You're right, it does have it's roots in the politics of the 80's when wealth, consumerism and political corruption were at an all time high. Otomo is blending in some of the social themes that still pop up in some of the stories from Japan today. The country was experiencing some of their biggest financial and technological gains but, in the opinion of some, at the expense of the a sense of genuine national pride, culture and the next generation of youth.

To a degree, the biker gangs represent a lost generation of over entitled kids with nothing better to do than wreak havok because the real challenges in life are not really a challenge any more. This is still an issue today in Japan where the culture is geared to making everything for their kids as easy as possibly for an enjoyable childhood. Not everyone buys into this but shools, for example, tend to not be so hard on kids for misbehaving and the threat of expulsion or being left behind a grade is not really there.

A big example of this is the law that children are garunteed to graduate. They can skip class, not do work, be disruptive, and still graduate from grade to grade up to high school. Basically, anything up to high school is meant to be training for the test to get into high school not to truly learn anything.