Who Is The Best Generation? | Ep. 028 Lemonade Stand 🍋

13:51Aiden:So I think part of my problem with evaluating Gen Alpha, which is the generation that began being born in 2013 and are basically spanning until now. Until 2013, until now. Yeah. And a lot of the statistics that I think will affect their lives the most haven't, you know, haven't exactly played out yet. Like, I can't compare life expectancy. The oldest one is 12. A lot of them. Yeah.

14:20Atrioc:These are Ludwig viewers. They watch a lot of Ludwig. We don't know how that's going to play out in five years.

14:26Aiden:They're not queuing up to buy homes. They don't have to buy the food. They should. They got to start that grind. These fucking gen officers are lazy. has been buy homes when you're 13 years old. Buy homes as soon as you fucking get because it'll get worse.

14:40Atrioc:What do we know about them? I'm genuinely curious. Like when we talk about Jen, other than they're obsessed with TikTok and Roblox, like what do we know? I think that's a huge part. I mean, short form media is a big part of their diet. Tech is rapidly changing in their lifetime. The school system they're coming up in is being upended by AI while they're in it. Like they're the test case in the middle of it. you know their friendships are taking place on roblox or on social media uh what else do we know about i mean that's there a lot of them are parented by the first generation parented by millennials so that's terrifying yeah i think part of the hard thing is like i i could point

15:20Aiden:to some of those things and make a guess based off of a different generation that comes before them is that a lot of these things will have significant effects on things like mental health or suicide rates. They are also, genuinely, they are also the first generation that is prominently within this pocket of time in America where I think things like vaccines are being questioned so broadly. It's not like the granola parent who was talking about vaccines causing autism didn't exist 25 years ago. Yeah, but it's gone. But the popularity of that version of health and parenting is more common now. And I think the issue when your entire sample size of people is either at the age of 12 or below it is that the data isn't amazing.

16:09Aiden:What are some pros? We're saying some negative things. What are some pros of being born right now in Gen Alpha?

16:14Atrioc:I would argue, and we'll talk about Gen Z, Millennials, and whatnot. But Gen Z has had a, let's say, somewhat normal childhood, and then everything's being upended now as they're adults. And arguably, I'd rather be Generation Alpha. like of the couple of them. Like I would rather be, grow up in a world where AI has and is already upended the education system rather than it feels like it's becoming obsolete right as I'm exiting it.

16:40Aiden:I think that's how I feel too, is a lot of the trends that are affecting Generation Z in negative ways that we've even talked about on the show. I think by being born a little later, you're at least coming up in a time where parents are more familiar with what's developing and playing out in the world. things like ai and its effect on education uh and the way it affects life in general we we get to have more time to react to those things i think the problem with gen z uh among many you know we'll get to gen z they they just exist they they are the testing ground for a lot of these technologies that have broken through in recent years right you're saying gen alpha gen alpha gets to potentially benefit from our reactions to those things and maybe shifts in policy or approaches to the way that would otherwise affect their health negatively.

17:34Aiden:And then in a more solidly pro direction, they might be at the precipice of how all of these things benefit healthcare substantially. So you might get to live long enough into a pocket of time that millennials or Gen Z doesn't really get to benefit from where your lifespan is elongated by the quality of medical treatment available. And so there, I mean, yeah, it's kind of like, you know, if you're the boomers, you dodge world war two right after it. Right. Right. So if you're Gen Alpha, you're kind of praying for war three to happen. Right. You want Gen Z to go through all the, or whether it's world war three or whether it's, you want the post world war three boom.

18:10You want to be the one right after you want to be the people who are young and right after, and then all the previous clanker wars happen over the next five to six years yeah gen z dies

18:19Atrioc:i mean i honestly think there's truth to it and i think especially healthcare you know like we did a whole episode about this talking about the advances in healthcare with ai and i continue to believe and there's a lot of evidence pointing that we are going to make massive leaps in healthcare over the next couple decades and that some of the the framing i've heard around it is just try to live long enough to get to the point that that stuff happens and probably we will get to live through that of life lifespans dramatically extending, you will almost certainly, and then the gen alpha will, if you're 10 right now, if you're five, you almost certainly are going to have access to vastly better medical.

18:55Can you pull up my screen, Perry? It's not just us hoping this. Yes, or mine, yeah. No, don't pull this. There was this military parade in China, and there was a hot mic incident where they caught Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un of North Korea talking together about how they're all going to live to be 150 with the events. They're all going to be able to use harvested lab-grown organs to replace their body and cycle it out and live to be 150. Whether or not they're actually right. It was very Trump-esque where they're like,

19:26Atrioc:I've heard that people are going to be able to live to 150 with organ donations and various blood transfusions. It's like none of them were like, this is happening. They're just like, I've heard that. It's all like, hands up. I'm definitely not doing this. These people are all 80, and they're talking about how they're going to live to 150. So I think it's too late for boomers. Yeah, they might be cooked, but Gen Alpha is going to have something like this. We're not going to be able to reverse the aging that has happened to these people, but maybe before we hit aging period, we get to dodge it.

19:55I also want to say, so what, you know, Gen Alpha, let's say you're 12 now, you'll be 30 in 28 years. What is that? That's like 53. 53. 20, 53. That's, the world's going to be different, bro. I can't even visualize what 2053 looks like. So they're going to be, you know, whether it's good or bad, they're going to be seeing stuff that will completely out of our realm of our possibility. We can't even imagine.

20:19Aiden:I think a last note on this is like we said at the beginning, this is framed around how these generations, you know, exist with it. You got to take it off. You got to take it off. All right. You want me to take away the last year.

20:31Atrioc:I keep looking over and I keep seeing three men doing what three.

20:35Aiden:They're making love. Yeah.

20:37Atrioc:That's what they're doing. They're celebrating. You told me the greatest generation liked to do stuff like this.

20:41Aiden:Yeah, they got wild, dude. But in an American context, and I think there's also a world here where, you know, due to the, you know, financial collapse of America, due to the crushing amount of debt that we have, you know, maybe American life for this generation is poor, but, you know, this generation succeeds somewhere else. You're saying Gen Alpha in China is really, they're rearing up yeah maybe they know who gen alpha when the nuclear war happens gen alpha in new zealand's gonna be chilling yeah that would be gabe newell's bunker yeah there's if the sorting

21:19Atrioc:hat could also you could pick which country that would be sick gabe who is going to live to 150 is i mean counterpoint once and csgo hands for niles once the boomers finally die and we get into power finally yeah maybe we can kick the debt problem down the road just a little bit longer let the alphas take care of it. Punch it onto the alphas? That's a good idea. We have the choice to make their lives better. God, we can punt it for like 30 more years.

21:45Aiden:We can just punt. We can just punt. All right, well, why don't we get the next one? Quick ranking so far. Would you rather be Gen Alpha or Greatest Gen if you had to pick? I would definitely rather be Gen Alpha. Gen Alpha by a mile. I think so too. It's just not worth it. The casino game... I mean, we don't know the Great Depression or the wars to come. Yeah. But I'll take that. But in one of those two, you know the Great Depression and wars to come. That's the difference. It's the devil you know versus you take a risk. Okay, all right. I'll at least flip the coin. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right, you're right.

22:16Okay. Millennials.

22:19Atrioc:Dude, we got to do a different... I can't go three back. Okay, all right. We're back to millennials. We are doing Gen Z. Let's mix it up. Let's do an older one.

22:29Aiden:No, no, Gen Z's good. Gen Z? All right, fine.

22:31Atrioc:All right, hit up with Gen Z.

22:33Aiden:Yeah, I'm going to listen to two... older men. Let's talk about Gen Z. Speaking of three men, Aiden. What did Gen Z love? They love being whiny on podcasts. They love working for Ludwig. They love stupid haircuts. They love cheating at basketball, complaining about...

22:55Atrioc:They love the environment. They always try to talk about the environment. Make me feel guilty about eating factory farmed foods. Yeah, what's wrong with that?

23:03Aiden:Yeah, guys, keep telling me what it's like.

