This is depressing:
The incomes of the young and middle-aged — especially men — have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s, a USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found.
People 54 or younger are losing ground financially at an unprecedented rate in this recession, widening a gap between young and old that had been expanding for years.
While the young have lost ground, older people have grown more prosperous over the years and the decades. Older women have done best of all.
The dividing line between those getting richer or poorer: the year 1955. If you were born before that, you’re part of a generation enjoying a four-decade run of historic income growth. Every generation after that is now sinking economically.
It is good to be elderly in the United States.
Throwin Stones
I had a history prof tell us that we’d be the first gen in America to not be better off than our parents. Damn, I think he may have been on to something.
4tehlulz
KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE
El Cid
Sociologist and historian of power in the United States G. William Domhoff:
***************************************
Numerous studies show that the wealth distribution has been extremely concentrated throughout American history, with the top 1% already owning 40-50% in large port cities like Boston, New York, and Charleston in the 19th century (Keister, 2005).
It was very stable over the course of the 20th century, although there were small declines in the aftermath of the New Deal and World II, when most people were working and could save a little money. There were progressive income tax rates, too, which took some money from the rich to help with government services.
Then there was a further decline, or flattening, in the 1970s, but this time in good part due to a fall in stock prices, meaning that the rich lost some of the value in their stocks.
By the late 1980s, however, the wealth distribution was almost as concentrated as it had been in 1929, when the top 1% had 44.2% of all wealth.
It has continued to edge up since that time, with a slight decline from 1998 to 2004, before the economy crashed in the late 2000s and little people got pushed down again.
gyma
I was born a year or two before that cutoff and I’m not feeling at all better off. I’ve often lamented that we felt better off in the 80s when we were making $20K a year (or so). I now have an advanced degree and can’t find a decent job. And being on the downside of my 50s and female means ain’t no one hiring me anytime soon.
So, please don’t think we are all that better off.
Michael D.
That’s why I hated the Bush giveaway called Medicare Part D. It was one of the biggest, unfunded giveaways to the wealthiest demographic in the nation on the insane notion that our seniors need to be protected somehow.
They always “get theirs” but you can go to hell if you “want yours.”
Fuck grandma and grandpa! Death Panels, I say!
mikr
there’s a reason we’re called Generation X … we’ve got X for our assets total.
Robin G.
Maybe it’s because the government’s helping them out with the medical care of the older half of that group. Just a thought.
Michael D.
@gyma: What is your degree in?
Punchy
Clearly this is Obama’s fault, cuz he wants black kids to beat up whiteys.
Comrade Jake
It would be interesting to me to see this broken out by education and income level.
I mean, let’s say you’re in your mid to late thirties, have lots of degrees, and are making $150k a year. You going to be better off or worse off compared to someone with the same background and making the same (inflation-adjusted) income say twenty-five years ago?
In other words I assume there’s some cutoff where people in the current generation are doing a heckofa lot better. So where is it? People making millions?
Morbo
@Michael D.: Damn, beaten to the death panel joke.
gypsy howell
The Greatest Generation turned out to be The Greatest Income Generation.
I’m waiting for My Brokaw to write a book about the government largesse, union benefits and corporate defined-benefit pensions that enabled my parents’ generation to succeed and prosper.
Waiting… waiting….
donovong
“It is good to be elderly in the United States.”
Okay, dickhead. I was born in 1954. Please aplogize to me immediately, on the floor of the house, for calling me fucking “elderly.” You young whippersnapper!
And, no, I am no better off now than I was in 1980. Perhaps less so.
gypsy howell
That would be MR Brokaw. He’s certainly not MY Brokaw.
JenJen
I’m in the afflicted, as in, born waaaaay after 1955, group.
But honestly… “elderly”? People over 54 are now elderly? Getting older is going to happen a lot faster than I thought, it appears.
James
Well, when you are talking about 1955 and before, you are talking about just about the last cohort who widely fought for and supported unions, too. That probably accounts for just about the entire wage gap right there, discounting longevity of service. Workers who are members of unions have better wages and better job security and better benefits. That’s just a fact. The “yuppies” turned to the “free market” gospel and expected that if they worked hard their employers would continue to pay them well and keep them around. Not so. Turns out their employers considered them as disposable as yesterday’s newspaper. We warned them, of course.
Hogwash. That has virtually ALWAYS been the case.
Well this is true. No dispute there.
Again. To the extent this is true, unionized workers negotiated decent pensions to go along with SS. (Remember, SS has been around a long, long time) Them 401ks that the Reaganites pushed to take the place of defined benefit plans haven’t been nearly as successful as advertised.
GReynoldsCT00
@4tehlulz:
My first thought…FUIGM
ironranger
I’ve lost count of the number of people I know in their later 50’s who had planned to retire by 58 or at the latest 60 until a large % of their nest eggs got eated & now plan to stay at their jobs, if they still have jobs, until 65. Health insurance coverage on the job is a huge factor.
ChrisS
Salaries have definitely stagnated for professional (i.e., bachelor and above) entry level and junior management positions.
I think that the rate of inflation has been woefully miscalculated because it fails to take into consideration housing, healthcare, and energy prices (three areas that have spike over the last 20 years). Additionally, there’s the cost of education. The generation before received grants had much lower tuition costs (plus tuition has been rising much faster than the rate of inflation) and since the late 70s, more and more college aid has come in the form of student loans which essentially cripple new graduates.
More college graduates + fewer jobs = lower salaries. Lower relative income coupled with rising costs in healthcare, housing, and energy + student loan payments = a poorer educated workforce.
But we have cell phones and flat screen TVs. So I guess it doesn’t matter.
Napoleon
I was born 1961, have a graduate degree compared to my dad having just an undergraduate, I am in a profession that the highest paid pull down very good salaries (though me not so much), work enormous hours under a lot of stess (my dad had a 9-5 job with a good amount of vacation and a government pension). For years it has been pretty obvious to me that at best I enjoy the same standard of living my parents did, although my future is much more uncertain then theirs ever was.
jrg
“Golden age of retirement. Social Security and private pensions have elevated the incomes of retired people to record levels and reduced poverty among the elderly.”
Isn’t it funny that the teabaggers whine about “redistribution”, but are not whining about this glaring example of it? You’d think that a group of people driven by anti-government ideology would be somewhat consistent. I’m starting to think ideology is not behind it at all… it’s just a group of pissed off rednecks that listen to too much AM radio.
