Boomer's Paradise with Philip Bump

Josh welcomes Washington Post columnist and author of 'The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America,' Philip Bump! Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, where are they and where are they going? You are one of them, but what does that mean for the country you grew up in and what happens next? Discussed: Stillness, '2000 Mules,' Florida Man 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua Topolski. Well,
I'm back. I haven't been around for a little while.
I gotta tell you the listener. I got to confine
in you that I have been dealing with some family business.
My family is of course in the mafia and no

(00:38):
my dad broke his hip and I had to go
to Pittsburgh and help out for a little bit. And
during that period I had to walk away from all
of my many many projects, including including this podcast, which
is very hard, and I barely looked at the internet.
I barely read the news. I did watch a lot

(00:58):
of nightly news in Pittsburgh, which is where my parents live,
and they love watching the news. They put it on
at like four o'clock because apparently there's just news, not CNN,
but like local news. You can start watching it, I
don't know four in the afternoon. They would put on
the news at four and then it would just be
on until ten or later, and it was really just

(01:19):
all about local stuff happening. So I learned a lot
about the many homicides that took place in Pittsburgh while
I was there, and I wasn't responsible for any of
them for the record. But anyhow, but I'm back and
it's so good. It's so good to be back because
I really have missed rambling like this. I haven't been
able to ramble to anybody. My parents when we're around,
they do most of the rambling, so you know, it's

(01:41):
a very different environment for me. Anyhow, we have a
great showed it. I'm very excited. I have to say,
I have been excited to have this conversation. We had
to move it a bunch of times, which of course
pained me emotionally. But we have an amazing guest today,
Philip Bump, who is a national calumnist for the Washing
and Impost. He also has a newsletter called how to

(02:03):
Read This Chart. He's kind of a data genius, and
he has written a book called The Aftermath about the
Baby Boomers and what they've done to America. So let's
not waste one minute. Let's get right into it and
talk to Philip. I want to tell the listener that

(02:34):
Philip has been instructed to sit as still as possible
because his mic is picking up some noises in the room,
some fabric noises from his shirt moving, or the many
flags in the background. We're not sure what it is.
It's something. Yeah. You know, if you end up seeing
any video from this and you're thinking, why is Philip
sitting so still, it's just in service of the audio quality.

(02:55):
All right, So I thank you for coming on the show.
First off, of course, I knew you're running around because
you've got a new book and you've got to talk
to a lot of people. I do appreciate you taking
the time, of course. But before we get into the
conversation that I would like to have with you, can
we talk about how much sleep you had last night? Sure?
Do you know how many hours you got? Actually? Yeah,
last night was unusual because I took my kids into

(03:18):
the city and we spent all day in the city,
took the train in, and you know, it was an
excursion a life of which we haven't usually had. We
have a three year old who usually naps, and so
we all were very worn out. So I got more
than usual last night, which is probably about seven hours.
Seven hours is not even what they recommend. That's still
a short night. Yeah, I don't know what time to
usually go to sleep, twelve to twelve thirty, Okay, so

(03:39):
you're kind of a night out a lot of parents
go to bed very early. Of course you're a news
persons that might have something to do with your sleeping habits.
But I stay up very late and wake up very early,
and I think it's terribly unhealthy. What time do you
usually wake up? Quarter to seven. We're on a sort
of similar schedule, though you're probably getting a little bit
more sleep than maybe because you seem I don't know,
better adjusted. Well, you know, we also have the occasional

(04:02):
kid having a nightmare, or dog howling, coyotes and things
alone those lines, Right, do you have a lot of
coyotes around your house, Well, you seem to the dog
picks them up. I can understand people be very upset
about that sound or a dog. Our dog starts starts
barking as well. So you're a calmness at the Washington Post.
A lot of your stuff is data based, right, and

(04:22):
you've been doing this for a long time. You tell
stories through data very often, or help to sort of
break down stories using data or correct people for misunderstanding data. Actually,
I see you do this a lot on Twitter, or
I feel like I see you do this a lot
where you sort of trying to explains something to people
that seems to have been misinterpreted. I mean, at this

(04:42):
point in time, do you feel like you're are you
getting through to people? Is it working? Because I feel
like we're not. We're not paying attention to the facts
that much like it. Is it frustrating for you? I
mean yeah, I mean, look, absolutely, there are occasions on
which it is frustrating. I mean, the the the extent

(05:03):
to which Americans broadly are willing to set aside very
obvious logical leaps in favor of the rhetoric that they
would like to believe is sort of astonishing. I mean,
the fact that, you know, Donald Trump could spend as
much times he did lying about a voter front and
there's obviously nothing to it. The fact that the next

(05:23):
DECUSA could have millions of dollars of revenue coming for
his terrible and totally idiotic movie two Thousand Mules. You know,
these are these are sort of the exemplars of the type.
But yeah, on a daily basis, we get nonsensical claims
about data which are very easily disproven. It's just but
people have little to no interest in having them disprove it.
You know, this is it's true, very much more on

(05:45):
the right. There are instances on the left as well,
but it's just it can be frustrating. But I really
do feel like my role to some extent is simply
to be the voice of reason, even if people aren't
necessarily listening to it. Right, That's a tough role. I mean,
I would be very frustrated by it. I think it's
like in the same way I would be bad at
being a waiter because I would eventually have to wait

(06:05):
on someone like me. You know. I think trying to
convince people over and over again in the particular way
that you do, which is like very fact based, right,
very database, which often shouldn't be up for debate, is like, yeah,
widely and loudly debated. I got into an argument with
somebody when I was in California and I was at

(06:26):
a bar and somebody started talking about, you know, COVID
vaccines or whatever and that they didn't do anything. And
I don't know why I decided to enter the conversation
the guy. It's like, there were four people at the
bar and he was just happened to be sitting next
to me, and I started talking about the data of
if you look at you know, death rate of unvaccinated
versus vaccinated. Very early on, it was pretty clear like
there's a correlation, which seems to be a correlation between

