'The golden years are not golden’: Boomers are hoarding most of America’s wealth and power because they’re terrified of outliving their money
10d 12m ago by lemmy.world/u/return2ozma in politics from fortune.com
If only they had voted for the candidates who wanted a strong social safety net, rather than the ones that wanted to fuck everyone who isn't part of the 0.1%, maybe they wouldn't have to worry now...
And the idea of a safety net has been around for a long time, in various forms, yet somehow helping everyone has always been a bad thing to do.
Helping people is good to conservatives too... so long as you mean one guy helping an old lady cross the street. Once you apply that idea to anything more than one individual's actions within the confines of the community in which they live then conservatives start opposing the idea. I've never heard a logical explanation as to why that is.
I mean, isn't the explanation pretty simple:
They reserve the right of the individual to be an egoistic, uncaring asshole.
After reading your comment again: you meant how they applaud the individual act but can't explain why they don't want it to be a applied to the whole community? In that case I agree, no logical explanation.
Because somehow enough people were convinced anything that wasn't democracy was communism but also that capitalist fascism is actually democracy
You can't just give everyone a social safety net, then black people and gays would benefit and we can't be having that in our christian values nation. Its better if we all suffer instead to avoid helping the wrong people.
Its better if we all suffer instead to avoid helping the wrong people.
This should be carved into America's tombstone.
yet somehow helping everyone has always been a bad thing to do
Except when you're at church pretending to listen to what the preacher is saying about the gospels
That sounds like socialism, which is the same as communism, since they don't understand that either. All they know is that they lived through the Red Scare, and grew up thinking evil Soviet Communists were going to nuke the world...
All they know is that they lived through the Red Scare
Are living in the Red Scare. It never ended, even though the Cold War did. They're still preaching the same anti-USSR propaganda to the kids today that they were in the 60s. You need look no further than the Republicans calling Obama a communist because he took a course on Communism in college. You know, the one that every college student was required to take during the Cold War and that every Republican politician also took.
bernie was who we needed - instead we got trump ala hillary
👆
Thinking voting could save a country like America is so out of touch it's cringe. America needs revolution.
Who's gonna lead it? You?
All these armchair revolutionaries.
The same people who are going to "vote", could.
It's not an age thing, it's a class thing. This is just a psyop to direct anger away from the Epstein class.
No war, but class war.
Absolutely. Note that the only boomers who are able to hoard money are the ones who have it to hoard.
The rest of them stay in the workforce, delaying future generations
Not their fault if they have to support themselves.
Maybe if boomers hadnt gone whole hog on consumerism and saved more, instead of thier $20/day coffee habit...
Not to mention the avocado sandwiches.
I guess we should just absolve boomers for decades of voting like shit, creating the environment we are all very unhappy with now.
I'm not disagreeing, but it is worthwhile to point out that the groups can converge.
It may be a class war, but when all the boomers you know are a class above you, it can be both.
Boomers are not the class above anyone, virtually all of them are working class. Theyre just also brainwashed to hate socialized benefits.
Every boomer I know owns a home and has significantly more liquidity than I do. Maybe your story is different, but to say they are unequivocally not in a class above anyone is false.
Perhaps you aren't considering enough classes. There are more than 2.
It is a class pyramid.
Correct.
I've spent my life watching boomers live in a manner FAR less frugal than what myself and my peers consider normal. I am in my 40s.
My grandparents had 3 children and a house and did a Hawaii trip every other year. My grandpa was a used car salesman that never stayed at one job more than a few years at a time and my grandma had part time jobs off and on.
We are not living in the same economic reality they did/are.
Almost all boomers are working class, because they made the majority of their money through employment and not through capital.
The only war is class war.
You're conveniently ignoring that the numbers prove boomers had a far more favorable economic environment during most of their lives and voted in such a way to prevent the next generations from having that environment.
They worked. There's no arguing that. But because of them we will also work, and have less for it.
My dad lost all his assets to cancer bills, as did my father in law, and my husband's family lost the house built by their grandfather due to having to settle the nursing home debt after my mother in law died.
I do not expect any inheritance from my mom, since I want her to use it all to take care of herself.
We really really need a single payer healthcare system. Those last dozen years of a person's life are where the medical industrial complex makes obscene bank.
I can not begin to explain the level of my contempt for networks like FoxNews..
It confounds me that my father can be such a bigot and against social reform after being left destitute after my step mom passed following seven years of cancer treatment before passing way. I think he wants everyone else to suffer like he does instead of wanting there to be less suffering. I used to be really close to him but I refuse to have a relationship with him anymore.
