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

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

On this week's show... Aiden scrolls on his phone, DougDoug buys a website, and Atrioc tells us what it was like back in his day We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bon...us episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 028 Recorded on: September 9th, 2025 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Who is the Best Generation? 1:24 The Greatest Generation 12:30 Gen Alpha 21:47 Gen Z 34:06 The Lost Generation 42:54 Millennials 53:06 Gen X 1:04:29 Boomers 1:29:54 Conclusion New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:36 And I wonder, right, if you could pick which generation, which would be the most advantageous, the best life, if you had a sorting hat, if you will, that you could put on your head and it would drift out of the generation that you were born in the last hundred years. What generation would you pick? I mean, I kind of like the generation that I was born into. I've, you know, I've access to so many technologies. I feel like I'm young. How it's our technology.
Starting point is 00:02:00 And then you guys. Can we frame this whole thing as a TikTok? Like let's put him in a vertical frame. We put subway surpers on the side. How was that? How about you two tell me how the dust bowl was? How about that? Dusty.
Starting point is 00:02:12 Did you even get the polio vaccine? Stronger men. It made us stronger men. Weak men for weak times. No, I get it. You're still, you were hanging on to that FDR first term. I know it changed everything for you guys.
Starting point is 00:02:26 That's the question, Doug. we're trying to answer today. And we have decided to look through the various generations that have existed over the past hundred years of American history, the focus on America, but it's also going to address the whole world broadly. And we're actually going to see as we pull generations randomly, which do we think of the eight is the best? Like if you could pick one, which is the greatest generation to have been born in? And I think we kick it off with the first one. We can just start off. Let's pull one from the head. Okay. Pull it out, pull it up, put out. All right, the first one is the greatest generation. Now, I'm just,
Starting point is 00:02:58 I would say the shittiest generation to be born in, which is weird that they name themselves that. They're the great, apparently the name comes from something coined in the 50s that these are the, you know, the hardest, hardest working,
Starting point is 00:03:12 been through the most, most capable generation because of what they came up. I feel like they were trying to tap it in for this contest with that name. Yeah. Because they knew would be ranking the greatest generation. Like we need, we need good SEO in 70 years. They read that there would be a podcast called Lemonet and say one day.
Starting point is 00:03:26 Yes. And we have to stand up first. on it. We're going to change my Twitch name to Greatest Scooter. Well, the greatest generation, these are the people born between about 1901 and 1927. So I, which I think when you're talking about times that far back, I think it helps a little. These are the people who were on average living into anywhere in the 1950s to the 1980s. With some of these people still alive now if they're in like their late 90s to like early hundreds. They're all are people still alive from this generation?
Starting point is 00:03:59 President's recently. Great they are. And that's what they set goals still. That's what makes them the greatest. They say no matter my impediments and my ability to think or speak, I will still run. That's so great.
Starting point is 00:04:14 That's honestly good. Here's what I want to understand. Okay. Like we all complain about what's going on our lives and we feel like it used to be better maybe for specifically our parents who were at a certain generation. But I think it's like if you were born in the greatest generation,
Starting point is 00:04:26 was it actually that bad? Was it good? What's going on economically, what's going culturally? Like, is that actually a shit time to be born or not? I think the big marker for these people is that they were basically born into, like they would be in the Great Depression. They would be in their teenage or 20s during the Great Depression. Was the Great Depression a good time, Edna?
Starting point is 00:04:48 Yeah. Because I feel like when people are teens nowadays feel like they're in a great depression. Yeah, you know, they're like they're very depressed. It's actually the same. It's the proliferation. Were they on Discord a lot? They were on a lot of short form video and didn't have a lot of real life friends. I don't know what source I read, but that's what it says.
Starting point is 00:05:05 No, these people, I think they're primarily known for growing up during the Depression and either coming of age or coming into their early adulthood during World War II. And then, you know, if you were a man, fighting in World War II. And I think a lot of changes in the wake of World War II are what defy find this generation's sort of success. I think the big things we could look at here are like life expectancy and
Starting point is 00:05:35 health care first. Like what was this generation dealing with? Realistically, pretty low life expectancy overall. Because they were shot by a German's hold. Shot by Nazis. So that's the first thing. It's like you had a pretty decent chance of just dying
Starting point is 00:05:51 in World War II and then shortly after, if you didn't die in World War II, a decent chance of dying in the Korean War. Right, right, right, right, right. Which are two of the bloodiest conflicts in American history. I think Korean War is like fifth and the World War II is like number one. And I can be wrong. I think even a lot of people around the world died in World War II.
Starting point is 00:06:10 In World War II, it was actually a lot of people around the world. Actually, while America did suffer the most, I think actually many countries suffered. It was over 400,000 American soldiers died in World War II. Over 600,000 people wounded. So over a million total casual. Just American. We're Americans on the low end there compared to a lot of...
Starting point is 00:06:31 Nope. Estimates for Russia are 50 million. I'm pretty sure no Russians died in World War II. I'm not 100%... Sorry, Soviets. Now that's a conspiracy. I might be... I mean, so, like, there's a broad range of things.
Starting point is 00:06:46 That's not like the very high end, but, you know, jokes aside, we didn't have it that bad. Although, you know, the people who fought for America had it pretty fucking bad, and it is worth reiterating that, obviously. And then in the Korean War, 36,000 deaths
Starting point is 00:06:58 and over 100,000 wounded. So also a pretty, I mean, pretty terrible outlook if you were someone who joined the military for either of these things. This is after the depression, right? So you go from the worst economic depression into your adult life possibly fighting in a war, one of the bloodiest
Starting point is 00:07:14 conflicts ever. So the life expectancy gap here is kind of strange for this generation because when you're a kid, you grow up in a time period where there's very few like antibiotics, there's not a lot of vaccines, you're dying from things like maybe measles, maybe polio, tuberculosis, pneumonia, you go straight into the bloodiest conflict
Starting point is 00:07:32 in our entire history. But if you manage to come out the other side of that and you're still in like your 20s, your 30s, your life from there relatively good. America is starting to build itself during and in the wake of World War II in this pretty incredible direction. If, I'll put an asterisk on this,
Starting point is 00:07:52 if you're white. And a man, usually. And a man, mostly. So that's the big asterisk on this. So there's a really important bill that comes in the wake of World War II that people might be familiar with, the GI Bill. And this gives returning soldiers, the white ones, unfortunately. Is that true? Black soldiers didn't give a deal.
Starting point is 00:08:13 A lot of these programs did not work in favor of Black soldiers in the wake of World War II. And this was what helped expand the racial wealth gap that existed in the United States. United States. A lot of like, wow, that is, I did not know that straight up. I did not know the GI Bill designed to assist all veterans, systematically excluded black Americans.
Starting point is 00:08:35 Yeah, yeah, it's really. Obviously, I knew there was racism that time. I just thought that GI Bill was one of the, the things that. I thought it was good old fashion racism,
Starting point is 00:08:43 not that they would modernize it. Well, I just thought that was the one thing. In my mind, that was like an anti-racist thing because people that came back from the war. No, no, they made it racist.
