The great baby-boomer retirement wave is upon us. According to Census Bureau data, 44% of boomers are at retirement age and millions more are soon to join them. By 2030, the largest generation to enter retirement will all be older than 65.
The general assumption is that boomers will have a comfortable retirement. Coasting on their accumulated wealth from three decades as America’s dominant economic force, boomers will sail off into their golden years to sip on margaritas on cruises and luxuriate in their well-appointed homes. After all, Federal Reserve data shows that while the 56 million Americans over 65 make up just 17% of the population, they hold more than half of America’s wealth — $96.4 trillion.
But there’s a flaw in the narrative of a sunny boomer retirement: A lot of older Americans are not set up for their later years. Yes, many members of the generation are loaded, but many more are not. Like every age cohort, there’s significant wealth inequality among retirees — and it’s gotten worse in the past decade. Despite holding more than half of the nation’s wealth, many boomers don’t have enough money to cover the costs of long-term care, and 43% of 55- to 64-year-olds had no retirement savings at all in 2022. That year, 30% of people over 65 were economically insecure, meaning they made less than $27,180 for a single person. And since younger boomers are less financially prepared for retirement than their older boomer siblings, the problem is bound to get worse.
As boomers continue to age out of the workforce, it’s going to put strain on the healthcare system, government programs, and the economy. That means more young people are going to be financially responsible for their parents, more government spending will be allocated to older folks, and economic growth could slow.
Why can’t they just stop eating Avocado toast?
I get that it’s popular to blame an entire generation for the current troubles in the world, but the ones facing poverty after retirement aren’t the rich assholes who ransacked the economy and set everyone else after them up to fail. And, believe it or not, not every one of them votes for conservatives against their best interests. Show some empathy.
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Okay, fuck YOUR boomers then. I’m sorry you descend from such assholes. And while we’re at it, fuck the wealthy and super wealthy who don’t give their money to do good in the world. And okay let’s fuck those non-wealthy who wasted what money they earned on selfish shit.
But there’s a lot of old people who’ve never become wealthy because they were fair and kind and helpful to others instead. They still vote for government policies that benefit people worse off than they, and they make a good effort to embrace diversity, fight climate change, promote truth and science and peace. They didn’t die of COVID because they masked up and got the vaccines and rejected ivermectin. They may not be a majority but there’s still a lot because the whole is so large. They don’t deserve extra special treats but they don’t deserve to die homeless either.
This is my boomer MIL. She is honestly one of the kindest people I know. . She votes pro-environment/pro-social issues and has given (almost beyond her means) everything she can to virtually anyone who needs it. She has almost nothing left, and is a stones throw from couch surfing. I have no idea what’ll happen when her health starts to fail. As frustrated as I am with boomers, I try to remember her and the good she has tried to bring about in the world.
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So because some members of a group were unkind or showed you discourtesy, you condemn them all? I’d love to hear your thoughts on other ethnic groups. Anyone from India ever give you a hard time? I bet that makes you think less of all Indians. Y’know a lot of Russians support Putin and the war in Ukraine. Do you also think all Russians deserve to be punished as a result?
I hope you don’t consider yourself socially progressive because your attitude is part of the problem.
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While my boomer parents have obviously participated in the system and profited from it, they have never voted for a party that lead us down this path. Are they also to blame?
Ok so, meeting quite a few rude indians, over a time period is enough to write off like, a billion+ people?
The point is you aren’t capable of accounting anecdotal consensus for large populations, even if you think you’ve anecdotally met a lot of em
Bud what is your deal with trying to make it seem like people are racist against Indians specifically?
I’m not the other comment, I’m just extending the example.
It’s basic critical thinking to take one situation and compare it to another.
It could be any very large group, indians are a group of 1.4 billion and I found it applicable to extend the example. The point is anecdotal observation cannot ever form accurate assumption for a large group.
Same goes for boomers.