I grew up on WIC and now my mom is conservative and against all safety nets and I'm like, bitch please I remember damn well picking out things that were on that WIC list every week at the store, don't act like we got by OK on our own. Not to mention her not working and on disability for the past couple decades... so independent we are.
If you want homes to stay in the family you need to get people added to the deed years before you die/acrue debt.
Depending on state this keeps the property out of any estate proceedings
She'd mortgaged it to cover part of her husband's debt from the cancer treatment and between that and the nursing home, the bank took a wash and it got transferred over to HUD.
Basically all the equity was stripped from it and it had liens in excess of the home value so the bank (Wells Fargo - ofc!) fobbed it to the government as a loss and took the write-off on their taxes.. which they do.
She'd been planning to have husband and I get the place but that all went out the window once her unmanaged diabetes chewed her up.
Weird, usually the spouse gets the property automatically. Of course they'd still be responsible for the loans which can be unmanageable.
Sucks our country puts people into such horrible positions for the crime of trying to stay alive
The house was the MIL's family.
There was an aunt living in it after FIL died, and so mother in law moved in with her sister.
Aunt died, leaving mother in law as sole occupant, and she was there for a few more years on her own until she got too sick.
She took out the mortgages on the family house after she got ownership, to strike down the remains of FIL's bills and clear the debts from the prior household.
Was just a shitshow all around. The one thing that was fun was crawling through the rafters of the house to pull out the family heirlooms.
We got the classic Singer 66 "redeye" treadle sewing machine with the 7 drawer "coffin case" and all the feet attachments. It's an absolute dream to use.
Everything else was tarred and nicotined to death as they were all smokers and the house reeked. NGL, whoever bought that from HUD had a ton of cleaning the cigarette residue off of everything, on their hands.
I can not begin to explain the level of my contempt for networks like FoxNews…
Everyone associated with that shithole is a traitor to our nation and I say that with the straightest face imaginable. What I want to happen to them would get me banned, even on Lemmy.
The nursing home shit pisses me off so much specifically because It's incredibly easy to avoid but you actually have to have enough money to pay lawyers to set up trusts and annuities and whatnot. It literally only impacts people who don't have the privilege to avoid it.
My grandfather technically died with barely a penny to his name. Just enough to cover funeral costs. All of his assets - around 2M total - had been transferred to various irrevocable trusts managed by his lawyers. The professional management cost something like 10% of the initial trust balance but that was worth it to prevent the slimebag nursing home people from getting. They got literally twelve dollars or something in probate. Not even worth the cost of the leach they sent to the hearing.
This is going to sound really fucked up, but my mom apparently bought specified disease insurance.
She smoked from before she was 18 up until after her last chemo treatment, and she still had her treatment covered 100%.
It didn’t cover everything - only medically necessary things. She tried to get the doctor to do an experimental procedure on her, and the insurance wouldn’t cover the procedure. It covered live-in hospice, but not a nursing home, etc.
That is amazing.. and she was able to buy the policy as a smoker?
She must have been able to.
She was notorious for lying to her doctors, but her medical history should have reflected that she smoked. She was on oxygen for smoking-related emphysema!
Look.
We all know boomers individually and like them.
Yes, we should be focusing more on class warfare than generational warfare.
But the bottom line is, as a generation, they were/are AWFUL. Quite possibly the most greedy generation of humans to ever exist. Because they had so much more than any other generation I can think of but are so unwilling to share, even on their way out. And their entire lifetime of voting habits proves how greedy they are.
Their generation has been in control for quite some time now and they are leaving us major environmental problems, an economic shitstorm, and completely off the rails politics.
They failed.
I love my mom, but she has a 4 bedroom house, and owns it outright. She lives by herself in this giant home, a mere 2 blocks away from my house that I'm renting with my wife and her 2 grandkids. We're couped up in a 2 bedroom 1 bath, 1000 sq ft rental. She was always the one pushing me out of her house instead of offering for me to stay there and save for a down payment. I've been renting for over a decade now. The area I live in has just gotten more and more expensive over time. It was always HCOL, but it went from like median 1 million dollar homes to 1.8. I had a small window in COVID where I even had a shot at affording a home due to depressed interest rates and a very brief small drop in local prices. During that time we got outbid when we did try. Since then, prices are up, and rates are up as well. Frankly I don't give a fuck about buying a home anymore. I will inevitably inherit her home and money, and that's likely 1-2 decades away, so at this point, why bother struggling? I will say that when I do inherit her home, I intend to share it with my children for as long as they want to because I'm not a selfish asshole. I love my mom, and she's even semi left leaning for a boomer, so politically she's tolerable, but listening to anything her or her friends bitch about is so goddamn annoying. Nearly all her friends have almost no living expenses, but hearing them go on about how it was just as hard when she was my age is just insulting. I can back up all my claims with hard data, and they don't give a fuck because they don't understand that shit has changed. They all think we're lazy. They don't understand childcare, medical insurance, and housing have gone up astronomically while wages have been stagnant. They don't fucking get it and I hate discussing economics with any of them. I love my Mom to a point, but she's also incredibly selfish. I will not miss that about her, and I think the world will be better off without a generation of like minded people, and we may actually begin to solve some of our problems. Having said that, it's also entirely possible that our generation gets all this wealth and just become carbon copies of our greedy ass parents. I hope not.