(06:47):
getting vaccinated and not dying. I feel like if I
had to do that as a job, I would I
kind of go crazy. Well, I mean, but part of
the problem, honestly, is that I spend a lot of
time and energy writing pieces for the posts that explore
the stuff, and then I'll tweet about it, and then
people will respond to the tweet and not getting to
any of the actual analysis, and they'll be like, well,
what blah blah blant. It's like, well, look click the
link it you'll see like that's accounted. You know. The

(07:10):
exception here being that I did this really the only
time I've ever done a Twitter thread is I pulled
out a lot of my stuff on two thousand mules
just to be like, you know, to have this benchmark
of here are all the reasons two thousand mules is nonsense.
And even then people wouldn't read further in the thread.
They'd respond to like the first one like you obviously
haven't seen the movie and show. It's just like social
media in particular make this worse I can imagine being
in a bar doesn't necessarily help either. Well, you know,

(07:33):
the thing about it is people are less bold in person.
That's true. I mean, you know, not to go down
a social media rabbit hole or anything. But in fact,
I just looked at Twitter for the first time in
actually in like kind of several days. I feel like,
or at least I haven't been looking at it very much,
and sort of wild what's going on there. It's kind
of like it's really a strange experience now. But yeah,

(07:54):
but I just think people are very bold on social media.
I mean it's classic internet stuff, right, there's no consequences really,
like you can say anything and do anything, and what
are people going to do? They're not gonna you know,
there's no there's no physical barrier, right, and in person
people are usually like you have to consider just I
don't know, what is it that feeling of being in
a room with somebody and making people uncomfortable, Like people

(08:16):
don't want to do that a lot of the time,
or they don't want to worry that they get somebody
angry enough that they get you know, punched in the
face exactly. Not I I would be the one getting
punched in the face. Just to be clear, for the rector,
I wouldn't be punching anybody. But so you've written a
book called The Aftermath. Yes, well, I should say I
have not read the book, and that's on me though.

(08:36):
I have been in Pittsburgh for the last two weeks
dealing with some stuff, so I have not had a chance.
And we were trying to schedule stop and I thought, well,
I'm going to read it, or at least skim it,
you know, so I know what I'm talking about. So
I will join. If there's anybody listening to this who
has no idea what the book is about, could you
talk about what the book is about? Sure? So the
Aftermath is I realized a couple of years ago that

(08:59):
we were going through this very tumultuous period in politics
and culture in particular, and that we are also going
through this transition with the baby boom, that the baby
boomers started going into retirement, and so I decided I
wanted to look at the extent to which those things
might overlap. And what I realized as I was researching
the book is there's an enormous amount of overlap. That

(09:19):
there are a lot of characteristics of the baby boom,
and that the sheer scale of the baby Boom, which
I think people tend to underestimate or not recognize, really
helps to find the ways in which American politics and
economics and culture are all contributing to are all seeing
this same this level of tension between old and young

(09:40):
that manifests in a lot of different other demographic ways.
And so the book is an exploration of both what
this moment looks like, how it's driven to a large
extent by what the baby Boom is, but then also
what happens after the baby Boom is gone, which won't
happen for decades, and the subheads to the last days
of the Baby future Power from America. But it's really
an exploitation and basically what happens over the next several
is as the baby Boom loses its script on the

(10:02):
power that it's held since you know, the nineteen fifties. Right, Okay,
there's a lot there, but that's along. But let me
just I want to back up and talk about the
baby boomers for a second. Define a baby boomer. Sure,
you know, if for someone who's listening who maybe does
not know, give me the kind of stock definition of
a baby boomer. Yeah, so a baby boomer is someone
who's born between nineteen forty six and nineteen sixty four.

(10:22):
And the reason that's important is twofold. The first is
that the baby boom is defined by those births. So
this is not just a you know, am gen X
because I was born in this general range of years.
And this is what we call is this is a
hard thing that the demographers that the Census Bureau said,
this is a defined and distinct generation that is identifiable,

(10:43):
will wipe the search in births, and so it's actually,
you know, we include anyone who's born in forty six
through sixty four, even though demographers actually see the boom
starting sort of in the middle of forty six and
ending in about the middle of sixty four. So you know,
there's some vagueness there, but the baby boom is a
clear event, demographic event that happened with this surgeon worse.
And the statistic I like the site to give some
sense of perspective is that there were one hundred and

(11:05):
forty million Americans in nineteen forty five. That's the total
population of the country over the next nineteen years for
the baby boom, Almost seventy six million babies were poor, right,
So that's more than fifty percent of the population nineteen
forty five are then boor okay, and so that means
that you know, a third of the country essentially is
nineteen or less at the end of the page, right, right,
And then you just consider how that reshapes everything moving

(11:28):
forward as they get older, and that's the effect of
the baby booms. Hat on the cot is there is
there no know this may be a stupid question, but
is there no other generation since the baby boomer generation
that has a comparative sort of birthrate? That mean, is
it just unmatched? Like who's after the Baby Boomers? It's
is it gen x X, right? That's that's right, Yeah,
that's me. That's me the greatest generation in my opinion, absolutely,

(11:50):
which is another generation. But I think we should just
take it, honestly, I think we're outed at this point.
And Gen X birthrate, like comparatively, do you know the
number offhand, like how many babies were born? You said
seventy seven million from forty six to sixty four, is
that right? Almost seventy six Okay, almost seventy six million,
seventy six millions, So do we start at sixty five?