Bigger picture is eat the rich, don’t let them divide us. Age and generation isn’t the problem. It’s a side effect of the income gap. It doesn’t take a saint to empathize, it takes a human. If you spit the same shit back at them, you’re as bad as they are and the next generation will look at us the same way.
Income gap is and always has been the problem. Eat the rich.
Yo you’re boomers were legit insane dicks! I agree we should all hate on them and try to make their lives miserable!!
On the other hand, the boomers in my life seem well aware how difficult things are nowadays for us. I’m brown tho so ymmv
By a majority, the poorer demographic of boomers voted for them, though. That trend increased as they continued to age.
If we get their voting records and fund only the ones who voted with any empathy for their fellow humans, maybe we can talk.
On a tangent: While we are at it, let’s not allow healthcare for the ones that rejected science and vocally supported those who supported violence against healthcare workers. Maybe some consequences for the Me Generation for once?
Yup, even if you’re a poor retiring boomer you don’t deserve a social safety net if you spent your whole life committed to destroying it. Conservative boomers who are the large majority of boomers voted in the conservative assholes explicitly to gut the “new deal” that their parents put in place for them. “I got mine” was their motto, well now live in it.
You should get the retirement you voted for all your life. Show me your blue voting record and you can have a social safety net.
You’re telling the wrong generation to have empathy. Stop victim blaming. It’s disgusting.
You’re wrong. All but one state voted for Reagan the first time. This was absolutely a multi-generational thing.
He won all but one state. You do realize that doesn’t mean everyone in those states voted for him, right?
Nice attempt to redirect the conversation, but that didn’t work. Boomers as a rule voted for Reagan and his platform of hate. They voted for his made up “Welfare Queen”. They voted to get rid of pensions. They voted to get rid of unions. They did all these things because THEY didn’t think that THEY needed them anymore. An entire generation of narcissists ruined and continues to ruin the world.
You don’t have to believe me, but my boomer parents agree. To quote my Baby Boomer father, “Boomers destroyed the world”.
You really don’t understand how US elections work, do you?
In 1980, Reagan received only 50.8% of the popular vote yet won in 44 states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election
In 1984, he received 58.8% and won 49 states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidential_election
If you look at the demographics of both elections, voters under 45 (i.e. the boomers at the time, since Gen X was too young to vote in '80 and the oldest were just turning 19 in '84) were much less likely to vote for Reagan.
But go on about how boomers voted for him “as a rule” even though about 40-50% voted against him, you absolute tool.
I’m convinced ageism (and to a lesser extent religious discrimination) is the last true bastion of bigotry. You’re not allowed to be homophobic, transphobic, or racist on the internet anymore. But if you call someone evil for the crime of being of voting age when Reagan got elected? No problemo.
It’s frustrating seeing people my age or younger than me (36) who think they’re fighting for progress but are just perpetuating the same cycle of hatred and dehumanization that they think they’re opposing. They’re closer to the fascists they decry than they’ll ever admit by picking an arbitrary group of people and ascribing all their problems to it.
If I were like the people I’ve been arguing with here, I’d assume we’re all lost, but I know there are plenty of gen x, millennials, gen z, gen alpha and, yes, boomers, who are ACTUALLY opposed to this kind of crap so that the world will keep chugging along. I’ll just remain perpetually annoyed the whole time.
Mostly to me it’s just really funny. Like it’s also really sad, that’s true, but it’s also funny, because of almost how incredibly stupid and shortsighted it is. Like, what does everyone think is gonna happen in 50 or 60 years? All the zoomers and millenials perpetuating this shit are just gonna get blamed equally by all of gen alpha and beta for deflecting all the blame onto boomers, and having done nothing to prevent, or even turn back, say, climate change. Or microplastics, or maybe like, if they’re really on the level, all of gen alpha will really get on their parents case for being absentee parents that abandoned them to a horrible digital wasteland via ipad.
