Baby Boomers – the dumbest generation?

Here’s a short video featuring Peter Thiel, President of Clarium Capital Management.  The question about whether or not baby boomers were ‘dumb’ not to see the housing bubble looming so soon after the burst of the tech bubble is moot in my view.

For most folk, their house is their home.  Most are not and were not property speculators. They simply  aspired to own their own home, and rising house prices merely  reassured them that borrowing large sums to pay for them, was  scary, but a fairly low risk. Very few people I think relish taking on a massive loan to buy anything.

So in my view, you cannot blame a whole generation as individuals for a global economic problem.

I’ve posted this clip for a different reason. Peter explains here why what happens in the next six months is less of a concern than what happens in the next twenty years. And I agree with him.

We are already undergoing a global transformation that  will sweep away the world that western baby boomers accepted as normal for their whole lives. That world will never return.

This raises big questions about what we can do about it. We are burdened with debt, our children are finding it as hard as we are to find work, let alone buy a home and the prospects for  economic growth to enable these aspirations seem at best to be shaky. Career security is gone forever and we boomers need to wake up to this new reality.

It’s this generational crisis which has prompted me to set up 40pluscareerguru. And my mission is to provide every insight and opportunity I can to help my generation survive and thrive through their middle age and beyond.

My sincere thanks go out to everyone that is helping me share this message.