To be fair, the people complaining in the article are complaining about the death of their way of life. They spent tens of thousands of dollars to live next to a giant lawn they could hit balls on, assuming that when they needed to retire and downsize there would be a steady stream of young people willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars more to live next to a giant lawn. But I mean, So. It's 2000 and golf is the It Thing and sure, we'll spend $400 a month to be a part of the It Thing. Maybe we'll even play. But it's 2018 and your $400 a month is now $2000 a month and it's no longer an It Thing. If you were born in the '70s it was abundantly clear people would bowl for ever. There was about six hours of bowling on every fucking Saturday afternoon. Bowling alleys every-fuckin-where. And then by the end of the '80s, fuckin' nobody was bowling anymore. Now? Now there's like blinkin'lights disco-bowling but you don't go to it more than once and neither do your friends. Because frankly, you don't have the time. Can you sink 4 hours on a weeknight? No, you're working late. No, you've got reports to run. And jesus christ that's $60 for the sitter. And bowling was what you did if you weren't upper-echelon enough to golf, most of the time. When I came to Hollywood everyone older than me made their deals on the golf course. Everyone younger than me made their deals paintballing. I've done both. Paintballing is cheaper. Now? Now it's all about baseball. Probably because you don't have to pay a green fee to use a baseball diamond at the park. The WSJ has been running a lot of articles on how fucked 'boomers are. I applaud them. The 'boomers were told that they could have everything and leave nothing for anyone else and things would work out just fine and they're discovering that it's not. I'm coming to the conclusion that much of the tension in the world is due to everyone 30 and under knowing down to their very bones that things are fucked for them and everyone over 50 discovering slowly that things used to be great, but now they're fucked and they're looking for someone to blame.Meanwhile club fees were rising; Ms. Harrington said by 2016 her dues had climbed to around $24,000, up from less than $5,000 when she first joined.
As someone over 50 who was absolutely sure at 30 that Social Security would be bankrupt by now, and drug and gang violence were insurmountable problems, and that we would never fight another war... ... I'm starting to wonder if maybe the perspective that "the older generation above me fucked it up for the generation behind me" is just another way of saying, "hey, I'm 50." I'm coming to the conclusion that much of the tension in the world is due to everyone 30 and under knowing down to their very bones that things are fucked for them and everyone over 50 discovering slowly that things used to be great, but now they're fucked and they're looking for someone to blame.
The perspective for the young has slowly shifted from "older generations have fucked up my future" to "older generations have fucked up my present" while the perspective for the old has slowly shifted from "I worry about kids these days" to "I worry about myself these days". The demographic shifts of the past 100 years are anything but business as usual.