Not to take away from your post, it just got me thinking about something.
This type of selfishness probably comes from the decades upon decades of both obvious and subtle messaging around scarcity of pretty much everything. Just the advertising phrase "ACT NOW! before it's gone." was and is used all the time. We have been conditioned to believe that everything is limited and at the same time we need to have everything. So when your entire life you've been inundated with messages of not-enough I can see why there is a fear of losing it all.
I think you’re right that this got cranked to 11 during their lives, but the leaded gasoline might have something to do with this too. Through that lens, much boomer behaviour can be described. Particularly considering that boomer stereotypes are transnational
Yep to all of it. I've completely accepted that I'll never own a home because I prefer to live in the Bay Area and I'm priced out. My mother has an enormous house in the midwest for her and her cats and one dog. She has a backyard where I play hide and seek with her grandkids (my niece and nephew). It's pretty unnecessary, but I doubt she ever thinks about it.
See, I don't really want to judge the boomers as a monolith, but in contrast to you, all the boomers I know individually do fit the stereotype.
They failed.
You're a failure
which yet again if true would ultimately be a failure of a boomer. the way at which the boomers are at fault are as numerous as the ways you could accuse this person of being a failure!
Ok, boomer. Little bit triggered? They only stated the truth.
Meanwhile everyone else outlives their money every couple weeks.
This is the top comment!
What an absurd thing to say in a world where individuals have the wealth of thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of millionaires. Good ol' Fortune spinning the generational conflict to prevent class war. Ma and Pa down at the old folks home pinching what pennies they have are not the ones creating a wealth hoarding problem. They are responding reasonably to a system that would watch them die in the streets while simultaneously not allowing them to choose the time of their own death.
You're right and I'm glad you're pointing this out. That said…
Boomers are still selfish assholes who won't get out of the way and release their positions in government office and owning multiple properties that they bought for a song while voting against housing initiatives that would "change the character" of their neighborhoods while young people face increasing costs of living. The rich, plus the selfish.
spinning the generational conflict to prevent class war
Sorry, I don't judge entire groups based on the behavior of a few. I know, it's weird, but I didn't do it when it was hip to judge people by skin tone and I'm not doing it now that it's all the rage to use the super-duper scientific method of what year someone was born.
You know what, you're right. There are classes of people who can't control their outcomes (skin color, sexual orientation, gender identity), and then there are those who can't control what decade they were born. That's exactly the same thing.
Boomers can't help stealing from their offspring because they were born at a time where that was wired-in. There's nothing they can do to improve their behavior. I'm so glad you corrected me for being a fucking bigot. All this time that I thought I was criticizing greed and power has actually been a misguided adventure into bigotry.
Do boomers who are white hold most of the wealth? Doesn't matter! They were born in a time when you couldn't control that. What the fuck. What a shit response. Defend people who lord over you or pretend to fight back as you lord over us. You're exposed. Shut up. Go away.
Sorry, how is your post different from someone claiming [insert racial group] is prone to greed and you're simply trying to criticize greed? It's basically a Mad Libs of that old fashioned bigotry.
Also, I'm confused by your first paragraph there. It's such a weird thing to acknowledge that birth year is a fixed/ascribed trait then immediately launch into a prejudicial rant based on said ascribed trait. Even weirder to pause mid rant to claim you aren't a bigot for inexorably linking an ascribed trait to a achieved (greed) state, which is basically the literal definition of bigotry. Or, is "That's exactly the same thing" sarcasm and you're implying people do choose when they're born? Very confusing.
Or, is … sarcasm
You're quick. Fuck everyone in my mother's generation who won't step aside and let younger people hold office, buy houses (she lives alone in a three bedroom house), or start careers (a former CEO came out of retirement and accepted a low-level position part-time where my partner works just so he'd have "something to do" ten hours per week). They are suppressing everyone under them.
sarcasm and you’re implying people do choose when they’re born?
What a weird thing to say.
You know, this new wave of age based bigotry does come with a silver lining. You see, an old school race based bigot can go their whole lives hating on [insert constructed racial group]. They can, on their death bed, look out the window and find someone to hate on. It's a life-long obsession. But you age based bigots are going to wake up one day in a world without booomers. Then what will you do with all your irrational hate?