Nim, ham hock of liberty
Good thing we’ve an economy that is almost completely dependent upon consumer spending!
Alan
This is what you get when our leaders are lead to believe– by Wall Street elites –they can end recessions by creating bubble after bubble, driving salaries (dotcom bubble) or housing costs so out of whack. But hey, you can buy a can opener at Walmart a heck of a lot cheaper today.
Bill E Pilgrim
Any questions anyone had about whether tea baggers actually know what they’re “protesting” can be answered by watching this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljFKK7XvsCs&feature=player_embedded
PS: Dear David Brooks: I think these people are uninformed gullible dupes who are cynically and knowingly brainwashed by Glenn Beck because everything they say reveals this to be the case. I don’t know or care whether they live in town or in the country. And if they were black I’d say the same thing.
Max
OT – Not sure who is watching it, but Dylan Rattigan is doing a nice job of taking down that GOP tool Brad Blakeman.
I can’t get a reading on whether I like Dylan or not.
satby
Born in 1955 boomer female here, and yes, the last few years I have done better. But my 2 adults sons aren’t employed (one just got out of technical school) and a factor in that is that all the entry level white collar jobs in fields like IT and financial services have dried up or been off-shored. College graduates are competing with 16 year olds for Burger King and Walmart jobs.
Comrade Darkness
@gyma: I find your comment interesting. 20k in 1984 would be 41k now (according to some random inflation calculator I found.) At the margins of “you have more than enough to survive, but not enough to be ostentatious” weird evolutionary perceptions come into play when people consider whether they feel “rich”. How much the people around you make is number one. How many thing you want to buy that you cannot afford and how often you see them.
Personally, like you, I felt richest making about 17k on a stipend while doing my grad work. My bank account just grew and grew, because I never had any time to sleep, let alone get to a store that sold anything other than food. And it was a co-op in the early days of those things where everything was really homely, not glitzy whole foods/paycheck.
I think the problem is now (at least relative to the 80s), partly, is that retail is on steroids. Everyone is constantly faced with cool things they can’t afford, so they feel poor.
Crashman06
My masters degree got me an extra 1K a year at my job. Awesome. At this rate, it’ll take me 40 years to recover the investment. Oh yeah, and I’m still making well under 40.
lloyd
Damn you,
Scott BeauchampRev. WrightACORNVan JonesACORN! Why did you destroy America?HRA
“It is good to be elderly in the United States.”
Surely, you joke.
Actually, I don’t know where to start in telling you the downside of it all. There is so much you being below the age of elderly will realize when your time is there. Then if you have family currently in the stage of dealing with this economy and looking for relief, you are basically supporting more than yourself for longer periods. I must qualify it with saying the need began in 2007-2008.
Personally, the need to still work is due to the health benefits. Otherwise I would gladly chuck the job that has me working to cover the duties of 4 previous employees.
Noonan
Fuzzy math! Fuzzy math!
Meanderthal
Wasn’t the census handled by…wait for it…AAAAACORN? (said in the same tone as “SAAAATAN?”) The results are clearly a commieliberal plot to stir up resentment against our betters.
Not that I’ve ever needed much stirring, frankly.
Xenos
Speaking anecdotally from a Gen-Xer upper-middle-class POV, there are a lot of middle age professionals out there who have a much lower standard of living than that of their parents’ generation. The exception is for those who went to Wall Street and those doctors who made it into highly-paid specialties. Everybody else is less secure – more debt, fewer towns with good schools they can afford to live in, glass ceilings in the law, consulting, and accounting firms.
Those born in the early to mid 50s at these big employers made partner in their 30s and are now working an extra decade to make up for investment losses, and those born after 1960 just can’t make partner even when they earn more money for the firm than a lot of the established partners.
I am not looking for sympathy here, but it is notable that a critical system for class formation and reproduction has come to a crashing halt. When you add to this the troubles higher education is having, you will see a large fraction of the upper middle class forced down into the middle class just like much of the middle class is getting demoted to lower middle class.
Jamey
Hey, for years, some have complained that women earn less than men. Guess businesses have wised up and decided simply to pay EVERYONE less. I work in a field that’s dominated by women–book publishing. Salaries are lower, in part, because everyone gets paid like “women.”
Fuck!
gopher2b
And its only going to get worse given how selfish, self-centered and powerful the baby boomers are.
slippy
My parents were born in 1948 and 1949 and I have consistently had a huge problem getting them to understand that they don’t live in the same world I do. They think that everybody just has the exact same chances they did and people who don’t succeed are just fuckups.
They also think that because I currently make more money than they do means I’m rich. Nothing is mentioned about the fact that they have paid off two houses because of how much their income has grown from when they started in the housing market, nor do they ever bother to mention that for them jobs were easy to come by and quite stable during their early adulthood, while for me I had to weather a George Bush recession starting out, pay for a college degree just to get a decent job, and take on a huge load of debt just to buy such frivolous things as groceries and rent while getting my degree.
No comprehension whatsoever.
Comrade Darkness
little blurb from the economist about how millionaires don’t feel rich right now. Yeah, yeah, more articles about how the wealthy are suffering, rather than the other 98%. But their perceptions are useful because you *know* all the other variables have been eliminated.
This is the, ehem, money quote: Not surprisingly, wealthier millionaires felt, well, more wealthy. Those with at least $1.8 million in investible assets were more inclined to call themselves wealthy.
*Asked what made them feel wealthy, most said to “live within means with little or no debt and with spending under control.”*
While real wealth has become concentrated at the top since the Reagan era, the follow-on effects of that have been seriously exaggerated by a shift in attitudes about money and debt. That pre ’55 generation has more of the attitudes learned during the great depression/wwii. Part of their financial success, I’m willing to bet, has to do with an total unwillingness to waste money servicing debt.
bedtimeforbonzo
Born in 1962 and part of the full-time work force since 1984, I felt the most prosperous during the Clinton Administration.
I remember a year-long salary freeze at the newspaper that employed me during Bush I (when, in retrospect, things weren’t as bad as they are now) and I felt a significant standard-of-living drop during Bush II, when the rich really got richer.
President Obama was dealt a bad hand and it’s too early to tell how he is playing it. Health care has been his big issue, of course, but the unemployment rate could ultimately decide his fate.
Betsy
@James:
I think this oversimplifies considerably. The problem is that the jobs that were heavily unionized went away, for the most part, and were replaced by low-wage service economy jobs or white-collar (i.e. non-union-oriented) information economy jobs. Sectors that had strong union support still do – skilled trades, heavy manufacturing. But there’s less and less of that. Service workers are started to be organized but there are unique challenges there. It took decades to get the trades to have strong unions and it will for service jobs too.
