Where the Boomers Led Us, Or Our Worse Presidency to Date

[Eric the Green]

The Sixties, 1963-1973, were the years that shaped a generation, and of the generation that shaped the sixties and the years ever since.

[nguyenivy]

(07-23-2022, 09:05 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(09-09-2018, 10:18 AM)David Horn Wrote: The real problem with the Boomer generation is two fold: we are split into two nearly equal camps and those two camps are diametrically opposed though focused on different things.  The Left camp is all about social justice and has gone off the rails with things like trigger warnings.

good so far

Quote:The Right camp is all about liberty and has gone off the rails with things like blame-shaming.

From my perspective, the right's biggest problem is a paradoxically un-conservative hatred of rules. They oppose policy after policy put forth by the left, but...put forward very little of their own. We have no real leadership, no vision.

Quote:This is a pissing contest, not a real contest of ideas.

 
It's basically reality TV

Quote:Maybe the Millies can do better.  Xers aren't doing much except being cynical.

Gen X are "idealistic about being realists". They remind me of an individualistic Frenchman during the French Revolution saying something like "I don't care about the mob, I'm not into politics man"....only to piss off the mob 5 minutes later and get guillotine'd. If you aren't going to be a collectivist during a 4T, at least learn how to think like a collectivist so you can avoid them, or, better yet, do something to push them back and regain some ground.

Your last point was interesting. I may be an early Millennial but I felt similar for a while in the whole 'not wanting to take sides' thing. Maybe it's due to me being an only-child, maybe it's the Asperger's, maybe nothing in particular. I have positions on things but US culture as a whole is just not collectivist in the way(s) [some?] European countries are. There have to be cultural reasons in addition to business reasons as to why we don't have the universal social safety nets and public transportation systems some EU countries have despite both sides of the northern Atlantic being 'Western'. So I have a question: What is a good vision for the future that is compatible with American culture? So far, it seems clear that the 'how we get there' part will be easier once we actually have a vision. Perhaps this is why the S&H archetypes go in the order they do? Idealist/Prophet -> Reactive/Nomad -> Civic/Hero -> Artist -> <loop back>

[Eric the Green]

(07-28-2022, 04:40 AM)nguyenivy Wrote:  I have positions on things but US culture as a whole is just not collectivist in the way(s) [some?] European countries are. There have to be cultural reasons in addition to business reasons as to why we don't have the universal social safety nets and public transportation systems some EU countries have despite both sides of the northern Atlantic being 'Western'. So I have a question: What is a good vision for the future that is compatible with American culture? So far, it seems clear that the 'how we get there' part will be easier once we actually have a vision. Perhaps this is why the S&H archetypes go in the order they do? Idealist/Prophet -> Reactive/Nomad -> Civic/Hero -> Artist -> <loop back>

This aversion to collectivism may just be a Reagan thing. To younger people who have not lived under anything else but Reaganomics neoliberalism, it may seem like the USA can do nothing else. But to many blue boomers like me, Reaganomics seems like an unnecessary and temporary fluke. From the 1930s through the 1970s the USA was in the lead in the world on many policies, after the New Deal, the Great Society, and sixties trends like civil rights, 
environmentalism and consumer protection. It's just that the corporate and neoliberal establishment was strong enough to mount a resistance and find a charming actor with a 22-4 horoscope score to run for president and launch the counter-revolution. 

Safety nets and public systems are perfectly compatible with American culture, just not with the neoliberal (fake free-market/fake individualist) regime that has been foisted upon us and which has deceived the people temporarily thanks to demagogues like Reagan and Trump. While the USA backtracked after having been ahead of Europe for the previous 50 years, in 1980 many countries in Europe like France took the sixties revolution and ran with it that year and became more collectivist and environmentalist than they had ever been. Others like the UK and Germany had already leaped ahead of (or along with) the USA earlier, and backtracked a bit in 1980, but still remain further ahead of the USA now.

So maybe the fake-individualist, social-darwinian, anti-democratic trend has some strong roots in the USA, but so do more collectivist and progressive trends, green/peace trends, and diversity trends too, even to the extent of being ahead of Europe. It's just a question of decreasing the temporary (uh, only 41-year, extended 3T-influenced) hold that the charming actor and his deceptive ideologies have on middle America, and we can go forward again if we choose to. The idealist Boomers supported these trends back in the sixties, and need to continue speaking up and leading the way on them again now after this temporary backtracking. 

