Once upon a time, we X-ers faced a mountain of criticism from boomers for what they perceived as our lack of a work ethic. What they didn’t see, however, was the workforce we entered and had inherited, one where layoffs are considered routine and job security no longer exists. Boomers wanting to remain an active part of society aren’t in a big hurry to retire, so not only are there fewer upper-level jobs available to us, we’re also facing an attack from the rear as energetic, eager-to-please and entry-level Y workers graduate from college and wave their freshly minted diplomas and sense of entitlement along with their aversion to so-called “grunt work.”

We’re the generation who’ll be struggling to finance the boomers’ retirement at the same time that we hope to god that we won’t be laid off or fired because our jobs were shipped to India, China or the Philippines. We’ll be the ones facing a retirement of our own without the fragile safety net of Social Security. We were at the forefront of the dot-com boom, recognizing the power of the Internet and its ability to literally transform the world as we know it, but our own influence on its development has diminished and is now dominated by the likes of Facebook creator and Y-er Mark Zuckerberg.

The Baby Boomers were the first totally atomized generation: distrusting the past, they went with what was easy and pleased themselves and others. Consequences? Well, we'll figure it out someday -- which was what made this brave new world generation of liberals into classic bourgeois conservatives, "out of sight, out of mind." They've left their kids to take up the slack, and that's why most generation Xers hate their parents -- they left behind a ruin, and never gave a thought to how people after them were supposed to knit together the remains. No one's gonna cry when you go, Boomers. Don't let the door hit you on the ass.