Like unless we gain empathy, and, beyond that, understanding, as to why each generation acted the way they did, unless we gain that insight and historical context, we’re just gonna keep treading water, as every new generation has to figure out everything by themselves, and can never learn from the mistakes of their progenitors. You don’t even need to like boomers, or boomer culture, or really even like, morally approve of why they did the things they did, you just need to understand how they justified it, and what they were thinking at the time. But people don’t wanna do that, instead it’s just easier to blame the olds.
Preach brother
Boomer mom inherited a house that was paid for, immediately did a reverse mortgage to fund her lifestyle.
Fuck you, mom.
When people pass on generational wealth, I read its usually gone within 3 generations.
Probably not true for billionaire level wealth, but for the people that work up millions or tens of millions.
The worst part, the absolute worst part, is that it’s a house my grandmother designed and my great grandmother financed.
4 generations of my family have lived there, and it will be gone when mom kicks off.
Have you tried bootstrap pulling? I hear that’s a great way to make an extra million or two.
My wife’s grandparents and their parents were very very wealthy but my mil and her siblings have literally waited every cent of it and im talking millions of dollars. One aunt is a forever student, she has never had a job, never earned her own money in any way and has constantly used money for her own education while never earning any degrees. One uncle spent the vast majority on gambling and alcohol.
Some people actually like being perpetual students, but to not earn any degrees while doing that is crazy. Like, get PhD or 2 if you want to spend forever in school and if you ever get bored of it then you’d have something to use. Also if you’re good at it, you can even get scholarships or grants along the way.
Ya thats not what she did. She just took classes that sounded interesting and never got anything to show for it. Being a full time student would be fun but not at the expense of fucking over everyone else.
I think it’s true at all levels. Dropping from billionaire to millionaire isn’t as sympathetic though.
That’s usually because often the second generation grew up seeing and learning (and possibly expereincing) the work that initially generated that wealth.
The 3rd generation only saw and experienced the lifestyle that comes with already having the wealth, and doesn’t really have an innate understanding of what it took to generate it.
You’d think knowing this trend is persistent and why, that most people with generational wealth would set up trusts so it couldn’t be destroyed.
Here, Iive a lifestyle with this perpetual allowance that probably gets persistently better as the wealth grows.
But i guess people just trust their children too much.
The Chinese even have an idiom for this exact phenomenon, the saying goes, “富不过三代”. Translated literally, it says wealth does not persist beyond three generations.
Wow that’s crazy they got something specific for it
Wouldn’t it just be because it’s divided among all their great grand children and spouses? If everyone had 4 children, the wealth would be divided 4^3=64 times. So, $1 million becomes $15k (assuming none is spent by the first 2 generations).
It was talking about wealth levels where passing it down to your children wouldn’t kill it. (Edit 1 million is a lot of money, but at the same time it’s not a lot of money. In many places its not enough to live a comfortable life off with a family indefinitely)
Like you have 40 mil and 3 children and give to those 3.
13.3 mil is with a very safe 3.5% withdrawal is 465.5k a year for each child to spend. At 3.5% that wealth will probably become much larger and be able to grow indefinitely as it’s below the 4% safe rule.
By the time you die it could be 30-50 mil or more and you then give it to your kids. You maintained the generational wealth and passed it on
But instead these children are spending it poorly and they each die with 4 million.
That’s still over a million each for each child of the child, even with 3 kids each, and each of those kids could probably turn it back into generational wealth but then they also spend it poorly.
My parents had a VERY nice house and decided to spend unwisely. They lost the house and all the equity in it, then bought a smaller house. They have since wasted every penny they have ever earned on random shit that they can acquire for their back yard. My parents could have put everyone through college or made a down payment on a house but decided instead to just spend and spend.
Paying it forward
Genuine question: why do you think you’re entitled to the house?
Because it was in the family for 2 generations before mom. My grandmother designed it, and my great grandmother financed it.
It was their desire it stay in the family. Ideally, when mom died, it should have gone to my sister, if we’re maintaining a matrilinear line.
Jasmine?
Nope! Weird that I do KNOW a Jasmine though?
Your sister? In Milford?
Nope, one of my kid’s friends.
Ah well she has the same story as you.