Weird I thought it was the billionaires hoarding wealth. I guess we shouldnt be mad at the billionaires anymore but at older Americans who have homes.
Yeah they are the bad guys !
And how dare they stay alive. I mean. The audacity !
Divide and rule, a tried and true propaganda method.
And since we have such a great social security system and retirement system and benefits and health care for retired people, why shouldn’t they just blow all their money in the trickle-up economy and let the banks take their house. Go be a greeter at Walmart you fucking fossils. What a bunch of assholes.
I can be mad at both simultaneously.
Billionaires for being leeches and boomers, in general, for voting like assholes and helping those billionaires.
Another article to distract us from the class struggle. Billionaires and corporations are the ones hoarding wealth and need to be eradicated, preferably by taxation, but I'm open to alternatives.
I've spent my life watching boomers empower the ultra-wealthy through their voting habits.
I'm not in a forgiving mood.
How do you think tax rates got so low for the ultra-wealthy?
That's humans for you. They have been indoctrinated for years and social media has pushed them further into making decisions based on fear. Look at the voting habits of Gen Z, not much better, TikTok is a powerful tool.
X and Y have plenty idiots too. I get it, there is plenty to be upset about, but it doesn't really benefit us if we blame other generations for our misery.
It's not hoarding if it's needed.
Look at where all the wealth from economic growth has gone since 1980: almost all to the ultra-rich. That's hoarding, not someone's nest egg.
Who voted for that?
centi-billionaires are hoarding most of the us's wealth, not boomers in general. fortune.con has a clear vested interest in keeping people fighting each other instead of fighting together.
i think "no war but class war" is an oversimplification most of the time, but when it comes to wealth hoarding, let's focus on the centibillionaires who are hoarding literally hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars first.
“no war but class war” and the Boomers have chosen to side with capitalists for 40+ years now.
which boomers, though?
not our queer elders in the baby boomer and silent generation who went through the aids crisis & saw so many governments intentionally do nothing to help them.
not the baby boomers and silent generation who were in the black panther party, the white panther party, and who were building the rainbow coalition & who got targeted because of it.
not the baby boomers who've been sent to prison in the US for contrived reasons, to intentionally rob them of their voting rights.
the worst people have been intentionally robbing good people of votes, or having them killed off. it's just more visible in that generation because of the size of that generation, due to the post-ww2 baby boom they were named for.
Yes those Boomers too. Have you phone banked before? Your opinion on registered Democratic Boomers will become informed real fast.
This is a dumb article. It sounds like they are blaming boomers for having money, then the article basically explains why they have money, and for the most part it's justified.
I'm not going to lambast anyone that got a cheap house at a low interest rate, then worked for 50+ years to get to retirement to find out they need more money. It's not like all of these boomers are sitting on millions, they have hundreds of thousands in retirement, no mortgage, but have fears of medical bills or nursing homes.
Fuck, I hope someday I approach retirement with enough money to live out the rest of my life in relative comfort. I'm fortunate in that I'm in my mid thirties and have a house (mortgage for now, but at least I'm getting equity). That shouldn't be held against me like it is to boomers in this article.
What I won't defend is boomers that complain about not having enough money when they continually voted for all of this. Statistically, boomers lean right, but I try not to generalize entire demographics like this. There were a couple of quotes I. His article that highlighted some of the worst offenders out there, but I mostly read about people that know that one illness will wipe out their savings, so they keep working until they can't.
If I can amass the monies I need to retire early, I'm out ASAP. My company offers a 55/10 plan where if I retire at 55, I can keep my medical coverage until I'm 65 when Medicare kicks in. That's my current goal, but shit happens, and it can happen to any of us. I just wish that shit happened to the billionaires and not everyone else.
I'm early GenX, very close to boomerhood. I was not able to buy a home until I was 43. I wasn't wasteful either: bought used cars, cooked my own food, my rent was low for the (HCOL) area, but prices just kept climbing and perpetually stayed just out of reach. Finally got an inexpensive house in a less expensive part.of the Bay Area, and happened to do so when interest rates were low. I have a pile of retirement money waiting for me but I also know it's not going to last long enough for my likely lifespan (my family tends to die in their 90s.) We can blame boomers for some stuff, but the economy they had in their working years is very different from what we have to deal with now.
I’m not going to lambast anyone that got a cheap house at a low interest rate, then worked for 50+ years to get to retirement to find out they need more money.
What if you found out they also voted like dogshit for 50+ years, leading to the situation we, and they, find ourselves in?
It’s not like all of these boomers are sitting on millions
No, but most of them voted like dogshit anyway.