(12:10):
Gen X starts sixty five and goes to what that
goes to eighty eighty, so how many babies were born?
But no, but this is key according to Pew Research Center,
which is the the go to for the delineation so generations.
But it's made up, you know, I mean, this is
not a demographic with a distinct event to your questions
or answering your question in two ways. No, there was
not a similar, like defined period of births that tells

(12:32):
us what gen X was right. It was just sort
of like, well, this makes sense as a truncation point
that Pew decided, same with millennials. Money, that's what else
started eighty one and then go to I think it's
like ninety five something along those lines. But again not
a hard demarcation. The generation that is next closest in
size total population to the boom is the millennial generation,
which at the age of forty, there are about you know,

(12:54):
nine for every ten boomers at the age of forty,
it's about ninety percent the total number that Boomers were
when they hit forty, and so it's almost as big.
And millennials are the children of boomers. Is that correct? Well,
I mean, look, you know there were boomers that were
the children that boomer right, right, if you're eighteen, you
know it's crazy. So you know, again this is all

(13:14):
made up, right, sure? But what's interesting you're kind of
hammering on this point the baby Boomer generation, where Gen
acts or gen y or whatever, gen Z millennials may
be a kind of a marketing or just a way
to categorize a group of people from at a certain period.
Certainly is used in marketing, obviously, and some of it
is fueled by marketing. But you're saying that one of

(13:34):
the characteristics of the baby Boomers that is distinct is
that there is an actual demographic event that occurs in
that era that is different from what we would consider
to be previous generations. That there is a huge uptick
in births. That's right, That we have populated America full
of these people in a way that no other generation.
I guess you're saying millennial, But it's interesting to consider

(13:55):
that millennials are the future boomers, which kind of checks
out to me in a way. But so there's a
real defining characteristic of it that isn't just like a
marketing term. Yeah, that's right. I mean it's almost as
if the analogy like to use is to astrology. But
it's as though there was evidence that people who were
born under the star sign of cancer actually had a
certain set of attributes and that you could define that,
you know, cancer has had the set of attributes, and

(14:17):
then they just made up the rest of the zodiac
in order to sort of flesh it out and has
something to spear right, Right, So generations are very much
like the zodiac in that, you know, they have these
sort of theoretical attributes that everyone shares, and they have
sort of vaguely defined boundaries and you can be on
the cusp and what does that mean? Like, you know,
there are a lot of parallels there, but there is
this real thing, you know, that that the baby boom

(14:37):
itself is actually real, right, And so as a result,
you've got a bunch of people who appear on the
planet at a certain time. Right. You said it's an
eighteen year period, right, it's nineteen years inclusive. Yeah, raise
in a certain environment, raised in a certain way in
a certain state of America that has had you know,
massive impact on the political and cultural landscape that we

(14:57):
currently navigate. Is that correct in saying that, well, it's
it's understanding, right, the Baby boom forced I mean, you know,
I mean not to be melodramatic, but you're like, no,
that's actually totally wrong. But the Baby boom really reshaped
what America looks like. You know, if there were external factors,
the development of television, transistor, radios, you know, geopolitical affairs,

(15:18):
those things had an effect as well. But when you
consider what it means you have to accommodate this massive
search and population, you understand how America had to reshape itself. Right,
Like imagine, you know, in the mid nineteen fifties, you
have to get not only a bunch of DW elementary
schools to accommodate everyone. You have to get a bunch
of elementary school teachers by the time they hit eighteen. Like,
what jobs are they gonna do? Are they're gonna go
to college? Who are the college professors? You can't just

(15:39):
whip up college professors, right, you send that, You send
a decent chuck of them off to Vietnam, right, you
know you give them to give them right different. They
are all these ways in which America change because it
had to deal with this, and this is the key point.
Now we're reaching the point where they're all hitting sixty
five somehow, a lot of us some sort of blinds.
I was like, oh my god, all of a sudden,
there's all these seniors. It's like, yeah, man, we've seen
this covering since nineteen forty six. Well, now now we

(16:00):
have to figure out what we're gonna do. Right. Uh,
When you put it in these terms, it's like shockingly
obvious that this is a problem like that, of course,
this huge disparity in certain sort of expectations or politics
or cultural norms or whatever. Of course, like it makes
a lot of sense given what you were just saying.
But people talk about boomers, and it's a very broad

(16:23):
term to mean like a person who's like uncool and
has bad ideas and is selfish. There's more to it
than that, I'm sure. Can you can you like just
hit a couple of the points of like what is
the defining boomer characteristic? Yeah? Okay, so you asked a
couple of questions that, I mean, did it's your last
point about you know, what is what is a boomer?
That's sort of the astrology aspect of it, right, you know,

(16:43):
like who who they are sort of conscientiously is is
you know, I think there there's an answerable component to that,
which which I'll get to. But you also asked, you know,
what are the ways they recipe America? They answer that
as simple. I think nearly everything in America's recipe by
the baby boom. And you know, that's part of what
the book goes into what differentiates a boomer from someone else.
And this has a very clear and I think of

(17:04):
poor Nancier, You're you're absolutely right. This is a very
very large generation of tens of millions of people. So
it is certainly by you know, by no means are
they are they all the same, but they are. They
do share some characteristics. One is that they are much
whiter than younger Americans. And you have to consider that
it's about a century ago the United States imposed new
restrictions on immigration. Partly is a backlash to immigrants from
Eastern Europe, Southern Europe. Also immigrants from Asia. Those weren't

(17:27):
lifted until after the boom ended. So at the time
of the baby boom. Time baby booms started, the average
immigrant was someone's grandparent would come over through the allis
Island era of immigration. Right right then one immigration laws
were loosened, we saw a lot of immigrants from Asia
and Central America in Mexico who helped to diversify the
United States. And so we have a younger generation in
America that is much less densely white than the Baby

(17:48):
boom generation. Right O. That's interesting. I mean you're saying
like we based like hit pause on like a more
diverse form of immigration like during this period. That's exactly
what I mean. That's that alone is just a kind
of fascinated, you know. I mean maybe if I had
read more history books, that would be obvious to me,
but that is not obvious as a component of like
the Boomer generations. Sorr. I didn't mean to cut you off,
but I find that kind of fascinating. Yeah, but I