What has developed politically is that the political parties today, more so than in the past, have become vehicles for the progressive trends on the one hand (Democrats) and the regressive backtracking ones on the other (Republicans). So now in spite of some who talk about the 2 parties being the same, they are not, and we must support Democrats now.

[JasonBlack]

(07-28-2022, 04:40 AM)nguyenivy Wrote: Your last point was interesting. I may be an early Millennial but I felt similar for a while in the whole 'not wanting to take sides' thing. Maybe it's due to me being an only-child, maybe it's the Asperger's, maybe nothing in particular. I have positions on things but US culture as a whole is just not collectivist in the way(s) [some?] European countries are. There have to be cultural reasons in addition to business reasons as to why we don't have the universal social safety nets and public transportation systems some EU countries have despite both sides of the northern Atlantic being 'Western'. So I have a question: What is a good vision for the future that is compatible with American culture? So far, it seems clear that the 'how we get there' part will be easier once we actually have a vision. Perhaps this is why the S&H archetypes go in the order they do? Idealist/Prophet -> Reactive/Nomad -> Civic/Hero -> Artist -> <loop back>

I agree 100%, and honestly...I'm not super collectivist myself. I just think we need to be collectivist enough to get a bit more structure, get some basic institutions and services working and stop being at each other's throats with all this culture war nonsense.

[pbrower2a]

(07-27-2022, 03:24 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-27-2022, 01:26 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: We have conventionally understood that  enough prosperity solves all problems. I'm not sold on conspicuous consumption, and such as we have implies resource depletion that will ultimately impoverish us and waste heat that could make our planet far less habitable than it is now.

I'll raise you one: most people should spend some time in their life being poor. Understanding the concept of scarcity of a visceral level is the beginning of understanding problem solving, restraint and patience. There are few things which will teach you more about competition, and, conversely, few things that will teach you more about cooperation. People should be encouraged to pursue greater prosperity over time, but prosperity in the hands of those with underdeveloped character and understanding brings nothing but ruin.

I had my first real experience with poverty only when I was in my sixties with the realization that getting out of poverty (house-rich, but poor in liquid assets and desirability in the work force except at jobs that keep one poor. I sought a "nights and weekends" job in a dollar store as a possibility of making a little money while seeking real pay for my efforts. The store saw through that. 

At some point one must learn that one cannot afford to waste money. One must budget anything significant. Maybe one decides to brown-bad lunch to work so that one has more money to put into the down-payment for a house. Maybe one must defer spme expensive trips as vacations. If you live in Greater Chicago you can go to the Lake Michigan shoreline instead of the California coastline or visit some amusement park far closer (and less expensive) than one of the two main Disney parks. (Those used to be reasonable; they aren't anymore). You must save for purchases such as electronic equipment instead of putting them on the never-never, and you should consider buying used stuff to getting the schlock at rent-to-own rip-off emporia. 

The people who rule us believe that their power, indulgence, and the gain are mandatory objectives for everyone else, and that mass suffering by the common man on behalf of those objectives is mandatory. In essence, he who owns the gold makes the rules, and because we have the privilege in sharing the same country with them and they own the assets we owe them everything. The nastier the elite (and this applies to fascists and commies as well, with the military-criminal syndicate in what Mike Flynn calls "Minnamar" as one of the worst), the less tolerant they are of any education that promotes critical thinking. To be sure I can't say enough hostile stuff about Donald Trump, but he is exactly what the super-rich become when they go from founding businesses that need good relationships with customers to seeing people as captive customers.  In a pathological capitalist society, life becomes a bidding war for the essentials in which those shut out starve. We aren't there yet, but we could go that way. 

Quote:While we're at it, we need to chill with all this Kenynesian, broken window fallacy nonsense that just incentivizes "growth" (read: frivolous spending) for its own sake. Few things are better at promoting inflation, erosion of personal savings, responsible financial behavior (both government and private) and the rise of bureaucracies who become insulated from the consequences of their decisions. If anything, I'd argue this is one of the major causes of the current 4th Turning.

I don't know what Keynesianism has to do with any "broken window" stuff. Obviously, frivolous spending at the personal level does not create individual prosperity and well-being. I have always refused to be ripped off even when the promise in return was bliss.  We may be better off when bloated, bureaucratized entities in business die. Do you really miss A&P? Montgomery-Ward? K-Mart? Sears? Borders? That's only retailing, but that was suspect. Bureaucratic bloat is one way to encourage groupthink that institutionalizes incompetence while creating nothing in return.  

