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In reply to the discussion: Baby boomers are killing themselves at an alarming rate, raising question: Why? [View all]fasttense
(17,301 posts)Sometimes she/he touches on it then goes terribly wrong.
Not everyone was a hippy in the boomer generation. Those without those hippy values bought into the greed is good, money determines your self worth, my job is me, consumerism is all. When the economy started to fail a good decade before the economist noticed, the most vulnerable felt it first. Corporations started to jettison high wage workers 1st and they were mostly people in their 50s and 60s. If you no longer have that good paying job, and your self esteem is based upon it, then you feel worthless. You can't buy all the crap advertised on the TV. You can't be part of the consumerism that has defined our capitalist society.
Suicide rates always go up in extreme capitalist societies. People are commodities and if you aren't making the decent salary then you are a piss poor commodity. To make it worse, traditional marriage is all but disappeared yet our capitalist society still parades it around as if it were the best thing ever. No longer are men the king of their castles. Women are remaining single even if they have children. Women are refusing to stay with men who act like lords but then don't bring home the gold. The deal for traditional marriage was that the man went out to work and brought home the paycheck and he was lord and master to his wife and children. But now, women have to go out to work full time to make ends meet and they don't want someone at home who does very little of the household chores and still thinks he's in charge. Women have been divorcing men like that in droves. That's why many a marriage falls apart when the man loses his job and can't find another decent job. The lord and master is no longer king but a serf like all the rest of us.
No longer can a man, especially in his 50s and 60s, bring home a pay check big enough to meet all the needs of the family. He has been dethroned and he does not have those hippy values to fall back on.
Not only that but those decent middle class jobs that have mostly disappeared were pretty awful anyway. At work you were ruled by whatever your boss told you to do. You have very little input on what to do or how to do it. Capitalism makes us all serfs on the job while the kings - the CEOs and board of directors - exploit us more and more, while trying to pay us less and less. A person with traditional values would think that yes the job is awful but at least I'm providing for my family. I'm sacrificing myself so my family can live well. But now, the job is awful and the pay is awful too. So, all that sacrifice the man thought he was doing to help his family was a waste.