From what I can see, as a boomer myself, is that we were best at voting ourselves more and more benefits, lower and lower taxes, and mortgaging all the value out of everything that had been built up over the previous generations. And the generations to follow are being left an empty purse.

I don't entirely place the blame on boomers for the raise of 1950s nostalgia and the corresponding misalignment of economic goals.

Someone (not a baby boomer) working in a traditional blue collar job today looks back at the portrayal of life in a rerun of a 1970s sitcom - Happy Days (or spin off, or even an "average" person sitcom from the 80s... Roseanne, Married with children) on late night cable and wonders what it would take to have that lifestyle today? Well, taxes are taking too large of a chunk of the family budget so people gravitate to candidates that say they'll cut taxes.

Though, they're missing out on the 1950s tax structure... where people making $200,000 (1950s dollars - about $2M in 2020s dollars) were getting taxed at 91%. Corporate tax rate was much higher too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...

The plank of "we're going to raise taxes" doesn't get as many nostalgic votes for people hoping to return to the lifestyle of the 1950s.

There's a whole lot of other factors too.

A right leaning 30 year old today is voting to try to have what they perceived how it worked in the 1950s from shallow portrayals of the period.