Too many comments to read them all, so forgive me if someone else has already said:

1. This is about social class (e.g. income, education, occupation), not about generations. And about a truckload of other factors far too complicated for anyone, let alone an amateur like Mr. Gibney, to untangle.

2. I can't comment on how Hobson handled the interview, but I do NOT think NPR should only interview people their listeners are likely to respect or agree with. This book's provocative title may sell well, and shouldn't everyone be aware of what it says and how valid its message is? Otherwise, public radio is no better than FOX. As the bumper sticker says, "I believe in free speech. That's how we know who the A--holes are."

Nearly every point this person made is an old trope about boomers (including me) that were long ago disproven. Most boomers had parents who grew up during the Depression, and were taught the importance of thrift and charity. Boomers were the essence of the social change movements of the 60s and 70s, as well as the biggest proponents of environmentalism from the 60s to today. Maybe fiscally and politically conservative boomers fit that horrible stereotype (and even then it's a stretch) but liberal boomers are pretty much the opposite of sociopath.

Not to mention that cutting Medicare and leaving the elderly on the "let 'em die" medical plan is the definition of sociopathic.

Truly pathetic to see the Radical Right trying to vilify targeted segments of citizens, and divide America by age. I have paid into social security since I was 16(42 years and counting) so that my elders could live with some dignity after never having been a part of the investor class, nor hoarding or lusting after money. I'm proud of the link this provides between the generations and it is disgraceful for the author to try and sow discord between any generation of Americans and another. BTW, thanks to the boomers preceding me who ended the Vietnam war, raised environmental conciousness, researched and promoted alternative energy and who spoke and continue to speak truth to power.
from an American circa 1959

I'm suspicious when anyone projects psychiatric pathologies onto whole generations of people.

The vast majority of people are neither sociopaths nor narcissists, and it debases these concepts when these terms are applied indiscriminately.

The author also appears to have a hidden conservative-libertarian political agenda.

Note that Gibney is a former partner in Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.
That should tell you a great deal.

The man is onto something, I was born in '62 and have always considered myself Gen X, especially since my parents were permissive 60's hippies, and, oh yeah:
I've written for years about how the older folks, generally GOP down South, but not always, don't seem to give a crap about the future, from climate to SS and Medicare funding, etc.
Looks to me like "gimme, gimme, gimme" got their proverbial hand caught in the proverbial till by Mr. Gibney, the author above.

And WTF is this "got caught in the till" bullstuff? Franklin Roosevelt and his voters made an agreement that 1) workers pay into Social Security throughout their working life, and 2) then we get a pension at the end of our lives. And that's what we did. Same with Medicare. These were completely above-board Acts of Congress, conducted in perfectly sunlit public view, and you're pretending it was some secret theft? What a lie.

Nobody "got caught" doing anything. That was all published, and for the last several decades (since 1935 for Social Security), those laws have been publicly available for you or anybody else to look at. What kind of scam are you and your author pulling here, anyway?

Seems to me that the only "getting caught" that will happen is if we pay our money into Social Security and Medicare for all our working lives, which I've done, and then some sleazeballs come in and try to steal our money and say "psych--we're going to astroturf up an anti-SS and -Medicare campaign, and steal your money you paid in. See ya!" Don't even TRY it, man.

Looks like Mr. Gibney is dishonest. First, Social Security wasn't CREATED in the Boomer era. It was created in the 1930s, long before the Boomers ever existed.

And Mr. Gibney is dishonest about this: he pretends that the only solution is to pit age against age, and deprive grandma of her medicare so as to give millenials goodies; but he pretends he doesn't see any possibility of cutting military spending instead.

This is a fake, astroturfed propaganda play: pit age against age, in a phonied-up feud, when in fact, a mere one-ninth of our military budget would pay for free college for everyone in the US.

You're a boomer...the birth rate declined to pre-war levels in 1964, ending the post-war birth rate spurt.

Got news for ya Bernie my boy. The Boomer generation ends in the year 1965!

It's funny when we were young the boomers were large enough that the media who branded you "Boomers" did not include our generation as boomers. It was considered 1945-1955, my parents were boomers "the birth boom after the men came back from war". But since 1990 since the boomers have been dying off or out of convenience, the media have smushed us into the boomer group.
To have to follow you and watch you reap the rewards, only to see them disappear once we reached the same age has been puzzling. (Funny how boomers got senior discounts earlier...they have moved the age up to 65, silver sneaker sport discount...moved up(still can't get in, moved to 62 boomers got in in their 50's)
I remember the media in late seventies giving us a group name though short lived... the "me generation". Our group just was never big enough. End of one...beginning of another...belonging to neither.