(18:10):
mean you can immediately understand how that overlaps with lots
of different strains of American politics, right. You know, when
you have this older, wider generation that all of a
sudden is very frustrated, and when they look at younger
Americans and they literally look different than they do, that
sort of freaks them out, Like you can see. Again,
not to oversimply, you can see how this plays out.
But there are other things too, and so the Boomers
started this trend, for example, of moving away from people

(18:33):
belonging to institutions. You know, they're less likely to go
to church than their parents, they are less likely to
participate in social groups and so on and so forth.
But that's really accelerated post boom, and so younger Americas
are much less likely to participate in institutions, much less
likely be members so political parties, much less likely to
go to church, mention less likely to be religious. At
the same time, they're also much better educated, so boomers
went to college more than their parents. But that trend

(18:55):
also continued, so younger people are much better educated, and
so over anyone who's pays its attention to politics again,
and you can see how these things overlap with democratic
and Republican orientation, right, you know, people who don't go
to church and have our college graduates and our people
of color are much more likely to be Democrats. Right,
And so that then also contributes to the tension. So
there are a lot of practical ways in which boomers

(19:16):
and young Americans are different. That then you can very
quickly see electricle selves. I mean this is maybe a
really stupid question. But do Republicans skew older than Democrats
across the board? Yeah? They do. I actually looked at

(19:37):
analysis for the Post that this has included some extent
in the book, but I pulled more recent numbers. You know,
about a third of the Republican Party registered Republican is
not including independent too lean Republican registered Republicans nationally, about
a third of the sixty five or over you know,
well over half of them at fiftyear over. Right, that's
not great for the Republicans, it's not. But then you
know this is this is like two chapters of the

(19:58):
book is so what does this mean? Right? Right? But
what does this mean? Over the wall? I was going
to get to that, like it's you know, you predict
the future. But in essence, you're saying that like boomers
are actually I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, more
progressive because they're more educated. I guess, I guess I
don't understand the distinction because you said they're more educating,
that trend is continued, But that would mean that like
boomers are buying large Democrats? Is that correct? No? No,

(20:20):
what I'm saying is when you look at the density
of college education over time. The Boomers really started the
upward trend, right, But then once the boom was done,
it continued to shoot higher higher. So most boomers do
not have a college education. Most young people don't have
coulege education too, but they're much more likely to have
a college education than that. That overlooks. I see that
accelerated as the generation war on essentially right, and continued

(20:42):
on that track. Okay, yeah, that's right, Okay, Okay, let's
hear some other baby Boomer facts. This is like fascinating
to me. So they are so they are very white.
I think we just stopped them very white. That was well.
You know what's interesting about it, though, is because immigration
laws were loosing, they actually got less white over time.
The Baby Boom generation kept growing in size until about
the year two thousand because of immigration, even though you know,

(21:02):
birth send in nineteen sixty four, because we kept bringing
people in who were born in forty from forty six
to sixty four, they weren't part of the American baby boom,
but we're part of other countries births over that period, right,
The boom itself actually got less white over time, which
I think is also sort of fascinating, right, That is interesting.
So you're saying, with a less limited immigration policy, there's
an influx of non white boomer age people. Yeah, exactly,

(21:25):
someone we moved here from China who was born in
nineteen sixty. They're a baby boom, right, right, Yeah, but
not not our baby boom, a totally different distinct one.
I'm sure, all right, what else should we know? What
are some other signs to watch out for, if you know,
if you want to know your baby boomer, well, I mean, look,
you know, again, drawing these sorts of distinctions is tricky,
just because this is not a generation which is cohesively

(21:47):
the statium in a lot of different ways. Right, They're
not a monolith. But if we reshaped America around their
needs and wants and likes and dislikes and whatever, the
kinds of challenges we were presented with because of this
new group of people that has appeared on the planet
in this country, presumably there are some connective elements amongst
that group that I mean, they may I'd just be like, oh,
they prefer to eat you know, hamburgers or whatever, you know,

(22:09):
Like I'm talking, there's got to be more, you know,
sort of demographically speaking, I mean, what you're talking about
is is a fact. Yeah, well, I mean from a
demographic standpoints, there's not a lot of other things. I mean,
younger people more like little live in cities, but not
overwhelmingly so. And you know, there's a chapter in the
book the looks at this. But when we talk about
the things that define them, right, so, demographers look not
necessarily generations, but at cohorts, people who are who are

(22:32):
born in the same general time period and live through
similar experiences. And so when you look at, for example,
people who are young during the Great Depression, they have
a certain relationship the money that other Americans probably don't. Right,
So we understand that idea of how cohorts go. But
when we talk about what are the defining characteristics of
the cohort of the baby boomers, it's every goddamn movie
you've seen in the past thirty years, right, you know,

(22:53):
it's it's a listen to rock and roll and you know,
I mean it's like it's like all of these stereotypes
are born of young baby boomers who all of a sudden,
marketers have this massive opportunity because they have this huge
influx of teenagers who have a ton of disposable income
and start driving decisions with the families making you have
this emerge at the same time as television. They're buying
stuff they see on television, so markets are pitching, and

(23:15):
then you have you know, you have Dick Clark's American Dance.
They're like all these things that we now associate with
the very stereotypical that's the baby booming. Well, it's interesting
that so much of Americana, or a nostalgia about the
way America used to be that we hear now, particularly
from people like Trump and you know Republicans often not
just them. But it's funny when you said they were

(23:38):
very white, Like the first thought I had was like, oh, well,
that kind of explains why a lot of these older
Americans perfect idea of like what America should be like.
Is this like very white, suburban sort of place right
like this classic like where they were on top. They
were sort of like in the pole position all the time,
and they lived in these very like homogeneous sort of

