Gen X will outnumber Baby Boomers in US Congress | Hacker News Reader

Gen X will outnumber Baby Boomers in US Congress

ctinsider.com

It's class warfare folks. Try to ignore this "generational labeling" to keep everyone distracted on the wrong thing.

Show me geriatric Congresspeople besides Bernie Sanders fighting for progressive policy to help the poor and/or young. It is class warfare, but the overlap between old and wealthy is substantial.

Congress net worth - https://capitolmarkets.org/research/congress-net-worth

31% of Wealth Owned by People Over 70 - https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-... - December 7th, 2025

Show me old political representation willing to plant trees whose shade they will never sit in.

In one sense, the generational label is correlated with class consciousness. The Boomer generation due to good post-WW2 conditions, relatively strong labor, and lots of red scare propaganda were immune to the chasm between the capital and labor class that has only grown since the 2000s.

Accounting for inflation, i.e., 2026 dollars, the 2000 top 10 richest individuals in the world had net worths between: - Bill Gates ($117 billion) - top - Kenneth Thompson ($31 billion) - #10

Today, those numbers are: - Elon Musk ($830 billion) - Warren Buffet ($150 billion)

There are at least 10 people today who are 50% richer than the richest person in 2000!

No wonder the people whose peak earning potential was in the 90s and 00s didn't feel the chasm between the billionaires and the working class.

>In one sense, the generational label is correlated with class consciousness. The Boomer generation due to good post-WW2 conditions, relatively strong labor, and lots of red scare propaganda were immune to the chasm between the capital and labor class that has only grown since the 2000s.

Propaganda, but also reality. What Stalin, Mao, Khmer Rouge did are real, and bad, and it influenced the thinking of a lot of people around Western supremacy. Our world of today is very different from that, and from a moral perspective it's truly questionable where the West is at this point. But back then?

ok, but generational labeling are definitely economic classes.

The boomers essentially commited economic warfare against generation X because of the 60's voter rights acts. They dismantled social programs for the fear black people and minoritieis would benefit.

So you can't just say this without acknowledging how boomers basically created class warfare.

Shocked that there's somebody in congres that's born in 1923.

You mean 1933 (Chuck Grassley, R-IA senator).

BTW here's a video of him in 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhAZaWhJ7bw

He's 93 but he's not incapacitated, unlike some other octogenarians in congress which are barely hanging on. But I can't believe he's filed to run for reelection again in 2028 (he'd be 101 at the end of that term).

He might not be incapacitated, but we need term and age limits.

Coupland warned that Gen X would get the blame for the generations that preceded them

They aren't doing themselves any favors: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/style/gen-x-generation-di...

...TL;DR a GenXer describes the entire generation as nihilists wearing "I don't really care; do you?" jackets

Will Smith, Elon Musk, health insurance CEO that got got, Thiel, Heather Bresch the CEO that without a market need jacked up EpiPen prices...endless list of failed up non-contributors

Every GenXer I worked with has been miserable to work with; Millennials and GenZ on the other hand have been amazing.

Generational divides are not just "class ware fare." Others in this thread making such a banal thought ending statement is can say what they want but my lived experience is generational social divides are real; human biology is memory based and class warfare is what the past believed in

I don't think having Gen X outnumber boomers in congress will have an effect.

if it was Gen Y or Z then maybe.

Yeah Gen X "sold out" faster than the stupid hippy boomers before them

About damn time.

Gen X will not save you because Gen X knows this shit ain’t worth saving.

Too bad my generation (X) is shaping up to be garbage, just like the Boomers. You'd think we would have learned from the example they set, where we had it fairly good as kids & young adults but saw the Boomers hellbent on trying to keep it all for themselves as we got older. Nope, apparently a lot of us are seeing fit to try and do it to the generations behind us: Millenials, Z, & Alpha.

https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/11/02/are-gen-xers-the-new...