Leelee for Obama
@gopher2b: Born in 1951-never, ever made more than 30,000 dollars, that came with 75 hour weeks as a salaried manager of a hotel restaurant. It was back in 1996-ah, who was President then, I forget.
If I don’t win the lottery, I’ll be working until I die, and that’s fine, as long as I can get a job. Right now, and for the last six years, I have been my elderly Mom’s care-giver, and made Nada.
There are many of us in my age group that are not in good shape-just for perspective.
Shinobi
They have to retire eventually.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to jobs, especially high level jobs as the baby boomers start retiring. The founder of my company is starting to make retirement type noises righ tnow, and I wonder who will end up replacing him?
ironranger
@gopher2b:
I agree if you are talking about republican/conservative baby boomers. Liberal baby boomers are a different breed.
Just Some Fuckhead
This is great news for John McCain and Hillary Clinton!
kay
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Just my opinion, but I think that if they have to keep explaining what it is they’re protesting, it’s probably not a successful movement, as far as rallying around some coherent, consistent message.
It gets pointed out as “hypocrisy”, Medicare beneficiaries protesting against “big government”, as an example, and it is that, but it’s also incoherent. It doesn’t make any sense.
I understand they’re all reading some “source book” promoted by Glenn Beck, some quasi-religious theory that purports to explain how our society is “supposed” to work.
I don’t know what’s in that book, but they’re having trouble squaring what they’re reading with how they actually survive.
winguts to iraq
as if old people know anything about what it means to be young in this country today.
Most of my 20-something friends have at least $30-$40K in college debt (if they went to public schools). The best jobs they can find pay around $20K a year. They have no health insurance, and haven’t been to the dentist in 10 years.
But shit, they be paying for grandma’s health care and social security for 15 fucking years.
I support death panels now more than ever.
Betsy
@Leelee for Obama:
Yeah. That’s the trouble with generation-wide generalizations. I think these kinds of numbers are useful for making people understand broad structural shifts, but much less so when it comes to talking about individuals’ lives. IOW, you may be “part of a generation” that’s doing dandy, but that doesn’t mean YOU are.
Shinobi
@slippy: I totally understand. I keep getting unasked for career advice from people who have never actually looked for a job.
Napoleon
@Betsy:
There is no reason the service sector should not/could not be heavily unionized and there is no reason that if you work in the industrial sector you would naturally feel more of an affinity toward unionization. The difference is that when the industrial sector was growing the people being hired looked favorably on unions and to some extent and at some times you had a government favorably disposed to it, and anyone in that sector today has inherited the result of that time long past, whereas when the service sector was growing you had a situation where the people being hired may not have been as favorable to unionization and you definitely had governments that were inclined to fight it, and anyone in that sector today has inherited that result.
Actually on a completely level playing field services are more susceptible to unionization because it is pretty tough to offshore your doctor and the maid who works at a hotel, but it is pretty easy to ship in a car made in China.
Comrade Dread
But God forbid we start talking about raising the limit on SS Payroll taxes, means-testing Medicare, or pushing the ages one can file at back a couple of years, because that’s the S-word, you know.
bedtimeforbonzo
I think we haven’t felt the full effect of the foreclosure crisis, the ugliest aspect of the Bush economic meltdown.
I don’t ever remember news of foreclosure being a headline-making event until the past year or so.
Meanwhile, my block has two end properties for sale, going for $195,000 and seeing no action. It used to be to find a nice home in a good neighborhood in northern Delaware for under $200,000 was such a find that they’d be gobbled up.
Betsy
@Napoleon:
You misread my point. I never suggested that industrial jobs were “naturally” more suited to unionization. In fact, if you know anything about labor history, you know that it took more than 50 years for most industrial sectors to become strongly unionized, during which strikes were violently broken, often with government assistance, racial divisions were played upon, and all manner of horrible things were done. Wide union support didn’t become entrenched until the 1930s. The reason it seemed easy for everyone to be pro-union in the middle part of the century is that for the most part, the hard work of unionization had already been done.
All I’m saying is that it is hard work to unionize any sector. Now, it’s true, there isn’t the kind of state-sanctioned violence directed at organizers. But people who try to start unions within their companies are still fired if caught, and companies work extremely hard to undermine organizing efforts. The fact that many service employees are undocumented makes it that much harder. So just saying that it’s because younger workers are too stupid to realize that unions are good for them is ridiculous.
Napoleon
@Comrade Dread:
Means-testing Medicare is a horrible idea. It 1) runs up administrative cost, 2) creates larger disincentives for certain groups to work and most importantly 3) it helps make the program one that many people can view as helping a discrete group of people instead of society as a whole. It is reason number 3 why, IMO, Republicans always push means testing.
someguy
Men have it coming. We’ve been earning 21 cents on the dollar more than women since at least the 70’s, and god knows how bad the disparity was before then. The reason more men are losing their jobs and starting to make less proportionally to women is because the market is finally starting to work and women are catching up.
The rich/middle class disparity is a different issue.
Walker
Dissenting voice here. I make less than my father (a doctor) did in the 80s, but I feel better off. That is almost entirely due to the fact that both my wife and I are as debt averse as they come. I pay cash for everything, including cars (though I am not sure I could have pulled college off this way without all the scholarships I got). My father managed his money very poorly and this was a strain on the family. I vowed to never live this way and am happier for it.
ironranger
@winguts to iraq:
Old people do know if they are middle income parents who would, if they could, help their kids through college more so they wouldn’t have such debt. Parents (& grandparents) do know & worry when it’s their child or grandchild that has to pay $40K in debt with a 20K job.
This over simplification/generalization stuff is starting to annoy me.
Betsy
@ironranger:
Me too. I’m not a big fan of generational warfare, regardless of the direction it goes in.
Napoleon
@Betsy:
After I read you a second time you are right, I miss read you. Personally I think the biggest variable is having a government supportive of it. It took a long time for industry to unionize because we had anti-union governments from the beginning of time to FDR (I think Meyerson had a recent column where he touched on it by noting that government jobs continue to unionize and it is likely because they do not take advantage of the week law to union bust). Because of this I have 2 big litmus test for Obama. He has to get real healthcare reform that breaks the stanglehold that industry has that runs cost way up and which provides affordable healthcare to the middle class and 2) makes it much easier to unionize.