(24:00):
environments that were that looked and felt very similar. Like
I feel like the immigration thing explains it better than
any anything I could imagine as to why their nostalgia
is so seemingly one sided, or at least a lot
of people. Not again, not across the board, but you
do hear it a lot. So we've got this huge generation.
Again not monolithic in their behaviors or their attitudes, but

(24:20):
there is some stuff that has carried through. I mean,
is there a moment where their politics or their way
of living, or their thinking begins to truly clash with
like their children or the generations that are following them.
I mean it explained that to me. Yeah, no, this
is this is a great question. And again, this is
a generation the last of the course of nineteen years,

(24:42):
and so it itself is divisible in some ways in
terms of when things start to happen. We've had baby
boomers hitting retirement age for some time now, for example.
But consider in the moment. Consider you know that the
State of the Union address is a really good example
of the ways in which this manifests. And so for
a long time, the Republican part, it's like, we gotta
cut in title once, we got to cut social Security
and medicare. We just talked about how Republicans are now

(25:04):
much older than Democrats and are older than they used
to be because America is older, and so all of
a sudden, President Bonding gets up in the State of Union, says, hey,
you know the problems want to cut Social Security Medicare,
and the problem is like, oh my god, no, no, no, no,
no no, we don't want to do that, which is
not the position they would have had previously, in part
because their base is so much older. Right, but when
you think about the Gen X did not push back
on the baby boomlat and part because we weren't. There

(25:25):
weren't as many of us, and so we weren't able
to sort of own culture in the same way that
younger you know, millennials and Gen Z are able to do.
So we own culture, just the cool parts that not
a lot of people are interacting with. Yeah, I mean
sort of which just comes as being young, right, you
know you're not much beyond that. I mean, you know
where we got our little blurp of the you know,
the hip hop the super Bowl halftime show last year,
which is about all we're going to get. That's true.

(25:47):
I think if it as a generation that doesn't care
about whether or not their culture is necessarily the most
popular culture, I think a defining characteristic of gen X
as they kind of don't care about being like the
top dog. You know, well, you should then write about
about generations and see how many Gen xers complain about
not getting mentioned in every freaking interview. Maybe I will.
But then consider the fact that when now we have

(26:09):
this group of millennials and Gen Z people who again
are almost as numerous as baby boomers when they were young,
and now more numerous than baby boomers, who have a
very different set of needs than the baby boomers. And
so we have this increased senior population now, so we
need to think about social security, and we need to
think about medicare, we need to think about senior housing,
we need to think about long term health re precautions
of that. But you also have this competing large group

(26:32):
of people increasingly voting, who are saying, actually, we also
need to invest in schools and BRICA and things along
those lines. And we know that historically that older Americans
are less likely to support things like school bond measures
because they're less locally have kids in schools. So this
sets up a political tension by itself just in terms
of where federal, state and local resources are going. This
is the moment when that's happening, because now old Americans

(26:54):
need those and now younger Americans also need to take
care of their own families at an increasing rape right
sore battling over resources. This is sort of like a
water world situation. I mean, that's one aspect of it, right, Right,
Do boomers get a bad rap? Like the word boomer
has become associated with something very negative? I said this earlier.
Is that a false representation? I mean the things you're

(27:15):
describing are I don't know. I mean we're constantly being
pulled backwards in this country, especially politically. I mean it's
not like every boomer is a is a Republican or something,
but it does feel like there's a very conservative element
in this country, whether it is you know, conservative Republican
or just somebody who is older and more conservative in
their thinking. That we make a lot of progress, then

(27:37):
it somehow gets like kind of there's always this group
trying to pull us back. Is that the boomers? Is
that our current you know, sort of the goal they've
been depicted as you know that it is sort of like,
you know, trying to rip us back to a simpler time,
as they would describe it, or is that misrepresentation. I
mean this is this is complicated and there are a
lot of different aspects to it. So so one aspect
is that we certainly do have older people tend to

(27:59):
vote more than younger people, and a result of that
is that the issues that are of concerned to older
people tend to get overrepresented in politics. And that while
boomers are themselves not robustly more republican than Democrat, that
they are much more republican than our younger generations. And
so if boomers themselves collectively just made a decision, they
would still be more heavily republican than what you're younger

(28:20):
people would do, just because they're more republican. But I
do think the boomers get a bad rap in the
sense that, for example, Baby boom controls, you know, a
disproportioned sheriff the wealth in the United States. But in
part that's because there are so many of them, and
when you look at a per capita basis that per capita,
baby boomers are no wealthier than any other generation. And
I think that when we talk about the ways in

(28:40):
which resentment manifests between generations who one of the challenges
is not only do younger people feel like, oh, baby booms,
they all got to buy houses, and you know they're
also wealthy. Look how wealthy hours of generation the baby
when we're saying basically are like, I'm not wealthy. What
are you talking about? Like, right, you know, why why
are you mad at me? I didn't do anything, you know, like, yes,
I go on a house, but it's not worth that
much in YadA, YadA YadA. Right, So you see some
of that resentment, right, but you also see four examples

(29:01):
that young people can get in the face of old
people in a way that wasn't possible fifty years ago, right,
And I think this is how to recognize we like,
you know, in nineteen seventy, when young people wanted to
cause a ruckus that go on college campus and carry
signs and hopefully get coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle
or whatever it happened to be. Now they get on TikTok.
You know, there's a quote that I used in the
book from a guy who's talking to Harpers and he's like, look,
you know, you can be in your bedroom in Cleveland

(29:22):
get a million followers overnight, and you can and you
can get those million followers can be the you know,
gloment onto your song, okay boomer and getting mad the
boomers and making fun of that, right, and the boomers
have to deal with that and see that in a
way that was not the case previously. And you know,
and that also increases generational attention. So there are all
these ways in which this manifest that aren't specifically about
the struggle for power, but still do reflect, you know,