I hope someday I approach retirement with enough money to live out the rest of my life in relative comfort.
I hope you do too. But only if you voted to help others along the way.
We all know boomers that aren't wealthy, but still voted like assholes anyway. My father is one of them. They're in the same shit we are, but voted to hurt others, and themselves, anyway. Pretty goddamn stupid.
I addressed that as well. I don't have sympathy for people that shoot themselves in the foot, and actively detest them for their actions affecting everyone. My main point is not all boomers are Republicans, and those that aren't shouldn't be vilified for living and saving for retirement.
As maddening as this is, I can’t say I blame them. Being poor in America is designed to suck. Then again, they’re the generation that helped make it that way, so…
Well you know when they're the ones that design the system. And they're the ones that purposely made being poor a crime and anything but desirable. Of course they're going to fear the system that they created.
I mean, they did better than the generation before them
Elder millennial here. My boomer and silent generation parents died and left me nothing ( I had to take care of my mom for ten years)as a result of 2008. They were lifelong liberals as were their parents. The pedophile capitalist class will get that money. All generations of people have been voting for these fascist neoliberals for decades. After Regan both parties started gleefully destroying the middle class, It will all be funneled to the top one way or another. Larry fink has openly stated that the blackrock vultures plan to take savings and 401k money
Joke's on them, I don't have those
Yeah but if your parents do it will effect you
My boomer and silent generation parents died >and left me nothing ( I had to take care of my >mom for ten years)
Did you lose working hours to senior care? This is exactly why I say to my husband "screw inheritance, as long as we don't go broke taking care of them, we'll have done alright".
I was working full time and raising my son. The stress of it broke me inside and the situation traumatized everyone in our household. We all tried to help out but taking care of someone with early onset Alzheimer’s is soul destroying and there’s really no help at all for families. Every possibility of help is obstructed with an impossible beurocratic maze of obstructions. It was a nightmare and I did feel resentment but at the same time my mom worked very hard in her life so she was absolutely a victim in our broken system. It’s going to get much much worse under all these medicade cuts. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford to take any time off because I live in an area that everyone in the house has to work overtime to make ends meet. It was a nightmare and it’s a very long sad story about a corrupt system, corrupt broken social workers and a broken society. It’s going to get so much worse under this administration I can’t even fathom the tragedy we’re about to face
I am so sorry you went through that. I've seen a couple acquaintances go through a similar journey being the caretaker of a parent with Alzheimer's, and even with a support network it seems arduous and heartbreaking. Going through it alone with other dependents sounds harrowing.
Our society is broken and it’s getting much worse very fast
It’s the billionaires! Do not be distracted by articles like this.
I mean the billionaires are largely able to do what they do because Boomers spent decades voting against the interests of everyone that isn't a billionaire.
Blame can be placed on more than one thing at a time. And should be.
Billionaires wouldn't be where they are without the help of Boomer voting behaviors for the past 40+ years.
At some point we'll have to shift focus from boomers hoarding money (which they are, absolutely) to the fact thay many people reaching retirement age in 20-25 years will have no plan, no safety net, and no options because of systemic changes in industry and government. These systemic changes were only ever considered for a few years out.
I don't think there are any good solutions for the longer term issues.
What you’re calling “hoarding money” for many is also what you refer to as a “safety net.”
Like owning a house and having a 401k shouldn’t be considered hoarding. Especially since the social security system is fucked. People need to save for their retirement, or else they have to live their old age in poverty and still work until they die.
They make the distinction because those people getting the safety net are trying desperately to keep it exclusive.
lol no they are not.
Their voting habits say otherwise.
many people reaching retirement age in 20-25 years will have no plan, no safety net, and no options
Short of tectonic changes to our political/legislative landscape we are looking at a doomsday hellscape situation as millennials and beyond reach retirement age. Lots and lots of suffering.
I'm no boomer, but I know how they feel. Who can tell when the next crash will hit, and mega inflation will strike. There is just no real way to know you have enough saved. Unless you are like elon or such. And gieven all that. People are holding on to their money because they may have to help keep their kids afloat. It isn't the boomers making the problem, it's the mega rich scraping every dime they can put of the hands of everyone they can so that they can be secure in their wealth. The bokmers are just a biproduct of that brainwashing.
They were bought. They grew up in a world of plenty. They were sold the idea that it will always be this way as long as they vote conservative. Fox News (and less blatant media) came and pacified them by giving them excuses for being greedy, which enabled the worst wealthy actors to hoard their shit and codify the greed into the both culture and law. They were used to create a system that is fucked and now are confused when the system they built sucks and the world of plenty is being shown to just be a short term golden age.
