We know now that there was no "trust fund" earning interest.
Lockbox!
-PJ
Posted on 06/15/2015 12:22:04 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
It’s no secret that the American middle class has been on the ropes for a while now. The problem isn’t just a crippling recession and an economic “recovery” that has mostly gone to the richest one percent, but the larger shifting of wealth from the middle to the very top that’s taken place since the late ‘70s. Add in things like the dismantling of unions that has accelerated apace since Ronald Reagan crushed the air-traffic controllers, and we’ve seen the middle class more solid in places like Canada, Germany, and Scandinavia, and begin to grow in a number of nations even while it shrinks here. Economists like Thomas Piketty thinks the process is inevitable with global capitalism, while others – the equally wise Joseph Stiglitz, for example – think the balance can be restored if we can find the political will.
It turns out that those concerned about a tattered middle class are right about most of it, but overlooking one thing: Boomers – or rather, a particular strain of Boomer and near-Boomer – are doing great. That is, if you were born in the ‘40s, you are going to be the last American generation to enjoy a robust safety net, and your gray years will be far more comfortable than those a decade older or younger.
Here’s a New York Times story, which looks at “the 25 million Americans now between the ages of 65 and 74”:
Supported by income from Social Security, pensions and investments, as well as an increasing number of paychecks from delaying retirement, older people not only weathered the economic downturn that began in 2007 but made significant gains, a New York Times analysis of government data has found.
And despite our generally ornery Xer jingoism, we’re going to concede something here. We’ve noticed that our friends who we could call “young Boomers” – born in the late ‘50s and early ’60s – are often far less privileged and spoiled than those born in the years right after World War II. This younger group grew up or came of ago, after all, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, as the postwar boom was fading, colleges were becoming expensive, and the Reagan Revolution was pulling the rug out from under the middle class.
And it turns out that those young Boomers are indeed a kind of transition generation. It’s the group now retiring that will take most of the spoils of the U.S. postwar boom and leave the rest of us with scraps:
In the past, the elderly were usually poorer than other age groups. Now, they are the last generation to widely enjoy a traditional pension, and are prime beneficiaries of a government safety net targeted at older Americans. They also have profited from the long rise in real estate prices that preceded the recession. As a result, more seniors now fall into the middle class — defined in this case between the 40th and 80th income percentile — than ever before.
If you wonder why you are working so hard to get a job, please note that a lot of these guys are sitting on theirs or at least working part-time. (It reminds us of the Onion story: “Parents With More Vacation Time, Financial Resources Want To Know When Son Will Come Home For A Visit.”)
The Times piece shows how a variety of Americans in that sub-generation is faring. Some are struggling, like the rest of us. But between the fancy cruises and fat pensions and gated communities and golf courses and vintage ‘57s Chevys, it’s not a world that younger Americans have any reason to expect. In fact, it sounds like something from a museum of postwar affluence.
So part of us is glad the American middle class will go out with a boom, so to speak. We don’t begrudge these people – our teachers and professors, our older friends, our parents and other relatives – comfort in their gray years. The way Americans, in the days before social security and other protections, lost their footings in old age was simply inhumane. But why couldn’t the prosperity be spread so that those born in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and after can enjoy the same stability and wealth?
Well, this is a complicated one, and we’ll nod to the usual suspects: Globalization, technology, and the depletion of natural resources (especially energy) meant that the postwar boom would not last forever.
But you know what else the original Boomers brought us? Despite their dabbling with progressivism and hippie utopianism, this group served as the shock troops for market-worshipping neoliberalism and the Reagan-Thatcher shift in the ‘70s and ‘80s. They gave us junk bonds and the privatization push and Gordon Gekko. Some of them went into the corporate world and started dismantling.
Let’s hope they enjoy their retirements. But these gray Boomers and grayer Silents – not all of them, but enough to do substantial damage – put forces in motion that mean for the rest of us, the twilight years will be significantly less cozy.
Scott Timberg is a staff writer for Salon, focusing on culture. A longtime arts reporter in Los Angeles who has contributed to the New York Times, he runs the blog Culture Crash. He's the author of the new book, "Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class."