(29:43):
the elevated state attention between the generations, right well, but
to be fair on the point about TikTok notes boomers
that are worrying about or have to deal with the
sort of instantaneous popularity of you know, hate being tossed
at a certain group or whatever. I mean, it's it's
sort of I mean, this is sort of a daily
habit now, right that we have to navigate some new
you know, movement of people right or wrong, good or

(30:05):
bad that has kind of allied themselves against a group,
some other group or some other person or whatever. I think.
I mean, yes, Boomers get shipped for it, but you know,
millennials get shipped for it too, a TikTok, you know,
so sure, I think it's it's sort of evenly, somewhat
even maybe not evenly distributed. But yeah, but again, the
baby boom is used to wielding power, right, not necessarily consciously,

(30:28):
but they're used to being the most important element of
American society. You know, you and I are very used
to online abuse. We like we can understand that world.
You know, yes, of course, it's what makes our jobs fun. Big.
There's a great story in Bandy Fair today that was
looking actually at the generation in the NBA and how
older NBA players want to just say, oh this, you know,
these young guys were terrible because X, Y and Z
in a way that we're you know, you and I

(30:48):
grew up watching sports and you know, hearing commentators say
things like that. But the young people in that and
going out, the younger NBA players are like, now, to
heck with this guy. Here's why blah blah blah been
pushing back. And it really is this microcosm that that
of the way in which they are not used to this.
They help power in the enemy there and they're not
used to having that be challenged in a way that
is so immediate to fans, right, And I think that's

(31:09):
a good microcosm of the effect that I'm talking about.
So that element is more like, these are people who
aren't used to being questioned when they when they're wielding
their power or whatever. Right, that's it. Yep. I can
see how that can manifest in all sorts of ways
in this country, and does manifest in in kind of
bad situations. Okay, So obviously Boomers very important to the

(31:29):
current fabric of America, A very misunderstood generation. Not all bad,
That's what I'm hearing. You know, we all probably know
some Boomers that we love, no question. You know, we
should be welcoming them and trying to understand them, right,
we shouldn't be making them outcasts. But what do we do?
How do we fix this? Is there a fix to it?
Is we got people? Just have to die? Is that

(31:49):
the answer to all of our current woes? When the
boomers are dying off? Like? Do we know what's going
to replace it? Are we gonna be plunged into chaos?
Like without a shared enemy? I mean, what happens? You
have to predict the future? Well, I mean, you know
the second half of the you know the books called
the Aftermath, right, So you know I do spend some
time trying to figure out what this looks like. You know,
I try and do so with humility, and you know,

(32:11):
I recognize that a lot of people who made a
lot of predictions in the past that are wrong. But
what I try to do is I try to look
at three things. I try to look at culture, economics,
and politics and estimate as the Baby Boom power WANs
what happens. And my determination was the Baby Boom has
much less full cultural power now they're not the dominant
cultural force, in part because culture tends to be the
domain of youth, and in part simply because you know,

(32:32):
these things change every time. You know, the cultural customs
tend to change. Economically, you know, there is a real
question what happens that some people with whom I spoke
estimate that you know, last year, two trillion dollars worth
of wealth was transferred out of the Baby Boom generation
dot places and part to institutions, in part through bequeathments
to family members, and a part through you know, just
paying for things like buying a kid a house or

(32:53):
paying for a kid's collapse, things along those lines. But
you know, they estimate more than fifty trillion dollars or
the course of the next two decades, where does that go?
You know? The answer that I've gotten mostly from folks
was probably too people who are already wealthy and their families.
It's a generational wealth. Yeah, no, absolutely right, you know,
but that also depends on how long boomers live and
how much how much they have medical costs, and whether

(33:13):
they're able to afford see your housing, and then a
lot of the determinations that are being made now. Right
when we talk about political power, you know, the immediate
question a lot of people have is, Okay, if America
is more diverse, as you know, among younger generations, they
tend to vote more heavily democratic, does that mean we
can't learn for an uber democratic future? And the answer
to that I have to show. The complexity is that

(33:34):
when you look at the Census Bureau's projections for what
the demography of the United States is going to look
like in twenty sixty, you break it out by age
and by race. The state in the Union it looks
the most like what the Census Spureau thinks, you know,
the United States will look like on the whole in
twenty sixty. The state that currently looks like that it
is Florida, the state of Florida is not uber Democrat. No,
that's not good. How is that possible? Why is it Florida.

(33:56):
Here's here's why it's Florida. It's FLORIDAUS. Florida is very old,
and Florida as the largest Spanic popular Yeah, okay, but
it consider the qualifiers. Florida's old population is very heavily
white and more conservative than the old population elsewhere. That's
not going to be the case in twenty sixty because
the old population is going to get more diverse as
America ages, right. And Second of all, Florida's Hispanic population
is very heavily Cuban American, which is a more conservative

(34:17):
group of Hispanic voters, and so that probably doesn't reflect
what Hispanic voters will look like in the future. It right,
So there are caveats, but again, the point is the
complexity here. What's number two? Do you know what number two? Sorry,
I don't mean to cut you off, but Florida's number one?
What is number two? Of course I do Joshua the
state of New Jersey, which is a very blue state.
I mean, that's interest, that's slightly I mean again, I'm sorry.
It is kind of shocking to me that you're telling me,
like when they look at what defines America in a way,

(34:41):
maybe it all makes sense. But when you're saying number
one and number two, it's what will define America potentially,
what America will look more like in the future. Is
number one Florida at number two New Jersey, two states
that are often often considered to be two of the
worst places in America. Now, I'm not saying I agree
with that, but it is like, ye, but I'm not

