The great baby-boomer retirement wave is upon us. According to Census Bureau data, 44% of boomers are at retirement age and millions more are soon to join them. By 2030, the largest generation to enter retirement will all be older than 65.
The general assumption is that boomers will have a comfortable retirement. Coasting on their accumulated wealth from three decades as America’s dominant economic force, boomers will sail off into their golden years to sip on margaritas on cruises and luxuriate in their well-appointed homes. After all, Federal Reserve data shows that while the 56 million Americans over 65 make up just 17% of the population, they hold more than half of America’s wealth — $96.4 trillion.
But there’s a flaw in the narrative of a sunny boomer retirement: A lot of older Americans are not set up for their later years. Yes, many members of the generation are loaded, but many more are not. Like every age cohort, there’s significant wealth inequality among retirees — and it’s gotten worse in the past decade. Despite holding more than half of the nation’s wealth, many boomers don’t have enough money to cover the costs of long-term care, and 43% of 55- to 64-year-olds had no retirement savings at all in 2022. That year, 30% of people over 65 were economically insecure, meaning they made less than $27,180 for a single person. And since younger boomers are less financially prepared for retirement than their older boomer siblings, the problem is bound to get worse.
As boomers continue to age out of the workforce, it’s going to put strain on the healthcare system, government programs, and the economy. That means more young people are going to be financially responsible for their parents, more government spending will be allocated to older folks, and economic growth could slow.
Nice attempt to redirect the conversation, but that didn’t work. Boomers as a rule voted for Reagan and his platform of hate. They voted for his made up “Welfare Queen”. They voted to get rid of pensions. They voted to get rid of unions. They did all these things because THEY didn’t think that THEY needed them anymore. An entire generation of narcissists ruined and continues to ruin the world.
You don’t have to believe me, but my boomer parents agree. To quote my Baby Boomer father, “Boomers destroyed the world”.
You really don’t understand how US elections work, do you?
In 1980, Reagan received only 50.8% of the popular vote yet won in 44 states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election
In 1984, he received 58.8% and won 49 states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidential_election
If you look at the demographics of both elections, voters under 45 (i.e. the boomers at the time, since Gen X was too young to vote in '80 and the oldest were just turning 19 in '84) were much less likely to vote for Reagan.
But go on about how boomers voted for him “as a rule” even though about 40-50% voted against him, you absolute tool.
I’m convinced ageism (and to a lesser extent religious discrimination) is the last true bastion of bigotry. You’re not allowed to be homophobic, transphobic, or racist on the internet anymore. But if you call someone evil for the crime of being of voting age when Reagan got elected? No problemo.
It’s frustrating seeing people my age or younger than me (36) who think they’re fighting for progress but are just perpetuating the same cycle of hatred and dehumanization that they think they’re opposing. They’re closer to the fascists they decry than they’ll ever admit by picking an arbitrary group of people and ascribing all their problems to it.
If I were like the people I’ve been arguing with here, I’d assume we’re all lost, but I know there are plenty of gen x, millennials, gen z, gen alpha and, yes, boomers, who are ACTUALLY opposed to this kind of crap so that the world will keep chugging along. I’ll just remain perpetually annoyed the whole time.
Mostly to me it’s just really funny. Like it’s also really sad, that’s true, but it’s also funny, because of almost how incredibly stupid and shortsighted it is. Like, what does everyone think is gonna happen in 50 or 60 years? All the zoomers and millenials perpetuating this shit are just gonna get blamed equally by all of gen alpha and beta for deflecting all the blame onto boomers, and having done nothing to prevent, or even turn back, say, climate change. Or microplastics, or maybe like, if they’re really on the level, all of gen alpha will really get on their parents case for being absentee parents that abandoned them to a horrible digital wasteland via ipad.
Like unless we gain empathy, and, beyond that, understanding, as to why each generation acted the way they did, unless we gain that insight and historical context, we’re just gonna keep treading water, as every new generation has to figure out everything by themselves, and can never learn from the mistakes of their progenitors. You don’t even need to like boomers, or boomer culture, or really even like, morally approve of why they did the things they did, you just need to understand how they justified it, and what they were thinking at the time. But people don’t wanna do that, instead it’s just easier to blame the olds.