Starting point is 00:08:53 No, I made a racist. That's crazy. What this did, what this did, and one of the criticisms of it is that it did help expand that racial wealth cap that already existed, is payment and support for tuition to secondary education, greatly expanding the number of people that were enrolling in colleges and kind of help set the trend of college becoming more standard in average people's education,
Starting point is 00:09:17 or maybe going back to high school or getting vocational training. It's helped support those things as well. and then also helped people get into homes, gave them very good mortgages with very low interest rates, and a lot of people moved into the suburbs, which was where a lot of building was expanding at the time. And the other thing that they were doing was fucky. They were doing a lot of fucking.
Starting point is 00:09:42 They were pumping out a lot of babies, just record amounts at the time. Was this again mostly men or were women involved with this? So presumably it was about either. on their 50-50 split on that. The gay generation. And then things like home prices, you know, if you're in the 40s, and this is all in 20-24 dollars,
Starting point is 00:10:03 if you're in the 40s, you know, the average home was like $64,000 in today's money, in today's money. 64,000 in today's money. Isn't that crazy? So what, it was like a nickel? Dude, it was like a couple thousand. Nichols.
Starting point is 00:10:16 Yeah. And then in the 50s, in the 50s, it jumps up to 93,000. And then in the 60s jumps to about $120,000. And that's all in today's in $24. Which is crazy, right? And you're also existing in a time period where a lot of common household technology is proliferating. Things like in the decades that happened, you're getting access to like fridges, microwaves,
Starting point is 00:10:43 AC units, landline phones are becoming more common, TVs are becoming more common. I would say maybe one of the downsides is through this period, it's declining, but food spend for families was a larger share of income. But that's considerably offset by the amount of money you were saving on things like your home when they were so, so much cheaper. And then also through the 40s, the 50s and 60s is medical technology is starting to catch up and vaccines are getting developed. Antibiotics are getting developed. I think the other big thing that people forget around this time is that there is a bit of a a bit of a mental health crisis in the wake of these wars. You know, mental health is not as well established of a field.
Starting point is 00:11:29 Things aren't as easily diagnosed or identified. A lot of these soldiers are coming home and dealing with PTSD in like an environment that doesn't know how to properly recognize that people are actually dealing with something like that. Health isn't viewed in the same way that it is now. So I think there's this strange thing If you're young, we're born into this generation Manage to navigate your young life
Starting point is 00:11:53 Through one of the worst periods in American history Through the Great Depression And then also survive the war You end up in a time frame That is unprecedented success and wealth If you're a white American So would you guys go for the Would you roll the crap dice there at this?
Starting point is 00:12:14 and go, all right, I'm gonna, I would be born in the greatest generation. Hopefully I survive the Great Depression. Hopefully survive World War II. Hopefully I was born white and hopefully I was born a man. Would you take those odds? Are you a betting man? That's a risky roulette table,
Starting point is 00:12:28 I'll be real. Stap for stat, this is a dog shit generation. Yeah, this is one of the worst. It is just so, because chances are, like, if we're running the simulations, so many of them are like, I was 10 and died of measles. And then a lot of them are like,
Starting point is 00:12:44 I was 18, went to France and then died. Died on Normandy Beach or whatever. Or I was 20 and then I died or I was 25 and then I died in the Korean War. Like there's so many of these people's stories just ended there and then they were the
Starting point is 00:13:01 they're the generation that sired the baby boomers and the silent generation. So that's a pro though. I mean you get through it all. You're fucking like crazy. You got some money. I would argue. And this is maybe a spoiler for what I think is the greatest generation,
Starting point is 00:13:15 that what if you were born right after the World War and the Great Depression? That would be even chiller. Oh, nice foreshadowed. I think if we're just gonna, I'm gonna cleanly call it the greatest generation. I'm sorry, you don't live up to the name. I know you went through a lot,
Starting point is 00:13:31 and I don't need to apologize. Most of you are dead and not listening to this podcast. That's the part of your audience. Yeah, I said bad. That's the worst part of the coin flip. Even if you survive at all, Aidan calls you a piece of shit a hundred years later. Not a great time.
Starting point is 00:13:44 Can you pull up this picture of the... Don't do that. You can't pull that up. And if you look on your screens now, you'll see a photo of three of the greatest generation. Greatest to ever do it. It didn't matter. It didn't matter how long and hard
Starting point is 00:14:01 the world through it. Next generation. All right. Let's rank these generations. And the next one is... Gen Alpha. Gen Alpha. Also, I would say...
Starting point is 00:14:15 We jumped right to the egg. Very similar. Wait, is this you again? This is also me. So we'll go me back to back here with Gen Alpha. And I'll quickly say they have something, they have a deep similarity with the greatest generation.
Starting point is 00:14:29 I really explain that. And it's that not a lot of them are taking measles vaccines. Oh, that's good. But the similarities, the similarities end there. Let's get these Gen Alpha kids into an iron lung. So, I, I think part of my problem with evaluating Gen Alpha, which is the generation that began being born in 2013.
Starting point is 00:14:56 And they're 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.
Starting point is 00:15:15 These are Ludwig viewers. They watch a lot of Ludwig. We don't know how that's going to play out in five years. They're not queuing up to buy homes. They don't have to buy the food. They should. They got to start that grind. The lesson of their history has been buy homes when you're 13 years old.
Starting point is 00:15:32 Buy homes as soon as you fucking get because it'll get worse. 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? That's a huge part. I mean, short form,
Starting point is 00:15:44 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. What else do we know about? I mean, that's a lot of them are parented by the first generation parented by millennials. So that's terrifying.
Starting point is 00:16:11 Yeah, I think part of the hard thing is like I could point 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, you know, 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, you know, it's not like the granola parent who was talking about ex, vaccines causing autism didn't exist 25 years ago.
Starting point is 00:16:49 Yeah, but it's gotten. 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, the data isn't amazing. What are some pros? What are some, like we're saying some negative? What are some pros of being born right now in Gen Alpha? I would argue, and we'll talk about Gen Z, millennials and whatnot. But like Gen Z is, you know, had a, let's say, someone.
Starting point is 00:17:16 what normal growth 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
Starting point is 00:17:25 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. I think that's how I feel too
Starting point is 00:17:37 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 and the way it affects life in general, we get to have more time to react to those things. I think the problem with Gen Z among many, you know.
Starting point is 00:18:07 We'll get to Gen Z, know what I mean? They just exist. They are the testing ground for a lot of these technologies that have broken through in recent years, right? But 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. And then in a more solidly pro-direction, they might be at the precipice of how all of these things benefit health care substantially. So you might get to live long enough into a pocket of time that millennials or Gen Z doesn't
Starting point is 00:18:43 really get to benefit from where your lifespan, is elongated by the quality of medical treatment available. And so there, it's, I mean, yeah, it's kind of like, you know, if you're the boomers, you dodge World War II right after it, right? Right. So if you're Gen Alpha, you're kind of praying for World War III happen, right? You want Gen Z to go through all the, or whether it's World War III or whether it's... You want to be the one right after.
Starting point is 00:19:07 You want to be the people who are young and right after and then all the previous shit. The clanker wars happen over the next five to six years. Yeah, Gen Zie dies. Gen. 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
Starting point is 00:19:27 massive leaps in healthcare over the next couple decades. And that some of 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 spans dramatically extending. You will almost certainly. And then the gen alpha will, if you're 10 right now, if you're 5, you almost certainly are going to have access to vastly better medical. Can you pull up my screen, Perry?