(35:03):
saying I agree with it. You know, there's wonderful parts
of Jersey, wonderful parts of Florida, but but they are
like a often like the joke, you know, the end
of a joke for a lot of people. You know,
Florida man is a thing because there's it seems like
she know, every day there's some absolutely outrageous story about
a guy who went crazy in Florida and Jersey. You know,
let's we don't have a whole another hour to talk
about all the but you know, these are cliches, but

(35:25):
it is interesting. Okay, what's number three? Do you know?
I'm just I gotta know, um, I don't know all
the stuff I had to inform care let's say it's
like Delaware or something maybe a little more. No, it's
definitely not Dello Delwar is too white. Okay, not at

(35:47):
the top ten states and look the most like what
the census spar projects the demophy will look like. Our
blue states are Biden votes. They are, which doesn't surprise interesting, right, Yeah,
But the sense of spirits projections just a you know,
and this is another chapter in the book. The sense
of spirits injections are based on an assumption that Hispanic
Americans will continue to identify as Hispanic. And they're all
sorts of calveiats to that, all sorts of calveats to
the way in which we measure diversity now, the way

(36:09):
in which we expect diversity to unfold over long term,
which may change that. It may mean that we actually
have a more conservative America than people expect. I mean,
isn't that in a way the assumption that an older
generation of any voter will act like a younger generation,
and sort of because that, I guess what would be
considered more blue, right, the Hispanic population If it's more
blue today, a younger probably. I mean, I don't know

(36:32):
how it's used, but I have to imagine it's got
to be maybe is it not younger, I don't know,
but as it gets older, I mean, isn't there just
there as an opportunity there for that older generation to
become more conservative as older people seem to do, like
because you're like, hey, I don't want people to get
the thing that's supposed to be mine, or I don't
you know, I don't want to be paying taxes for
these new people who just showed up or whatever the

(36:52):
whatever the I don't know. I can't put my mind
in the in the space to really understand the complaints.
But right, like, there's no guarantee that person who is
today a Democrat young and not like worried about the
same things would be sixty years old and feel the
same way. Well, you get to a few things there,
and one is that, hey, the parties themselves are fungible,

(37:14):
right Like, the Republican Party in twenty years time doesn't
have to have the same values and principles of the
Romical Party today though, And in fact, I think you will.
I think it will. Well, I mean, if it does,
then it's going to get you know, twenty percent votes share,
I think, right, And that's just good. Okay. So the
other thing is that, yeah, I mean when we talk
about this idea that people get more conservative as the age,

(37:36):
you know, that's based on we don't really have a great, long,
lengthy history of social science research, right right. You know,
it goes back to you know, not even a century
in terms of polling, goes less than that in terms
of like solid scientific research on sociological trans and things
along those lines. So even if we assume that's true though,
which I don't know that we have a sufficient enough
sample size to say it is. Even if we assume

(37:56):
that's true, we're basing it on a very white population
of Americans. Right, Older black Americans today, they they're not
more conservative. Right, Older Spanic Americans to day still vote
heavily Democrats, right right, There are a reason to think
that those populations that are non whitey're going to get
more Republican. I don't know who there is. Well, actually,
I mean, just going back to that point about the
future of the Republican Party. I mean, if anything, in

(38:18):
my adult life, I have seen the Republican Party become
less progressive. It was not normal when I was younger
for people who were identified as Republican to be like
kind of outspoken, full on racists or Nazis or like
aligning themselves with like, you know, white supremacy. That's a
pretty common thing in the Republican Party from what I
can tell. Now. A lot of it maybe broad trudged

(38:40):
up because of Trump, but like I mean, I remember
when Obama was running, you know, the first time around,
and it was like there was sort of unabashed like
oh ooh, people are bringing like you know, monkeys to rallies,
you know, to make fun of him, and just like
really weird racist shit that I'd never seen happen in
America in politics, not to that degree. That was just
kind of out just people couldn't help themselves. It was

(39:02):
like very outspoken. To me, I've seen the Republican Party
seemingly go further into some kind of weird, you know,
race based sort of conservative standpoint. Like so explain that
to me, because it based on what you're saying, Like
it kind of like the thing with medicare. They're like, no,
we don't want that, we want to be whatever the
boomers are asking for it. But but I don't know that.

(39:23):
I mean, again, you said it was a very white generation.
But I see a Republican Party that moves further and
further to an extreme right position, which feels incompatible with
what you're to. What you're saying the demographics of the
country as they as they are evolving, And I am
I mistaken and in reading it that way, No, you're
not mistaken that. What you're doing, though, is you're you're
restating the thesis of the book, right, which is that

(39:46):
what happens in two thousand days, Barack Obama is elected
and at the same time you start to see this
extremely sharp divide between older and younger Americans. Now they vote,
you have a new cadre of more diverse younger Americans
coming out to vote for a candid who excites them,
who isn't John Kerry, who is an al Gore. In
two thousand they'd left Barack Obama. And then you have
a reaction to that, which is a lot of people,
older people joining this tea party movement thing which is

(40:09):
heavily predicated on giving government funding to non white Americans,
on a perception of immigration as this toxic thing. But
also if you speak to people who study this thing,
concerned by older Americans about their younger family members who
are under the sway of this socialist who's not even white. Right,
this is a moment in which all this becomes very impotent.
Then you layer on top of that the census spirit

(40:30):
of first pinkance, projection of oh, by the way, in
the next couple decades, whites are gonna be a minority
in the country, and everyone freaks out. And that's the moment.
This is why we're seeing this now, You're right, it
predates Trump. Trump leveraged it very successfully, leveraged BLM in
twenty fourteen, the Immigration Surgeon twenty fourteen for his twenty
fifteen launch of twenty sixteen campaign. But it predates him,
and it centers around an older, whiter America suddenly coming

(40:52):
to terms with they're losing their grip on power with
the election of Barack Obama. Right. I have long felt that,
I'm sure you have expressed this, that Trump's rise to
power as the voice of the Republican Party is like
the death rattle of this generational thinking or this party
the way it has been. Like my hope was that