23:05Atrioc:When I go dump crude oil into the Los Angeles River, there's always some Gen Z. There's always some woke Gen Z. Holding up a sec. Great of Thunberg always yells at me when I pour crude oil onto the birds in the LA Harbor. Gen Z years, 1997 to 2012. What year were you born? 97, baby. You're such a fake Gen Z, actually. I'm the gatekeeper. I'm the gatekeeper. Wait, so you're the oldest Gen Z. You're the oldest Gen Z. Okay, I didn't realize that. I will say, it feels like to me, there's this weird 97 to 9-11 period of Gen Z where they're really not. They're so different. They're like so... Because you guys still had VCRs and early Game Boys with batteries.

23:45Aiden:I was watching The Lion King. Yeah, it doesn't... Because there's Gen Z that's now that are still in school and you're like basically 30 and dead. I'm 28! There's such a difference in what I've seen from Gen Z. But yes, okay, so Gen Z, the tech you guys grew up with would be like the Nintendo DS, the Wii. Indeed. Indeed. And we played Super Mario Galaxy.

24:06Atrioc:I think the key thing is that you grew up with tech. Because for us, there was still, I mean, yes, there were video game consoles, but they weren't ubiquitous in your life. And the really big thing is, internet wasn't big yet when we were in high school. I mean, in high school - It was. I'll say phones, really. Yeah, so definitely phones. So internet was becoming a thing going into high school. I remember in middle school, it's still AOL is how we talk to people, right? There wasn't really social media yet. High school is when that stuff was kicking off. And even that, it was still very immature.

24:35Atrioc:There was no YouTube that anybody used really in high school. It was like coming to form towards the second half of high school. But anyway, the big one being phones, right? I did not have a smartphone in high school, and almost nobody did. And then right after we exit is when smartphones become a thing. And then that, as everybody knows, has dominated society, has dominated attention spans, has dominated apps, it dominates entertainment, it's TikTok, it's the gig economy. Like, phones have, in combo with the internet, dramatically changed how people live their lives. I would say, like, phones and social media are the big things.

25:10Atrioc:But phones are what made social media really excel, right? Like, Instagram, the reason it took off is because of phones, right? And this impacted everybody, right? Every generation is hit by this, but I think what you're saying is right, was Gen Z is the first native. Right, they grew up with this. They're immersed in it from, Shut the... He's not even saying anything and he's annoying me. Why do you have to pair me? He's on his phone. He's always with the phones with this generation. What's the good parts? What's the pros of the generation? They grew up... I mean, it's like this... Ludwig gives you a job.

25:42Ludwig gives you a job. Almost certainly you get a job from Ludwig. Oh, a good one. They're all really depressed. That's not actually... This is a negative, Doug. Well, okay. But not in a great depression sort of way.

25:50Atrioc:Counterpoint, they're actually aware that they're depressed. Because one of the things I often have heard when I talk to older people is like, oh, yeah, they're really depressed. But like in Texas, you don't talk about that. Right. You don't bring it up. You know, it's like there's certainly an argument that Gen Z is more anxious and more depressed than any other generation. There's also an argument that we just talk about mental health far, far, far more. And there's more awareness. And I think both of those presumably have truth to them. It's a fair argument. I would say they're also, you know, they're more connected with people with similar interests online.

26:20in a way where you would be like you know if you lived in a certain area even when i would grow up and move on different military bases if i didn't have a friend that i could find in that school who liked the same hobbies as me i just had to pretend they didn't exist and try to conform a little bit more but now you really can find people with similar hobbies and interests anywhere you want online and build these communities which is kind of cool um like it's mario kart we

26:42Atrioc:is kind of like a guinea pig where we like inject phones okay how does that work and we just kind of squirt it in there and we see what oh it's like hey right is your finished cup education ai let's just see what happens right i think gen z is very much the guinea pig and we're just oh like covid we're like yeah let's just see what happens if remote work and then we hire a bunch of people then everybody gets laid off let's just see what happens let's see what happens let's see what happens crypto let's just see what happens gen z i think i think that's that and and the uh

27:10Aiden:average home price is about four hundred thousand dollars now yeah i think that's the other thing

27:14Atrioc:that's worth pointing out, and obviously we'll get to homes, is just this is the generation where really the prospect of home ownership and even just spending a reasonable amount of money on your living expenses is, that's not the thing anymore. You have to spend a crazy amount of money and it is incredibly unlikely you're going to be able to buy a home and have that traditional American dream. I think with our generation, it's like half and half. Half the people have a foot in that, half don't. A lot of us have boomers who have accumulated all this wealth and we can lean on that. And I think Gen Z is the first one where it's like, oh no, I graduate from college or high school or whatever and I'm just planning on paying all of my money in rent for the rest of my life.

27:52Atrioc:And that is depressing.

27:53Aiden:I think that the general downside of this generation is that you are the guinea pig generation in so many ways. You're the generation that this technology has molded the heaviest at a time when it's the least regulated. You have the least defined path of how to become successful, like this general track record that all of the generations prior of you could pretty much follow is starting to break. This system of American success that is modeled out for you and you've been sold your whole upbringing isn't translating into the things that it's supposed to. And then you've also gone through the mind blender of having a phone or an iPad or the internet around you unmoderated for your entire life.

28:43Aiden:and we're just gonna kind of see how that works out. And you sit in this little divot of time where I think this generation's gonna be wrestling with a lot of the consequences of just having been born and existing in this time period in a way that I think Gen Alpha gets to be more reactionary to. Right. Or in millennials didn't have to live through in quite the same way because it came at a tail end of their mental development. I think it's still it's millennials, but I totally agree with what you're saying. And I really like the point about this is one of the generations where you really cannot get advice from those older than you.

29:18Like it is just that the old systems do not apply in any way. They have fractured and broken. And so you're kind of on your own, you know, in a unique way. And almost like a greatest generation way. Almost like a throwback. Like things are changing so much that you are really thrown to the wolves. That's interesting.

29:36Atrioc:I also just piggybacking on what you're saying of the change in like. So the old systems, like we grew up with our parents, and presumably most Gen Z kids do as well, their parents saying, you got to go to college and you get a good degree and then you'll get a job and you'll be set. And you buy a home and you're told this dream. And that's true, has worked for many millennials, but many have failed. I mean, there's a lot of resentment. It was already failing. Right. There's a lot of resentment in our generation. And I, in college, was resentful of the fact that our colleges were giving my friends and people I knew these degrees that were not going to pay back at all.

30:11Atrioc:And they're putting themselves$100 ,000,$200 ,000 in debt for an English degree from some college that is just not going to pay back. But they've been sold this story over and over. But it was still true for many people. Like, you could go get a computer science degree and just be good. And that was my experience, right? and then it feels like now the the stat that came out that's really illustrative is that college graduates are just as unemployed as non-college graduates for men yeah but yes okay for men but like that alone is like that's a total like the facade was still there but now it is a complete fracturing for gen z of this is what you were supposed to do to succeed you know two more things about this generation that are interesting we kind of mentioned the pandemic but in the way that Vietnam would be a big deal for previous generation, COVID is the big defining event of this generation so far, the biggest world event.

31:03And it really hit every member of Gen Z during schooling. And I think that's where it impacts the most. In studies, after study, it's shown that people that were in school during COVID had markedly worse outcomes in the years following. It disengages you from the system you were on. You get off of the treadmill, it's hard to get back on in the same way. And so they all got hit with it, various age, some older than some younger, but it's like, that's been a big thing. And again, it shook the world in such a way. Second thing is the creator economy. It's like, it never existed really prior to Gen Z.

31:38And Gen Z has now become such as big cultural force, not only from like where they get information, thanks for watching this podcast, but also as like a path of, you know, career path. Like where you want to possibly, It's the number one requested job among Gen Z is like working the creator economy. So that's, these are two weird things that didn't exist before that are like big defining parts of this gen.

32:00Aiden:Yeah, you have such a comparatively outsized cultural impact now because you're so well integrated and you understand all of these tools to like make videos and share them. and you don't have to go through the old media structure of going through all these hoops to broadcast a television show, for example. So young people get to be at the forefront of cultural messaging in a way that they never were before. I just saw a really interesting stat. I'm not going to spoil who the number one ranking generation was, but it was ranking generations based on economic, political power, but then also had cultural power.

32:41And what you said was so true in that Gen Z was like massively higher, outweighed on the cultural power and had no financial or political power, like zero. Like they have way more cultural influence, but almost no. And I thought that was very interesting.