Woody
In the current depression, older workers (with higher wages) are being released to make possible the hiring (when there are jobs) of younger workers whose wages are lower…
PurpleGirl
Betsy’s right (#46). I was born in 1951 and after 30-odd years in the work force, I don’t expect to ever retire. I’ve worked for small companies mostly at lower paid jobs (especially when I worked in publishing), so there isn’t much in the way of savings or pension funds. I’m unemployed right now. I expect that when I do find another job my salary will be lower than the recent one I made.
Betsy
@Napoleon:
I agree entirely. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify what I meant. :)
Comrade Darkness
@Betsy: It’s bigger even than that. We as a society have chosen to spend our wealth on things that don’t pay back, like big houses far from where we work. That means we spend our spare money servicing debt, buying gas, and wasting our productive personal time commuting. As a society, we have voted with our dollars to spend our cumulative wealth on items that not only pays zero dividends they decrease our efficiency. The last “wealthy” generation did not do this. They built modest houses in the city. They taxed wealth and spent it on infrastructure that benefited everyone marginal tax rates 1913-2009.
We are in a downward spiral now because where we spent our wealth had so little forethought (on housing developments that are impossible to service with public transport, and other things like massive pro sports complexs that crush muni budgets) recovering something out of what we blew our wad on is not going to be easy.
(And if you happen to think our housing mentality isn’t that big of a problem, try this on. At the peak of the bubble, total mortgage debt was 8 trillion dollars more than the total money supply of the united states (M2).)
Karmakin
@Shinobi:
That actually is the exit ramp I do believe. When the largest segment of the workforce retires, people will have to be hired to replace them. This will create a stronger market for labor, increasing wages and benefits.
The unfortunate reality is that dropping wages and benefits have less to do with political or economic trends and more to do with increasing productivity levels (which have skyrocketed over the last 15 years or so)
Betsy
You know, what is actually one of the most interesting things about this data is that it belies the uniformity of “baby boomers.” It splits them right down the middle. So generalizations about them apply even less than they usually do, since fully half of them are on the losing side of the 1955 divide. (Assuming we take the usual years of the baby boom, 1946-1965)
ericblair
@Betsy: That pre ‘55 generation has more of the attitudes learned during the great depression/wwii. Part of their financial success, I’m willing to bet, has to do with an total unwillingness to waste money servicing debt.
Sure, their generation as a whole didn’t take on as much debt, but that was because they couldn’t. To buy a house you had to have a substantial (over 20%) downpayment, which means that it kept housing prices relatively low. During the middle of the housing boom, even if you wanted to put 20% down you were in a market where people with no money down were bidding up starter home cracker boxes to $600K. Not a lot of people can put together $120,000 for a downpayment.
Really since the Reagan administration, the US has pursued an I’m-Forever-Blowing-Bubbles economic strategy, which encouraged massive risk-taking with investments and real estate, causing the same kind of periodic panics that happened in the 1800s. All risk has been pushed down onto the middle and lower income households, with neither the resources, time, or knowledge to manage it. Your average Joe entered the 1980s like a mark going into a shiny casino with his life savings, and now is stumbling out the way marks usually do.
Svensker
@donovong:
What you said.
Betsy
@ericblair: I think you meant to say @Comrade Darkness: , since I didn’t write that. :)
Xenos
@Shinobi: “They have to retire eventually.”
A lot of good people have lost immensely waiting for them. Pathways to success that used to take 10 years are taking 18 years. And the best and brightest college graduates, for a generation, are saying “fuck that career path” and have gone to Wall Street. And now they are unemployed.
There is nothing unprecedented in this – a lot of people had to deal with misfortune in the Great Depression, and it is largely their kids who have succeeded now. But it is important to know where in the cycle of generations you are falling so that realistic career options can be pursued. When you know enough history to be humble you are subject to succumbing to bitterness and anger when things seem so unfair.
serge
Boy, I cannot agree with that assertion. I was born in ’54 and I’ve had a great job for almost thirty years. I’ve taken a huge pay cut for this year, and I fully expect to be ‘made redundant’ after the first of the year and a new executive system takes place in my firm. Ironically I’m one of only <150 people nationally who’ve been members of our professional assn for more than 25 years.
On top of this, my spouse is a physician who makes a good salary as a child and adolescent psychiatrist who works for our state mental health system. She sees the worst of the worst cases every day, serves her patients well, and hasn’t seen shit as far as increased income in years. The state wants her really to go away before she can max on her retirement. They’ve actually gotten vicious about it. All this and she’s one of the last MDs they have in our area; they’ve driven the rest off successfully.
We’re the ones who are supposed to be fat and happy. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still comfortable and can afford more than most. I get up each day celebrating that fact and mourning the fact that this is not the same for everyone. That we’re doing better than 15 or 10 or 5 years ago is an argument that I’d dispute.
Comrade Darkness
@ericblair: I totally agree. Your comment about where the risk lies is absolutely true. The middle class lost hold of the legislative agenda about the time lobbiests got control.
This can be fixed. But everyone has to make a shit load of noise, and never let up.
These intergenerational comparisons are akin to comparing countries; the cultures are so different. 49 years ago, my parents bought an inexpensive house slated for demolition. They are still in it. My mom still picks up pennies off the street (although, I think she purells them now…) Although the housing bubble we are in looks a hella lot like the 1929 one, we aren’t going to become them as a result. Mobility is one reason, if nothing else.
Your casino model is an excellent one that soundbites well. We need regulations to keep the banking system from becoming a casino that sucks everyone dry.
Irony Abounds
Having been born in 1955, I guess I stand right smack dab in the middle. I also just got my annual Social Security Statement, which shows I have paid in approx. $250,000 into Social Security and Medicare to date. Assuming I wait until I am 66 before collecting, I will likely put in an additional $200,000 or so to that point. Will I ever see what I paid in come back? I suppose if I live to 85 or so. I can understand the angst of younger taxpayers who will likely never see anything close to a return of their money.
R-Jud
I’ll be 30 this Halloween, and I know that the only reason I’m better off than my parents (even when you factor in the $25K debt I left college with) is because I currently live in a foreign country where I don’t have to pay for health care (above and beyond the 3% extra in income tax I pay).
However, they don’t have college football here, so it’s not all roses.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This is how empires die. By growth of the purely rent-seeking sectors of their economy, increased wealth concentration breaking the back of their middle class, and creeping oligarchy as the political system is taken over and hollowed out from within by entrenched monied interests. We have learned nothing from the late-19th Cen/early 20th Cen decline and fall of the British empire that preceded us and which seeded our growth as a global power.