Starting point is 00:19:52 It's not just us hoping this. Or mine, yeah. No, don't believe 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, like, use harvested lab-grown organs
Starting point is 00:20:14 to replace their body. cycle it out and live to be 150. Whether or not they're actually right. It was very like Trump-esque where they're like, 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. There's like, I've heard that this is, 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, for boomers. Like they're not better.
Starting point is 00:20:40 Yeah, they might be cooked, but Chin Alfa is going to have something like this. And you're going to, you're not going to be able to reverse the aging that has happened these people, but maybe before we hit aging period. We get to get to doge. So what, you know, Gen Alpha, let's say you're 12 now. You'll be 30 in 28 years. What is that? That sounds like 53.
Starting point is 00:20:57 Mike. 53. That's, the world's going to be different. I can't even visualize what 20503 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 possible. We can't even imagine it. And I think a last note on the.
Starting point is 00:21:16 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. You got to take away the lost generation. I keep looking over and I keep seeing three men doing what? They're making love. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:32 That's what they're celebrating America. You told me the greatest generation liked to do stuff like this. 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.
Starting point is 00:21:52 You know, maybe American life for this generation is poor, but you know, this generation succeeds somewhere else. You're saying Gen Alpha and China is really, they're rearing up. Yeah, maybe they... You know who? Gen Alpha, when the nuclear war happens,
Starting point is 00:22:08 Jen Alpha and New Zealand's going to be chilling. Yeah. That would be... Gabe Newell's bunker. Yeah, there's... If the sorting hat could also, you could pick which country. That would be sick. Gabe, who is going to live to 150? I mean, counterpoint
Starting point is 00:22:21 once... And CSGO handsford and once the boomers finally die and we get into power, finally. Maybe we can kick the debt problem down the road just a little bit longer. Let the alphas take care of it. Put it on to alpha? That's a good idea. We have the choice to make their lives
Starting point is 00:22:38 cutter back. God, we can punt it for like 30 more years. We could just punt. We just punt. All right, well, why don't we get the next one? Well, actually, 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. Absolutely. I think so.
Starting point is 00:22:52 It's just not worth it. You're the casino game. I mean, we don't know the Great Depression or the wars to come. Yeah. But in one of those two, you know the Great Depression and Wars to come. That's the difference. The devil you know versus you take a risk. Okay, all right.
Starting point is 00:23:07 I'll at least flip the court. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. Okay. Millennials. Ooh. Dude, we got to do a different. I can't go three back.
Starting point is 00:23:16 Okay, all right. Back to back, back. We're back to millennials. We are doing Gen Z. Let's mix it up. Let's do an older room. Gen Z. All right, fine.
Starting point is 00:23:26 All right. Hit up with Gen Z. Yeah, you and I'm going to listen to two older men. Let's talk about Jen Z. Speaking of three men, Aiden. What did Gen Z love? They love being whiny on podcasts. They love working for Ludwig.
Starting point is 00:23:42 They do. They love stupid. haircuts. They love cheating at basketball, complaining about the they love the environment. They always try to talk about the environment. Make me feel guilty about eating factory
Starting point is 00:23:56 farmed foods. Yeah, what's wrong with that? Yeah, guys, keep telling me what it's like. 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, Greta Thunberg always yells at me when I pour crude oil onto the birds in the L.A. Harbor.
Starting point is 00:24:12 Genzy years, 1990s. to 2012. Though I, what, you 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.
Starting point is 00:24:23 You're the oldest. Okay, I didn't realize that. I will say there, 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 they still,
Starting point is 00:24:36 you guys still had VCRs and early Game Boys with batteries. I was watching the Lion King. Yeah, it doesn't, like, because there's Gen Z doesn't. now that are still in school. And you're like basically 30 and dead. There's such a difference. 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. I think the key thing is that you grew up with tech.
Starting point is 00:25:04 Because like for us, there was still, I mean, like, yes, there were video game consoles, but they weren't like 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 like becoming a thing going into high school. I remember like, you know, in middle school, it's still AOL is how we like talk to people, right? There wasn't really social media yet. It was high school is when that stuff was kicking off. And even that it was still very immature. 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
Starting point is 00:25:40 smartphone in high school. And almost nobody did. And then, right? Right. right after we exit is when smartphones become a thing. And then that, as everybody knows, has dominated society, has dominated society, has dominated attention spans, has dominated apps, it dominates entertainment, it's TikTok,
Starting point is 00:25:57 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. But phones are what made social media really excelle, right?
Starting point is 00:26:09 Like Instagram, the reason it took off is because of things, because of phones, right? And this impacted everything. Everybody, right? Every generation is hit by this. But I think what you're saying is right, was Gen Z is the first native.
Starting point is 00:26:18 Right. They grew up with this. They were immersed in it from, shut the, he's not even saying anything and he's annoying me. He's on his phone. He's on his phone.
Starting point is 00:26:28 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. Lutterwood gives you a job. Almost certainly you get a job from Butler.
Starting point is 00:26:38 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. Counterpoint, they're actually aware that they're depressed. Because one of the things I often have heard by I talk to older people is like,
Starting point is 00:26:51 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, so 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.
Starting point is 00:27:06 And I think both of those presumably have truth to them. That's a fair argument. I would say they're also, you know, they're more connected with, people with similar interests online, like in 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,
Starting point is 00:27:22 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 interest anywhere you want online and build these communities, which is kind of cool. It's fun like, it's Mario Kart Wii.
Starting point is 00:27:37 Gensi is kind of like a guinea pig where we like injecting phones. Okay. How does that work? And we just kind of squirted in there and we see what, oh, it's like, hey, right is your finish up 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. And then we hire a bunch
Starting point is 00:27:56 people and everybody gets laid off. Let's just see what happens. Let's see what happens. Crypto. Let's just what happens, Gen Z. I think that's that, and the average home price is about $400,000 now. Yeah, I think that's the other thing that's worth pointing out. And obviously, we'll get the homes is just this is the generation where really the prospect of homeownership 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 like with our generation, it's like half and half.
Starting point is 00:28:31 Half the people have a foot in that. Half don't. A lot of us have boomers who have, you know, 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, whatever, and I'm just planning on paying all of my money and rent for the rest of my life. And that is depressing. I think that the general downside of this generation is that you are the guinea pig generation in so many ways.
Starting point is 00:28:56 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
Starting point is 00:29:22 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. And we're just going to kind of see how that works out. And you sit in this little divot of time where I think this generation's
Starting point is 00:29:48 going to 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. Like 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 in a unique way. And almost like a greatest generation way, almost like a throwback. Things are changing so much that you are really thrown to the
Starting point is 00:30:29 wolves. That's interesting. I also just piggybacking what you're saying of the change in like, So the old systems, like we know, 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 that's, you know, you're like told this dream. And that's true has worked for many millennials, but many have failed. I mean, there's a lot of resent. It was already failing. Right.