I wish I could confidently say I'd do better, but probably not. We are products of the world we live in and are shaped by what we see and hear.
I dunno, my limited sample size says the boomers were raised by parents who lived through WWII, so they were raised frugal. Save as much as you can types. Then yes, things were eventually good... the 70's had high inflation I think. So now they hold on to whaterevr they have. But yeah, can't say I would have done better.
100%, I don't think there's a single thing that I would do differently than them on an individual level. Housing was cheap (compared to today). School was cheap (compared to today). Healthcare costs were manageable (again, relative). Being frugal and attempting to have enough retirement to make it through old age is not a vice, that is just sound money management.
The actual sin is making it harder for everyone else coming behind them.
- Make housing more expensive by restricting zoning (I already purchased my house, so I need to protect my investment from things that would degrade the value).
- Make school more expensive by not properly scaling public higher education (I am already out of school, so why should we invest more in public schools).
- Make unions weak (no collective action means I personally might earn more, though workers overall will earn less).
- Make a single payer healthcare system a political impossibility (the system is working for me (because I have $$), I might have to wait in line with all the poors if they can also access the same level of healthcare).
Basically they enshittified government and culture before it was cool, creating stratification layers to benefit themselves when the available alternatives would have been better for society and subsequent generations.
Yeah, they were taught froma young age to look out for themselves financially. And in theory that the gov would take care of those who couldn't. Well the last part was a lie, and the first part was really so that when the rich did it, people would accept it. Kind of like how in books, the cannibles always make new people eat human meat so they are now one of them. Lol.
We are products of the world we live in and are shaped by what we see and hear.
Yeah, but it's every individual's responsibility to employ critical thought.
If two asshole billionaires named Elon Musk and Donald Trump do a livestream discussion a month out from an election in which they talk about hating worker rights because they get in the way, then maybe, as a worker, I shouldn't vote to give them power.
But they did do that and working class Americans went out in droves and voted to give them power anyway.
I don't absolve boomers because they were tricked. If you get tricked for decades to vote against your best interests and the best interests of your children....then you're a dumb and/or greedy asshole.
It isn’t the boomers making the problem
They voted like shit for decades. That voting created the environment we are now dealing with.
It's the ultra-wealthy AND boomer's fault.
They were brainwashed starting at a very young age. I doubt most of us here could have seen through it back then.
Damn, if there was only something to catch people who this happens to. Some interwoven metaphorical structure that's provided socially so that this fear doesn't need to be true. For their well being, for an emergency. Oh well, I don't suppose such exists.
Honestly a valid concern but it’s a cultural problem.
We don’t live gracefully and we don’t die gracefully. Why are they living so long? For what?
Well, in my observation/opinion it is because all of their prime years were stolen(tricked/finagled) from them.
“Hey let me get most of that” is a wild proposition. Not just most but the significant majority. Let me get 5/7 of that? That’s the ask under our current system. 5 out of 7 days laboring for someone else. You get two for haircuts, laundry, connecting with your kids etc. etc. etc. so basically all of your time from 20 to 65 or whatever “retirement” age is now.
Im gonna tell you right now I am 46 and my best years are behind me. By the time I am 65…. Lmao.
Don’t get me wrong, I lift, have abs, beautiful SO, kids…. Nevertheless years were blown on someone else shit. I’m not doing that. Anyway I digress. My point is that I am very fortunate and have eschewed the grind mentality. I’d rather live it up and die at 68 living humble than go to 85 while my body falls into ruin.
It’s really changed my outlook on healthcare too. Why are we keeping an 80 year old alive with hospital stays every 4 months? That’s insane. Chained to an oxygen tank. Terrified of death living in regret and disappointment. Nothing you know even applies anymore. Can’t even work the tv. It’s crazy. Im good off all that.
Just live and go when it’s our time. That’s my plan.
5 out of 7 days laboring for someone else.
I was raised by a single mother with a full time job. I feel like I only knew her on weekends. And even then she was sleeping or doing chores/errands. We're not super close now. And I think that's largely because we just didn't get the time during those developmental years.
And as you can imagine, if people aren't getting quality time with their parents growing up, those people may end up without the guidance they need to be decent people with a strong moral compass or have the skills to handle adulthood.
Our society is ill.
"Why don't old(er than me) people simply die and stop being leeches?" is a wild take.
Do you apply that logic to other people who take more from society than they (currently) contribute?
"Why are they living so long" lol As if boomers are choosing to live long lives strictly to spite younger generations. How long you live is not really a choice. One could suicide, but if you're in good health and living a reasonably happy life, why would you, or anyone?. Is the poster suggesting we go Soylent Green and all die at age 30 or w/e?