(41:14):
like this was like close to the final most toxic,
most sort of deranged element kind of trying to get
its last gasp after they've experienced the Obama years and
had to think about in America where we could have
a black president and then some like you know, but
it doesn't feel like that was a temporary death rattle.
It feels like it was a more permanent, like realigning

(41:34):
of I don't know, like a set of values, like
I understand, holding onto the things that they feel like
we're the way they were and that they want them
to stay like. But it's unclear to me how a
political party in this country can navigate from that position
and we don't just end up in essentially like some
kind of civil war, a race based sort of war here,
because like, what's the logical end of that? I mean

(41:55):
not to be overly dramatic, but it feels like, what
is it We just wait for that generation to die
out and hope that we don't meant too many new
people Like that is that basically the solution? So I'll
start by saying, there are four things that identified as
unknowns that that you know could certainly change the shape
of climate change is one of them. You know, how
long people live? As another with the extent to which

(42:16):
Hispanics continue identifies hispanic as. The third and the fourth
is does America survive as a pluralistic democracy? And yeah, right,
that is very much up in the air. It's not clear.
I mean, I think twenty twenty two was a good
step in that direction. But you know, you know, every
time I spoke with political science, they'd be like, well,
assuming America surprize as it is, ben X and I
spell that people who were very much like you know,
I mean, look, democracy, true pluralistic dromocracy in the United

(42:38):
States began in the nineteen sixties, began at the end
of the Baby boom. Right. You know, one of the
fascinating things that I noted in the book, which is
sort of the tangential here, is that you know, this
this whole reaction to like schools being named after Confederate leaders,
after Brown vers support of education. The reason there are
so many schools to name was because the Baby boom
and made them had to have to build all these schools.
And so you see this entrenchment of a very particular
style of American politics right at the moment the boom

(43:00):
is on set, and right when all of a sudden
you start to see blacks get more power. So yes,
that's very much a question mark. I do think it's
important to note three things. The first is that in
twenty twelve, the Republican Party said, look, we either need
to become pluralistic or we need to, like, you know,
figure out what we're gonna do, and Donald Trump is like,
you know, we're gonna just you know, triple down on
appealing to the white vote. Then what happens is he

(43:21):
wins in sixteen by the skin of his teeth, he
loses in twenty and then the party gets demolished in
twenty twenty two. Doesn't get demolished, it does it underperforms
in twenty twenty two, do well, didn't do good? Yeah,
what's the party's first reaction? Ronald McDaniel says, you know,
what we need to do is reach out to a
more diverse group of voters, which they do need to do,
and the party recognize that. Right. Will they do it
with the short term I don't know, but I think
they internally recognize that something you have to do. The
second thing is that the issues on which younger Americans

(43:44):
are more concerned, the Republican Party actually has moved left,
not on race based stuff necessarily, but on LGBTQ issues
on things like climate change, the Republican Party is not
as stringent as it was fifteen twenty years ago. Twenty
two thousand and four, the party put all these anti
seems that marriage ballot measures to try and boost George
Bush's reelection right right, Nowadays, the party ostensibly and often

(44:07):
you know, basically the subset of the party which is
fervently anti same sex marriage. Yeah, is a minority that
is a change, and that overlaps with a thing that
is very central to younger voters. So it is already
making changes to be different to this group of voters
than it used to be, right. I mean, it is
fascinating to think about a future state of the Republican
Party that actually embraces that stuff, because I feel like, yes,

(44:29):
on the surface, that is feels like it's true that
there's been a loosening of sort of the conservative viewpoint
on things like the LGBTQ plus community, But at the
same time, I feel like, deep down they definitely would
vote against anything that helps out that community. Right, They're
not really all had problem boys that the junior says, sure,

(44:49):
right exactly, and and and the leader of their party
is absolutely not aligning around. I mean, I guess in
a way, maybe Trump is more progressive on that front
than than some of the other potential candidates, because he
at least kind of acknowledges the existence of those people,
where I think a lot of Republicans for a long
time did not. But unfortunately we don't have enough time.
I want to keep going because there's I'm so fascinating

(45:10):
by this, but I gotta say, like these sort of
big questions that you're you're opposing about, like the future
of America, are absolutely fascinating. I'm dying now, dying to
read the book because you know, I like the setup,
but now hearing you actually dig into it, it's just
to me, it's just it sounds like such a fertile
and frankly confusing moment in our history. I mean, to

(45:31):
your point about people saying, well, maybe we don't continue
to be you know, this democracy that we've enjoyed. I
know that it's talked about a lot. But what's interesting
is I mean, and of course this is your forte
presenting like data against the possibility of it and understanding
the demographics that could drive something like that makes it
feel a lot more real. And so that's just scary
and fascinating to me. Philip. Thank you so much for

(45:54):
coming on and doing this. The book is the aftermath
what is the subtitle of the book, The Last Days
of the Boom in the Future of Power in America. Yeah,
so that sounds very dramatic. I know I was being
dramatic during this, but I got to sell books, man,
you know, absolutely fantastic conversation. You've got to come back
and do this again soon, of course. Thank you. Well,

(46:18):
that was a fascinating conversation. I feel like I learned
a lot and yet have so many more questions. We're
gonna have to have phill It back, especially with twenty
twenty four being just around the corner, which sounds crazy,
that sounds wrong, But with every passing day we're getting
closer and closer to a presidential election in this country,

(46:39):
which sounds very frightening and upsetting to me personally. But
love to find out what a boomer thinks about it.
Love to get in there and just chat with them.
Maybe I will. So, yeah, I got to get Phillip
back to discuss the florification of America. Well, that is
our show for this week. We'll be back next week, finally, thankfully,

(47:00):
with more what future, and as always, I wish you
and your family the very best.