Starting point is 00:30:56 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:31:17 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 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,
Starting point is 00:31:34 that's a total It's never been like that. 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. I think you're interesting.
Starting point is 00:31:48 We kind of mentioned the pandemic, but you know, in the way that like Vietnam would be a big deal for previous generation. The COVID is like the big defining event of this generation so far, the biggest world event. And it really had,
Starting point is 00:31:59 it hit every member of Gen Z during schooling. So, and I think that's where it impacts the most. You know, in studies, after study, it's shown that, like, people that were in school during COVID had markedly worse outcomes in the years following. You know, it disengages you from the system you were on. You get off of the treadmill and it's hard to get back on in the same way. And so they all got hit with it, various ages, 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.
Starting point is 00:32:26 Second thing is the creator economy. It's like it never existed, really, prior to Gen Z. and Gen Z has now become such as big cultural force, not only from where they get information, thanks for watching this podcast, but also as like a path of, you know, a career path. Like where you want to possibly, it's the number one requested job among Gen Z
Starting point is 00:32:49 is like working in the creator economy. So these are two weird things that didn't exist before that are like big defining points this gen. 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're so and you don't have to go through the old media structure of like going through all these hoops to get you know broadcast a television show for example right so young people get to be the at the forefront of like cultural
Starting point is 00:33:23 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 like economic political power, but then also had cultural power. And 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.
Starting point is 00:33:47 Like they have way more cultural influence, but almost no. That is very interesting. 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,
Starting point is 00:34:01 like you said, I do think the people who are born in like 97 to like 99 are in. It's like 0.1. 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. I would agree with that. Particularly because of COVID.
Starting point is 00:34:25 Yeah. Yeah. It does feel like it, they just get hit with everything first. The world is changing rapidly. It feels like they are the unprepared younger people being thrust into it. So I do feel like it's a kind of a unlucky dice roll. COVID, yeah, anecdotally, COVID happened
Starting point is 00:34:39 and I was able to change my life to benefit from it. Like I was mature enough and had enough experience as a, you know, 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. Like it's so just seems incredibly challenging.
Starting point is 00:34:55 That being said, would rather go into the trenches of TikTok and COVID than the trenches of World War II, I still would rather be a Gen Z than a greatest generation. Yeah, I agree. I would still take Gen Z over greatest generation. Any day to week. Any day the week.
Starting point is 00:35:12 Dude, so far, greatest generation is at the bottom of the list. It just don't want to fight. Honestly, for the first couple minutes, you had me sold of like, damn, you know, they kind of had it okay. And, you know what,
Starting point is 00:35:21 no, actually World War II suck bad. No, it's really that great. It's really that combo of no health care, like shitty health care. into Great Depression into World War II. And it's, it'll be tough to top that right now. Who's next? Ahem.
Starting point is 00:35:40 The lost generation. The lost generation. The lost, I don't even know much about this. What do we know? Okay. I mean, they're lost. The lost generation, okay? The defining thing is that they were born and they were young adults during World War I.
Starting point is 00:35:55 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 it's like the cabbages guy and Avatar Last Ender vendor it's like they start to grow up
Starting point is 00:36:11 and it's so sad because they would never see him they'll never get to see Avatar last Air Fender they're like oh world war one my cabbages no and then World War one 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 I and how it ruined
Starting point is 00:36:28 the whole sort of romanticized war and national unity. There's also prohibition, a move towards cities. There's just kind of this 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!
Starting point is 00:36:52 They had it really bad. So they had a pretty shit. Some of those guys are in their 30s and 40s, and then they just, they had to to go to World War II. Some people went back to back World War. Dude, back to back wars. No, no, that's this generation to be clear. And it's, I assume,
Starting point is 00:37:06 I didn't look at why they're called Lost, but it's literally a sandwich, man. It's World War I. So here's the question. There's four quarters to the Lost Generation. Yeah. Right? It's World War I a good decade, and then Depression. They did get the 20s. They got to hang out with Leo to Cabrio
Starting point is 00:37:22 and zip the ship game. 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'd rather have greatest. You take the gamble of 100%. Greatest for sure, because, look,
Starting point is 00:37:37 the best case scenario of lost generation is like you go to a Gatsby party and get syphilis. Like, there's, that's like the best case scenario. Worth it. Because 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.
Starting point is 00:37:57 Yeah, basically what you got is the 20s. 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 like the American perspective, this is where consumer culture starts to come up. A lot of mass production. Cars become a big thing.
Starting point is 00:38:16 Radios like 40% of people have radios by the end of the night, by 1930. So like this is you are being connected to the rest of the nation. More people are moving to cities. There's like investing in the stock. stock market and there's, you know, jazz and there's all this, like, kind of cultural stuff. Jazz, Aiden. And they got rid of that later. Like, you're, you know, your life is pretty shit from the war.
Starting point is 00:38:38 And certainly if you're in Europe, right? I mean, the World War I just absolutely devastates. 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,
Starting point is 00:38:55 it was pretty chill. I just read All Quiet on the restroom front for the first time. I think maybe I had it in school, but I never, I never cared. I read it while I was on a plane flying back from Arizona, and I was tearing up on a plane. It is so impressingly sad. It is just young people being thrown to their deaths over and over in this miserable, sad environment.
Starting point is 00:39:14 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 feel, they get a lot of purpose out of that.
Starting point is 00:39:34 And so I think for the greatest gen, the world around them got better their whole life. They went through the bad times, but it got better. I think for lost, like going through World War I and then going back to World War II or Great Depression is like just misery. I just feel like this is probably the worst.
Starting point is 00:39:50 This is, I mean, I don't see an upside. This one seems to be a good. The only upside is that if you're, born in this, you're more likely to get to enjoy a decade. With greatest generation, you have to survive through two brutal decades to get.
Starting point is 00:40:05 And again, this is if you're American. 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 going to die, let's say you're going to 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.
Starting point is 00:40:19 You know, if you're looking at it, 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 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.
Starting point is 00:40:46 There are some people who never realize. It's like, everybody just be going like, oh, this is fucking awful. And then they're distracting themselves with jazz. 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 state, but this World War I. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:59 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 noble it is to fight for his country and how great it is and how they're going to be the iron youth and they're going to help. And like him over the course of the book, just having that all fall from his eyes
Starting point is 00:41:16 and realizing what a disaster this is and being there when his friends around him die. And I think I cannot Meganized War which is World War I That is probably The most horrendous war
Starting point is 00:41:27 To have happened in the world This war I mean it's like truly Just infinite amount of people Being sent into a bloody Trench War death And I Not that there's a comparison
Starting point is 00:41:37 But World War II Is probably a better thing To have gone through You put on the cheer list I'm not tier listing it But like it feels like This is the worst iteration To me
Starting point is 00:41:43 This one I would not choose this one Yeah The more I think about it Having to experience If like 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 with Germany again. It's like, it's like, come on. I can imagine the scenario 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 late 30s, early 40s, and you're in your like late 30s, early 40s. you decide to enlist again because it's like your only option. And then you cope back to
Starting point is 00:42:23 your house. Not necessarily decide, right? Yeah. There's still conscription at this period. 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. I might agree with that. Anyway, that's, I'm imagining like the worst track there. That with that. Yeah. That's, uh, yeah. I'm down to put
Starting point is 00:42:39 lost generation. Dead last right now. That is fair. And that's right around 1900 for people are 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.
