A Generation of Sociopaths

How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

De: Bruce Cannon Gibney

Narrado por: Wayne Pyle

In his "remarkable" (Men's Journal) and "controversial" (Fortune) book -- written in a "wry, amusing style" (The Guardian) -- Bruce Cannon Gibney shows how America was hijacked by the Boomers, a generation whose reckless self-indulgence degraded the foundations of American prosperity.

In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.

Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.

Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Sure to be controversial."—Fortune

"Informative, provocative, and entertaining reading for those interested in political economy and U.S. social and economic history."—Booklist

"Gibney lays into the 'Me' generation for cashing out their children's future and leaving the planet looking like a rock star's hotel room.... Timely."—Esquire

"A Generation of Sociopaths is a polemic, but what a polemic: filled with data, rich in anecdote, deadly serious yet wickedly funny."—Alexandra Wolfe, author of Valley of the Gods

"The core of Gibney's argument, that the boomers are guilty of 'generational plunder,' is spot-on. He accuses them of 'the mass, democratically-sanctioned transfer of wealth away from the young and toward the Boomers,' and he's right."—Dana Milbank, Washington Post

"Remarkable .... Impressively weighted with hard numbers and specifics, the volume serves as both an indictment of and rebuttal to a Woodstock Generation that has gleefully celebrated themselves for decades while gradually running the country into the ground ... Gibney paints a persuasive and frequently hilarious portrait of the Me Generation."—Men's Journal

"Like Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Bruce Cannon Gibney's A Generation of Sociopaths proceeds from a deceptively simple premise: that the gains made by the American middle class in the period after the world wars of the previous century were a fluke.... A damning, searingly relevant indictment."—The Globe and Mail

"[Gibney] has a wry, amusing style and plenty of well parsed statistics to back him up ... Read A Generation of Sociopaths and hope for the best. Gibney is more optimistic than those who predict an imminent third world war, than the scientists who warn of sudden climate shifts and the end of antibiotics, and even - in one sense - than the evangelicals who believe in the Rapture. He also has a better sense of humor."—Jane Smiley, The Guardian

"[Gibney] maintains that the Boomer Generation, privilege incarnate, exhibit all the traits associated with that clinical pathology: 'deceit, selfishness, imprudence, remorselessness, hostility, the works.' He argues the case well."—Toronto Star

"Uproariously funny but rigorously argued and researched.... Intellectually invaluable..... Re-fram[es] the dysfunction in our politics as less a consequence of partisan factionalism and more as a grand agreement between privileged Boomers across the political divide to enrich their present rather than vouchsafing the future."—Lawyers, Guns, and Money

a generation of degenerates

historically this is an accurate breakdown of the sociopathy involved in Boomer tax formula and generational distribution of wealth away from helping the poor and maintaining Society to helping themselves. I would actually say that his path Ford proposed is not nearly Progressive enough like taxing billionaires who are currently paying nothing you know no taxes whatsoever.

A must read for everyone but Boomers

This book makes the convincing case that boomers need to be dealt with immediately. If you are under the age of 60 you need to vote immediately for anyone not 60 or older. It's that simple.

Awesome Work!

It is a little over the top as as far as blaming everything on baby boomers, however, facts are facts. Though I don't think it was necessarily organized or with intent as much as a lack of checks and balances. Or maybe better stated what happens to anything when someone that did not stuggle takes over.

Interesting concept, conflates cause and effect

Does a lot of work describing an observable phenomenon (the toxic effect of one particular generation on American culture and politics), but does so in a strange way. The DSM V criteria for diagnosing sociopathy isn't suited to diagnosing entire populations, and it's particularly difficult to diagnose someone with a personality disorder when they themselves don't think anything is wrong.

The writer isn't a psychologist or a psychiatrist, so that detail is of little importance. instead, the writer is a venture capitalist so presumably there's no need to actually know what one is talking about.

But, that isn't really the problem with this book. If it were just that, it would still be an interesting, if flawed, rhetorical concept.

The problem is 1) reifying generational politics (i.e. making generations a coherent thing) and 2) ignoring the material conditions which create the culture of a given moment.

Preach Brother!!

A book with guts. Calls out the Boomers for their selfish destructive behavior. Not recommended for anyone on one political "side" or another. Also, my type of humor.