It’s not surprising. The market economy and class are rarely discussed when trust is the topic of conversation, even if everyone will skirt around the issue that plainly sits right in the middle of the room. Come on, people. It’s a class issue. It’s an economic issue. And the origin of low trust, and thus its deleterious manifestations, is a political failure by those who run government and shape the economy. The origin of low trust is decades of capitalist depredation and the thinning out of the state in such a way that working people have been left to fend for themselves in a Hobbesian state of struggle..."

I, for one, think he just might be right.

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*Longtime reader EG and I have discussed this point before...My first year as an undergraduate student cost me $540. As a result, those of us who went to school at that time could quite easily finance university with summer jobs alone or, at worst, with small student loans that didn't cripple us financially until we reached middle age or beyond (the latter was C.'s situation).

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