32:56Aiden:So with all that said, where do you think it stands? I think this is an interesting one for me because it is technically the pocket I'm in. I do sit in a weird spot where I'm, like you said, I do think that people who are born in like 97 to like 99 are in, it's a little different for you. But if I was, you know, take my survivorship bias out of the equation, I think I would rather be a millennial or rather be Gen Alpha. I think Gen Z at the very least is worse than those two options.

33:28Atrioc:I would agree with that. Particularly because of COVID. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does feel like they just get hit with everything first. The world's changing rapidly. It feels like they're the unprepared younger people being thrust into it. So I do feel like it's kind of an unlucky dice roll. COVID, yeah, anecdotally, COVID happened, and I was able to change my life to benefit from it. I was mature enough and had enough experience in my career and in my work and everything to benefit from it. Same with AI. And that would be totally different if I was 16 when this stuff is coming out or happening. It just seems incredibly challenging.

34:00That being said, would rather go into the trenches of TikTok and COVID

34:05Atrioc:than the trenches of World War II. I still would rather be a Gen Z than a Greatest Generation. Yeah, I agree.

34:12Aiden:I would still take Gen Z of our Greatest Generation any day of the week. Any day of the week. Dude, so far, Greatest Generation is at the bottom of the list. I just don't want to fight.

34:21Atrioc:Honestly, for the first couple of minutes, you had me sort of like, damn, you know, they kind of had it okay. And you know what? No, actually, World War II sucked bad. No, it's really that great. Great Depression.

34:30Aiden:It's really that combo of no healthcare, like shitty healthcare into Great Depression into World War II. And it'll be tough to top that right now. We'll talk about that. Who's next? The lost generation. The lost generation. I don't even know much about this. What do we know? Okay. They're lost.

34:51Atrioc:The lost generation. Okay. The defining thing is that they were born and they were young adults during World War I. All right? So we're shifting it before The Greatest Generation. And as I looked into The Lost Generation, they're like the character in a movie that is only there to be kicked down every time they show up. It's like the cabbages guy in Avatar The Last Airbender. It's like they start to grow up.

35:16Aiden:And it's so sad because they would never see him. They'll never get to see Avatar The Last Airbender.

35:20Atrioc:They're like, oh, World War I, my cabbages, no! And then World War I ends, and then they like get to gather their cabbages during the roaring 20s but even then there's a lot of disillusionment people are kind of like upset over world war one and how it ruined the whole sort of romanticized war and national unity there's also prohibition a move towards cities there's just kind of this like weird fraying of cultural society it's where you get like the great gatsby coming out and then oh beans the great depression my cabbages again and so they're kind of like middle-aged adults during the great depression and then towards the final quarter of their life they get to chill with world war ii my cabbages they had it really bad so they had

35:59Aiden:some of those guys are in their 30s and 40s and then they just they had to go to world war ii some people went back to back world wars back to back wars no no that that's this generation to be

36:09Atrioc:clear and it's i i assume i didn't look at why they're called lost but it's it's literally a sandwich man it's world war one so here's the question there's four quarters to the lost generation yeah right it's it's world war one a good decade and then depression they did get the 20s they got to hang out with leo dicaprio and so here's the here's the question right greatest generation starts with great depression then world war ii and then their final two quarters are pretty good which would you rather have right easily easily greatest you rather have greatest

36:38Aiden:you take the gamble of a hundred greatest for sure because look the best case scenario of lost generation is like you go to a gatsby party and get syphilis like it's there's there's that's like the best case scenario because you're you're pretty much you're pretty much dead by the time all of the progress post-world war ii is happening you're pretty much guaranteed to be dead by then

37:02Atrioc:yeah basically what you got is the 20s that's the one that's the one salvaging thing for the lost generation and like some interesting things about that we call it like the roaring 20s but as a reminder, people are still pretty poor in the 20s, but at least from the American perspective, this is where consumer culture starts to come up. A lot of mass production, cars become a big thing, radios, like 40 % of people have radios by the end of the night, by 1930. So this is, you are being connected to the rest of the nation. More people are moving to cities. There's investing in the stock market, and there's jazz, and there's all this kind of cultural stuff.

37:36Atrioc:There's jazz, Aiden. And they got rid of

37:38Aiden:that later.

37:39Atrioc:Like, you know, your life is pretty shit from the war. And certainly if you're in Europe, right? I mean, the World War I just absolutely devastates everything. It decimates everything, right? It's like, it's pretty decent for, like, we should say Lost Generation just sucks balls if you're European. Like, it is just truly awful. If you're American, you at least get that 20s, where for a large number of people, it was pretty chill. I just read All Quiet on the Restaurant Front for the first time. I think maybe I had it in school, but I never cared. I read it while I was on a plane flying back from Arizona and I was tearing up on a plane.

38:09It is so impressingly sad. It is just young people being thrown to their deaths over and over in this miserable, sad environment. One thing I want to say on our point between greatest gen and this gen is I've seen a lot of studies on happiness that show even in poorer countries that have measurably worse outcomes than like a richer country. As long as you feel like you are currently doing better than your parents, that is a huge part of how, If you feel like we're on the right direction, people get a lot of purpose out of that. And so I think for the greatest gen, the world around them got better their whole life.

38:44They went through the bad times, but it got better. I think for Lost, going through World War I and then going back to World War II or Great Depression is just misery. I just feel like this is probably the worst. I mean, I don't see an upside.

38:56Atrioc:The only upside is that if you're born in this, you're more likely to get to enjoy a decade. right with greatest generation like you have to survive through two brutal decades to get and again this is if you're american like you kind of want to die of syphilis in the 20s it's a good time to go i mean that's the thing like you know if you're gonna die let's say you're gonna die in world war ii either way you'd rather die in world war ii as lost generation where you at least got to enjoy the 20s you know if you're looking at you know and what you were saying about war so like one of the defining things with lost generation as much as you have the 20s and it's good it's it's what you said everybody again particularly in europe but people are coming back from the war scarred and so like ernest hemingway and f scotch fitzgerald are like authors during this time and they're they're the great american authors and their their whole thing is about like disillusionment so hemingway's quote there's nothing as bad as war when people realize how bad it is they cannot do anything to stop it because they go crazy there are some people who never realize it's like everybody just be going like oh this is fucking awful and and then they're distracting themselves yeah it was a part in the book where he talks about he's like a 19 year old kid i mean he's a german soldier in the city but it's world war one yeah and he's talking about how he's in school at like 16 all his friends and the teacher is talking to him and talking about how how noble it is to fight for his country and how great it is and how how they're going to be the iron youth and they're going to help and like him uh over the course of the book just having that all fall from his eyes and realizing what what a disaster this is and and being there when his friends around him die.

40:25And I think the first mechanized war, which is World War I, that is probably the most horrendous war to have happened in the world thus far. I mean, it is like truly just infinite amount of people being sent into a bloody trench for death. And I, not that there's a comparison, but World War II is probably a better thing to have gone through. Yeah, where'd you put on the tier list? I'm not tier listing it, but it feels like this is the worst iteration to me. This one, I would not choose this one.

40:50Atrioc:Yeah, the more that I think about it, having to experience, I think, to put this differently, the worst possible experience to have is that you go through that in World War I. You watch all of your friends and family die. You come back for a decade. If you're in America and you're lucky, you get an okay generation. And then depression. And then you have to go back to war. Yeah. With Germany again. It's like, come on. I can imagine the scenario

41:14Aiden:where you're coming out of the depression or you're in the depression era where you're suffering and you're poor and unemployed and you're in your like late 30s, early 40s and you decide to enlist again because it's like your only option. And then you cope back to Europe.

41:28Atrioc:And reminder, not necessarily decide, right? There's still conscription at this point.

41:31Aiden:I think when you're at that age, it has to be voluntary, right? Or maybe not. For World War II, I'm not sure. Maybe not. Not now, I think. Anyway, I'm imagining like the worst track there with that. I'm down to put Lost Generation dead last right now. That's the shittiest time to be born.

41:47Atrioc:That is fair. And that's right around 1900 for people to clear. So right at the turn of the century, if you were born, damn, your life probably sucked. Feel for you. You get drafted up to 35 years, seven months. So if they were born. And if you would ever enlisted or whatever, then it could be up to 44. So if you'd already. What? Yeah. So it's worse for vets? Yeah. Dude, that's I was going to say at least lost generation wasn't drafted into World War Two. And they needed vets, dude. They needed. Oh, my God. What do we got? Next one. Yeah.