Not too surprising I guess. Gen Xers I know paint themselves as more laid back than Boomers, and in some ways they are, but they are exactly as corporate and bureaucratic as Boomers in many other ways. Whatever rebel spirit they had decades ago seems long gone now

They're better parents than Boomers were I think, but not really better bosses

Obviously a generalization though

I just overheard a GenXer telling some gen z newhires at my work that social security is going to cut benefits in 2030 because 90% of immigrants are on welfare. I was in the next room so it was too awkward for me to jump into the conversation and straighten him out. It's very frustrating. Stop watching conservative media. It will rot your brain.

Immigrants are like the free square in bingo to many people. Anything you don't like, you can blame on them. It makes life easier for a certain kind of person.

Didn't X get more childhood lead than anyone else? Dealt a bad hand maybe.

We did and we were statistically the most violent generation. Anecdotally, when I was a dumb kid, we honestly went looking for fights.

What many people forget is that more GenXers wanted to beat up Kurt Cobain than to listen to his music.

>the most violent generation

As a late GenX, gas was still leaded when I was a kid. It's usage peaked in GenX years and dropped after that until it was mostly phased out. Biggest mistake human kind ever did. (oops, GP mentioned this).

I went to school with a bunch of these idiots. While there were a lot of intelligent and nice individuals, this was before the "don't be bullys" thing really took off. There was no shortage of uncontrolled assholes running around that thought they could get away with anything. My mom worked for booking at the jail at the time and reported back to me how many kids in the yearbook ended up incarcerated and it was a lot.

> Biggest mistake human kind ever did.

The same guy invented Freon and popularized chlorofluorocarbons. He was chairman and president of the American Chemical Society, a winner of the Priestly Medal, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He created both while working for General Motors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

Fighting goes back quite a long ways, at least in American culture. Baby boomers fought, they're parents fought, etc. Bar brawls and street fights in film are a stereotype, but like all stereotypes reflect a real and pervasive phenomenon. (The pernicious aspect of stereotypes is the moral framing and tacit inferences they promote, not the underlying, facial observations.) Environmental effects like pollution may have been a contributing factor, but I think minor compared to culture. Similarly, video games likely contributed much more to the reduction in public anti-social behavior than reductions in pollution. Bored young men had less reason to congregate and get involved in situations prone to the eruption of public violence. The evidence supporting the role of video games reducing violence and crime seems to be much stronger than for theories about pollution, and the mechanism is far simpler.

> Anecdotally, when I was a dumb kid, we honestly went looking for fights.

I've always kinda chuckled at the folks from this generation whining about how soft kids are nowadays. We're there simply no external consequences back then?

If I got into half of the trouble GenX'ers claim to have in my youth, I'd have spent my youth in and out of jail and halfway houses.

Yep, I remember 69 cent leaded gas as a child. Also sitting in the back of station wagon with the window open breathing the fumes. I wonder how many IQ points I burned that way.

1970 was peak leaded gas, but unleaded didn't overcome leaded in usage until 1980.

There's a theory that environmental lead levels were a contributing factor to the PNW's serial killer glut: https://grist.org/culture/murderland-caroline-fraser-serial-...

Be nice to your local GenX. You never know.

Gen X was dealt a bad hand in so many ways. They coined the term "latch key kid" because their parents needed to work more, or they came from broken homes at a new rate. Their young childhood was in the economic doldrums of the 70's and their childhood and formative years during the 80's enjoyed the particular economic circumstances of the 80's. Life was dangerous too. Childhood deaths were some 3x what they are today, especially from accidents.

Calling whole generation “garbage” is not very mature and reasonable

Generations are not a useful concept. People need to stop thinking of themselves as a member of a club with certain personality traits and instead as belonging to a class and position in society that affects how they see the world.

Being an affluent retiree affects your worldview no matter what generation you are from. It is not exclusive to Boomers. Gen Xers of that socioeconomic status will act similarly when they reach that age.

Politics, like businesses and other their places of power, attract very specific types of people. The generation they are born in doesn't matter.

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