Thanks for responding! If the home is owned by your mother, isn’t she allowed to do with it what she wants? Or was there some sort of plan set in place that she’s now reneging on?
I’m not very familiar with generational wealth or the processes by which it’s established so I apologize if I’m coming off as ignorant or if what I’m asking is too personal (grew up incredibly poor and I thought this stuff was, like, a movie plot more than anything else).
At any rate, thanks again for your response!
There WAS a plan, but it went out the window when my grandmother died and the house transferred to my grandfather. He was a bundle of bad ideas.
You asked a fair question and were kind about it and people still think you have to be downvoted… I guess those people are entitled to their vote
They have about as much of a claim on the house that their mother did anyway
The mother had a claim because the house was literally given to her, which was the right of it’s previous owner.
This person has no claim.
If the previous owners wanted it to remain with the family line they should have formalized that by placing the house in a trust.
Yes legally you are correct. The mother legally did inherit the home and has no obligation to share any of that windfall with her adult children. The grandparents didn’t put in any legal requirements that the house not be sold/scammed away from in a reverse mortgage scheme.
My point wasn’t about the legality of the situation just refuting the implied point from the original replay, that while OP did nothing to be entitled to an inheritance, neither did their mother.
Pulling up the ladder on your way up is a generally shitty thing to do.
We’ve set up a society where your success in life is heavily dictated by generational wealth. It’s not fair, but that’s the game, so not passing on generational wealth while enjoying the generational wealth passed on to you is greedy.
FYI, based on your follow-up comment, this wasn’t a “genuine question” it was more of a self-serving opportunity to impart your beliefs and opinions onto someone else. It’s a bad look, regardless of the shitty opinion you shared. Just thought you might want to know
This is quite the presumptuous take, almost a self-serving opportunity to impart your opinion onto someone else. Just thought you might want to know
You’re welcome to your opinion, but what makes it presumptuous?
Genuine question: why do you think that the mother is more entitled to the house than OP? Neither of them paid for it.
your comment exists only to be edgy/angry and project your own internal weirdness.
The real villains here are the absurdly rich. Especially those who find ways to pay less in taxes.
The top 1% are the problem.
Tax the rich.
Even as people starve, they’ll defend those absurdly rich folk because one day it’ll be them starving people out!
I hate this “I got mine”/“I’ll get mine” attitude. If I were wealthy, I’d gladly pay higher taxes to support social programs. Shouldn’t that be the whole point of accumulating wealth - to be able to give back? It should be hard-coded into the very structure of society.
And it was a certain generation who decided to do teaching the rich. The ones who want to take digital security for themselves and scrap it for the rest of us
No it isn’t. That wave should have already hit. The 2010’s called and they want their news item back. The real story is why aren’t they retiring?
(Because they don’t have a retirement)
I think boomers that have high paying and powerful jobs are working longer than ever because they want to. The other side of the boomer wealth inequality, yes, those ones have to.
In fact, every time I have seen a thread on the topic of boomers working past retirement because they can’t afford to retire on Lemmy so far, someone chimes in about how they’re in their late 60s and love their job as a [something rarely unpleasant], so they want to keep working.
As if that’s the same as someone in their 70s working the fryer at Burger King.
I mean, anyone got some data to reference to look at so we can clear the air?
I’m 46. When I was in high school we were told “pursue teaching or healthcare because everyone doing it now will be retired”.
I didn’t pursue either thank god because
- They didn’t retire
- When they did or openings came up they were replaced by low wage immigrants that were willing to get paid less to do the same job with a worse title.
I went into aviation. I’ve heard that “all the pilots that joined the airlines after 'Nam are gonna retire en masse any minute now and we’ll never find enough pilots” lie for 20 years now, and the next mouth I hear that lie come out of is going to rapidly break into small, wet pieces.
Don’t you need verified degrees and licenses to do those jobs? I would imagine immigrants picking oranges, never seen one bedside at a hospital or in a child’s school.