42:23Atrioc:next who

42:29Aiden:all right we got millennials tell me about me Aiden tell us about us I will tell you charming smile no actually most likely to go bald full heads of hair most likely to go bald very good illegal legends sunset sunsetting in their YouTube careers probably can't keep it going for much longer than right now Just because the viewership's been way down.

42:51Atrioc:It's weird. It does say all that.

42:53Aiden:Wikipedia is crazy.

42:54Atrioc:Our generation is more of a roller coaster. We're building for the up. We're building for the slingshot.

42:58Aiden:Yeah. We're pulling back. Okay. So with millennials, this is an interesting generation to me because I think you're starting to see the trends turn against you, but not fully yet. You don't have the same quality of life as the couple generations that came before you in terms of like affordability of housing or affordability of college. But you do still have a pretty concrete track, like college enrollment in this generation has like gone up from previous generations. You're like the most educated so far. You're also the most likely to inherit the wealth of the two generations prior to you, especially the boomer generation.

43:47Aiden:I think that has to come later in your life. Maybe you're struggling to buy a home, for instance, but you're set up to receive the wealth of the wealthiest generation previous to you. I think you're also at the tail end of the, by the way, this is the generation that's born 1981 to 1996. And you're seeing the benefits of modern medicine, vaccination vaccines you're at a time when there's like a max public i would say belief in these things you're also coming out of an era where we've achieved all these great scientific achievements i feel like uh you have the legacy of things like landing on the moon that you're like coasting off of you're also at the okay hold on i'm stopping you there at no point have i thought damn i'm

44:36Atrioc:coasting off the no no no remember that thing that happened 40 years before i was born it didn't

44:42Aiden:happen 40 years before you're born, right?

44:44Atrioc:Okay, 30. I'm not coasting off World War II. Why would I coast off of the moon?

44:48Aiden:No, I think you just exist. Okay, my point is more, you're not taking credit for the achievement. You exist in an American time frame where like belief in scientific achievement and like all of these things are core tenets of your upbringing and I would say they are real in a lot of those ways that they're being perpetuated.

45:09Atrioc:Yeah, there's still a real sense of American exceptionalism. Like we are driving all these things around the world and we're the center of culture or the center of technology. It was one of the defining things of my youth. Because I was born in 91, which sounds so fucking old. It was the year. For context, we were born like three months apart or something. It was the year the Soviet Union fell and the Cold War ended. Berlin Wall goes down. And it sort of fell, especially when I was young, especially living on a military base. But it was like, we've done it. It's the end of history, America, global hegemon, and now everything's going to be good forever.

45:42That was the idea in the 90s. That was sort of the feeling that I had as a child.

45:46Aiden:Yeah, and that's the feeling that you grow up with. And I think by the time, the first big, I would say, hiccups, or at least that you're realizing as a millennial, from my perspective, are 9-11 happens. And then the reaction, the global reaction to 9-11, especially America's reaction. Okay, we invade Afghanistan. and we invaded Iraq a couple years later. So now you might be enlisting in the military as a reaction to that event if you're old enough, and then you're leading straight into the 2008 financial crisis, which is also something you have to navigate. You're coming out of college into that time period, which is, I think you're starting to deal with the first big economic problems that have been set up by the policies of the generations before you.

46:38Aiden:So you're at this weird inflection point where you're not the testing ground for all of the technology that is proliferating. Exactly. It's coming to access, it's something you're accessing when you're older. You have this strong belief and faith in American institutions and the legacy of American success that has come before you and existed for most of your upbringing. But now you're starting to see the earliest parts of the system break around you and realize that your path in life is not as easy as it was for your parents. Like you can't afford a home as soon as your parents did. Maybe you're choosing to not get married and have kids as early as your parents did.

47:18Aiden:And all of those decisions are getting pushed a little later, but I would argue, especially over the long run, and statistically this is more likely to be the case if you're white, when it comes to the inheritance of previous generations' wealth. But I think going into the next century or, I don't know, 50 years, I think millennials are going to be a very large, empowered generation. They are the largest generation by population, right? Right now. The largest voting block right now, just recently passed. So you're going to wield the most political power and the most wealth as a voting block. The millennials will be the generation that will shape most of the next 50 years.

48:02Aiden:Thank you. And you're welcome. We'll spare him.

48:07Atrioc:Yeah, something as you're saying that that I hadn't thought about till right now is you talk about like the American exceptionalism and growing up, I was told over and over, America's the greatest country on earth. Like you're privileged to be born here, the greatest, and you're just told over and over how great America is. Yes, with the sprinkles of it, you know, here's the faults or whatnot, but it is off the world wars and off the moon and off of Soviet Union and all these things. And then all of the major events that have happened in our adult lifetime or young adult lifetime have all felt like a fucking waste.

48:37Atrioc:Like Afghanistan, all of the wars in the Middle East felt pointless and wasteful and indestructible and they went on for 20 years. We're$37 trillion in debt now. That doesn't feel like it got us anything. The Great Recession was boomers fucking up the banking system and the loaning. Like we didn't do that, right? Like the Great Recession started when we were in high school. It's not like we were doing this. And so it's interesting to think about like the defining elements of our generation. And all of them, I think, are this slow narrative that is being unraveled about American exceptionalism as we just watch miss after miss after miss is my feeling.

49:14I think that's well said. I mean, my my wife, same age as me, was more directly impacted. But a lot of people have memories like this of growing up and seeing their parents lose their home in the Great Recession or have to lose their job. And then and if you're an older millennial, we just barely dodged it, I think, getting as the recovery was coming back. But like most people, many older millennials had to graduate into the recession. and that hurts your earnings for decades to come. So I do think that, I think that in general, I feel like America kind of had this narrative until maybe say 1999.

49:48And then ever since then, it's been sort of like a, it feels like the crest of the wave, but especially in 08, it's felt like none of the old methods or the post-World War II discussion has really fit. It doesn't fit anymore. And so being a little bit older as a millennial, it's obviously easier I guess than being native to it like Gen Z but it's the same you're getting hit again and again with like different body blows different shocks to the system of what you were told when you grew up

50:15Aiden:one benefit of this generation I think and you guys can speak more to this but I feel like this is the generation that started to benefit a lot from really positive social changes like the like more less discrimination happening or more, a broader acceptance of like different people and different walks of life and different races. And that is, you were a generation that ushered in a lot of social change that I think is very important to the way we live modern life. I would agree that possibly the most generation, because there's a big shift, at least with the younger Gen Z, mostly the male side.

50:55My understanding is they're becoming more radicalized socially. There's like the Andrew Tate and there's the, especially not even just in America, like I've seen in South Korea, you know it's been off the cliff for and so this is like a thing that seems to have peaked with millennials which is like trying for more equality among yeah i feel like it's that's was my thought

51:14Aiden:too is like in a way i feel like it's more of a core tenet of the millennial generation than generation z because of that radicalization thank you um but mostly doug i'm gonna just give you so much credit uh but yeah and i i think this is actually one of the most interesting ones to rank on the list that we've made so far because I would probably put, like I said, I think I put millennials above Gen Z and then alpha is like the coin flip of, it could have so much potential, but your life could also be shit depending on how things turn out, right? I would put millennials personally at the top of the list so far.

51:52Aiden:I think this is the best generation to be born into overall all because you have this, while certain aspects of your life are worse, like maybe homes are less affordable as an example, or maybe it's less affordable to have a family, you have access to a lot of modern amenities and technology that I think can push your life and career in a lot of interesting directions. And also you're the beneficiary of a lot of things that help with like life expectancy and general health.

52:25Atrioc:A key thing, just as we talk about this, is I think Gen Z, all of these new technologies and trends and shattering of America, this happened at pivotal moments in an unregulated way where you weren't equipped to handle it. Whereas for us, it's like, we got to experience stability and then things start changing. I think it's a huge advantage. I would infinitely rather be a millennial than Gen Z for those reasons. I can't imagine AI coming out when I'm in fucking sophomore year of high school. Like that would be so disruptive for me and my friends and everything or COVID. Anyway. Yeah. I think about this all the time.