Actually, you're thinking of Logan's Run. Soylent Green turned any dead person into food, but you could live to old age. Logan's Run would kill you off the year you turn 30. 🤓
Oof, thanks!
Mmmmm yes generational conflict will stoke the working class against each other yessss the plan is working
They don't need to. Boomers generally aren't working class anymore and they've been been fighting for the capitalist class for 40+ years now.
Good, direct your ire at an arbitrary age group instead of at the billionaire class, and alienate potential allies. Perfect
Lol. Show me a Boomer who's a potential ally. These people have obstructed progress at every opportunity. Do you phone bank? I suggest you try it. Your opinion on registered Democratic Boomers will become informed real fast.
Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side!
I'm just telling you how it is bud. Boomers aren't our allies. One look at nearly every Senator and President elected in the past 40 years should tell you that.
Came into the comments expecting people would pile on boomers, as per usual. Was pleasantly surprised to find that most people are getting the message that it's a class war.
The idea that boomers are "hoarding America's wealth and power" is ludicrous.
I'm GenX, and I'm trying to pay off my house, so my son will have the option of being a homeowner when I die. I think it might be the only chance he'll have.
Hold on a minute billionaires are to blame but boomers aren't helping by bootlicking them. And yes hoarding what they have too. Some refuse to retire, and some like my dad got millions and doesn't want to let anyone of his children get red cent.
It's both.
Billionaries AND boomers are to blame. Just because many boomers aren't reaping the benefits of their dogshit voting habits doesn't mean they didn't have a hand in the current situation because of their voting habits.
Democracy in a capitalist economy is an illusion. Boomers didn't vote for this, it was foisted on them. Neither party fulfills the promises they make on the campaign trail, unless the promise is to an oligarch.
Boomers didn’t vote for this
As someone who phone banks regularly: They absolutely did. I spoke to hundreds of registered Democratic Boomers. They hated Sanders.
Sure they voted, but they didn't vote for this. Remember, boomers are the most propagandized generation in the most propagandized country on Earth. Ignorance shouldn't be an excuse, but most boomers genuinely do not know when they vote against their own interests. They are pawns, while the Kings and Queens laugh to see them blamed. And that pisses me off a lot more than ignorance.
Sure they voted, but they didn’t vote for this.
Yes. They. Did.
At the same time those boomers, through their own ignorance mind you, were sold a bridge that didn't exist.
Why are houses more unaffordable for your son than they were for you? It's totally not hording, just boomers being unwilling to build a better world for their children and grandchildren.
Just make sure to put it in a irrevocable trust now so the nursing homes don't take it there's a 5 year look back period.
You're a semi boomer though with the last real chance of boomer life style. Not sure I trust you 😉
My wife's grandmother was expecting to die at age 90. So she burned through most of her retirement money. Now she only has 10% of it and she's 92 years old. She downgraded her living space a few times already.
I'm a bit terrified about what the future brings for her when she's still alive and she runs out of money fully.
I’m sure it will trickle down eventually.
Pee and blood both flow downhill. Not sure about assets.
Cum is thicker than both
It is trickling down. Everyone is just looking at the pyramid upside down.
” You write like every boomer is sitting on a McMansion and a seven‑figure IRA,” one bereaved Boomer wrote to me. “A lot of us are one bad diagnosis away from losing everything.”
Spoken like a generation of morons that voted time and time and time again, most recently in this past election, for economic policies that catered to that eight-figure IRAs because you thought you'd be in that bracket while spending like a drunken sailor for boats and jet skis in a pathetic attempt to seem like you had eight-figure IRAs, all while killing off Unions that tried to protect your pensions and retirement benefits. And let's not forget that the boomer generation also thought that racism was something that should be brought back.
Nah, this economic hellscape was brought mostly by these old dumbasses, may they reap what they sowed and hopefully quickly so the younger generations can fix what they broke.
I think the silent generation is getting an undeserved pass on this. They are the ones born just before and during WWII, you know the generation of the current President and the one before him. Those MF are still kicking - most of America's top leadership comes form that generation.
They're getting a pass because population-wise they had about as much voting power as GenX.
Maybe, but they control more power in the US than GenX has ever had
That’s the world they created. They always took the shortest path to profits, and that path was the one that exploited people the most by giving corporations all the power in the name of making the line go up.
As an X’er not too far behind them:
On paper I look like one of those hoarders: nice income and a lot of house equity. I also have above average 401k balance
However
- excessive home inflation
- interest rates lock-in
- medical emergency costs ridiculous
- kid college costs ridiculous
- car costs ridiculous
- divorce lost half of everything
- retirement age 65–>67
- ageism means i can’t expect to work as long as I need to
- boomer parents not going to leave anything
We’re hit by all the same excessive inflation as everyone else but we can’t downsize because mortgage rates are too high. All the missing safety nets affect us as much as everyone, except we’re out of time to recover from any catastrophe.