Using healthcare in Canada they are often African or Filipino and they aren’t hired as nurses because nurses are expensive. We have all new titles at cheaper wages for them.
What teachers do you know aren’t retiring once they qualify for their full pension?
Most folks in that profession are in the GTFO stage.
I’m in Canada so it’s a bit different. Teachers are not noping the fuck out here at the same click as the US for a multitude of reasons.
I think the point is that we are coming up on the moment when those retirees who didn’t retire in the 2010’s, because they had no money to retire with and can’t live on the joke salary of what social security has become, are all about to be forced by nature and an employment structure that’s is hungry for younger talent to actually retire. And we have no infrastructure to handle that.
I was told this could be all fixed by pulling up your bootstraps and a firm handshake.
Also no more starbucks and avocado toast. Easy.
Boomers drink used motor oil and eat asbestos toast. It’s called moxie, kid.
Look, there was a generation between Boomers and Gen X and the fact that they’re now just lumped in together is ridiculous. They’re called Boomers because they were born during the baby boom immediately following WWII. That boom did not last 20 years. Actual Boomers have been retired for a decade.
Gen X, always forgotten. Fuckin latchkey kids to the end.
I think a lot of us grew to prefer it that way.
There’s a lot to be said for being able to blend into a crowd and be forgotten. You sure can get away with a lot more, anyway.
This comment has given me far more food for thought than the first skim.
Yes, you’re correct. There is more.
Being content with being part of the crowd and being comfortable with your own identity in a way that you don’t need externalise it, because ultimately the validation that you receive can only come from you, because it won’t come from anywhere else. Someone else will claim the credit anyway.
Being comfortable not being noticed.
Just getting on with it. Work, life, pleasure, marriage, parenthood, careers, it’s probably not going to get any better, it’s probably going to be blamed on you anyway, just get on with it and hope no-one asks too many questions.
Find a nice quiet spot out of the wind for a snooze, knock off work at 4pm, quiet life with no surprises etc.
Someone born in 1950 was only 64 10 years ago. There are plenty of older boomers that have been waiting to retire into their 70s.
Elevated birth rates lasted at the very least until the late 1950s. It was more than just a few years.
There are plenty of older boomers that have been waiting to retire into their 70s.
So what? They should’ve been retired for a decade. Sticking around in the workforce is tantamount to theft of wealth and opportunity from the generation coming up behind them.
The “late 1950s” boomers are literally the only ones who have any excuse to not be retired yet.
You don’t need an excuse to not be retired. Plenty of people just don’t have the means to retire so are still working. Or plenty of boomers are housing or at least helping their millennial kids with bills and therefore don’t retire. Why should a 69 year old who is still totally active leave their job, which puts their mental and physical health at risk all while moving to a smaller, fixed income at a time of crazy price increases just to make room for other people to make more? They’re getting screwed by grocery prices and insurance spikes too
Because their job is as an executive and they just play with their own buttholes all day.
If some executive retired, do you really think you’d just step into their shoes? That is not opening a job for a millennial.
Before anyone says that will let everyone shuffle up a bit, letting each level improve, I also wanted to point out the number of executives is very small, relative to the entire cohort. Even if they all stepped aside, that’s just not opening many spaces
That is not opening a job for a millennial.
Exactly. My generation needs our shot at fucking things up first!
Of course I wouldn’t. I’m totally understand qualified and uninterested. But I’m telling you most of the corporations around here are run by old guys going on “business trips” in mexico who got their job through their golf buddy. And they don’t do much aside from wander around chatting all day, collecting a salary equal to 4 of the people actually producing value.
Did you really just say that the boomers are stealing our jobs? Lmao
The last boomers haven’t. The youngest ones will be 60 this year. There are still tons of them in the workforce.
No, that’s what I’m saying. Those turning 60 this year are not Boomers. They are the generation that came between Boomers and GenX. Yeah, even this Wikipedia article lumps them in with Boomers, but they weren’t considered Boomers as they were coming of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones They shouldn’t be now, either. Ask any of them if they consider themselves Boomers.