52:56I think about, you know, how, how tempted I was to cut corners in college to play more legal legends. And if I had, I don't think I would have gotten into a good college. I would not have learned a goddamn thing. Cause I would have, I would have used JGBT for everything in order to play more league. And the only reason I had to go to the library and focus and like try to grind through it was because I would have failed otherwise. Like I had to do it. So yeah, I, I soft agree. I think the Gen Alpha coin flip is an interesting question where they might have, you know, I think if this stuff gets solved, it could be really prosperous.

53:28Atrioc:And I remember you saying off pod, AI will fix it. I've been telling Doug to say the whole time. He doesn't even like AI.

53:38All right. Okay. That's a fair discussion.

53:40Aiden:Why don't we get on to the next one? So right now we win. Yeah. You guys are beating me. Oh, I ripped it in half. Oh, okay. You don't need to get so angry. Gen X. Gen X, I have a little presentation about Gen X.

53:54Atrioc:I'm so curious about Gen X because we never talk about Gen X. It's just boomers or millennials, right? We just pretend that they're almost silent, if you will.

54:02Aiden:Can I give my little guess as to why this is the case? I think that the reason they're forgotten about a lot of the time is I think culturally, we basically lump them in with baby boomers. I think that's the main reason that we don't talk about the specifics of their generation. Let's show it. Yeah. So if you can pull this up, uh this is gen x also known as the m at least in america the mtv generation because that was such a dominant cultural influence when they were growing up how how old are they right now just

54:30Atrioc:give a sense of it because because boomers are like 65 to 70 or 65 to 80 something like that right uh no that's you're thinking of gen x oh gen x is 65 to 82 oh roughly oh damn okay boomers are right after the war so 46 to 64 damn okay i so i have been lumping them together um yeah well so they get on the lobby because there's because the way the population curve went there are so many more boomers that gen x just wasn't big enough to have a cultural impact to have a economic and political impact the way that boomers did so they kind of got forgotten they're often called the forgotten generation um 65 to 80 is their number so when they were born it was like Like the Beatles and black and white, when the earliest ones were born, and when the latest ones were born, it was like the 1980s.

55:19Rubik's Cube just came out. It's yuppies and it's Reagan and it's boom times. So they were named after this novel by Douglas Copeland about tales for an accelerated culture. And I think that's the main thing is culture really began to accelerate in their time with mass media. These are all some famous Gen X people. And a lot of them who have big cultural impact today, like Joe Rogan is the most popular podcast.

55:41Atrioc:Or damn, Dwayne The Rock Johnson. didn't know he was um that's vin diesel

55:50will ferrell kurt cobain died young but he's kind of like a uh the one of the most famous like gen xers the the rebellious uh you know that's the kind of yeah they were big of analog technology like that that is their the walkman the vcr early floppy disks and pcs all of that is very Gen X. They got to experience a lot of this stuff before it became all digital. One of the quotes they might say is like, when I was a kid, because again, this is one of the first generations to have two parents working. So women started entering the workforce. So they were called the latchkey generation because they could just leave home and wander around and go on their bikes and do whatever.

56:32So what's very funny is when I grew up, I could go play outside until sundown without a parent or cell phone or anything. and now this generation is one of the most likely to have six tracking apps on all their children and like life 360 and you know watch everything they do so very interesting they one of their big events was the fall of the berlin wall again in 1991 they were like you know in their 20s for this uh the admission of the worldwide web happened for them 9-11 again it's also a millennial thing

56:57Atrioc:but we were young they were like yeah we were yeah we really did not experience 9-11 to any meaningful degree um so that's that's that's no i'm sorry i don't go over so that's that's sort of gen x in a nutshell they what i would say is they they got to draft off a lot of things that the boomers had but again are too small to claim the full power of it they didn't have enough of voting block to to take it i did have a big con i wanted to show uh and this is what i found while researching so i can find it this is happening right now this is called the gen x career meltdown It's basically that Gen X came right after the boomers and really wanted to emulate them in a lot of these creative fields like photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV.

57:41But unlike the boomers who got to finish their career, make all the money and sort of retire while those things were still thriving, Gen X is being hit with all of those things radically being disrupted by the internet while they're still like 45, 50, like still needing to earn, still needing to figure it out and all of it's getting wiped out. And so it's actually a really kind of deeply kind of sad and dangerous time because they can't change. Like it's much more difficult to be like - Learning code. To be like 45 or like, you know, 54 with three kids and to be, okay, I'm just going to change my career radically.

58:18Like newspaper editor no longer exists as a career in a lot of places. Like it's just wiped out. Photography is all digital. Like the things they spent their life doing don't exist.

58:28Atrioc:Yeah, that's interesting. A lot of the automation and stuff that, you know, like the trucking industry, there's a lot of Gen X in there. Yeah. And, you know, as those jobs get decimated, like who wants to retrain and hire a 65-year-old 20-year-old truck? You know, somebody who's been trucking for 20 years. Yeah, I'm having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over. A 53-year-old in film and TV director. Talking to people in their late 40s and 50s about who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights or at least a solid career are now more likely to hear about the photographer whose work's dried up, the designer who can't get hired, or the magazine journalist who isn't doing much of anything.

59:02Like this is a, it's weird because they don't have like a World War I or World War II. Their biggest crisis is coming late in their life as the things they spent every, you know, their years doing are irrelevant. Like that's an interesting crisis to have. It's kind of unique.

59:17Aiden:Is this your, because for me, this is my parents' generation. Is this your? I have one Boomer 1, one Gen X. Okay.

59:25Atrioc:Yeah, I thought my parents were boomers, but they are Gen X, but like late Gen X. Yeah. Okay. And so, I mean, I see my parents are pretty happy, pretty stable, enjoyed the prosperity. But my dad was in the military, which is not a career that got changed. Yeah. This is really interesting because I still associate somebody who's 50 plus as benefiting from the economic environment and everything that the boomers really ushered in. and it still feels like they are they got a ton going for them and really the one downside is this like major transformation towards the end but i still think that the major the they got to be there for genuine moments of like american exceptionalism uh including the soviet union falling and i would include 9-11 of like a moment of like the the nation really rallying together around this thing whereas again we grew up when we're just in iraq like we didn't grow up, you know, like being like, Hey, we had this, you know, big crisis that we had to overcome together.

1:00:23Atrioc:We're just like, Oh yeah, we're killing tons of people every day. If you guys are younger, it's worth noting that after nine 11, uh, the America has, was like, we put 95 % approval in George Bush. Like it's the most united America has ever been behind a president. It was the most bipartisan, the bills ever, like it was a brief country was like united as Americans, you know, unless you were Islamic, but like we were united as Americans and like, and that that's like foreign to us and right in that same unification was then used to go start a war in iraq and spend tens of trillions of dollars like the stupidest possible use but like during that gen x period like you had american exceptionalism yes technology starting to change but there's still the generation that really benefited from that in the same way that you're saying like oh these things have changed all of the tv and movie executives who are getting wealthy off all these things are gen x right they're all sure and so i it's very widely distributed like all generations are so i would say it's a fair point and it's worth saying that by the rule of like did you have a better time than your parents they did they absolutely did they had a way better time than they were in a era of actually real peace and prosperity uh in america only near the end where it's starting to

1:01:30Aiden:like fray and they're still active you know oh i i think this one is interesting i i figured this would be one of the harder ones to place. For me, I take millennials over Generation X. And I think because if you're in the millennial category, you are just younger when the internet became super important. And I think you are more likely to adapt in how that fits into your life and career, which I think is a very, very important thing for how you succeed from there. And also like the amount of options that you have to take your life in. I do think there's an economic argument for choosing Gen X.

1:02:18Aiden:Like I would understand if somebody chose that generation over millennials, but that's kind of my vote. It's like, I stand by millennials here. I think I personally would take millennials because I fear change and I know the devil that I know. But I think realistically, if you're doing a marble out of the hat, Gen X had a better chance, better. You have statistically a better chance of success.