Wait--so this empathetic, not-sociopathic author wants to show his empathy by...

...yanking funding from Social Security and Medicare?

Wow. Well hey, it's not as if anyone ever died from lack of health care, right?

Maybe--I don't know--provide free college, provide Social Security, and provide Medicare, but cut military spending instead? Funny how we don't hear a peep about that from this guy. Considering that sociopaths have all this lack of empathy and everything, you'd think he'd want to take it from the military budget, not from Social Security or Medicare. Not to mention that, in case nobody noticed, nobody is asking us (either boomers or any other members of the public) whether we want to spend a trillion bucks a year on the war du jour, or spend a little of that on free college tuition. They're doing what they like, and trusting the party pork machines to keep themselves going. No boomers have EVER gotten together en masse saying, "let's keep free college tuition from happening" to their congresspeople, and writing letters about it or demonstrating or anything like it.

Nor, for that matter, is the debt untenable--for a country that issues the world's reserve currency, a time when we're paying zero interest rates is precisely the time when we SHOULD incur debt. What, he thinks it's better to issue debt when we're actually paying high interest rates? That's ridiculous. Debt is a problem when interest rates go up to a point where servicing them is too high to manage, and where it isn't backed by sufficient economic activity. Neither is the case here, where our interest rates are in the low single digits and our economy is the single biggest one on earth.

This author seemingly hasn't bothered doing much thinking or studying about these statements at all. However, I won't blame those of his generation for this thoughtlessness, either "as individuals" or "as a generation."

You are correct, no boomers have ever gotten together to give another generation probably ....anything.
The politicians had no problem getting elected by just making it about the boomers and their entitlements... they didn't have to promise anything to any other generation.
And you are correct... Boomers never got together to ask for free college, help with college tuition or pay back tuition grants. It wasn't for them... why would they?

Suspicious that everyone ducks the question of "if we're going to yank funding to pay for young people's college, why don't we cut military overspending, instead of only targeting old people's pensions and medical care?" None of you seems comfortable calling for that instead. That way, NOBODY would get hurt, and EVERYBODY would show empathy for everyone else.

The fact that you all duck that question makes it clear that this is yet another "divide and conquer" propaganda scam, to pit older people against younger people and vice versa, just the way the powers that be incite racial disharmony among the left, to divide the left. We're sort of wise to it by now, I'm afraid. Time to rewrite your script.

You want to give free college to the younger folks? I'm all for it. In fact, I've repeatedly written letters to our representatives and voted for people who urge that we should do so. Cut military waste and overspending, and bring our military spending in line with China's, and that's several hundred billion a year right there.

We spend as much on defense as China, Russia, the UK, France, India, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia COMBINED. If we cut our military spending in half, our budget would still be TWICE as big as our nearest competitor, China, at nearly $300B. We can afford to send every American to college, no problem. We just don't because of greed and narrow-mindedness.

Exactly. Thank you.

I am not an expert on military spending, it's needs as technology changes and those costs. I assume as technology increases less people will be needed... as in manufacturing...but I don't know.
But, that is not the question being brought by the author.
He is trying to show how Boomers where given entitlements. The politicians gave them entitlements to get thier votes.
What one should read is how those entitlements hurt non-boomers; whether it's the future budgets of states, environmental, or educational opportunities.
Boomers votes should now be about the future...environment, educating and training for the future (not the boomers past). Over half of the work force who pay taxes are NOT represented...just look at our Supreme Court.

"Boomers where given entitlements. The politicians gave them entitlements to get thier votes."

Social Security was created in the 1930s, before the baby boom ever began, and before Boomers ever existed. Your facts are incorrect.

You don't have to be an expert on military spending to be aware that we spend several times as much as any other country on earth. The amount of billions we waste on it could easily pay for millenials' free college. (Free college would cost $75 billion, which is a mere one-ninth of our military spending.) It's very suspicious that the author, and you, rail against Social Security and Medicare, but you both want to pretend that cutting military spending isn't an option. That's dishonest.

The author didn't bring up the question of military spending because he is dishonest. He DID bring up Social Security and Medicare, and he did so to make the point that we should raid Social Security and Medicare spending so that we benefit millenials instead. However, this is completely dishonest, since military spending is wildly over what any other country on earth spends. Since tens of billions of this spending is wasteful, the author shouldn't say let's cut Social Security and Medicare so we can give more things to millenials, he should say "let's cut military waste and overspending, so that we can have Social Security, Medicare, AND programs that benefit millenials.