Couldn’t have said it better, myself.
Only if you count their offshoring industries.
Were previous generations bombarded with the constant commercials that we seem to get?
I don’t call them the Boomers.
I call them the Locusts.
We know now that there was no "trust fund" earning interest.
Lockbox!
-PJ
In fact it was government and the greedy corporations looking for more suckers when as things became obscenely expensive, like homes, cars, schooling, insurance, medical etc...
What they did was convince all the woman they had to have careers. Stay at home moms were portrayed as stupid fat simpletons. Fact is the corrupt corporations were looking for more low wage employees. Endless lines of them.
Now millions of “career” women are suddenly working at chicken licken, Walmart and auto parts stores are wondering how they got so screwed. Ya seen the attitudes of most of these people?
They can’t afford to stay home and have babies and raise families. They have no insurance or worthless insurance they’re forced to pay for.
And since few can afford all these traditional family things, like babies, the government just imported tens of millions more low wage illegal to fill the holes. They have lots of babies, regardless if they can afford them. Government then got the what’s left of the middle class to subsidize millions of their imported low wage workers. A win win for the employers!!
You need an update.
Multi-generational cooperation (harkening back to pre-hippy standard operating procedure) would soften the blow quite a bit and help society to rebound more quickly and with less pain.
Leave the Koch Brothers out. Unlike almost all other monied interests, they actually push for pro-market policies, rather than government hand-outs to their companies or regulations that prevent the entrance of competitors, suppress disruptive technologies, and the like. That is why the left hates them so much: they can’t be co-opted to support the expansion of state power. It has to do with their business model: they run their companies’ divisions as if they were all small start-up companies. What’s good for the Koch Bros. is by-and-large what’s good for new entrants into the market, small businesses included.
I'm not terribly upset. (I just hope I stay employed.) Methinks the article is describing more that glamorous "culture" of retirement, which IMHO will fade away as rapidly as shuffleboard.
I never saw myself playing golf in Florida. Not one of those happy, cultured people on the retirement home brochures resembles me. For me, it's a straight road to the assisted living facility. In between I hope to work while God gives me the strength.
No :)
I knew one old lady who would only watch tv after she had cleaned her house and dolled herself all up (so the tv people would only see her at her best :)
Silly, but the old bird got a lot done in her life!
Nobody likes a whiner, moaner, groaner, complainer. Leastway, success doesn't.
That's the job hoarding the article was complaining about.
If you wonder why you are working so hard to get a job, please note that a lot of these guys are sitting on theirs or at least working part-time.
-PJ
If ya believe that you'll believe anything. They'll have most of the boomers and their kids living in poverty and working until they drop dead. Government even looted their Social Security money which was confiscated from them at gun point.
Were there.
I bet this same author supports policies like Obamacare, which has put a huge squeeze on the middle class and increasing the corporatization of healthcare providers and putting small independent practices out of business.
A better idea might be to watch the grandkids to give the kids a much needed/appreciated leg up. We are only as successful as our kids prospects are bright. It’s time to get on the same team and ditch this obsession with naming every decade or so.
Among other societal characteristics that supported wealth creation.
“By the way Social Security I paid into, dont make it sound like its a liberal given free bee.”
Meh, people take out in benefits WAY more than they paid in. It’s a welfare program disguised as something else.
"When the whole world brought its savings to the United States, people of mediocre skills and slack work habits could afford big houses, expensive vacations, and (at taxpayer expense) generous pensions. Why Americans expected to live well indefinitely on the largesse of foreign investors is a question for the psychiatrists, not the economists."
--Spengler, Asia Times
That may be true of your Boomer acquaintances, but not of me or most of the Boomers I grew up with. Most of my friends, all of my first cousins, and I were brought up in lower middle class families and were first generation college graduates. A college education, debt free, at a state university was affordable back then, even for kids from modest backgrounds. My parents worked hard to provide what we had, and I am grateful to them for that, but it was definitely not a third-base upbringing. From them, I learned the value of hard work, education, and thrift. As a result, I expect to retire in the next two years at a comfort level that would be almost unimaginable to them. If that's being sanctimonious, so be it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.