1:02:39Atrioc:I think this is the lowest risk option of what we've talked about. Millennials, as we talked about, these new trends come in and are crazy disruptive and we're adults and can handle it better. But I'm sure we all know plenty of millennials who have not handled things well and are dealing with lack of affordability and lack of job prospects and all these things. And so I think just the gap between haves and have-nots really started to expand on millennials. And Gen X, it's still a lot of that just you can follow the path and have a good life kind of vibe still existed i guess the way i would look at it is get a house you know get a get a good career go shake somebody's fucking hand to get a job like you know go to medical school and medical school my dad was had made more money after medical school than when he went in because he would work on the summers yeah like that's a education was affordable is the point right the stuff that boomer said still worked for yes it doesn't for us all of our friends who work as who became doctors are still in debt 10 years after graduating like

1:03:30Aiden:If I was picking this, like I was some omnipotent being, I was dropping a marble into the system of life, I would drop it into Gen X. But for me personally, I would pick millennials.

1:03:41Atrioc:Yeah, same. And for me, it's like technology is what makes me excited to be alive. And if I was back then, I was like, oh, cool. You hear about Pong? Like, I don't know. You say Pong, literally, it's like selfish, but in my mind, I'm thinking of gaming. It's like they didn't have good games.

1:03:59Aiden:When you get older, there's arcades. You're also in the time period. You're in the wake of the civil rights movement. There's so many interesting cultural things happening in that time period too, like through your teenage years to your 20s. I think it's, I don't know. You have some sick video games. You get Donkey Kong by the time you're 24. You don't get anything sick, really. You don't think Donkey Kong's sick when you haven't seen anything else? Goldeneye doesn't come out until 1997. Bro, but you haven't seen Goldeneye yet. Well, that's what I'm saying. multiplayer, playing with the things that I love about gaming.

1:04:31Aiden:No, it's because your dopamine receptors are fried, bro. Dude, imagine you still... Gen X! The zoomer is telling me my dopamine receptors are fried! Obviously, put yourself in the Gen X body. You have farmed a table dopamine receptor still, and you're playing Donkey Kong at the age of 25 in the arcade? That wits. Yeah,

1:04:52Atrioc:relative. You're making a good case. I bet the high from playing Donkey Kong

1:04:57Aiden:when you're 25 is higher than any high you've had playing league that's what i actually no i think that's that's not true that's crap that's not true all right well you know what it is and you know what we have to call one left the champs the boomers the boomers god i want to be born you hate them but you love them but you probably hate them okay i want to do a little bit of slide here

1:05:21Atrioc:can i introduce the tone here i think that growing up uh there's always been a little chiding, particularly the last five years around like, okay, boomer and a little resentment towards boomers and kind of chiding at the boomers. And then the past, like, especially year, especially this year, as I've done more research in a variety of different factors around what is causing the various economic, cultural challenges, debt challenges, all of these different things. I really keep coming back to, I think boomers fucked us up pretty hard. I think they took a situation, took all the benefit from it, built lots of housing and then stopped housing from being built, took all the political power and then stopped other people from having political power.

1:05:58Atrioc:They took all of this stuff. They put us$37 trillion in debt so they could go blow up half the Middle East. And now we are stuck with all of these things. And I have become really genuinely pretty resentful towards the boomers. And I would love for you to convince me otherwise. I don't want to be an asshole. Let's find out. So the boomers, 1946 to 1964, World War II ends in 1945. And it is a pivotal moment for the entire world. It changes everything. And again, we all currently live in the shadow of how the world got reset up, how boundaries got redrawn, how power dynamics shifted after World War II.

1:06:30They are born starting in 1946, one year after. Everyone gets home from the war, starts fucking, and begins this new world order. So they have dodged the Great Depression. They have dodged World War I. They have dodged World War II. Again, their cultural impact goes beyond what I could fit in one slide here. So this is Boomers, and this is a quote you might hear from boomers nowadays.

1:06:49Atrioc:And then I told them, just print out a resume and walk in and they'll give you a job.

1:06:58Couldn't quite get the laugh right. You get the idea. So this is boomers. Famous boomers you might know. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson, George Clooney. Wide range of people who've had cultural impact recently. Boomers are kind of like the TV generation because when boomers were born in 1945 and onward. TV went from 0 % of US households to 100 % so rapidly. Literally in their lifetime, they saw everyone around them get the TV and it become a huge part of the cultural landscape and seeing radios as the client.

1:07:30Atrioc:That being said, those are rookie numbers. We all got smartphones in like two years. That's true. That took them like two decades. Even faster. The greatest challenges they faced in their lives were not World War II or Great Depression. They did have in the 70s, which there would be, you know, there would be somewhere between 20 or 30 at that range. Huge rise in inflation. People had long gas lines. They had, this is a beginning of some economic changes we did where we suspended the gold standard and all that stuff. It was the 70s. And then Vietnam, I'm sorry, I don't have an image here, but Vietnam was their, they were old enough to have fought and died in Vietnam.

1:08:05And in fact, many of them spent their youth protesting. Protesting it.

1:08:08Atrioc:Yeah, Vietnam. And this is the jungles of Vietnam. This is not the jungles of Vietnam. I think I have the wrong picture. but it was Vietnam. Okay. So, and I found, here, I'll go back to this. So the main thing about the boomers is that this is the fertility rate in the United States. And you can see right after World War II, there is this massive spike. And you can call it, demographers call it the pig in the python, which is like if a python ate a big pig and it's being digested. So in 1970, again, most Americans were between five and 23. This is the boomers. So over their lifetime, time. They have had outsized impact on everything because they have been so much bigger than every other generation around them.

1:08:49So people that have their beliefs and their worldview and where they grew up with have just had this unprecedented amount of political power. And again, shown here, they have, even today, even today when they're all relatively old, have still the most political power. When they were born in 1945, they had about 20, 30 years of flat home prices, right, for them to get their jobs and get earning on the ladder. Holy shit, I did not realize that. And then right around 1970, when they hit around 30 years old, boom, it skyrockets.

1:09:21Atrioc:Do you think that has anything to do with the fact they bought and built all the homes and then stopped other ones from being built? Does that have anything to do with it, Brandon? Just lucky, I guess, I think. Just lucky, just lucky timing. So yeah, right around here is when they started acquiring houses, and that is when they went absolutely off the rails, which is a huge part of why they have all the wealth today. So this is a chart of U.S. wealth by generation starting right now. So right here is basically when they started to get political power. Like when I have the arrow on the chart is when the first boomer president comes in.

1:09:52Okay. And you'll notice from there, their wealth skyrockets past the older generation, silent generation. And then it goes to unprecedented heights. So we see now that they have more than Gen X, silent, and millennials combined. Gen Z is not even on this chart. They have almost no collective wealth of generation right now. so that arrow lines up nicely with this we've talked about this on previous episode but i want to go into it this is bill clinton in 92 the first boomer president basically right when we're born bill clinton takes over followed by a series of boomers you know two terms of bill clinton two terms of george bush two terms of obama uh trump biden trump biden is the only non-boomer because he's too old he is three years too old to be a boomer oh no he's great he's yeah i think he's great or silent i think he's silent actually whatever it is he's three years to old so he's basically a boomer he's basically like the oldest boomer or the oldest of the previous so essentially our entire lives 92 to 24 till now has all been boomer political power and that is when these massive wealth changes happen that has kept assets like housing and stocks that were acquired before this time growing and bubbling so that new people cannot get on the ladder but they are they are rising up.

1:11:02And I wanted to show, most of the day we've been talking about America. It's been mostly an American-centric lens of these generations because it's hard because it changes so much later. But I just want to say the boomers, this post-World War II, like, shaking up of the world are not just an American phenomenon. And so I've extrapolated over the entire world right now who is still running the country. By the way, by normal laws of generations, which is mostly that are about 20 years long. We should have been done with the boomers in about 2012. It should have been 92 to 2012, and then we move on to Gen X presidents.

1:11:34That's the rough idea, but they have kept hanging on to power, and in fact, with Biden, got needy molder. So right now, across the world, these are boomer leaders. Now, I'm gonna go through this a little bit. Donald Trump, obviously, you know, in North America, biggest economy in the world and biggest economy in North America. But if you go to South America, Brazil, biggest economy in South America, boomer, Lula. the four biggest economies in africa are four boomers we're just gonna make up more than the rest of africa combined uh germany the biggest economy in europe boomer uh uk one of the biggest economies in europe boomer i included sweden to make fun of aiden also a boomer no no also a boomer uh valder putin boomer the two biggest economies in asia india and china boomer boomer Also Japan, I didn't include it.

1:12:20He got covered by Xi Jinping.

