When Will The Boomers Leave the Stage?

We are living through what is perhaps the last hurrah of boomer leaders. It’s hard to believe that it was only 28 years ago that we elected, in Bill Clinton, the first of only three boomer presidents, after having eight presidents, from Ike to George H.W. Bush, who represented the Greatest Generation.

Today we have a cadre of boomers, all septuagenarians, trying to make one last attempt in a world moving and changing faster than ever, trying to keep alive the aging boomer legacy.

As they do, a whole new generation is waiting in the wings. Soon, in the words of JFK, the torch will be passed to a new generation of Americans. Millennials shaped not by JFK, as so many boomers were, by their memories of 9/11, endless war and the financial crisis.

Capturing the political zeitgeist of these millennials at this moment is Charlotte Alter, in her new book The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America

My conversation with Charlotte Alter:

Did The Boomers Get Us Where We Are Today?

Taking to the streets and traveling to the deep south, the boomer generation once played a major role in advancing civil rights in America

The voices of protest of the boomer generation helped end the Vietnam war and drove Richard Nixon from office.

In music, culture, movies and books, the boomers have made the world a richer place.

The rights of gays, woman and those with disabilities all blossomed under boomer initiatives. Boomers did much to push for improvement of the environment. For boomers inclusion and tolerance have always been a true north

Today, as a retrograde administration seeks to undo so much of that progress, there should be perhaps no better time to pay homage to what the boomers generation has accomplished.

Bruce Gibney sees it differently.

Perhaps he would have been happier if we had frozen in the 1950’s? Perhaps the self absorbed world of Mad Men had more appeal?

Bruce Cannon Gibney is a venture capitalist and writer. He was an early investor in PayPal, and later joined Founders Fund. His new book is A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

My conversation with Bruce Cannon Gibney

The Looming Generational Showdown

We spend a lot of time talking about technological change. The impact that everything from our phones and the Internet to self driving cars are having on the way we live. The fact is, the single greatest factor in changing the way we live, may be the demographic changes shifting right in our neighborhoods and workplaces.

Boomers are, not so gracefully, aging out and retiring. Millennials are trying to find and take their place in the world and, as many of the ads during the Superbowl showed us, we look different as a nation; our values and what constitutes a family are all changing rapidly.

This would all be just very interesting were it not for the fact that policy makers are literally ignoring these changes. Be it entitlements, transportation, education, or health care, leaders in Washington and in Statehouse often act like these changes just aren't happening, or somehow they will just go away. They won't. Business knows it. We know it. The question is what do we need to do?

Pew Research, Executive Vice President, Paul Taylor gives us a look into The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown.

My conversation with Paul Taylor: