Free Republic

Looking ahead to the next phase of life can seem pretty dreadful if you can’t stand the person who you’ll be spending it with. That may be what some boomers are facing. Among U.S. adults ages 50 and older, the divorce rate has roughly doubled since the 1990s, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. Statistically speaking we’re healthier and probably going to be living a lot longer — possibly 30 years longer — than average retirees once did. The surge in late-in-life — or “gray” — divorce is one possibly unintended consequence of this so-called longevity bonus. Read:...

Older Americans own half of the houses in the market. Many are simply refusing to sell and others have adult “kids” moving back in since they can’t afford a place to rent or buy. It is a Catch 22 and many people are looking at countries like Italy where the number of adults that live at home is enormous. Multi-generational families just don’t coincide with the “rugged American” worldview where you go out on your own and you make it with your own two hands. Of course, many house humpers had mom and dad chip in but that doesn’t make...

<p>For 30 years, Pat Fryzel stored her children’s memorabilia, and her grandmother’s, too. But when she and her husband downsized, from a large Winchester home to a two-bedroom Boston town house, there was no room for the American Girl dolls or Nana’s cake plates. So Fryzel asked her grown kids to collect what they wanted.</p>

I was wondering when it would happen. For over thirty years I have been anxiously awaiting the backlash. Alas, for years it never arrived. What backlash have I been awaiting, you ask? Why, the backlash to the most self-important, morally superior, narcissistic generation to cast a shadow across this republic in its history, the Baby Boomers. Had the generation just been designated “the Babies” and been left at that, America would have been on the right track. As we now are about to discover, while the Boomers decline into senescence, they never really did grow up — at least their...

Baby Boomers: your millennial children are worse off than you. With a median household income of $40,581, millennials earn 20 percent less than boomers did at the same stage of life, despite being better educated, according to a new analysis of Federal Reserve data by the advocacy group Young Invincibles. The analysis being released Friday gives concrete details about a troubling generational divide that helps to explain much of the anxiety that defined the 2016 election. Millennials have half the net worth of boomers. Their home ownership rate is lower, while their student debt is drastically higher. The generational gap...

"It appears we're going to have an old folks' home." That's the ever-outspoken Harry Reid, Nevada's retiring senior senator, talking about Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders being the unofficial early front-runners for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Warren, at 67, is the youngest of the Big Three, and she's the only one who excites both establishment Democrats and progressive activists. But is the senior senator from Massachusetts game for a presidential run? Some pundits believe she's already positioning herself for it. Warren, the former guiding light of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, recently announced she's joining the Senate's...

In business, the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers. In an economy where more than 2/3rds of the growth rate is driven by consumption, an even bigger imbalance of the “have” and “have not’s” presents a major headwind.

I have seen the best minds of my generation, to steal a phrase from the late Allen Ginsberg, driven to heights of self-absorption, advocating policies that assure the failure of the next. Nothing so suggests the failure of my generation — the boomers — than its two representatives running for president. What Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump reflect are two sides of the same nasty boomer coin. On one side, there are aging boomers embracing Trump, an icon of materialistic obsession and a lack of concern for “losers.” On the other is a control-freak determination to tell everyone how to...

"...Now many in that class are turning 58 years old, and Butler is a shell of what it was four decades ago, with the mills long-since shuttered or shrunk — casualties of the globalized steel industry — taking most of the jobs and that old sense of security with them. People here are approaching their golden years with a sense of bitterness about the new, unforgiving economy and foreboding about what they will have to show for this life. Something their parents could count on — a comfortable retirement, debt-free and maybe in a warmer place — seems out of...

It’s like the last twist in a horror movie. You think the baby boomers are dead, or at least easing into retirement, and then they thrust their claw up from the dirt, or lunge from the bathtub with a knife. Or take over a presidential election. Or decide to “liberate” your country from an economic partnership that is imperfect but deeply popular among younger generations whose vision is more kaleidoscopic than the color scheme of a national flag. “YOU STOLE OUR FUTURE FROM US,” said a blue banner hoisted by two young women in front of Big Ben after the...

Baby boomers' long reign over the kingdom of American demographics has finally come to an end: Millennials have officially surpassed them as the largest living generation in the U.S. That's according to new population estimates released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau and analyzed by the Pew Research Center.

Beyoncé didn't bring back the Black Panthers when she and an Afro-frizzed dance team donned black leather jackets and berets during Super Bowl 50's halftime show. That's because the Black Panthers never actually left. The Panthers were more than militants; they were pioneers in American pop and political culture. The Black Lives Matter movement, the rise of social media, music and sports, even Donald Trump -- all were shaped by the Panthers in some way, historians and ex-Panthers say. On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, people are taking a second look at the group....

Sunday, Feb 7, 2016 08:01 PM +0900 It’s almost over for Hillary: This election is a mass insurrection against a rigged system Sanders has ended the coronation and fired up the grass roots. Now Clinton's electability argument is crumbling too Bill Curry It would be hard to overstate what Bernie Sanders has already achieved in his campaign for president, or the obstacles he’s had to surmount in order to achieve it. Not only has he turned a planned Hillary Clinton coronation into an exercise in grass-roots democracy, he’s reset the terms of the debate. We are edging closer to the...

"This is the real reason Washington can’t create a long-term deficit reduction plan. The boomers love their safety nets." Wow, so it looks like we have a budget deal in Washington. A debt ceiling and spending crisis has been averted. It’s good news. But let’s all calm down. It’s only temporary. The agreement does not address the long-term fiscal problems we have. Problems that were mostly created by none other than the “baby boomer” generation. Yeah, you know who you are. You’re tanned and healthy and living way past average life expectancy. You’ve got a defined benefit pension plan from...

If anyone deserves to pay more to shore up the federal safety net, either through higher taxes or lower benefits, it’s boomers — the generation that was born into some of the strongest job growth in the history of America, gobbled up the best parts, and left its children and grandchildren with some bones to pick through and a big bill to pay. Politicians shouldn’t be talking about holding that generation harmless. They should be asking how future workers can claw back some of the spoils that the “Me Generation” hoarded for itself.

The old issues of class, race and geography may still dominate coverage of our changing political landscape, but perhaps a more compelling divide relates to generations. American politics are being shaped by two gigantic generations – the baby boomers and their offspring, the millennials – as well as smaller cohorts of Generation X, who preceded the millennials, and what has been known as the Silent Generation, who preceded the boomers. Both the boomers and the Silents gradually have moved to the right as they have aged. Other factors underpin this trend, such as the fact that boomers are overwhelmingly white...

Writers commenting on the Supreme Court's recent discovery of a constitutional right to gay marriage have (quite logically) cast this as the latest chapter in the sexual revolution begun by the Baby Boomers. But it must also be seen in the context of the larger "gift" left for us by that same generation. I am speaking specifically of the Boomers' rejection of their parents and the corresponding cultural abandonment of wisdom. If you were around during the late 1960s and early 1970s, you'll remember that this was everywhere . UC Berkeley student Jack Weinberg coined the mantra of the era:...

Yesterday, we began our high-minded graduation speech to the Class of 2015. We explained how the young graduates were not only the most heavily indebted in history, but also the least likely to be able to pay their debts. Median wages have been going down since these graduates were about five years old… So have economic growth rates. Today, we continue the speech no one wants us to give… You are heirs to claptrap, nonsense, bogus theories, and trillions of dollars in debt. The systems, programs, and institutions your parents set up are mostly worthless scams. Worse, they produce outcomes...

At 67, Hillary Clinton is now a “woman of a certain age.” So much emphasis and worry are put on physical aging in women that the emotional maturity and freedom that can come at this time are given short shrift. That robs everyone of a great natural resource. As women of a certain age, it is our time to lead. The new standard for aging women should be about vitality, strength, and assertiveness. One of the largest demographics in America is women in their forties to sixties, and by 2020 there will be nearly 60 million peri- and post-menopausal women...

A tectonic shift is occurring in American politics. The old guard of the Democratic Party will soon be far too ancient to contest an election. This creates serious problems for the party once 2016 passes. It’s obvious that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden will soon announce their candidacy, but who will fill the ranks when they’re gone? It’s important to know that there was once a socially conservative generation deemed "The Greatest Generation." These, the heroes of Anzio and Guadalcanal, gave birth to a litter of selfish creatures called "baby boomers." The baby boomers soon colonized communal settlements known as...