The author is dishonest.

Yes it was created when you stated. But boomers helped politicians turned it into a retirement account instead of help for those in need during their old age.

That's nonsense.

First, it was ALWAYS intended to be something people paid into while they worked, and then got payments to allow them to keep from starving when they got older (about which excuse me, I've been paying into it all my life--you think you're going to steal it from me now? Get back). You're saying I should have my money stolen instead of getting it back?

Second, what the heck is this change you're talking about? Social Security has workers paying money to it while we work, and then getting payments to keep ourselves alive after we retire, just like it always has. What on earth do you pretend has changed about it?

Third, I notice you STILL avoid addressing the question: why is the author pretending the only alternatives are 1) either letting the elderly starve and die from treatable illness because we'll cut their Medicare and Social Security, or 2) giving goodies to Millenials? You continue to pretend that we can't cut military spending instead, and make EVERYBODY happy. Why?

Your and the author's (and all the astroturf posters' here) studious avoidance of that fact, and the charade of pretending that only by cutting Social Security and Medicare (and never military spending) can we solve the Millenials' problems for them, is phony. This is astroturfed fauxtrage, and we all know it.

One of the things I found disturbing about the interview was when the author spoke of the "5 old white guys". Would that not be considered a racist comment if it was said about others who were non white? I won't be purchasing this book.

When Boomers took over managing the American auto industry, American cars began losing their reputation for reliability and longevity (late-70s and 1980s). Boomers, both as automakers and as auto-buyers, began the popularity of imports. Almost, and I'm just speculating, as if they wanted to kill an industry their parents and grandparents were so proud of building up.

Mr. Gibney, in his indictment of giving help to old people, totally ignores the vast war machine which sucks up nearly half of our GDP and produces nothing which benefits our country.

Thank you. That's exactly what struck me as well. This person ignores the military overspending completely, wants to take funding from the elderly's pensions and their medical care instead, and claims to be the mouthpiece of those with "empathy"? Good lord.

I think it's called narcissism when you blame others but take no responsibility yourself. Generalizing a whole generation by the extremes of the wealthy who are in power is ludicrous.

American capitalism has produced " The Culture of Narcissism ". The ruling class desperately wants to justify itself - to justify this obscene inequality - mostly by blaming the victims and using increasingly vacuous and vicious " identity politics ".
And who in the mainstream news media cares to notice this growing antagonism between pro-Trump Zionists and pro-Hillary Zionists ? Neither deserve the support of working class Americans. In general, ALL self-absorbed nationalism is poisonous for peace on earth-and prosperity for ALL.

Ron have you ever studied spiral dynamics and the evolution of human consciousness. I think you'd like some of the work. Use the force, evolve to the unity of alpha and omega, become one with the light. It's funny that in kindergarten we are taught the golden rule and to share and share alike. These lessons should be deeply ingrained in our hearts through deep meditative and spiritual practice throughout our lives.

Just me asking but could this book be the most extreme case of cognitive dissonance in the annals of psychiatry? I am loathe to even browse it but just wondering if it the mentions boomer music. `

Funny, I was wondering the same thing. The popular music that came from the boomer generation has rarely been matched in terms of its impact on society.

yep, boomer are the best at everything!

"I'll never forget old what's his name".

Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn remember how she would say we will meet again some sunny day Vera Vera what has become of you does anybody else in here feel the way I do. Pink Floyd The Wall Vera Lynn. I like your sense of humor.

There is an egregious error in what Gibney says here: Social Security and Medicare are funded separately from items in the discretionary budget through FICA and payroll tax, so their funding cannot impinge upon funding for items in the discretionary budget. Right now, Social Security is not only fully funded, but has a surplus of $2.8 trillion dollars that is projected to last through 2038. These are not some obscure facts, but easily verified from the FAQs at the Social Security website. His remarks about the consequences of funding Social Security crowding out funding for education and research are therefore baseless.

Exactly right. Not to mention (see my comment above) that his hysteria-mongering about the debt is similarly ill-considered. Debt-servicing is not the problem he pretends, for a country that issues the world's reserve currency, has near-zero interest rates to pay, and backs it up with the strongest economy on earth. (This may always change, of course, and when we no longer have the world's reserve currency, and/or when our interest rates spike to double digits, THEN we must curtail our debt. However, that isn't happening now.)

He doesn't seem to have spent a single moment studying about these things before writing about them.