Will be 60 January 18th. NOT a boomer!
Started working when I was 14.
I’m 62 and had my first job at 12.
Mom disowned me and dad left everything to his 5th wife. No wealth dribbled down my way.
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What gen are you in then?
What gen are you in then?
Gen X
I was born in 1962 and I consider myself a Boomer. I have a friend born in 1961 who considers himself GenX. It’s life circumstances and attitude that determine where you fit.
Also, everybody please remember all these generational labels are made-up bullshit and vast generalizations that might be useful for some meta-analysis of trends, but they’re less than useless when it comes to understanding individual behavior.
Like I taught my kids, the minute you start thinking all people in “Group Whatever” are alike, you lose.
I’m not sure it changes this conversation to argue about that. The usual demographic description of Boomers is those born up to 1964. If we define the Jones cohort, this just splits that in half, and that article gave an ending date 1965. I’m not sure how it matters to this conversation.
My older brother was born in 1965 and would be pissed off if anyone called him a boomer. We should do that
Ironically I think they are referred to as the silent generation. I’m genx my parents are boomers and older brother is silent generation. I think.
Silent generation precedes the boomers.
Ah sorry, thanks for the correction.
While generally right here.
they have not been retired for nearly a decade. THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN. but they’ve been holding on. How many companies have fossils still leading them?
as someone in my 40’s, just before millenials. We were lost because there’s simply no way up the ladder to places the boomers refused to vacate. doesn’t matter how educated, experienced many of us were, There was a ceiling. We were told “hold your turn. boomers will retire soon”… they’re in their 70’s and 80’s now. My parents included (Thankfully with us). But they’re all STILL TRYING TO WORK!
My parents at least DID retire Mostly. MY dad still does some work because to the boomers, work was living. they really knew nothing else.
problem is now the combination of Covid and age, and many of them legit dying while still working, we’ve got a clusterfuck of an economic problem (here in Canada, we’re already experiencing this wave). Immigration, Local resources, and infrastructure is just simply not setup for the mass wave of retirees going straight into either homes, or the ground. We can’t import people fast enough to fill all the jobs, and the faster we import them, we can’t build homes fast enough to keep the housing in check.
have to get ahead of this 10 years ago sadly. We’re too late and we’ll all be playing reactionary for the next 20 years in regards to the shifting demographcs.
The boomers started retiring 20 years ago. What they’re doing now is dying.
“Can I live with you?” I remember my Dad joking. I said, “Maybe you should have thought of that when you kicked me out when I finished high school.”
Maybe boomers will finally stop blocking the healthcare reforms that they will desperately need. If they can turn off TV news long enough to see their own problems instead of the made-up problems they are trained to focus on.
I think that, more likely, they’ll plump up healthcare services for only themselves. Boomers don’t vote against big government social services for everyone, they only oppose it when it’s not for themselves. That’s why both Republicans and Democrats defend Social Security and medicare for the elderly. Even DeSantis is campaigning on defending SS.
Unfortunately, I’m sure you’re right. I’m not sure how the younger generations will afford to foot the already astronomical bill for Boomer healthcare. Meanwhile, actual healthcare reforms would benefit everyone and in fact end up costing far less.
Don’t worry, they definitely won’t go that route of helping everyone a lot when they could help their people just a little.
Hit the Pause Button on Medicare for a couple of years. Literally pay nothing. And a lot of our old people problem will disappear.
The whole point is that it’s not really an old person problem. It’s a poor person problem.
We rag on the boomer generation for sponging up all the wealth for themselves, but what gets lost is that this was also at the expense of large swathes of less fortunate boomers. They weren’t just hoarding from other generations, they were hoarding from their fellow boomers. The exploitation class did not discriminate by age.
My father has Parkinson’s and my mother, who was his primary caregiver, passed a few months ago. They went from being comfortable with their finances and having a small, but nice home, to my father now going into a nursing home and likely lose everything he owns because of how expensive nursing care is. We are looking at $7k a month with zero assistance from Medicare and he has enough money that he doesn’t qualify for Medicaid but will burn through all his assets in just a short time. It’s ridiculous that people work hard and save and it’s all gone in a flash.
