Go ahead and resent boomers but for the right reasons

There is a natural human tendency to assume that your generation has it harder than everyone else.

- Allison Schrager, Tribune News Service

Even by those standards, however, baby boomers (and some older millennials) are on the receiving end of an extraordinary amount of resentment.You could fill a good-sized library with all the books devoted to boomer-hate. Much of the blame heaped on the older generation is for ruining the world with their neoliberal economics, refusal to vacate the houses they bought long ago on the cheap, destruction of the climate, accumulation of all the wealth, and so on.

A lot of this antipathy is unfounded, and none of these accusations is completely fair. Boomers faced higher mortgage rates, and maybe had to live in smaller houses in more rural areas than they would have liked. Much of the climate damage predates the boomer generation. And neoliberalism worked: Young people today have more wealth than their parents did at their age. All this intergenerational resentment is not so much unjustified as misdirected. The younger generations have ample reason to be upset with the boomers - for getting bigger retirement benefits and leaving behind lots of debt, which threatens future prosperity.