Given a family medical emergency, I missed 15 years of 401k contributions, and never upgraded from A “starter home”, despite what the valuation looks like, and I have a lot of major maintenance coming up
I have to say that despite a lot of things that look really good on paper, I was much better off financially in my 30’s
Now, now. There's a handful of millennials waiting to hoard it after they die. This is how the trickle-down works, people, let it trickle. Gosh, so impatient...
The headline alone is bullshit. They can annuitize their savings if they want to, but they don't. Great, the whole article is pointless. Classic Fortune writing.
But I do think guaranteed pensions need to come back, and that right soon.
Billionaires are collecting everything. Stop stoking the distaste for boomers into the scapegoat they need to take the focus off the capital class. Grandpa with a couple million in assets, mostly in his home, isn't "hording", he's securing himself into his end of life. Elon Musk has no such excuse, he just wants to gratify his unrestrained desire to go to Mars even if it means leaving earth on life support to do it.
Even with all the non-ultra rich (500 mil and up) boomers combined, the ultra rich have way more money and are not paying thier fair share. Kill the ultra rich, save the poor.
More than that, the "wealth" Boomers possess is largely tied up in their homes (inflated assets benefiting from artificially low property taxes) and their 401ks (just riding the wave of inflated equities post-COVID). It's not like they're stealing your salaries or your health care benefits or larding you up with college debt, as all of these are functions of corporate finance profiteering not personal retirement accounts.
What we're really seeing is an inflationary wave created by corporate excess consumption that Boomers are able to ride a little easier than their Millennial and GenA peers.
Kill the ultra rich, save the poor.
We have such enormous surpluses, but we insist on squandering them to... build another data center nobody wants? Finance another round of bombing runs on Tehran and Caracas? Shove a few thousand more migrants into concentration camps?
That said, we've got a lot of Boomers with brainworms who are convinced this is good public policy. We've also got a bunch of Joe Rogan Millennials and Alphas who feel the same way. I don't know how to change that. Certainly not while billionaires own and operate the national media.
artificially low property taxes
I disagree with this one...
California laws freeze property taxes for residents over the age of 55. The end result is that new homebuyers can pay multiples of what their senior neighbors cough up, because the housing value has been locked in to the pre-'00s price booms. They're not the only state with these very elderly-friendly property tax rules.
Ok, I didn't have that law, but my main problem with that law is that it is limited to people over 55.
Problem is property tax valuation ends up mixing up people just using their house as a place to live, and folks using it as a financial instrument. So people can get hosed on the property tax despite having no actionable wealth derived from their residence.
Problem is property tax valuation ends up mixing up people just using their house as a place to live, and folks using it as a financial instrument.
Most tax districts have a "homestead exemption" which is limited to one home per homeowner. You can game this (spouses and children having property declared in their names, for instance). But - broadly speaking - the law does accommodate this exception.
The bigger problem is that our financial sector is so bloated with unspent cash and so hungry for ROI that our tax system isn't a serious deterrent to landlordism and financialization of real estate.
No disagreement here.
Then die already.
If they're not hoarding it, they're pissing it all away on their healthcare anyway as they go on to eventually start fucking dying as old people tend to do.
Jesus what a horrible generation. The greatest generation gave birth to the absolute worst generation.
I haven't read more than the title ye5. So this is a response to that alone. But don'tmost people want to avoid running out of money before they die (and are the most vulnerable)...?
Yep
Hence how the Americans have a 80 year old president and Mitch Mconnel still has a job.
How boomers look at the younger generation knowing they will never amount to or achieve anything that they did in their lifetime. Because they took all the wealth, housing, and jobs.
so that's why they buy Corvettes?
Can't they just calculate annual costs times yearly inflation against life expectancy... And add an emergency fund and some luxury options then boom. They'd know where they're at rather than worrying.
Can't they just calculate annual costs times yearly inflation against life expectancy...
The article explains that both these things have changed quite a bit since they started planning for their retirement.
Guess they need to stop eating avocado toast and Starbucks. Maybe pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Don't worry, we're going to croak before retirement.
Can’t take it with you… unless you’re really old school Egyptian
Don't give them any ideas, I really wouldn't be surprised at a boomer choosing to entomb themselves with their wealth rather than passing it on.
Aging absolutely sucks. The complete lack of emphasis on anti-aging research is baffling to me. Give me back my 25 year old body.
people hoarding money you say? Isn't that one of the signs of a recession?
More for us when they die
I wish most of them would die already so I could piss on their graves.