And nothing makes that fact more appallingly clear than the depopulation of our industrial cities like Detroit. Photo essays like this make me think of Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher as a metaphor for what our civilization has become as a result of the choices we’ve made.
drillfork
It’s pensions. CEOs still get them, but they’ve otherwise gone extinct during my adult life.
My father (born in 1933) worked for the phone company (yes, back when it was just the phone company) for almost 40 years. He never made a lot money, but it was enough to support a middle-class family, and of course he received excellent benefits.
He retired early 1990, taking a pension of about $250K. At the time he was told that the buy-outs would only get smaller from there. As he told me, “I got good advice, and I took it.”
I worked at IBM for a few years, and honestly, the people I really felt sorry for were the ones about 10 years younger than my father, and about 10 years older than me. At least my generation could see where this was going. Those folks, they worked their whole lives and they saw the older employees taken care of. But it started to change for them, and they didn’t know what hit them. You’ll never find a better example of a huge employer relentlessly whittling down pensions to nothing over a 20-year span than IBM.
I can accept an argument that employers shouldn’t have to be on the hook for paying retired workers. It’s hard to even imagine now that that was the norm as recently as 20 years ago. But the point is, there’s no safety net anymore.
Nowadays, the people I really fear for are my friends’ kids…
estraven
“It is good to be elderly in the United States.” I sure wish this was true for my mother-in-law, for whom we are having to make some very difficult decisions as to her living arrangements. She worked hard for most of her life, raised a family, took care of two elderly invalids while raising that family, and has nothing material to show for it. We have to spend her tiny tiny reserve funds (less than $5,000) on funeral plans, so we are told, so that Medicaid will pick up expenses whether she gets in-home care or nursing-home care. We can in no way afford to pay the $5,000 to $7,000 it would cost to get her into assisted living.
Don’t tell me about how great it is to be elderly in the U.S.
Scott H
The up side might be that no one is getting any younger.
There have to be reasons, facts, why the situation is just so. A few rounds of Guinness, and we could probably hammer them out.
To start, our elders benefited considerably from the judicious application of socialist and collectivist policies. Laws against child labor, the growth of strong labor unions, Social Security, the GI Bill, much later Medicare. Some of the policies had immediate benefits – some involved an expectation of delayed gratification (a foreign idea today).
Also, somewhere along the line investment in long-term equity (capitalism) got switched out for the idea of ‘disposable income’ (consumerism).
Oddly enough, the American revolution in growth and prosperity, the envy of the planet, happened in an age of onerous taxation (yes, Virginia, there was such a thing as the 90% tax bracket).
BTW, for a pictorial history of how bad things really used to be, I recommend browsing through the Shorpy web site.
Xenos
@R-Jud: Pick a local rugby club and follow a few games. You’ll warm up to it.
Enjoy Gilgamesh, a/k/a the original bromance.
satby
@Irony Abounds: Why would you expect to get back exactly what you paid into an insurance policy? Because SS is insurance, as is Medicare. If your house doesn’t burn down and you donj’t wreck your car do you expect Allstate to give you back your premiums?
And, many people live to be 85, and one good sting in the hospital for cardiac problems, cancer or any serious illness will blow through $500,00 in a flash.
Libertini
Born in 63. Was better off and would have continued to be had I not quit my job a couple of months ago. (Yup. You read that right. I quit a good paying job in order to do my own thing; decided I would rather be poor, and even afraid, than miserable.) I may still continue to be as my self-employment ventures seem to be doing OK so far. I may be wrong in believing the worst is over, but I think it is.
My mom was born in 43, and was definitely getting better off till she had to deal with cancer, and finally succumbed to it. Even with the medical bills she accumulated during her last 10 years (expenses not covered by insurance) she had set aside a nice chunk of change. I hate that she never got to enjoy the fruits of her labors.
Dad was born in 38 and was definitely NOT better off. In fact, the stress of his IRA’s tanking was a HUGE precipitating factor in his final heart attack this January. I will always blame those SOBs who mucked up our investment markets for his death.
Had my parents stayed together, they almost certainly would have been much better off…financially. So I think it’s a mixed bag, and I wouldn’t use a particular year as a cutoff. Too many variables.
R-Jud
@Xenos: Thanks! I finished Gilgamesh 2 weeks ago but had a deadline on another project this week, and an infant who’s teething and up all night, so haven’t been able to type up my essays. I am now meandering through the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
My husband has been nagging me to get into rugby, so I guess I should just give in, huh?
Brick Oven Bill
1955 is a year in which tariffs were in the process of being reduced from the historic rate of 30-40% to the current rate of near zero.
The practical effect of this was to drive production overseas to less regulated markets, and reduce the price of labor for the producers. DougJ has previously posted a graph of wealth concentration. The wealth concentration chart is a mirror image of the chart of tariffs vs. time.
Tariffs should be returned to historic levels.
bedtimeforbonzo
“My mom was born in 43, and was definitely getting better off till she had to deal with cancer, and finally succumbed to it. Even with the medical bills she accumulated during her last 10 years (expenses not covered by insurance) she had set aside a nice chunk of change. I hate that she never got to enjoy the fruits of her labors.”
Libertini: I feel the same way about my Dad, who died of cancer in 1996, at 56.
On a more human level, if you will, I regret that he never got to meet my 10-year-old son, whose engineering mind is just like his was and who I know would make my Dad’s eyes twinkle.
ksmiami
Comrade Darkness is spot on. We need massive reinvestment in infrastructure in this country and fewer billionaires. The Chinese are building cities out of dust, creating a modern electric grid and more and we sit here and argue over death panels and birth certificates. And, we are plagued with pretty significantly ignorant people who think any government program is socialism… Additionally, I think Uwe Reinhardt said it best when he said we have no healthcare system, but everyone has an iPod. We have sacrificed being a wealthy society as a whole for extreme individual wealth on a scale that is more common in the Middle East, than in a modern western nation. We need to change now or realize that we are heading into decline as a nation.
JHF
Oh no, we’re going to have our first fight! :-)
John, that statement is… how shall I put this, not being exactly “elderly” myself… okay, ridiculous. The USA has to be one of the worst countries in the world to grow old in.
My wife is 65, I’m 64, and we’re both living high on the hog, all right, with combined Social Security of less than two grand per month + whatever I can make. No equity, no property, no nuthin’. Don’t know where all these well-off geezers hang out, but whenever I see one, I push him off the sidewalk.
The only thing going for us is Medicare (for her), and it is admittedly a lifesaver.
Molly
@slippy: “My parents were born in 1948 and 1949 and I have consistently had a huge problem getting them to understand that they don’t live in the same world I do.”
I switch companies about every 2 years, have to. My parents think I’m insane, need to find a good company and settle down. They are offended that I have the salary I do because I’m so “flighty with employment.” Nope. Same job every time, for companies who pay me, nothing more.
Different world. Companies are a paycheck, not a home. It’s a business arrangement and my employment is driven by someone’s calculator and HR people who do not know me personally. I am a number, and the companies are run by formulas driven off of stock price. Doesn’t bother me, this is what employment has always been for me and most Gen X-ers (and now Y and millenials too.) This is the new reality.
Maude
@Leelee for Obama: That reminds me of waitresses saying how much you could earn at thus and so restaurant. Of course, it wasn’t true.
If you actually do something on a job, well, the pay is not so much.
Reagan upended the structure of the economic system in the US.
PATCO, all of the mergers and acquisitions, S&Ls, the start of securitizing mortgages by Salomon Brothers, and the taxpayer paying off the crimes of the S&Ls under Bush I.
Bush I continued this and Clinton went full speed ahead.
Look at the trade agreements that sold out the manufacturing sector to overseas.
Clinton did sign the repeal of Glass/Stegal and the Commodities Modernization Act and now he is worth over $100 mil.
Bush II went over the cliff.
It used to e that families only needed one income. Those days are long over.
Lupin
This is good news since I was born in 1954 and didn’t know I was supposed to be rich.
I want all of you youngsters to send me all of your money, and also sign organ donor cards for me; you never know when I might need your kidneys, livers, eyes, blood, whatever. (You may keep your brains however.)
I also want all your shit.
You may them mover to the favella on the hill and live off gambling on rat fights or whatever you kids enjoy in your spare time. There’ll be reruns of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA to keep you entertained.
Welcome to America 2020.
Molly
@estraven: “She worked hard for most of her life, raised a family, took care of two elderly invalids while raising that family, and has nothing material to show for it.”
My MIL and her sister, both in their 70s, worked their asses off their whole lives. One is in Detroit, one is in Florida. Between the stock market crash killing their 401Ks and their inability to sell their houses, they’re hardly getting by. Plus, both of them have medical problems, and Medicare does not cover everything they need, and they have no money for their medications.
The elderly do NOT have it easy right now. My grandparents, who were born in 1922, got the pensions and retired at 50 to a retirement community, then didn’t understand why everyone else hadn’t “worked hard enough.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@Lupin:
You can have whatever’s in my colon when you get it.
R-Jud
@Molly:
Yep. Best real-world advice I ever had from a teacher:
“It is going to be different for you guys. Even when you’re employed by someone else, behave as if you’re self-employed if you want to pay the bills consistently.”
Libertini
@bedtimeforbonzo: I am so sorry for your loss. My brother and sister in-law adopted two kids, thankfully before either of my parents passed, so they finally got their grandkids. : )
Steeplejack
@R-Jud:
However, they don’t have college football here, so it’s not all roses.
Sort of OT to the theme of this thread, but there was a comment from someone here a week or so back who bought a DirecTV setup and successfully installed it at his house in France. Voilà! American TV. Including college football, presumably.
Okay, back to economic doom and gloom and generational backbiting.
Libertini
@R-Jud: I finally decided I would rather go broke trying to work for myself than spend my life putting money in rich men’s pockets like my parents did all their lives.
@Lupin: If I DO go broke and can’t afford rent anymore, you can have all my shit while I couch surf. For the rest of my life.
Dream On
I am a 34-year-old who know many MANY people in their 60’s who are indeed one pay-check away from oblivion. And they have health-problems to boot. So this situation ain’t about the young versus the old. It’s about wealth stratification, Mexico-style.
Steeplejack
@satby:
Why would you expect to get back exactly what you paid into an insurance policy? Because SS is insurance, as is Medicare. If your house doesn’t burn down and you don’t wreck your car do you expect Allstate to give you back your premiums?
Ding ding ding! This has been driving me nuts the last few days, because I could not articulate it to save my life. My CPA friend said the same thing a few months ago, and I could not remember how she phrased it. Thank you.
This is a chilling reminder of how the Republicans have successfully reframed the debate, even without succeeding in Bush’s stated goal of privatizing Social Security. They have got us all thinking in “privatized” terms. Like I’m paying into my private account in Social Security/Medicare, and I should get a good return on investment or feel bad because I’m “overpaying” or not getting enough back.
satby
Class war, race war, generational war: think there’s any other ways we can keep everyone preoccupied with fighting each other instead of the corporate interests that have pillaged this country and raped just about everyone at this point?
satby
@Steeplejack: Thanks for cleaning up my typos!
Dream On
@Karmakin
“It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to jobs, especially high level jobs as the baby boomers start retiring. The founder of my company is starting to make retirement type noises right now, and I wonder who will end up replacing him?”
—————-
In-sourcing and out-sourcing, coming to a company near you!
Steeplejack
@satby:
Compulsive copyeditor. And I think it was just one.
Just Some Fuckhead
@satby:
It’s been pretty obvious to me for quite awhile that graduate students are working at my local fast food restaurants. They can’t get a simple fucking order right to save their sorry lives.
DZ
Well, I guess this is the only reason to be happy that I am now 62.
Irony Abounds
@satby: There are different types of insurance. Car and fire insurance and term life insurance are designed to cover catastrophic events and generally have no investment type features. Social Security is more like whole life insurance, with certain investment features. It also serves as a quasi-retirement account whether it is considered insurance or not. In both cases, however, there would be some cost-benefit analysis that occurs, i.e., does the insurance make financial sense.
To be clear, I was not complaining about the numbers, but they raise the issue of the political viability of Social Security. Up to this point, the vast majority of retirees are getting much more out of Social Security than they ever put in. If the numbers for younger people show they will be paying much greater amounts than they will ever get out of the system, logic dictates that support for Social Security will weaken considerably. When you look at the numbers from USA Today concerning the under 55 crowd getting squashed economically, combine that with the wealth of the elderly, and the incessant whining of the old farts about keeping the government’s hands out of their Medicare, it is not inconceivable that there could be a real age war in this country.