Starting point is 00:42:56 And if you'd ever enlisted or whatever, then it could be up to 44. So if you'd already... What? So it's worse for vets? Dude. I was going to say at least lost generation wasn't drafted in the World War II.
Starting point is 00:43:07 And they were. They needed... Oh, my God. What we got? Next one. Next. Who? All right, we got millennials.
Starting point is 00:43:26 Meladios. Tell me about me, Aidan. Tell us about us. I will tell you. You know what I'll tell you. Charming? Good smile? No, actually, most likely to go bald.
Starting point is 00:43:36 Most likely to go bald. Very good illegal legends. Sunsetting in their YouTube careers probably can't keep it going for a much longer than right now. Just because the viewership's been way down. It says it. No, it does say all that. Wikipedia is crazy. Our generation is more of a roller coaster.
Starting point is 00:43:51 We're building for the up, okay? We're building for the slingshot. Yeah. We're falling back. Okay, so with millennials, I, this is an interesting generation to me because I think you're starting to see the, you're starting to see the trends turn against you,
Starting point is 00:44:11 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 college enrollment in this generation
Starting point is 00:44:29 has like gone up from previous generations you're like the most 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 I think that's that's you know that has to come later in your
Starting point is 00:44:46 later in your life you know 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, vaccines. You're at a time when there's like a max public, I would say, belief in these things.
Starting point is 00:45:17 You're also coming out of an era where we've achieved all these great scientific achievements. I feel like 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 if I thought, damn. I'm coasting off the- No, no, no, no. Remember that thing that happened 40 years before I was born? It didn't happen 40 years before you're born, right? 30. Okay, 30. I'm not coasting off World War II. Why would I coast off of the moon? No, I think you just exist. We kind of are coasted off-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-you're not taking credit for the achievement. you exist in an American time frame
Starting point is 00:45:50 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 perpetuating. There's still a real sense of American exceptionalism
Starting point is 00:46:06 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. We were born like three months apart or something. It was the year the Soviet Union fell
Starting point is 00:46:22 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.
Starting point is 00:46:37 That was the idea in the 90. That was sort of the feeling that I had as a child. 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,
Starting point is 00:46:56 especially America's reaction. Okay, we invade Afghanistan and we invade Iraq like a couple years later. So now you, it's the, you know, you might be enlisting in the military as like a reaction to that event if you're old enough and then you're leading straight into the 2008 financial crisis.
Starting point is 00:47:17 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. 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, like, belief and faith in American,
Starting point is 00:47:47 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. 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. 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, if you're white, when it comes to the inheritance of previous generation's wealth. But I think going into the next like 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 like population, right? Right now. The largest voting block right now just recently passed. So you're going to wield the most, the most power, of like political power and the most wealth as a voting bloc.
Starting point is 00:48:51 You, the millennials will be the generation that will shape most of the next 50 years. Thank you. And you're welcome. We'll spare him. Yeah, something as you're saying that that I hadn't thought about till right now is it, you talk about like the American exceptionalism
Starting point is 00:49:09 and growing up where I was told over and over America's the greatest country on earth. Like you are, your privilege 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
Starting point is 00:49:22 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. Like Afghanistan, all of the wars in the Middle East felt pointless and wasteful and destructive and they went on for 20 years. We're $37 trillion in debt now.
Starting point is 00:49:42 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. I think that's well said. I mean, 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
Starting point is 00:50:17 lose their home in the Great Recession or have to lose their job or, and then, and if you're an older millennial, we just barely dodged it, I think, getting as a 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 into maybe say 1999. And then, Ever since then, it's been sort of like a, it feels like the crest of the wave. But especially in 08,
Starting point is 00:50:49 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
Starting point is 00:51:04 with like different body blows, different shocks to the system of what you were told when you grew up. 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
Starting point is 00:51:20 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 like that is, you were a generation that ushered
Starting point is 00:51:38 in a lot of social change, but I think is very important to the way we live modern life. I would agree that. Possibly the most, because there's a big shift, at least with the younger Gen Z, mostly the male side. My understanding is they're becoming more radicalized socially. There's like the Andrew Tate and there's the, not even just in America. Like I've seen in South Korea, you know, it's been off the cliff. 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 was my thought too. is like in a way, I feel like it's more of a core tenet
Starting point is 00:52:11 of the millennial generation than Generation Z because of that radicalization. Thank you. But mostly Doug. I'm going to just give you that so much credit. But yeah, and I think this is actually one of the most interesting ones to rank on the list that we've made so far
Starting point is 00:52:26 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 be shit depending on how things turn out, right? I would put millennials personally at the top of the list so far. I think this is the best generation to be born into overall because you have this,
Starting point is 00:52:54 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. A key thing, I'm just as we talk about this, is I think Gen Z, all of these new technologies and trends and shattering of American, you know, this happened at pivotal moments in an unregulated way where you weren't equipped to handle it.
Starting point is 00:53:33 Whereas for us, it's like, we got to experience stability and then things start changing. I think it's a huge advantage. Like 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-Had anyway. Yeah. I think about, you know, how I attempted I was to cut corners in college to play more
Starting point is 00:53:57 League of Legends. And if I had had... I don't think I would have gotten into a good college. I just would not have learned a goddamn thing because I would have used to judge of me for everything in order to play more league. And the only reason I had to go to the library and focus and try to grind through it was because I would have failed otherwise. Like I had to do it. So, yeah, I soft agree.
Starting point is 00:54:15 I think the Gen Alpha coin flips an interesting question where they might have, you know, I think if this stuff gets solved, it could be really prosperous. 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. All right. Okay, that's a fair. That's a fair discussion. Why don't we get on to the next one?
Starting point is 00:54:36 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. I'm so curious about Gen X because we never talk about Gen X.
Starting point is 00:54:53 It's just boomers are millennials, right? We just pretend that they're almost silent, if you will. 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. Like, I think that's the main reason that we don't talk about the specifics of their generation.
Starting point is 00:55:12 Let's show it. Yeah. So if you can pull this up, this is Gen X, also known as the, at least in America, the MTV generation, because that was such a dominant cultural influence when they were growing up.
Starting point is 00:55:24 How old are they right now? Just give a sense of it. Because boomers are like 65 to 70, or 60 to 80, something like that, right? No, that's, you're digging of Gen X. Oh. Gen X is 65 to 82. Oh.
Starting point is 00:55:38 Roughly. Oh, damn. Okay. Boomers are right after the war, so 46 to 64. Damn, okay. So I have been lumping them together. Yeah. Well, so they get lumping them in a lot because there's because the way the population
Starting point is 00:55:49 curve went, there are so many more boomers that Gen X just wasn't big enough to have a cultural impact, to have an economic and political impact the way that boomers did. So they kind of got forgotten. They're often called a forgotten generation. 65 to 80 is their numbers. So when they were born, it was like the Beatles and black and white and when the earliest ones were born.
Starting point is 00:56:11 And when the latest ones were born, it was like the 1980s. Rubik'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. I think that's the main thing is culture really began to accelerate in their time with mass media.