Do you think FAKE NEWS of the mainstream news media is interested in truth and fact ? Hey, we have to psyche up the nation for World War III. Crackpot " national security " -- " the Russians are coming ! "--trumps social security.

True. I'm only trying to be economical with my outrage, living as we do in a time when there is so much to be outraged at.

What a reactionary article: "So by failing to invest in the foundations of prosperity, which the boomers' parents did do in a very significant way, the boomers have consigned their children .."
The " foundations of prosperity " is, of course, the capitalist system ? But then you should fit right into the neo-Democrat Party . The Hillary Democrats are more than willing to betray their own generation for the welfare of the American plutocracy.
As a baby boomer myself I do not regret the radicalization of my generation in the late 60s.
The younger generation should recover the wisdom of the old socialists of the Debs era.
Too many 60s radicals went soft on " The System ".

. . . and Mr. Gibney is a VC billionaire (or, at least, a centi-millionaire). Nice when the wealthy lecture us that we cannot have nice things, like modest comfort in our retirement, or healthcare.

The SS Trust Fund is nothing other than the sum total (with interest) of the excess payroll taxes collected starting in 1983 when the youngest boomers were entering the workforce and the oldest entering their prime earning years. This system, designed by the Greenspan Commission (not boomers), did not invest these excess taxes in real investments but instead allowed these real tax dollars to flow into the treasury creating IOU's to the Trust Fund and adding to the national debt. Around this same time, the Reagan Tax Cuts went into effect, the primary beneficiaries of which were the elite of the previous generation. Unlike those of previous generations, boomer "entitlements" have been paid for by the very same beneficiaries!!

The American ruling class constitute the true sociopaths. They are incapable of an intelligent understanding of their rotten economic system. Only a FASCIST political system can adapt to the plutocracy. And THEY are on a higher moral level than Vladimir Putin's Russian oligarchy ? Worth dying for ?

Truth hurts boomers. The truth is made more obvious by your non-introspective comments. Read the book, he does not argue that ALL boomers are sociopaths. He's talking about deceleration and it looks as if the breaks are currently being heavily applied by none other than....drum roll...boomers. Cannot wait till you all are voted out of office. The end is nigh but hey, looks like you're going out with a horrific boom. Trump, the archetype of the modern day boomer.

Oh you delightful millennials ...where would we be without you telling us how crappy we are as you eat the food in our fridges, "borrow" money for gas, and move back home to "save" money. Maybe if we didn't spend lifetimes trying to give you the lives we never had ...WE WOULD HAVE HAD MONEY TO INVEST...BUT INVEST WE DID IN YOU!!!!! And you are right every day reading a comment like yours proves what a bad investment that was.

You will find that every generation is a very small overall evolution for the better over the previous but with paradigm being a dead metaphor maybe the idea that there are differentiated and distinct generations is a myth in itself. You do make an utter fool of yourself in your comment... The food in your fridge...right because previous generations destroyed micro farming and wanted useless manicured lawns instead of useful self sustaining gardens. Oh the gas for cars hmm yes and how gleeful the old wise ones are to trumpet their use of the automobile to constrict the diversity of nature and drive a few blocks running over squirrels and raccoons and possums is so much better. God millenials you say just serve us and our idiotic ways and keep the mean green meme alive. Oh they moved back in well the most evolved cultures always have extended family living and find out that it is a huge health benefit to all so called generations to live in diverse age groupings. Let's see what would be better every millennial building another house or overpaying for the boomers overpriced over leveraged over taxed way of life. I mean hey let's just build and build until our national parks look like suburbia.

Above all TRUTH hurts the capitalist ruling class . There is hardly a single professional journalist employed by the mainstream news media who is not devoted and loyal to the irrational profit system. Talk Radio is monotonous in its praise for divine " free enterprise ".
Who speaks for the American working class ? Who speaks for world peace ? Who speaks for economic justice ? Not the Trump White House ! Not the Hillary Democrats !

All things come from the source and to the source they will return. For duality is mere illusion..the self playing it's game again creating destroying preserving. Why did this self decide to exist and why did those matter particles outnumber the antimatter particles just enough for life to happen. Because nobody likes having dinner alone. From sandals to sandals in three generations they say. I like your comments. Who speaks for the one our original true face? Who will speak for the one our final destined resting spot until we do it all again and once again the one gets the grand amnesia and must evolve from single celled to multi celled to dinosaur to mammal to self reflection of the hominid to cyborg robo masters and the new ruling class. Like damn why did those cybernetic beings get to buy the faster graphene quantum brain and I m stuck with this damn dodecahedronic core Intel mind. Are we all having fun yet? This book did it's job in providing us with much to talk about. Let's play the game of life. Let's dance. The dialectic of progress and it's problems and solutions ad infinitum all the world is a stage. Lao Tzu where are you?