I have a cynical view of bureaucracy as a means of kicking people upstairs who are more likely to quit, especially for a competitor, or even be fired and start reading the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao for solutions to the pathology of capitalism. Put such people in a bureaucracy (which could be civil service) in which they can buy a house on a thirty-year mortgage, a new mid-sized car every five years, and perhaps be well-off enough to send their kids to college instead of suggesting to them that such a trade as meat-cutting is a good course in life, and one might fend off a proletarian revolution. 

It may be that we need more competitive capitalism and not less to fend off either a right-wing or left-wing tyranny. Every society has its wannabe Hitlers and Mao Zedongs.

[David Horn]

(07-28-2022, 02:53 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-28-2022, 04:40 AM)nguyenivy Wrote: Your last point was interesting. I may be an early Millennial but I felt similar for a while in the whole 'not wanting to take sides' thing. Maybe it's due to me being an only-child, maybe it's the Asperger's, maybe nothing in particular. I have positions on things but US culture as a whole is just not collectivist in the way(s) [some?] European countries are. There have to be cultural reasons in addition to business reasons as to why we don't have the universal social safety nets and public transportation systems some EU countries have despite both sides of the northern Atlantic being 'Western'. So I have a question: What is a good vision for the future that is compatible with American culture? So far, it seems clear that the 'how we get there' part will be easier once we actually have a vision. Perhaps this is why the S&H archetypes go in the order they do? Idealist/Prophet -> Reactive/Nomad -> Civic/Hero -> Artist -> <loop back>

I agree 100%, and honestly...I'm not super collectivist myself. I just think we need to be collectivist enough to get a bit more structure, get some basic institutions and services working and stop being at each other's throats with all this culture war nonsense.

The neoliberal swing started in the late 60s under Nixon.  Venture capital got the upper hand it always wanted, and it was off to the races.  Can we decide that enough is enough?  TBD, but the dam is showing cracks.

[Eric the Green]

(07-29-2022, 07:12 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-28-2022, 02:53 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-28-2022, 04:40 AM)nguyenivy Wrote: Your last point was interesting. I may be an early Millennial but I felt similar for a while in the whole 'not wanting to take sides' thing. Maybe it's due to me being an only-child, maybe it's the Asperger's, maybe nothing in particular. I have positions on things but US culture as a whole is just not collectivist in the way(s) [some?] European countries are. There have to be cultural reasons in addition to business reasons as to why we don't have the universal social safety nets and public transportation systems some EU countries have despite both sides of the northern Atlantic being 'Western'. So I have a question: What is a good vision for the future that is compatible with American culture? So far, it seems clear that the 'how we get there' part will be easier once we actually have a vision. Perhaps this is why the S&H archetypes go in the order they do? Idealist/Prophet -> Reactive/Nomad -> Civic/Hero -> Artist -> <loop back>

I agree 100%, and honestly...I'm not super collectivist myself. I just think we need to be collectivist enough to get a bit more structure, get some basic institutions and services working and stop being at each other's throats with all this culture war nonsense.

The neoliberal swing started in the late 60s under Nixon.  Venture capital got the upper hand it always wanted, and it was off to the races.  Can we decide that enough is enough?  TBD, but the dam is showing cracks.

Nixon was by no means fully neoliberal. After all, he instituted the EPA. He did not reduce taxes as a scheme to increase growth. His election and the outcome of 1968 was the start of a general conservative trend, but it was Reagan who instituted the neoliberal regime.

If Manchin coming on board pans out with a vote within a week for the revised and watered-down BBBBB, then that is a good start for breaking up neoliberalism and of a reform decade, with the conjunction of Dec.2020 marking the shift as expected; although if Republicans take the House, then that's another 2-year delay at least for more reform and more shift. So TBD yes, but if this bill goes through it's a major fulfillment of the trend I expected to start at this time.

IF the Democrats can keep the House, and pick up two more seats in the Senate, then bypassing the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act would be another huge step very much in line with the reforms I have predicted. Since it has already passed the House, then 2 or 3 Senate victories might actually be enough to at least get that and other reforms which the House has already passed. If that's the way it works, without a chamber reconciliation process needed.

[JasonBlack]

(07-29-2022, 05:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Nixon was by no means fully neoliberal. After all, he instituted the EPA. He did not reduce taxes as a scheme to increase growth. His election and the outcome of 1968 was the start of a general conservative trend, but it was Reagan who instituted the neoliberal regime.

Beat me to it. I'm not a fan of Nixon, but mostly on account of the war on drugs and some shady dealings (that's a euphemism for...genocide).