1:12:24Australia, Albanese, Boomer. In Antarctica, there's a really old penguin. That's a lot of power. So we are currently living in a truly, and by the way, I added up the GDPs of all these countries. It's like, it's well more than half of the world population and well, well above like 70 % of the world economy. So it's like, we are in a Boomer dominated world, top to bottom across all countries. They have all of the wealth and all of the power, no matter where you go, no matter which continent you're on. And because of the dropping fertility rate in the world, the idea is that the oldest generation will always be the most powerful going forward.

1:13:06Like it's because old people live longer and we're not having enough new babies. Once the boomers die off, the next oldest will take over. which, by the way, if you look at this little bump here, is millennials.

1:13:18Atrioc:Yeah. Let's go. So we should talk about how much boomers damage have done. We're going to imprison anybody who's too tall. Yeah. Or too Aiden-y. You got to engender yourself to us a little more.

1:13:31Aiden:Okay. We can say I'm millennial. We are setting up for a millennial type situation. And we should talk about what the boomers have done wrong so we can learn from it because we're going to have a similar level of influence globally. The millennial population bump is almost as...

1:13:47Atrioc:Okay, so is the millennial population bump as big as the boomer? No, not even close. Okay. Relatively, it will... Okay, because we're going to be the biggest. We're going to have the most control technically, but not in the way the boomers have, where they have this unbelievably large just percentage of people, right? That's right. Okay. Yeah. And again, Gen Z is almost just as big as millennials, to be honest. I think it's a little smaller. Because we're both way smaller than boomers. Neither generation is even close to how big they were. So that's boomers in a nutshell. They really have... You know, one thing I want to say, I had a little note about it here, but I'll just sort of paraphrase.

1:14:27The idea is that when boomers were young and they had this big population bump, the things they cared most about were like getting out of Vietnam, student protest, things like that. And they got those things done. They made impacts. Then as they grew older, They started to care more about like, you know, housing, affordable, whatever. Like the things they care about have been priority number one for America their entire lives. And now as they get older, you're seeing this huge push to like eliminate all property taxes. Yeah. And that is the last gasp of boomers who have gotten all the real estate using their political power to on the way out, kick out the only tax they really are still paying.

1:15:03Like it's, it really is, um, this testament to how much they have, they have taken it over. I wish I had the, uh, quote here.

1:15:13Atrioc:Or even the incredibly wealthy boomers of which there are so many who have helped to drive their housing prices just through the roof, complaining about just screeching at the idea of social security reform, which to be clear is a, is a system where you pay into social security throughout your adult life. and then when you retire, the government pays you back. But we are bankrupt. We can't afford it, and it's becoming more unaffordable every year. And the problem is that the boomers are living longer than any previous generation, which makes the system even more distorted. So there needs to be something to change there.

1:15:46Atrioc:The only way to not change it is to put America more into debt to assure that they get Social Security until they die, and then we are stuck paying for that bill. It's just like, ugh.

1:15:57Aiden:I think the general theme here is as this cohort aged because of their outsized impact. They're able to make a lot of decisions that are most pressing to whatever their generation is at the time, successfully put that policy into place, and they've been able to do that the whole way through. So the world as it's structured, or the American world as it's structured, serves to benefit the boomer generation the most whatever time period you happen to be in. Can you guys think of any big downsides to their generation. I wanted to ask you guys that because I figured from an economic perspective, the boomers were going to have kind of the best case here.

1:16:40Aiden:But can you guys think of any big blights? I think personally, like they came up in Vietnam. It's like the big downside. They had gotten drafted into Vietnam. Many of them died. It was a stupid, pointless war. High to the Cold War, arrogant. You know, it's like, yeah. Yeah, and that radicalized a lot of them, and they were anti-war, though they in later life often became pro-war. So I would say Vietnam in their youth is like the biggest black market of this generation. But again, the death scale is so much smaller than World War II, World War I, Korean War. And from an American POV, I mean, they just had just decades of prosperity, decades of green lights.

1:17:23Even if you fucked up a little bit, you're likely to have things bounce back and go on the right track.

1:17:27Atrioc:because you can go to college. It's very easy to fund yourself to go through college and then you have an incredible amount of new prospects. Housing was cheap. You're more likely to be addicted to cigarettes. Yeah, health stuff is always the biggest thing. Yeah, health and technology obviously were worse then. And that's, I mean, I would still rather for that reason be a millennial, but yes, they had access to TV and I think maybe some people forget how shitty TV was when you had 10 channels and you just like hope something was on. and it's not, yeah. And again, you know, we said at the beginning, but like this is a primary like white male perspective or whatever.

1:18:04White American life. Because like being a boomer, it doesn't matter your opportunities for housing are better if you can't get on the housing ladder because you're a woman or you're black or whatever, in the 40s and 50s like that. Right. You're screwing that. But they did get to see like, so the thing about baby boomers, I think that's the truism about this thing is like everything was getting better. Decade after decade after decade, they were seeing new technologies make lives better immediately. They were seeing civil rights progress, make progress. Things were measurably getting better. Yeah, I was going to say, this is the generation leading the charge

1:18:37Aiden:with a lot of the movements for equality. Yeah, that's true. They were the people - Not as much as us, but yeah, they were not bad. All right, all right. I have this video from the currently leaving prime minister of France who is trying to pass a balanced budget who could not get it passed. He couldn't get people to politically agree because he couldn't decide whether they should cut spending or whether they should raise taxes. And they tried to do a little bit of both and he couldn't get it through. And he said this on the way out. This is translated with, I don't know, some kind of technology, but so it's not his actual voice, but this is what it sounds like.

1:19:16He's talking about boomers and he is a boomer, by the way. He's talking about boomers in France. This is not just an American phenomenon, basically, this boomer thing. They're the ones who are the victims. they're the ones who will have to pay off the debt for their entire lives and we've managed

1:19:28Aiden:to make them believe that it needs to be increased even more don't you think that's brilliant all this just for the comfort of certain political parties and for the comfort of the boomers as they say who from this point of view think that well everything is just fine yeah so we talked about all the fracturing that is going on for millennials and for gen z and for gen alpha But for boomers, things are roughly fine because they still have all of these assets. And so they are like on the way out the door, just making sure that no money goes towards solving any of these new problems and only goes to keeping what they had afloat.

1:20:04Just keeping it afloat.

1:20:05Atrioc:For example, the largest floating block in the United States is boomers. And they voted to keep cutting taxes in the big, beautiful bill and put us more in debt. Well, I'll say we none of them are going to deal with that. By the time that happened, millennials are the biggest voting block in America. However, we don't vote at higher rates. There's more millennial voters, but boomers vote like way higher rates.

1:20:27Aiden:So with that being said, where would you actually, I think similar to Gen X and maybe even more solidly, I think you could make an argument that this was the best generation to be born into. On this list, I think, you know, obviously variations in circumstance that I'd put an asterisk on that. But I think in a lot of ways, you could argue that this was the best generation to be born into. Would you guys pick boomers? It's hard to imagine giving up what I have access to now.

1:21:00Atrioc:I think definitively, it's very hard to argue that it was not the best generation to be born into. If you are rolling a die and you want to ensure you have the best outcome and the highest likelihood of becoming wealthy and having all these incredible benefits, it is clearly the baby boomer generation. you have so much more power and influence and they have and we have seen how they have made everything benefit themselves and fuck everybody else and pull up the ladder that being said me individually i have no interest in being alive in 1970 i want to make videos and play video games and build interesting creative things and the world is a million times more adapted for that now so like no absolutely not i would rather be any of the more recent ones i think it's so i looked it up and the um you know even though we do say that there's a obviously more racism back then the racial wealth gap among boomers still like black boomers have all the wealth among black people in america like it's still so even if you were not white you're probably have a better economic opportunity being born as a boomer then it's probably different to be women who couldn't have the same access to like bank accounts and jobs but so basically as a man either way you're probably getting more economic opportunities.

1:22:09I would say I wouldn't pick it, but again, for some reasons, we adapted to these lives and I wouldn't change it. It easily is the number. I think it easily clears as like less chance of dying in a war, less chance of, I'll be telling that you just have more likelihood that at the end of your life, you're going to have some financial security. And whether that's from your own assets or whether it's from the government, which is funneling it through social security before it falls out of funding. It's all to you for most of your life. So I, yeah, I would say that I would say for me, it's an easy win.