Starting point is 00:56:30 These are all some famous GenX people. And a lot of them who have big, cultural impact today. Like Joe Rogan is the most popular podcast. Or Dan, Wayne the Rock Johnson, didn't know he was... That's Vin Diesel.
Starting point is 00:56:43 Will Ferrell. Kurt Cobain died young, but he's kind of like one of the most famous like Gen Xers, the rebellious, you know, that's the kind of idea.
Starting point is 00:56:54 They were big of analog technology. Like that, that is their, the Walkman, the VCR, early floppy disks in PC, all of that is very Gen X. They got to experience a lot of this stuff
Starting point is 00:57:07 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 during the workforce. So they were called the latchkey generation because they could just leave home
Starting point is 00:57:24 and wander around and go on their bikes and do whatever. So what's very funny is this generation 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.
Starting point is 00:57:42 They, one of their big events was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Again, in the 1991, they were like, you know, in their 20s for this. The admission of the World Wide Web happened for them. 9-11. Again, it's also a millennial thing, but we were young. They were like, yeah, we were, we really did not experience 9-11 to any meaningful degree. So that's, that's, that's, that's, that's sort of Gen. in a nutshell,
Starting point is 00:58:04 they, what I would say is 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 take it. I did have a big con I wanted to show.
Starting point is 00:58:17 And this is what I found while researching, so I can find it. This is happening right now. This is called the GenX career meltdown. It's basically that GenX came right after the boomers and really wanted to emulate them in a lot of these creative fields
Starting point is 00:58:31 like a talk. graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV. But 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, it's kind of sad and dangerous time
Starting point is 00:59:01 because they can't change. Like it's much more difficult to be like, learning code. Just 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. Like, newspaper editor no longer exists as a career in a lot of places. Like it's just wiped out. Photography is all digital.
Starting point is 00:59:19 Like the things they spent their life doing don't exist. 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, jobs get decimated, like who, who wants to retrain and hire a 65-year-old 20-year-old, somebody who's been trucking for 20 years?
Starting point is 00:59:39 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 people in their late 40s and 50 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 dried up, the designer who can't get hired, or the magazine journalist who isn't doing much of anything. Like, 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, that's an interesting crisis to have.
Starting point is 01:00:11 It's kind of unique. Is this your, because for me, this is my parents' generation. Is this your? I have one boomer, one, one Gen X. Okay. Yeah, I thought they, my parents were boomers, but they are GenX, but like late Gen X. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 01:00:26 And so, I mean, you know, and I see my parents are, are pretty happy, pretty stable, enjoyed the prosperity of, but my dad was in the military, which is not a career that got, you know, changed. Yeah. So, this is really interesting, because I still associate somebody who's, you know, 50 plus as benefiting from the, you know, economic environment and everything that the boomers really ushered in. And it still feels like they are, they got a ton going for them.
Starting point is 01:00:52 And really the one downside is this like major transformation towards the end. but I still think that the major, they got to be there for genuine moments of like American exceptionalism, including the Soviet Union falling and I would include 9-11 of like a moment of like the nation really rallying together around this thing.
Starting point is 01:01:11 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. We're just like, oh yeah, we're killing tons of people every day in Iraq. Yeah, you guys are younger.
Starting point is 01:01:22 It's worth noting that after 9-11, America was like, we put 95% approval in George Bush. Like, it's the most united America's ever been behind a president. It was the most bipartisan, the bills ever. Like, it was a brief period of, like, united as Americans, you know, unless you were Islamic. But, like, we were united as Americans. And, like, that's like foreign to us. And right, and that same unification was then used to go start a war in Iraq and spend tens of
Starting point is 01:01:49 trillions of dollars. Like, the stupidest possible use. But, like, during that Gen X period, like, you had American acceptance. exceptionalism. Yes, technology is starting to change, but they're still the generation that really benefited from that. And 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. And so I... It's very widely distributed. Like all generations are. So I would say it's a fair point.
Starting point is 01:02:11 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 a parent. They were in an era of actually real peace and prosperity in America only near the end. where it's starting to like fray and they're still active you know. Oh, I think this one is interesting. I figure 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,
Starting point is 01:02:47 you were 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 the amount of options that you have to take your life in. I do think there's an economic argument
Starting point is 01:03:11 for choosing Gen X. 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,
Starting point is 01:03:26 if you're doing a marble out of the hat, Gen X had a better chance. You've a statistically a better chance of success. I think this is the lowest risk option of what we've talked about. Millennials, like, as we talked about, like these new trends come in
Starting point is 01:03:39 and are crazy disruptive and where 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.
Starting point is 01:03:49 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 in a house.
Starting point is 01:04:02 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.
Starting point is 01:04:15 Right. Like the stuff that boomers said still worked for Gen X. It doesn't work. All of our friends who became doctors are still, in debt 10 years after graduating. Like it's, yeah. If I was picking, if I was picking this, like I was some omnipotent being, I was dropping
Starting point is 01:04:29 a marble into the system of life. Yeah. I would drop it into Gen X. But for me personally, I would pick millennials. 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,
Starting point is 01:04:45 you hear about Pong? Like, I don't know. You say Pong? They literally think it's like selfish, but in my mind I'm thinking of gaming, it's like they didn't have good games. Right. When you get older, like when you get older, there's arcades. You're also in the time period. Like, you're in the wake of the civil rights movement.
Starting point is 01:05:01 Like, there's so many interesting cultural things happening in that time period too, like through your teenage years to your 20s. Yeah. I think it's, I don't know, you have some sick video games. You get Donkey Kong by the time you're like 24. You don't get anything sick, really. You don't think Donkey Kong's sick when you haven't seen anything else?
Starting point is 01:05:17 Goldman doesn't come out until 1997. Bro, but you haven't seen it, Goldeneye yet. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, multiplayer, playing with, like, the things that I love about gaming. No, no, it's because your dopamine receptors are fried, bro. You can't even enjoy it. Gen X. The consumer is telling me my dopeemeter's everything.
Starting point is 01:05:35 No, no, 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 wins. That wins. Yeah, relative. Like that's got to be. Hey, you make it a good case. I bet the high for.
Starting point is 01:05:51 playing Donkey Kong 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 crack. That's not true. That's not true. All right. Well, you know what it is and you know what we have to close out. One left. The champs.
Starting point is 01:06:05 The boomers. Fuck you. Boomers. God, I want to be born. You hate him, but you love them. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:06:12 But you hate him. Okay, I want to do a little bit of a slide here. Can I introduce the tone here? I think that growing up, 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.
Starting point is 01:06:38 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. 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.
Starting point is 01:07:05 And I would love for you to convince me otherwise. I don't want to be an asshole. 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.
Starting point is 01:07:21 how boundaries got redrawn, how power dynamics shifted after World War II. They are born starting in 1946, one year after. Everyone gets home in the war, starts fucking, and begins this new world order. So they have dodged the Great Depression. They have Dodge World War I. They have Dodge World War I. Again, their cultural impact goes beyond what I could fit in one slider. So this is Boomers, and this is a quote you might hear from Boomers nowadays.
Starting point is 01:07:44 And then I told him, just print out a resume and walk in and they'll give you a job. couldn'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.