Quote:If Manchin coming on board pans out with a vote within a week for the revised and watered-down BBBBB, then that is a good start for breaking up neoliberalism and of a reform decade, with the conjunction of Dec.2020 marking the shift as expected; although if Republicans take the House, then that's another 2-year delay at least for more reform and more shift. So TBD yes, but if this bill goes through it's a major fulfillment of the trend I expected to start at this time.

IF the Democrats can keep the House, and pick up two more seats in the Senate, then bypassing the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act would be another huge step very much in line with the reforms I have predicted. Since it has already passed the House, then 2 or 3 Senate victories might actually be enough to at least get that and other reforms which the House has already passed. If that's the way it works, without a chamber reconciliation process needed.

I think a lot of the problem with the United States is that we pay similar rates of taxes as other developed countries, but they actually....get something out of their tax dollars. Among normal people, both Democrats and Republicans have wanted infrastructure reform for DECADES, but both party's leaders keep using it as a bargaining chip and it never gets done.

[JasonBlack]

We talk a lot of smack about boomers around these parts (including me sometimes), but my boomer mentors taught me one very important lesson growing up: the coming years will be hard on everyone, and will call for self-sacrifice and austerity**, but never forget what those sacrifices are for. At the end of the day, the only world worth fighting for is a world where people have the freedom to express themselves and pursue what inspires them. Regardless of what side of politics you fall on, I hope we can all agree on at least that much.

**both right wing calls for balanced budgets and left wing calls to combat global warming require austerity, and honestly...both have a point.

[pbrower2a]

(07-31-2022, 02:58 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: We talk a lot of smack about boomers around these parts (including me sometimes), but my boomer mentors taught me one very important lesson growing up: the coming years will be hard on everyone, and will call for self-sacrifice and austerity**, but never forget what those sacrifices are for. At the end of the day, the only world worth fighting for is a world where people have the freedom to express themselves and pursue what inspires them. Regardless of what side of politics you fall on, I hope we can all agree on at least that much.

**both right wing calls for balanced budgets and left wing calls to combat global warming require austerity, and honestly...both have a point.

The Hard Right cares not a whit for balanced budgets when they can instead have crony capitalism which is the best thing possible for plutocratic profit -- with of course the privatization of everything possible to rapacious monopolists and the degradation of workers' rights and the denial of any responsibility of the economic elites for peace (wars for profit can be extremely attractive to reckless and rapacious elites) environmental or social viability of the economic order. Such implies huge sacrifices of the masses for questionable ends, but those are sacrifices.  The call for great sacrifices can have a very dark side, and you can predict how badly they will work. 

The suppression of global warming (as well as other injustices such as human trafficking, only the worst of those injustices; as I see it there is nothing wrong with human trafficking that well-performed hangings can't solve) will require some sacrifices, but those sacrifices will be necessary if we are not to have a Crisis Era that makes the last one look like a holiday festival for Humanity. Today we see something like Stalin's collectivization of Soviet agriculture and the Nazi Holocaust as not only immoral but even worse, absurd.

Global warming will inundate huge areas of alluvial farmland and desertify much of the world's wheat-fields* that now produces a huge part of the world's food supply. Agriculture and peasant farmers may not be glamorous to over-educated bureaucrats and college professors, but they are the ones who feed the non-farmers in much of the world. The peasant farmers of Bengal may barely feed themselves, so they are particularly vulnerable. Does anyone want to relocate huge numbers of peasant farmers? 

Agriculture is the foundation of all economic activity, and when it fails, then so does everything else.  Many problems have techno-fixes, but hunger does not. Famines will lead to the failures of political systems and the rise of extremist ideologies that could be even more murderous and warlike than Nazism. The line between people generally being well fed and enduring horrific famines is quite narrow. 

To protect ourselves from the worst consequences of global warming we will need to reduce dependency upon gas-guzzling motor vehicles and eschew conspicuous consumption. In view of the technology we do not need to own as much stuff as we used to. You can read a classic book out of a Kindle that you have put into something that simulates a book. You may not need a large library of video and music. Indeed you may even be able to live in an inside apartment with a fake window that offers art work or a fake view far better than anything in the area. You could have virtual reality that simulates a road trip. Such is the opposite of conspicuous consumption.      

*Wheat is the crop grown in the driest farmlands suitable to intense agriculture in such countries as Spain, Morocco, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine that are  most vulnerable to desertification if rising temperatures do not come with rising rainfall.

