"The meme is mostly used by young people on social media to respond to perceived condescension from older users – but it’s been touted as a way to understand why job and life prospects are constrained for so many young people. It’s not capitalists, it’s not the politicians who serve them – it’s “boomers”, or everyone born in the two decades after the second world war.

Like much of online culture, “OK Boomer” tells us something about the cultural dominance of upper-middle-class youth. These young people are surrounded by baby boomers who’ve “hoarded all the wealth” and polluted the planet in the process. They haven’t had to witness – or deal with the ramifications of – old age and precarity for millions of working people in that generational cohort. Instead they get to revel without self-reflection in oedipal angst about their elders – many of whom were kind enough to pass them their ill-gotten privileges.

Workers of all ages, after all, barely earn enough to survive, much less save for retirement. A 2018 PBS Newshour report notes that half of Americans approaching age 65 have less than $25,000 in savings. One in four don’t even have $1,000. ... "After all, the problem with generational analysis is that even though it claims to be rooted in economic realities, it cannot see the reality of class. There were plenty of “Gen Xers” and older “millennials” convincing “boomers” to refinance away the small amount of wealth they had accumulated. There were also plenty of “boomers” who didn’t feel any generational solidarity while exploiting people their own age and amassing vast fortunes in the process."

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/06/ok-boomer-meme-older-generations