Ruemara
I am more educated than my parents, have earned more than them as salary and am now working for less money than I’ve earned at any time since I was 19. My mate hasn’t worked in almost a year and half. I’m not sure I’m liking this whole “have to age to get some profits” fiscal model for America. Will some of these wealthy 55+ers pls, trickle some down on me and mine so we can keep a roof over our heads, thank you?
Leelee for Obama
@Irony Abounds: I would venture a guess that there might actually be a plan in there somewhere. When St. Ronnie re-structured SS back in the 80s, they should have raised payroll deductions, and invested the trust fund better and made it illegal to use the trust fund to fund shit that should have caused tax increases.
They didn’t do that, did they? No! Instead, they have created this mess and GWB did the Medicare Part D, unfunded and now, the young will learn why keeping the old around wasn’t in their best interests. It was in the interests of politicians who could buy the votes of the old, who vote in droves. This is not to say we don’t love the older members of our families, or that we wish them gone, but the politics of this is crystal clear to me these days.
grumpy realist
Suggest people read David Brin’s “Earth”. Aside from some gee-whiz technology I just wish we had at this point, his book is really on target with how a lot of this will probably play out….
DZ
@Irony Abounds:
Well, maybe. I have contributed the max to SS for 37 years. I have had cancer 3 times, and my expected 10-year survival rate is 70%. If I die at that time or even 5 years after that, I will have paid in considerably more than I got out. Moreover, I have been subsidizing my parents’ generation for all those years. It just isn’t a simple question.
Notorious P.A.T.
“because I currently live in a foreign country where I don’t have to pay for health care (above and beyond the 3% extra in income tax I pay)”
Oh, the horror! ! ! You should be marching in the streets! Aren’t your tired of the government stealing all your money? Go Galt! Why do they punish success? etc. etc.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Apparently some people don’t mind being a slave to their government.
LD50
See, I’ve always had a lot of problems with that definition of ‘baby boom’. I was born in 1962, and tho I voted for him twice, I don’t feel like I have jackshit in common *generationally* with Bill Clinton. When I turned 20, the world was a very fucking different place than it was in the late 60’s/early 70’s.
From what I’ve read, the US birth rate peaked in 1955, and declined slowly but steadily after that.
Notorious P.A.T.
“College graduates are competing with 16 year olds for Burger King and Walmart jobs.”
I resemble that remark.
Notorious P.A.T.
“Apparently some people don’t mind being a slave to their government.”
Yeah, those communist nazis are like that.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Notorious P.A.T.: I’m arguing with a libertarian friend on FB and he said that to me today concerning single-payer. His exact quote: “But single payer is not the way to go. My ideology gives people power and choice. Yours seems to enslave people to the government.”
I told him to go rent Roots and get back to me when he understood slavery. How do you argue with these idiots?
Interrobang
I’ve seen this kind of thing with my own parents, who don’t get that contract jobs are “real jobs” (actual question from my mother: “Is this a real job, or another contract job?”), don’t get that at least part of the reason I wasn’t making the kind of money they were by the time I was in my early 20s isn’t because I’m some kind of fuckup (“You must just not be sending out enough resumes.” “What part of ‘There’s been a recession going on for most of my working life’ don’t you get?”), and don’t get that entry-level professional jobs are hard to get now (they came of age during a labour shortage).
My parents were born in 1943 and 1945 respectively. Both had good, well-paying jobs with benefits (my dad was an officer in the RCAF and my mom was a unionised teacher). The year after they got married, they were driving two new sports cars. That same year, their combined income in 2009 dollars was something like $80K/year. They didn’t have student loans, and, with my dad in the military, they even had housing and a lot of other expenses paid. By the time they were my age, they had bought their third (sequential) house.
I have six grand left to pay on my student loans and I’ve been out of school for 10 years. I have never owned a car and would have to completely rearrange my life to be able to afford one. I don’t own a house and have no hope of being able to get one anytime soon. By the time my parents were my age, they had me, and I couldn’t afford kids even if I wanted them (I don’t).
I’m distinctly downwardly mobile compared to my parents, despite having more education (graduate degree as opposed to a bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate) and being more of a white-collar-type professional. And I work in IT, albeit in a low-end subfield of IT.
ChrisS
I think some posters are are mistaking their anecdotal experiences with data. The study referenced above is a huge generalization and it’s not representative of your life.
As a group, the cohort of baby-boomers enjoyed a a stable middle-class lifestyle in their youth thanks to a massive post-world war II economic expansion with all sorts of goodies for labor (pensions, a progressive income tax that funded huge infrastructure projects, which led to jobs, economic stimulus, etc.). They had the choice of schools and an increasing focus on education (paid for with grants paired with relatively low tuition). They have mostly been employed during the heyday of US manufacturing. During the 1980s, they elected government officials who promised to lower their taxes and cut wasteful government spending. They voted to deregulate markets and they complained about labor costs, which ate into their investment returns. They voted for free trade agreements and said sayonara to all sorts of low-level and entry level positions to overseas countries.
This is what the group has enjoyed to begin their working careers. And when they started reaping the benefits, they pulled up the ladder. “Students don’t need grants! They should pay their own way through loans, why, my bank can offer them 8% interest.” “‘I’ve been paying for years into social security, that’s my money!” “Pensions are expensive corporate frivolities, the employee can invest their retirement into 401ks and I’ve got a friend on wall street who says he can turn that into 12% return!” and so on.
The same age class of people who benefited the most from a “socialist”, labor-friendly climate in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and the most from the investor friendly 80s & 90s aren’t people born in the 1970s. It may not be your experience and it may not be your friends’ experiences. But the facts are facts. The climate today is so much more difficult for newer workers, plus today’s entry level workers get to pay for: a massive public debt resulting from huge tax cuts under the GOP combined with unprecedented peacetime military spending, restocking the social security trust fund (through either increased taxes or decreased benefits), and a political climate hostile to labor in general. And they’re missing out on the boom associated with plentiful cheap oil, but retain a huge sprawling landscape designed for the personal automobile and cheap gas.
satby
@Interrobang:
See, even though I’m a boomer, I have this problem with my mom, too; because I work in IT and veer wildly between a job with a good salary when I’m on a contract and unemployed/glorified temp worker when I’m not. And I’ve worked for the same company (off and on) for 11 years. I came of age at the end of the times when you could get a good middle class job without a college degree (I still don’t have one) and I make lots more money than most people I know. BUT, I’ve spent more than 1/2 of my adult working life as a contract IT or contract paralegal without benefits. My mother cannot understand that there can be full time jobs at big companies that don’t have benefits or health insurance. The fact that many large firms use a lot of temp workers as another way to evade paying extra for benefits and health care for workers is unfathomable to her.
