Would be interested to see what this chart looked like in 1990, when the oldest Boomers were the same age as the oldest millennials are today
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Oh look everything started going to shit(wealth started getting transferred to the boomers) the moment (~1980) the boomers had majority control of the Senate.
That's the silent generation. Boomers became the majority in the late 2000s
Goddamn Silent Generation isn't so silent
After every generation dies out, do we just move the label to the left and add the next gen?
Very weird to break this out by age cohort when the problem with the Senate is disproportionate regional population representation not demographic representation.
Porque no los dos?
Because the Senate is a career capstone achievement for most people, not a job you land right out of college
Because it's a system consisting pretty much exclusively of career politicians, even though it was originally designed to consist of representative peers.
I guess that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but whatever the US has been doing is clearly not working.
It was originally designed to be a reward for accumulating the most friends in the state Senate
I agree that Senators as a group should be older than all-workers as a group, same as senior corporate management.
Where it gets troubling is that Boomers are 60-80 years old, and a lot of those people are too old to work, let alone in a role that requires decades of training and experience to do competently. If they plotted Senate representation against proportion of workforce, rather than population, the discrepancy would be even more glaring.
a lot of those people are too old to work, let alone in a role that requires decades of training and experience to do competently
That's fundamentally a problem with democratic politics. The job of a politician is not to governor, but to campaign. The goal is to hit the magic combination of fundraising, friendly media, and popular approval to outpoll every other contender on election day.
A big advantage in campaigning is incumbency. Politicians get all of the above simply be being in office (which is why getting appointed a Senate seat by the governor is such a sweetheart deal).
Add to that, Senators serve for six years. And while I'd argue folks 60-70 years old are perfectly employable, you get into dangerous territory if you're winning a seat at age 76 and holding it into age 82.
If they plotted Senate representation against proportion of workforce, rather than population, the discrepancy would be even more glaring.
Maybe weighted against income. But there are a distressingly large number of senior citizens who still need to hold jobs in order to make ends meet.
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
With the rise in life expectancy I think this is a new problem, but you're likely right that it will continue as power is not easily relinquished.
Well, good-ish news. Life expectancies in western nations have been falling since COVID
The youngest of the silent generation are 80 this year and the oldest are 97.
Retire already
the silent holds most of the power in the senate, then the boomers.
This is what happens when you have a minimum age for senators but no maximum age. How are people about to die next week supposed to make decisions lasting years or decades?
So I guess proportional representation skips a generation.
And now analyze their work experience. Probably most of them are "Career Politicians" who never worked a honest job in their lives.
Basic MS office graphs are beautiful?
I still submit that if baby boomers all died tomorrow the world would be a net better place.
Senators are old, shocking.
It's in the name.