Starting point is 01:08:07 Boomers are kind of like the TV generation because when boomers were born in 1945 and onward, TV went from zero percent of U.S. households to 100 percent so rapidly. Literally in their lifetime, they saw everyone around them get. that a TV and it become a huge part of the cultural landscape and seeing radio is the client. That being said, those are rookie numbers.
Starting point is 01:08:26 We all got smartphones in like two years. That's true. It took it like two decades. Even faster. The greatest challenges they faced in their lives, we're not World War II or Great Depression. They did have in the 70s, which there would be, you know, it would be somewhere between 20 or 30 that range. Huge rise in inflation.
Starting point is 01:08:46 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 70s. And then Vietnam. I'm sorry, I don't have an image here, but Vietnam was there, was there, they were old enough to have fought and died in Vietnam. And in fact, many of them spent their youth protesting. Protesting it. Yeah, Vietnam. And these, this is the jungles of Vietnam. This is not the jungles of Vietnam. I think of 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
Starting point is 01:09:18 popular, the fertility rate in the United States. And you can see, right after World War II, there's this massive spike. And you can call it, demographers call it the pig and the python, which is like if a python ate a big pig and it says, do you mean digested? So in 1970, again, most Americans were between 5 and 23. This is the boomers. So over their lifetime, they have had outsized impact on everything because they have been so much bigger than every other generation around them.
Starting point is 01:09:45 So 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.
Starting point is 01:10:08 Holy shit, I did not realize that. And then right around 1970, when they hit around 30 years old, boom, it skyrockets. 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,
Starting point is 01:10:29 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. Okay. And you'll notice from there, their wealth skyrockets past the older generation,
Starting point is 01:10:51 silent generation. And then it goes to unprecedented heights. So we see now that they have more than, you know, Gen X, silent and millennials combined. Gen Z is not even on this chart. They have almost no collective wealth generation right now. So that arrow lines up nicely with this. We've talked about us on previous episode, but I want to go into it.
Starting point is 01:11:08 This is Bill Clinton, the 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, Trump, Biden, Trump. Biden is the only non-boomer because he's too old. He is three years to be a boomer. Oh, no, he's great.
Starting point is 01:11:29 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, to now, has all been boomer political power. And that is when these massive wealth changes happen that has kept
Starting point is 01:11:47 assets like housing and stocks that were acquired before this time growling and bubbling so that new people cannot get on the ladder but they are rising up. And 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 better. But I just want to say the boomers, this post-war War II like shaking up of the world are not just an American phenomenon. And so I have extrapolated over the entire world right now who is still running the country. By the way, by normal laws of generations,
Starting point is 01:12:19 which is mostly 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. That's the rough idea. But they have kept hanging onto power, and in fact, with Biden, got him older. So right now, across the world,
Starting point is 01:12:37 these are boomer leaders. Now, I'm going to go through this a little bit. Donald Trump, obviously you know, in North America, biggest economy in the world and biggest company in North America. But if you go to South America, Brazil, biggest economy, South America, America, boomer, Lula.
Starting point is 01:12:49 The four biggest economies in Africa are four boomers. Which can make up more than the rest of Africa combined. Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, boomer. UK, one of the biggest economies in Europe, boomer. I included Sweden to make fun of Aden. Also a boomer. No, no. Also a boomer.
Starting point is 01:13:08 Valor Putin, boomer. The two biggest economies in Asia, India and China. Boomer, boomer. Also, Japan, including got covered by Xi Jinping. Australia, Albanese, boomer. In Antarctica, there's a really old penguin. That's a lot of power.
Starting point is 01:13:26 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.
Starting point is 01:13:46 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. Like, because old people will live longer and we're not having enough new babies, once the boomers die off, it will still, the next oldest will take over, which, by the way, if you look at this little bump here, is millennials. Yeah, let's go. So, well, we should talk about how much boomers damage have done.
Starting point is 01:14:19 We're going to imprison anybody who's too tall. Yeah. We're too eight andy. You got to engender yourself just a little more. Okay. Maybe we can say a 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
Starting point is 01:14:35 we're going to have a similar level of influence globally. The millennial population bump is almost as. Okay. So, so is the millennials, millennial population bump as big as the boomer. Not even close. Okay. So that's...
Starting point is 01:14:49 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.
Starting point is 01:15:00 Yeah. And again, Gen Zee's almost just as big as millennials, to be honest. It's a little bit... I think it's a little smaller. Because we're, I mean, we're both way smaller than boomers. Like neither generation is even close to how big they were. So that's, that's boomers in a nutshell. they really have, you know, one thing I want to say,
Starting point is 01:15:18 I had a little note about it here, but I'll just sort of paraphrase. The 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.
Starting point is 01:15:33 Then as they grew older, they started to care more about like, you know, housing affordability, whatever. Like the things they cared 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.
Starting point is 01:15:49 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. Like it's, it really is just testament to how much they have, they have taken it over. I wish I had the quote here. 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 system where you pay into social security
Starting point is 01:16:25 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. The only way to not change it is to put America more. or 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, oh.
Starting point is 01:16:52 I think the general theme here, right, is like as this cohort aged and 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, the American world,
Starting point is 01:17:14 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 like a, you know, from an economic perspective, the boomers were going to have kind of the best case here. But can you guys think of any big blights? I think personally, like they came up in Vietnam. It's like the big down. They had got drafted into Vietnam. Many of them died. It was a stupid, pointless war, height of the Cold War, arrogant.
Starting point is 01:17:53 You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, that, that, 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, it's like the biggest black mark of this generation, but, 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 like green lights. Like even if you fucked up a little bit,
Starting point is 01:18:19 you're likely to have things bounce back and go on the right track. Because you can go to college. You, it's very easy to fund yourself to go through college and then you have an incredible amount of new prospects. Housing was cheap.
Starting point is 01:18:31 You were more likely to be addicted to cigarettes. Yeah, you know, higher rates of... Yeah, health stuff is always a basic thing. Yeah, health and technology, obviously were worse than. And that's, I mean, I would, still rather for that reason be a millennial. But, you know, they, 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
Starting point is 01:18:56 like white male perspective or whatever. Because like being a boomer, it doesn't matter your opportunities for housing or better if you can't get on the housing letter because you're a woman or you're black or whatever in the in the 40s and 50s like that. Right. You're screwing that. But They did get to see, like, so the thing about baby boomerers, 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.
Starting point is 01:19:22 They were seeing like civil rights progress, make progress. Things were measurably getting better. Yeah, I was going to say, this is the generation leading the charge with a lot of the, like, 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.
Starting point is 01:19:43 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 past. You couldn't get people to politically agree because they 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 you 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. He's talking about boomers, and he is a boomer, by the way.
Starting point is 01:20:13 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 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.
Starting point is 01:20:39 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. Just keeping it afloat. 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. We are, by the time that happened,
Starting point is 01:21:12 millennials are the biggest voting block in America. However, we don't vote at higher rates. Like we, there's more millennial voters, but boomers vote like way higher rates. Right. So they, yeah, yeah. So with that being said,
Starting point is 01:21:24 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. I'm on this list. I think, you know, obviously variations in circumstance that I'd put an asterisk on that
Starting point is 01:21:42 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. 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
Starting point is 01:22:02 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 booner generation. You have so much more power and influence. 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,
Starting point is 01:22:19 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 tough. So I looked it up and the, you know,
Starting point is 01:22:39 even though we do say that there's, obviously more racism back then, the racial wealth gap among boomers still, like black boomers have all of the wealth among black people in America. Like it's still, so even if you were not white, you're probably having a better economic opportunity being born as a boomer.