And yeah, the last time I got laid off from the employer that I work for now was because as an over 40 worker my salary was too high. The comapny lost a court case on it.
binzinerator
@Throwin Stones:
I had an economic professor say that too, and this was back in 1984, my sophomore year in college, during a lecture on supply-side economics in my macroeconomics 101 class.
I remember it clearly because my head was just blown away when I realized supply-side economics (Laffer curve and all that) was just an elaborate bullshit job to get ordinary people to agree to a massive government transfer of wealth — to the wealthy.
Once you figure out that’s what supply-side really is, it isn’t too hard to predict what the result would be, just as as that prof did, if those policies were ever put into effect for a generation.
Now we have the data to confirm that prediction.
Heckuva job Ronnie and Georgie!
Ruckus
@Molly:
I switch companies about every 2 years, have to. My parents think I’m insane, need to find a good company and settle down. They are offended that I have the salary I do because I’m so “flighty with employment.” Nope. Same job every time, for companies who pay me, nothing more.
Different world. Companies are a paycheck, not a home. It’s a business arrangement and my employment is driven by someone’s calculator and HR people who do not know me personally. I am a number, and the companies are run by formulas driven off of stock price. Doesn’t bother me, this is what employment has always been for me and most Gen X-ers (and now Y and millenials too.) This is the new reality.
@R-Jud at 89
Yep. Best real-world advice I ever had from a teacher:
“It is going to be different for you guys. Even when you’re employed by someone else, behave as if you’re self-employed if you want to pay the bills consistently.”
I think this is the most striking generalization difference. A lot of my parents generation were the stay the course, one job types. And I think they taught a lot of their children the same idea. My parents were very independent, owned their own biz and never had this one job, one life mindset.
Born in 49 and I’m on my third career now because I like to eat somewhat regularly. My plan is to work until I’m 70 because otherwise SS won’t pay enough to exist on. No health insurance so fingers crossed until I hit 65. I’d like to think about retirement or at least working part time but I haven’t figured out how to do that and still have that eating part going on.
Interrobang made the point that he has been in recessions most of his working life. That’s a function of capitalism, the highs and lows are not as smooth. And with capitalism run amok like we have now only a few of us hit the highs (not that I’d every understand what that’s like) and the lows are deep and long for all. IOW capitalism doesn’t suck it’s the way it’s been run for the last 40-50 years that does.
binzinerator
@ironranger:
They had planned to retire by 60 at the latest? Jesus H., what a different world they lived in.
I’m in my 40’s. I make $55,000 a year. According to my financial planner the ugly truth is even if I work until I am 70 I will still be less comfortable in my retirement than I am now. And I will only be able to pay for a 1/3 of the anticipated college tuition for my 2 kids.
In other words, even if I can work until I’m 70 — assuming I live that long or am still healthy enough to continue working by then — I will still be less well off and my kids may still not be able to go to college.
Of course, I could have a better standard of living when I retire than I do now if I decided to totally screw my kids out of a chance for a college education. Or I could decide to live in very reduced circumstances when I retire and shift my contributions from retirement to college and maybe fund 60% of their educations.
The best outcome would be to save all the money toward their education and their future and then die the day after I retire.
So here we are in our history, in America fer fucks sake, where a large number of us may realize that at some point we could better provide for our children’s future if we were dead rather than alive.
But hey 55 grand a year is still above the new diminished US median income. And at least I got a job, amirite?
I’m a regular lucky ducky is what I am.
binzinerator
@Brick Oven Bill:
What about electric trains?
gyma
@Michael D.: My B.S. degree is in Industrial Psychology and I have an MLIS from UC, Berkeley. I’m currently a web content manager doing research on everything from demographics to infant mortality to surface water quality. All for the rich salary of $36K or just over $17/hour. Hell, volunteers are considered worth more than that when organizations calculate the value of volunteer help!
@Comrade Darkness: Yeah, I’ve often wondered why I feel so poor today when I didn’t feel this way back then. Of course, I’m not making that $41K either. In the early 80s we went out to breakfast once a week (albeit a Denny’s) and would head up to the mountains (Rockies) for a weekend of R&R at the drop of a hat. Gasoline must have been well under a $1/gallon, restaurant food was reasonable, and a decent motel room could be had for $25 or so. A crappy breakfast at Denny’s w/tip now runs nearly $20. Back then it was about $4-5. I’m also thinking I didn’t have any health insurance in those days (pre HMO) and I wasn’t all that concerned. I could see my doctor for $25-35 or so and not break the bank. Same for the dentist. Now it costs nearly $100 to have my teeth cleaned and the last fillings I had replaced (2) cost $350!
And for the record, I need to remember not to comment on a tread on my way out the door when I know it will be 8+ hours before I’ll be online again!
gyma
Crap, ‘tread’, ‘thread’ what’s the diff?
Lavocat
That is, until the death panels come a-knockin’.
Boston Yankee
Live in a gated retirement community inhabited for the most part with very well off neighbors. Naturally, they all have medicare, social security, vested pensions or civil service pensions and the majority of them are conservative voting Republicans who can quote Fox News. They are against any taxes, until very recently for every war, seemingly very religious, and not sure that they can trust non-whites or any form of government.
How did this come to be?
Thomas
Before she was tarp watchdog Elizabeth Warren came and did a guest lecture at my law school. Therein she explained some of the financial difficulties this generation was facing and, as several others have mentioned, said this generation would actually be poorer than its parents. As usual, she was right.
kynefski
I was born in 1954 and entered full-time work in 1975. (You want to live in some weird times?)
I don’t mind the generational warfare stuff. The fact is that we need to get out of the way. We occupy way too many of the best positions in the economy, and we’re keeping way too many talented people from advancing to where they belong. A year ago, when the markets tanked, my first thought was, “Ah, fuck, now we’re going to see a bunch of boomers claiming they can’t possibly retire in a timely fashion.”
To my fellow affluent boomers: That hit to our 401(k)s was just bad luck. Shit happens. It provides no excuse for blocking the progress of those who are younger and better than we. We need to retire just as soon as we can without being a burden to our children. And if it isn’t as well as we might have hoped? Fifty years controlling popular culture should count for something. Goodbye to All That indeed.