Let the debt die with him. Get that house into a trust, or out of his name however you can. Don’t let greedy corporations steal the generational wealth he worked hard for and surely wants to pass on, and not have taken away by the health care industry. A few grand on lawyers and accountants now will save you hundreds of thousands down the line.
Your father needs to put his assets into a trust ASAP then. Once he divests through the trust he will qualify for Medicaid. It’s unfortunate that we need to jump through these hoops, but it is what it is.
I’ve seen it go both ways. Things are so much better for the kids when assets are in a trust. Without it, I’ve seen people lose everything. Don’t give the dirty debt collectors a dime.
Sorry to hear about that. This is one reason why I wonder if it’s even worth saving for the future. Live the best life you can in your prime years and then let the pieces fall where they may in the end. You’ll qualify for more programs if you didn’t bother saving anyway.
If you want to pass on generational wealth you need a trust. It keeps those assets protected, and once you die the debt dies with you.
Assuming those programs still exist by the time you get to that point.
If the oligarchs continue to get their way, those programs will disappear. It doesn’t serve them to have a class of people whose labor or income they can’t exploit.
If you’re 40 or under it isn’t worth saving. Retirement is a Myth for Millennials onward. Unless we get UBI, everything is going to go tits up anyway.
This feels like a self fulfilling prophecy
If you’re 40 or under it isn’t worth saving.
That is precisely the best time to save and invest.
You’ve been given some horrible advice. That or you’re just not very smart.
If you believe the same retirement options that were available for boomers is realistically available for younger people, I have a 401k to sell you and a Social Security check is in the mail.
Without significant changes to the way we handle our economy no amount of savings now will make up for the shit that’s coming.
That being said, it should be noted I have a good paying job, I have a 401k, I have investments and none of that is going to carry any of us through to the retirement expectations that we’re being sold.
If you’re under 40, between automation and climate change, shit is going to get real very quickly.
How does giving everyone a UBI solve that we can’t afford to pay the old pensions now? Gonna tax the UBI to pay for it?
Dunno your country’s specifics, but in the U.S., the eventual social security deficits could be completely resolved by removing the caps on social security contributions.
UBI could be payed for by a radically progressive tax structure similar to the U.S. tax structure in the 1950s.
I’ve looked that structure up before, it only worked if you paid yourself. They just plowed all the money straight back into business expenses or acquisition.
In the U.S., the difference between average and median income is ~$25k/yr, so, if my logic is correct, it should theoretically be possible to have an UBI of $25k/yr (which would bring the average income on top of UBI down to around the median).
Well, I’ll give you this. Most communists don’t actually admit they want to drag everyone down to their level. The honesty is refreshing. That’s not sarcasm, this is rare as hell.
Think of it as the circle of life. It’s basically what powered the Boomers–all those freeways and suburb projects put money in their pockets. You give UBI and you drastically reduce homelessness, allowing more people to participate in the economy. Those with good incomes won’t notice the UBI but for those without, it will save their lives.
that’s called “crippling national debt”
Yet it has worked wonders everywhere it has been tried. Don’t mix up your hatred for taxes with the viability of public programs.
Yeah…I’m not American. “Works wonders everywhere it’s been tried” is a bit of an exaggeration, I’ve seen how this sort of thing goes.
Because the system isn’t designed to work for even the upper middle class, or even the comfortably independently wealthy. The system is designed to continue diverting all of that hard work’s rewards towards the wealthiest tier of wealthy.
Nobody is safe from this vampirism, not even those who would call themselves rich. As it is, wealth will always siphon down to the parasites at the bottom. We’ve all been fooled into thinking we’re at the bottom of a pyramid (or, if you’re lucky, somewhere in the middle), but it’s really just a funnel, sucking everything down to a single point.