Starting point is 01:22:56 And it's probably a difference 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 opportunity as boomer. I would say, I wouldn't pick it, but again, for some reasons. We adapted to these lives and I wouldn't change it.
Starting point is 01:23:12 It easily is the number. I think it easily clears as like less chance of dying in a war, less chance of a ton of a ton of. 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
Starting point is 01:23:32 before it falls out of funding, it's all to you for most of your life. So yeah, I would say they, I would say for me, it's an easy win. And for someone like a white guy like me, if I was born in this 50s or 60s, very likely I would have easy career opportunities. You know, someone has no major problem.
Starting point is 01:23:53 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 millennial, is number one, but Boomer will be right second, and I think it's easy actually first. Or you put it all on red, you go,
Starting point is 01:24:09 Lost Generation, send it. Just to see. It's so crazy. It's like Dark Souls, dude. I like the hardest mode. Yeah, start on Boomer's than you New Game Plus into Lost Gen. This is fun.
Starting point is 01:24:24 I think, I'm, I mean, it's, I guess I'm excited to see what the next, you know, 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, Gen Z,
Starting point is 01:24:43 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? Like, realistically, you guys have another, like, 10 years, you'll be alive. I'm going to kill you. Especially good job.
Starting point is 01:25:00 Yeah, I think about it, like, okay, remember, I don't remember, but like think about 20 years ago right now. It's 2005. Imagine 2005 in your mind. Like YouTube has just launched. Phones do not exist. You can still watch Saddam Hussein being hanged on YouTube.
Starting point is 01:25:15 You cannot, by the way. In 2005. No, you cannot. You could back then. Was it one of the first videos or what? Yeah, I watched it. There's like 20 videos on YouTube at this time. Look, it might have in 2006.
Starting point is 01:25:29 They were manually approving every video. There's no way they're like, yeah, let's add this. Let's have to be five percent. The first two videos, I went to the zoo and Saddam Hussein execution. Yeah, but that's 20 years ago.
Starting point is 01:25:45 And the whole world is different. It's so dramatically different. I can't even, there's so little similar between the world we're in now in 2005. What is 20 years from now that look like?
Starting point is 01:25:53 We cannot picture it. It's going to be drastically unimaginally 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.
Starting point is 01:26:05 It could be better, it could be worse. We literally don't know. It could be the top or bottom of this ranking. Yeah, I feel like so much of being able to evaluate like the lost generation and the greatest generation in this, right? We can literally see the whole timeline, right? Yeah. So you can be like, well, the greatest generation,
Starting point is 01:26:20 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. people, which is dark. That's like the boy of the show. Do we're watching the news? We're figuring it out. Like, we're guessing what's going to happen? What is, what is the world we're going to live in? I think it's interesting. I want to just briefly pose something, which is just a crazy thing. Like, 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 city. So you know when you see the skyline of American city? 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,
Starting point is 01:27:09 was built by the boom primarily. And I see a lot of those were built before the boom. Like the silent generation, the greatest generation, the great skyscrapers of like New York or of Chicago, these were all built by, was it like 50s, 60s, 70s? No, I would say like, what you're talking about like New York. Yeah, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, like all this stuff we think.
Starting point is 01:27:27 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. I was wrong. I thought the Great Generation did everything. Oh, and then we're all coasting.
Starting point is 01:27:37 Oh, I actually dislike the more now. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, the baby boomers got to... I think the boomers just coasted. They literally had the ultimate coast.
Starting point is 01:27:45 Maybe it's just the... I don't know. Everything was set up. It still... Man, shit, bothers me, man. It's really frustrating. Anyway.
Starting point is 01:27:51 So two generations we didn't get to get to were the missionary generation, which is before lost. Why was it called that? The missionary generation? Because they fucked, they fucked basic? I think it was...
Starting point is 01:28:01 They were only... 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 last 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. By the way, what a terrible name.
Starting point is 01:28:23 You don't want to be a beta. Right. They're born to be cucks. At least put another thing, like a beta alphas. You know, let's add another. title at the end. They're just going to get mobbed by Alpha. Wait, what, how are these
Starting point is 01:28:37 generations named? Who got to pick greatest? Greatest? They picked it? I think we win one more. When you defeat Hitler, you get to name yourself. That's fair. That's fair.
Starting point is 01:28:46 Dude, by the way, I looked it up. You're right. The greatest generation built all the cities. They're so great, man. They're actually the greatest. They did. They had the tough times. It's like the weak men, hard times thing, but they built it.
Starting point is 01:28:57 We had a generation that just like set everyone else up. God. And the boomer screwed it, man. 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
Starting point is 01:29:10 looked at the next three before the lost generation, one of which is the missionary generation. And the outlook back then just wasn't good, as it turns out. It's like, before running water. You're reaching back and it's like, it's slavery, like no, no water,
Starting point is 01:29:26 civil war, religious fervor, quote, unquote, and just no medical treatments available. Everybody is a farmer. You're just a farmer back then. You're probably just farming. It's pretty bitter back then.
Starting point is 01:29:42 It really starts to get, it's really the boomers where it starts to get fucking juicy. Cool and fun. Yeah. It gets a fucking hang out. I may deserve it. Maybe they worked hard.
Starting point is 01:29:53 They were, they were born, right? They picked the right time to be born. I'll say that. Homey crazy, man. I think my pick, my pick is Gen X. I'm not my personal pick, but I think
Starting point is 01:30:06 Gen X is, you at least get to reap some of the rewards of the interesting entertainment that comes to fruition. I think that's something that the boomers don't get to, no matter how much money they have, they never get to be fully integrated to
Starting point is 01:30:22 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 when we an end on this. The worst part about being a boomer is being old and having to
Starting point is 01:30:38 not understand Facebook. Right now, this is an AI generated image of a sand castle 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. Already,
Starting point is 01:31:02 mental cognition of that of Vicky there on the post. And I'd say no. Hold on. Hold on. That woman sincerely believes that's a real picture. I would love to have my last few years. Are you serious? Your final 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,
Starting point is 01:31:34 fashion, sense, and dance styles. We were the fortunate generation. We lived at the best years the country ever had. And then Vicki 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. It's funny because they call off the messaging that if the lost generation and greatest generation are flinging at me, I can be like respect.
Starting point is 01:32:06 I think if you talk to somebody old enough, especially when I was younger, I remember there's a certain, 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
Starting point is 01:32:29 review of what that generation was going through. And you're like, shit, man. It's like your friends in school died of measles. Like, you got drafted into World War II. It was like the advent of like machine weaponry and like the two world wars then. Nuclear bomb. Yeah, it's all horrific. And then the baby boomers were like, I had to pay to go to school.
Starting point is 01:32:53 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. Thank you for watching this week's Lemonade, Stan. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.

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