[beechnut79]

(07-31-2022, 01:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-31-2022, 02:58 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: We talk a lot of smack about boomers around these parts (including me sometimes), but my boomer mentors taught me one very important lesson growing up: the coming years will be hard on everyone, and will call for self-sacrifice and austerity**, but never forget what those sacrifices are for. At the end of the day, the only world worth fighting for is a world where people have the freedom to express themselves and pursue what inspires them. Regardless of what side of politics you fall on, I hope we can all agree on at least that much.

**both right wing calls for balanced budgets and left wing calls to combat global warming require austerity, and honestly...both have a point.

The Hard Right cares not a whit for balanced budgets when they can instead have crony capitalism which is the best thing possible for plutocratic profit -- with of course the privatization of everything possible to rapacious monopolists and the degradation of workers' rights and the denial of any responsibility of the economic elites for peace (wars for profit can be extremely attractive to reckless and rapacious elites) environmental or social viability of the economic order. Such implies huge sacrifices of the masses for questionable ends, but those are sacrifices.  The call for great sacrifices can have a very dark side, and you can predict how badly they will work. 

The suppression of global warming (as well as other injustices such as human trafficking, only the worst of those injustices; as I see it there is nothing wrong with human trafficking that well-performed hangings can't solve) will require some sacrifices, but those sacrifices will be necessary if we are not to have a Crisis Era that makes the last one look like a holiday festival for Humanity. Today we see something like Stalin's collectivization of Soviet agriculture and the Nazi Holocaust as not only immoral but even worse, absurd.

Global warming will inundate huge areas of alluvial farmland and desertify much of the world's wheat-fields* that now produces a huge part of the world's food supply. Agriculture and peasant farmers may not be glamorous to over-educated bureaucrats and college professors, but they are the ones who feed the non-farmers in much of the world. The peasant farmers of Bengal may barely feed themselves, so they are particularly vulnerable. Does anyone want to relocate huge numbers of peasant farmers? 

Agriculture is the foundation of all economic activity, and when it fails, then so does everything else.  Many problems have techno-fixes, but hunger does not. Famines will lead to the failures of political systems and the rise of extremist ideologies that could be even more murderous and warlike than Nazism. The line between people generally being well fed and enduring horrific famines is quite narrow. 

To protect ourselves from the worst consequences of global warming we will need to reduce dependency upon gas-guzzling motor vehicles and eschew conspicuous consumption. In view of the technology we do not need to own as much stuff as we used to. You can read a classic book out of a Kindle that you have put into something that simulates a book. You may not need a large library of video and music. Indeed you may even be able to live in an inside apartment with a fake window that offers art work or a fake view far better than anything in the area. You could have virtual reality that simulates a road trip. Such is the opposite of conspicuous consumption.      

*Wheat is the crop grown in the driest farmlands suitable to intense agriculture in such countries as Spain, Morocco, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine that are  most vulnerable to desertification if rising temperatures do not come with rising rainfall.

When it comes to gas guzzling cars, we can switch to electric but that will takes lots of time. Shouldn't we take steps to reduce auto dependency as well, because the congestion will still be there? While we're at it, do you feel that high speed rail, the darling of the transportation world in much of Europe and Asia, will ever take off here in the US and also Canada?

[pbrower2a]

(08-01-2022, 11:52 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(07-31-2022, 01:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-31-2022, 02:58 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: We talk a lot of smack about boomers around these parts (including me sometimes), but my boomer mentors taught me one very important lesson growing up: the coming years will be hard on everyone, and will call for self-sacrifice and austerity**, but never forget what those sacrifices are for. At the end of the day, the only world worth fighting for is a world where people have the freedom to express themselves and pursue what inspires them. Regardless of what side of politics you fall on, I hope we can all agree on at least that much.

**both right wing calls for balanced budgets and left wing calls to combat global warming require austerity, and honestly...both have a point.

The Hard Right cares not a whit for balanced budgets when they can instead have crony capitalism which is the best thing possible for plutocratic profit -- with of course the privatization of everything possible to rapacious monopolists and the degradation of workers' rights and the denial of any responsibility of the economic elites for peace (wars for profit can be extremely attractive to reckless and rapacious elites) environmental or social viability of the economic order. Such implies huge sacrifices of the masses for questionable ends, but those are sacrifices.  The call for great sacrifices can have a very dark side, and you can predict how badly they will work. 