So the top two hundred net worth individuals have amassed 30% of us wealth and boomers hold half the wealth. No wonder young people are suffering…
I think the point is that those two hundred are Boomers. The rest of the boomers are broke.
It’s always a class war, anything else is a distraction.
Yeah it’s easy to get mad at boomers. It’s also easy to forget that medicare and social security are under attack. The divisionthat matters isn’t between generations, it’s between the rich and the poor.
This is occurring specifically because of the choices they collectively made.
It’s hard to be sympathetic.
economic growth slowing? sounds like an ok situation to me.
Growth is literally destroying the habitable planet, the mindset of growth needs to stop.
Growth slowing is fine when your economic system doesn’t require infinite growth. If we’re looking for shrinkage we need to change economic systems… Which I’m personally all for
Those lazy boomers just don’t wanna work any more, my generation (millenial) has at least two jobs and shares a apt with 6 other people. Or why don’t they just learn to code?
After all, Federal Reserve data shows that while the 56 million Americans over 65 make up just 17% of the population, they hold more than half of America’s wealth — $96.4 trillion.
How is that wealth distributed? What do you wanna bet it’s REALLY skewed towards rich people hoarding like old dragons? What’s the median, not average, wealth of the boomers?
You didn’t read the article…this is covered in a table.
I see income distribution. Is there wealth distribution? I don’t see it. They’re not the same. they can be pretty disconnected.
Like net worth? Yes.
Oh, I stopped before then, thanks for mentioning it!
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Income isn’t the same as wealth though. For extreme wealth, income often isn’t even the biggest factor.
Tax the wealthy more, they won’t lose any quality of life whatsoever, and the money they extorted from their fellow humans gets paid back to support them in their old age.
This isn’t actually a hard problem to solve if you take greed out of the equation.
It’s still going to be a hard problem to solve, even though we should raise taxes on the elites.
When there are more old people in retirement than young people at work, it’s impossible for each old person to get the care they need. This pulls more workers out of other economic functions to help take care of these people which just further exacerbates the supply shortage.
Furthermore, most of our economy is built off ““innovation””, which is typically done by people in their 20s-30s. This generation is going to be limited by this extra work of being care caretakers, and the costs of innovation are going to be higher…
Consider all this, then add Taiwan just voted for independence, so China is likely to be more antagonist towards the west, so costs of simple manufacturing or complex manufacturing of consumer goods are also going to skyrocket
The next 7 years are going to be very interesting
Taiwan didn’t just vote for Independence, they elected the China-skeptical candidate for President. It wasn’t some Brexit-esque national referendum on Independence.
I don’t think it’s correct to assume that the labour market will move into old age care just because more workers will be needed. Personally, there’s no amount of money that you could offer me to get me into that line of work.
As I understand it, there’s already a shortage of workers in that field. Increasing demand might draw more as the money (theoretically) increases, but being short staffed adds even more difficulty to the work, so burnout might be high enough to counteract that.
In short, I think a lot of boomers will suffer as they need care, and it’s possible it’ll also affect younger generations.
What about when it’s your parents that need taking care of, and no one else is available to help?
I guess it’s one area where I’m lucky neither of my parents are still around because I’ll never have to make that decision because I have no idea what I would have done if I did need to make it.
Though I do know from the other side of that that I don’t want to be a burden on my daughter when I get to that point. Maybe I’ll be lucky and things will be figured out since the population spread will look different, but then again, I don’t know if I’d consider any kind of life like that lucky. Both of my parents chose to decline medical care when it got to the point where they’d need it regularly to survive; I might do the same.
That’s a tough choice to make, but nothing wrong with yours
You underestimate the stupidity of boomers, they’d rather vote to increase SS taxes for the younger generation than to realize they’ve been Stockholm syndromed their entire life.
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What country is that?
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(for people who can’t see bios:)
software developer, FOSS enthusiast, 🍕🍝🇮🇹
Italy?
I am on Lemmy so it maybe shows a lot less than it does on other instances or platforms? In any case I can assume that it’s itally based in the “.it”
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BONJOURNO
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