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."
Your post is spot on. I, like you worked hard on my homework while my friends played Capture the Flag every evening. I did not realize it then but I was differentiating my future from theirs.
We all had bare subsistence housing back then but now I guess I am one of those who lives retired in a golfing community and working part time if I feel like it. BTW, paid for our son to get a degree without debt.
When I was earning mine I was doubling up on my credit hours, taking 20 to 22 every term. I would wake up almost every morning wondering if I was going to make it but I finally did. I sometimes wondered if I should have just quit and gone back into the Air force as an NCO. It would have been the easy way out but I stayed in school.
Three things: 1) his dad’s hard work ethic; 2) his mom’s Christianity; and 3) his own imagination that he got from constantly watching movies and reading. I’m convinced he was as much an intellectual as any college prof. He constantly read and had a very active life of the mind, writing his own plays and acting in them when just a young teenager. He watched movies constantly, and read very difficult books.
I am the late Boomer kid, as is my husband. We did BETTER under Reagan & has policies. That all went to trash once the Left took over. I was a potter-sculptor, making extra money while being (the most important job in the world- a Mother & housewife). I made good money then. Once the Left took over, people started to not have extra income to buy handmade items. Once the craft circuit died, that was when Wally World stepped in with Cheap-Chinese-Junk. I closed my studio.
The Left slowly killed tiny home businesses. They were also the ones who said I was “inferior” for not working outside of the home and for thinking my chosen life was of any worth.
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Maybe that is why they hate my kind & want to destroy those who chose to succeed with hard work, save for the future, including for a pension to make our retirements comfortable.
“Meh, people take out in benefits WAY more than they paid in. It’s a welfare program disguised as something else.”
Let me really piss you off, next year I’ll be drawing full SS and a full paycheck and plan on doing that for another 7 years until my wife is old enough to retire at 62. Hell I may just keep working as long as my health holds up. According to SS that will be another 2300 a month.
The left cannot establish their wet dream of a liberal, fascist police state until the source of any resistance, the middle class, is destroyed.
This Baby Boomer has a lot of Marine brothers on the Wall and we never thought we hit a triple. I would say more but I would get banned.
Absolutely correct!
Agriculture, mining, as much manufacturing as possible and the understanding that competition is healthy comprise the foundation of a healthy economy. Both political parties are quite socialist and have been excessively so for a very long time.
Show me one candidate for the presidency, who would lay off even a quarter of all current government employees to balance the budget and take some of the regulatory (zoning, planning, building, etc.), tax and fee weight off of new, small manufacturing shops.
There’s no effective difference between influential Democrats and Republicans in my sparsely populated, remote, Republican majority county (very large area). All of both parties are either employed by government or government-supported businesses (mostly state and local) or pensioners from government. All are NIMBYs and against any new, small competition, any new building of homes, against families, and most of all, against seeing any young men at work.
The Left are contraindicators. We’re due for an American Renaissance.
We do want to get rid of the crony capitalists, the kleptocrats and the kakocracy, but let’s not act the martinet and start a reign of terror.
The Koch’s got rich the old American way, they earned it.
If the POTUS were going to sign that into law, the VP would be running the country. The Code is the way it is to preserve the elite power. They don’t go gently into that good night.
You are in for a surprise.
believe me, we PAID....
I'm very keen to what our younger people are facing...that's why I vote conservatively and as frugally minded as I can....its why I send money to my adult kids and why I want to leave some kind of legacy to my children.
I hear you.
bttt
Pretty wretched class envy article. Pure victimization. Pure tripe.
“I’m poor because the Boomer’s stole my lifestyle. Never mind I am a lazy ass who won’t lift a finger to fund my lifestyle.”
The house at 6830 South 78th Ave is a dead ringer for our house, and about three blocks away from it.
Lots of nice small homes available here for under $150,000.
So, you’re proud of the fact that you’re both going to drain welfare money out of the government and take a job from an able-bodied younger person?
You evaded the question.
Feel free to answer it.
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