The suppression of global warming (as well as other injustices such as human trafficking, only the worst of those injustices; as I see it there is nothing wrong with human trafficking that well-performed hangings can't solve) will require some sacrifices, but those sacrifices will be necessary if we are not to have a Crisis Era that makes the last one look like a holiday festival for Humanity. Today we see something like Stalin's collectivization of Soviet agriculture and the Nazi Holocaust as not only immoral but even worse, absurd.

Global warming will inundate huge areas of alluvial farmland and desertify much of the world's wheat-fields* that now produces a huge part of the world's food supply. Agriculture and peasant farmers may not be glamorous to over-educated bureaucrats and college professors, but they are the ones who feed the non-farmers in much of the world. The peasant farmers of Bengal may barely feed themselves, so they are particularly vulnerable. Does anyone want to relocate huge numbers of peasant farmers? 

Agriculture is the foundation of all economic activity, and when it fails, then so does everything else.  Many problems have techno-fixes, but hunger does not. Famines will lead to the failures of political systems and the rise of extremist ideologies that could be even more murderous and warlike than Nazism. The line between people generally being well fed and enduring horrific famines is quite narrow. 

To protect ourselves from the worst consequences of global warming we will need to reduce dependency upon gas-guzzling motor vehicles and eschew conspicuous consumption. In view of the technology we do not need to own as much stuff as we used to. You can read a classic book out of a Kindle that you have put into something that simulates a book. You may not need a large library of video and music. Indeed you may even be able to live in an inside apartment with a fake window that offers art work or a fake view far better than anything in the area. You could have virtual reality that simulates a road trip. Such is the opposite of conspicuous consumption.      

*Wheat is the crop grown in the driest farmlands suitable to intense agriculture in such countries as Spain, Morocco, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine that are  most vulnerable to desertification if rising temperatures do not come with rising rainfall.

When it comes to gas guzzling cars, we can switch to electric but that will takes lots of time. Shouldn't we take steps to reduce auto dependency as well, because the congestion will still be there? While we're at it, do you feel that high speed rail, the darling of the transportation world in much of Europe and Asia, will ever take off here in the US and also Canada?

What is "a long time"? It took little time for compact discs to replace vinyl discs for recorded music, DVD's to replace VHS tapes in the marketplace, or for flat-screen TV's to supplant CRT-based TV's. If there is enough prosperity, good times kill obsolete technologies.  DVD and Blue-Ray coexist in part because many poor people have yet to upgrade to DVD and because much recorded video isat as high a level of definition as is possible (most black-and-white movies and video made for TV broadcasts) that Blue-Ray is no improvement. It would be difficult for me to consider replacing a complete set of The Honeymooners, a 1950's comedy series, with Blue-Ray... or even Taxi.  

General Motors has stated that beginning with the 2035 it will make no gas-powered vehicles The typical gas buggy being sold today has an expected life of about twelve years. Twelve years seems like a long time (he model year begins in September of the previous year) so on the average a gas buggy now sold new will be scrapped by then. 

It's up to customers to decide whether to buy an electric vehicle of a gas buggy between now and then. I expect the economy to have a deep downturn between now and then, and Obama's Cash for Clunkers could work to get gas-powered cars off the road and into the scrapyard. By 2035 if one did not replace one's car in the usual attrition of aging vehicles one will find high taxes and reduced availability as incentives to abandon gas-powered vehicles. (This will likely also apply to golf carts and lawn  mowers). 

Will Boomers lead the way in this change? Hardly. They are now old enough that they will range from 73 to 92 when GM (and likely nobody else) manufactures "gas buggies" any more. The last generation of Americans to have clear memories of people who lived in the horse-and-buggy days will often be in a nursing home or a grave when the "gas buggy" is retired as an object of manufacture. i am one of those Boomers. If I should buy a new car or a used car less than five years old, then that is likely the last vehicle that I will buy. I turn 67 in December. A hint on that: there was a point at which I would never ride in the car if my mother was driving. She was a moderate speeder, and usually adjusted her speed for conditions of the road. She failed to adapt to her slowing reflexes. I insisted that she cut back her speed by ten miles per hour on the open road if she wanted me as a passenger.

I am now a marginal driver. I have unusually slow reflexes and sleep apnea.  Ideally I would move to some place with good public transportation (like Chicago) except that I would be priced into the dangerous South Side. I can't imagine my driving getting any better, and I am taking frequent road trips to make sure that I see things that I want to see while I have a chance. The police have stopped me twice for suspected DUI... and I was not drinking or using drugs. If I am starting to fall asleep while driving I usually get about a two minute warning and I pull over. The local police know me well for this.