1:22:45And for someone like a white guy, like me, if I was born in this fifties or sixties, very likely I would have easy career opportunities. You know, I guess someone has no major problem. It would have been an easy glide for me. I would be the standard boomer probably. And the world was less polarized. Then America got more, you know, it would just be easier. So for me, I think I would pick millennials number one, but Boomer would be right second, and I think it's easy actually first. Or you put it all

1:23:13Atrioc:on red, you go Lost Generation. Send it. Just go crazy in World War I. Take a challenge. It's like Dark Souls, dude. I want the hardest mode. Yeah, start on Boomer's, then you New Game Plus into Lost Gen.

1:23:28Aiden:This is fun. I think I'm excited. I mean, I guess I'm excited to see what the next 10, 20 years, even though I think it could be doom and gloom in a lot of ways, just to have the answer of what things are like for Generation Alpha and Gen Z. I think those two especially have so much of their experience of what we're evaluating here yet to play out. And even millennials, right? Realistically, you guys have another 10 years, you'll be alive. I'm going to kill you. Especially good job. Dude, I think about it like, okay. Remember, I don't remember, but like think about 20 years ago right now. It's 2005.

1:24:11Imagine 2005 in your mind. Like YouTube has just launched. Phones do not exist.

1:24:16Aiden:You can still watch Saddam Hussein being hanged on YouTube. You cannot, by the way. That's 20 years ago. In 2005. No, you cannot. You could back then. Was it one of the first videos or what? Yeah, I watched it. Okay.

1:24:30Atrioc:There's like 20 videos on YouTube at this time. Look, it might have been 2006. they were manually approving every video there's no way they're like yeah let's add this let's

1:24:38Aiden:the first two videos i went to the zoo and saddam's execution uh yeah but that's 20 years ago and so the whole world is different it's so dramatically different i can't even there's so little similarity between the world we're in now in 2005 what is 20 years from now gonna look like we cannot picture it it's going to be drastically unimaginably different so i do think Gen Alpha is the massive coin flip here where we don't know what the hell they're going to go through. It could be better. It could be worse. We literally don't know. They could be the top or bottom of this ranking. Yeah, I feel like so much of being able to evaluate the lost generation and the greatest generation in this, right, is we can literally see the whole timeline, right?

1:25:22Aiden:Yeah. So you can be like, well, the greatest generation, you can see the struggle at the beginning and the benefits that the people who make it far enough get to see. And you get to evaluate it so holistically. But so much of this for the top four is guessing what the ending is going to be for people. That's what we're all doing. Which is dark. That's like the point of the show. We're watching the news. We're figuring it out. We're guessing what's going to happen. What is the world we're going to live in? I think it's interesting.

1:25:47Atrioc:I want to just briefly pose something, which is just a crazy thing. As an American, I think probably as a European as well, we used to build cities. The cities didn't exist forever. The baby boomers built the cities. So you know when you see the skyline of American cities? like the boomers did that in their lifetime and then they stopped things from being built like in my lifetime of the major cities i've lived in there's like one or maybe two new skyscrapers that have like been put in my lifetime and you compare that to like san francisco for example was built by the boom primarily and i see a lot of those were built before the boom i think like the silent generation the greatest generation the great skyscrapers of like new york or of chicago these were all built by wasn't that like 50s 60s 70s no i would say like you're talking about like new york yeah no new york san francisco los angeles like all this stuff is it like the golden yeah i think this is all earlier this is old it's like 20s 30s oh i was i was wrong i feel the great generation did everything and then we're all coasting oh i actually dislike them more now interesting okay yeah the baby boomers got to i think the boomers just coasted they literally had the ultimate coast maybe it's just i don't know everything was set up it's still something it bothers me man it's it's really frustrating anyway so two generations we didn't get to get to were the missionary generation, which is before Lost.

1:27:01Why was it called that? The missionary generation? Because they fucked basic?

1:27:05Aiden:I think it was, they were only fucking front to front. They never invented doggy? And it was just, no, it was, and then the Lost generation figured it out. Yeah, that changed everything. Yeah, which is probably one of the only pros for the Lost generation if you think about it. And then the only thing you're going to talk about is Gen Beta, which just started this year. January 1st, 2025 is the first Gen Betas, which by the way, what a terrible name. You don't want to be a beta. They're born to be cucks.

1:27:34Atrioc:At least put another thing, like beta alphas. Let's add another title to the end. They're just going to get mogged by alphas. Wait, hold on. How are these generations named? Who got to pick greatest? Greatest? They did. They picked it? I think we did win World War II. When you defeat Hitler, you get to name yourself. That's fair. That's fair. Dude, by the way, I looked it up. You're right. The greatest generation built all the cities. That's what I'm saying. They're so great, man. They're actually the greatest. They did. They had the tough times. They built it. It's like the weak men, hard times thing, but they built it.

1:28:02Atrioc:We had a generation that just like set everyone else up. What? God. And the boomers screwed it, man.

1:28:07Aiden:I think it's, I was digging back because I wanted to see how many generations we had named, like just how far back we could go. And, you know, I looked at the next three before the last generation, one of which is the missionary generation. And the outlook back then just wasn't good, as it turns out. It's like. It's before running water. You're reaching back and it's like, it's slavery, like no, no water, civil war, religious fervor, quote unquote, and just no medical treatments available. Everybody is a farmer.

1:28:40Atrioc:You're just a farmer.

1:28:41Aiden:You're probably just farming. Like it's, it's pretty, it's pretty bitter back then. It really starts to get, it's, it's really the boomers where it starts to get. Fucking juicy. Cool and fun. Yeah. It gets to fucking hang out. I think they deserve it. Maybe they worked harder. They were born, right? By being born. They picked the right time to be born. I'll say that. Homey crazy, man. I think my pick is Gen X. Not my personal pick, but I think Gen X is you at least get to reap some of the rewards of the interesting entertainment that comes to fruition. That's fair. I think that's something that the boomers don't get to.

1:29:23Aiden:no matter how much money they have, they never get to be fully integrated to in the same way. And I think they're missing out on a cultural window that exists primarily for Gen X and after. I agree with that. If only because we can end on this. The worst part about being a boomer is being old and having to not understand Facebook. Right now, this is an AI generated image of a sandcastle dog that is obviously fake to any eyes. Beautiful. You have every right to be proud of this awesome work of art. I hope that you will create and share many more creations like this. And there's just walls of boomers commenting on this.

1:30:03Already the internet is so hard.

1:30:05Aiden:Is it really worth having the mental cognition of that, of Vicky there on the post? Yeah. And I'd say no. Hold on, hold on.

1:30:14Atrioc:That woman sincerely believes that that's a real picture. I would love to have my last two years. Are you serious? Your final New Year's, you're rich, and you think that everybody's making incredible things because you don't understand technology? That's fucking incredible. Maybe it's coming for us all. And if you were to ask who was the best generation, the boomers will tell you it was them. I found more quotes. I'm 59. I love being a boomer. Everything was better when I grew up. I turned 65 today, and I still think we had the best of everything. Cars, music, fashion, scenes, and dance styles.

1:30:41We were the fortunate generation. We lived in the best years the country ever had. And then Vicky Bloom here says, we had to pay out of the pocket for these things when we were a kid. Never had handouts like this. Why can't today's young people make things work like we did? Because they're lazy. Biden has made them depend on the government, and it is sad to say they'll never know what a dollar's worth.

1:31:02Aiden:It's funny because they co-opt the messaging that if the lost generation and greatest generation are flinging at me, I can be like, respect. I think if you talk to somebody old enough, especially when I was younger, I remember there's a certain air from like greatest generation era people that's like not I had it so good growing up and I long for those times. I had it so shit growing up and you don't know how hard it was. And I can get behind that because when you do the VOD review of what that generation was going through and you're like shit, man. It's like your friends in school died of measles.

1:31:43Aiden:like you got drafted into world war ii it was like the advent of like machine weaponry and like the two world wars then yeah it's all it's all horrific and then the baby boomers were like i had to pay to go to school and then you find out how much it costs and you're like yeah i had to fucking pay too on that note let us know which generation you would like to be born in in the comments that you're watching this week's lemonade stand bye everybody bye everybody