Yes, exactly .

Integral Transrational Nondual comedic rants are my favorite pastime. It's a form of divine schizophrenia so please take my postings as no more than that. Wheeeee. Sounds like a manic day Dr.

First, the boomers are not to blame that their generation was so large -- blame their parents, the greatest generation. And yes we grew up in a period of seemingly limitless prosperity, fueled by the post-@WWII economic expansion and the GI Bill which enabled their parents to become upwardly mobile. Many of us participated in or were shaped by the civil rights movement, as well as the deaths of our inspiring leaders -- JFK, MLK, RFK. No one has mentioned that our lives were also shaped by the Viet Nam War which many of us fought in or struggled against. We are the last generation to be drafted into war. We shaped and were shaped by the Women's and Gay Rights movements. No mention has been made of our altruism. We helped establish and participated in the first Earth Day -- most of us started recycling and thinking about the planet and environment at that time. Many of us have spent our lives working in public service in the less remunerative areas of law, medical and social services and the arts. We have also been hit economically: during our working lives, pensions were replaced with 401K's, manufacturing jobs moved to find cheap labor -- first to other parts of the US, then overseas, and recently to automation. Plus we were hit by the 2007-8 recession just at the moment when we should have been consolidating our retirement resources. Many of us lost jobs and have yet to regain constant employment and had to liquidate savings. The idea that somehow we are the selfish generation is ludicrous. We are not any more or less selfish than any other generation. To blame Boomers for who was elected or what legislation was passed during our lifetimes -- as if no one else was alive voting and serving in government -- is bizarre. Our parents generation, who lived far longer than their parents generation, has been voting in record numbers for most of our lives. The chief complaint about Boomers seems to be that because of our outsized demographic weight, we are going to take more resources when it comes to Medicare and Social Security. Since we are currently in the 71-54 age range, we don't really know yet but there is a doable fix -- just increase the ceiling for SS taxes and the problem would be greatly relieved. What would these angry youngsters have us do? Are these our children? Hello, Oedipus! Well, we'll die off eventually, and then they'll have to look for someone else to blame. By the way, the Millennial generation is even larger than the Boomers. So good luck, folks.

Blame their parents? The author isn't complaining about the birth increase after WWII was over. He's looking how the politicians got that generation hook, line and sinker by giving them entitlements. There were too many Boomers that didn't say..."wait a minute, couldn't that bill hurt the environment (natural resources, social sucurity fund, ect) for my grandchildren's grandchildren?"
To keep saying over and over things that happened during the time Boomers were alive, whether the information is correct or not, is not looking at the information the author has put forth.

I did not catch the beginning of the interview but I was impressed smugness, shallow understanding of the issues, and willingness to speak with the most egregious inaccuracy. Generally I think it is silly to entertain discussions of which generation screwed up the world the most. In a succession they all have. It is, however, appalling to give platform to someone who is as shallow and reckless with history and facts as Mr. Gibney.

Connecting improvidence to sociopathy by a cursory reference to GDP reveals a shallow understanding of both the psychological concept and the economic indicator. For a guy who had a career in finance, it is a pretty poor presentation,

On the issue of senior entitlements, Gibney seems to have a poor understanding of what entitlements are. If people pay into social security all their working lives, they really are entitled to a share when they retire. It is not a gift to the greedy.

Gibney is correct that the Civil Rights movement did not begin with the baby boomers. And by the way, it still is going on. I would take issue with his clouded understanding of the Vietnam era draft deferment process. It was not easy to maintain deferments and lots of middle class and affluent young men were drafted. The current all volunteer army does assure that of our wars will be fought mostly by young and usually economically disadvantaged people on the behalf of old and affluent people. However, no generation and no culture has a lock on that inequity..

On being reared in so called "permissive parenting", Gibney ignores the fact that there is no evidence that permissive parenting was practiced as much as it was talked about. Not all of us missed family rules, disciple, curfews, and beatings.

Again I am not taken aback by his characterization of baby boomers as sociopaths. His presentation of his understanding of the term is very shallow. I am not going to say that in many cases baby boomers have not acted in extreme self-interest. Regardless of the generation people tend to act in their own self interest. Its not good but its not characteristic of a generation.

I am surprised that an otherwise intelligent adult chose to expend careless energies to write the book. I was not surprised as I read the other comments that Gibney's most valiant defenders are trolls.