Scott Alexander reviews comments on his defense of Baby Boomers, clarifying three separate claims about generational fairness and addressing debates about housing policy, Social Security, cultural changes, and whether the structural problems attributed to Boomers are actually universal features of aging populations. Longer summary

Scott Alexander responds to comments on his original post defending Baby Boomers from generational criticism. He clarifies that he should have better separated three distinct claims: whether Boomers had it easier, whether the political system favors them unfairly, and whether they're uniquely selfish. He addresses housing policy (particularly California's Proposition 13), cultural changes like divorce and childcare, Social Security technicalities, and whether anti-Boomer sentiment is justified as a political project. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between 'natural' and 'marked' policy choices, and argues that many problems blamed on Boomers result from broader structural issues like demographic pyramids rather than unique generational selfishness. Shorter summary

Scott reviews Bryan Caplan's book arguing that modern parents can relax their intensive parenting, while wrestling with whether this advice still applies in the age of smartphones and social media. Longer summary

Scott reviews Bryan Caplan's book 'Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids', exploring its main arguments about how parents today spend much more time on childcare than previous generations despite evidence that parenting style doesn't greatly affect outcomes. The post explores historical childcare data, the cultural shift away from letting kids play unsupervised, and modern challenges like screen time. Scott, dealing with his own twins, finds the book's advice about relaxing parenting standards compelling but struggles with modern concerns about phones and technology that weren't relevant when the book was written in 2011. Shorter summary