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Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won't be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it's nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today's seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It's not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice
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This part I disagree with. Plenty of folks would be happy to build an addition for the mother or mil as long as she would be willing to add something to the family and not treat it as a free ride. My mother has lived with us for two years and she broke the agreement that she live here rent free but was to help with the cleaning and the children so now she pays us rent. We opened our home to our mother and all she does is take. She's a baby boomer. I'm sorry, I only have anectdotal experience, but I do think this generation of people are some of the most greedy around. Some of the stuff they did to me, I can't bear to see happen to them--no home, back turned on them. Yet when you extend them help they behave as if they should not do anything in return or show any gratiousness.
Sorry, this is a sore spot for me. Perhaps I have incredibly greedy parents, but I don't think I'm alone in this. I resent that my parents generation want to suck us dry and take from their grandchildren a secure future. I resent that they do this while enjoying travel and all kinds of material amenities. It will be my children who won't have squat when they are old because they were robbed of their ability to save. They will be the ones trying to actually survive on SS alone.

Sorry, this is a sore spot for me. Perhaps I have incredibly greedy parents, but I don't think I'm alone in this.

My parents too, and a scarily high percentage of other Boomer parents that I know. They bleat on about how they "need" this and "need" that, but heaven forbid that they have to spend some of their personal time and resources acquiring those things. It is a total lack of personal responsibility on their parts, and therefore I feel a complete lack of sympathy for the consequences of undisciplined and immature life choices.

As I see it, GenX has a right to be completely unsympathetic to the "plight" of the older generations. While it is starting to be written about, I think that the Boomer and older generations still don't "get" that the younger generations feel this way pretty strongly.