For years, we've discussed millennials as if, at best, they weresome sort of novelty. Or, at worst, an annoyance, a temperamentaldemographic that lived among us as cultural aliens.

But millenials are much more than a niche audience brokers areforced to deal with or employers have to live with. In fact,according to the latest data from the number-crunchers at PewResearch, millenials will hit 75 million strong this year,surpassing the dwindling boomers as this country's largest agedemographic.

In case you're wondering, this group—loosely defined (for now)as those born between 1981 and 1997—continues to grow because ofthe burgeoning young immigrant population, according to Pew.Boomers, obviously, are starting to, well, die out.

We've already seen the impact Generation Y (see, they even havetwo nicknames) has had on the national stage, playing a huge partin electing Barack Obama not once, but twice. Love him or hate him,his campaign managed to speak to millenials on their level, throughlate-night talk shows, social media and viral videos. The last twoelections have had less to do with either the message (change) orthe messenger (old white guys vs. a younger black man) than themedium itself.

Brokers and employers alike have to realign their thinking whenit comes to millenials. They are the new baby boomers. We justhaven't caught up to that yet.

How long have we catered to boomers, politically andeconomically? And how much has that short-term patronization costus as a nation in terms of long-term viability? Social Security isthe world's shakiest Ponzi scheme. Our energy policy is asantiquated as it is short-sighted. Our minimum wage, which boomerscould actually live off of back in the day, has deteriorated inreal dollars as quickly as our national debt has ballooned.

Boomers—and to a lesser extent, Xers—have lived like frats boysand sorority girls—leaving millenials to clean up the house andnurse our hangovers.

And nothing will change. Until it has to.

I liken it to the broker community's outrage over health carereform or even advisors' hand-wringing over Dodd-Frank. We saw itcoming. We knew “business as usual” was unsustainable. But we keptgoing because business was good for brokers and life was easy forcarriers.

Now it's not. The rules have changed. And instead of playing thegame, we just want to pick up our ball and go home.

Sounds like a lot of boomers I know.