Early Retirement Extreme Forums

George the original one wrote:> the Boomers are the wealthiest generation in human history

I think you give Boomers too much credit. _Some_ Boomers are the wealthiest, but _most_ Boomers have not saved enough for retirement, so how can they be wealthy?

Depends how you parse the statistics I guess. Households headed by people 75 or older have the highest median net worth of any age group.


Not too hard to see why. They weren't as profligate as their kids and their investments have also had a long time to mature.


People also seem to be losing wealth. For households headed by people 65 to 74, average median net worth dropped 17 percent; for those 55 to 64, it fell 32.6 percent, and for those 45 to 54, it dropped 39 percent. That is from a national survey compared with the time the survey was done before that. Not sure how often they do it.

This chart is pretty clear.

You can also see the relationship between old and young. The old people had more time to work, save, invest, etc. But many things are also skewed in their favor.


http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/ ... ell-being/

This guy pulls no punches.

A Generation of Sociopaths
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/03/ ... by-boomers

I can't be more inline with his premise. 100% true.

Baby Boomers are a Prophet generation, with their prime working years during a Third Turning, coming down from a high and heading toward a crisis. Institutions weaken and individualism strengthens, so naturally Prophets are (seen as) selfish individuals. The "negative reputation" of the Prophet generation is narcissistic, presumptuous, and ruthless, which I think many ERE type folks would agree are worse negative traits than those of the other generations.
http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/ ... types.html

Maybe Prophet generations, being the most selfish group and being in control when society is coming down from a high and heading to a crisis, are typically seen as the worst generation by subsequent generations.

Baby boomers have been the largest generation and have dictated policies since they time they were able to vote. Such policies have resulted in a substantial public investment being made in them when they were starting life out and once the majority of baby boomers had gotten into positions of power - politics, business owners, property owners, asset owners, senior management, they voted in neo liberal economics which has reversed most of the public investment they received so that younger people did not get those same opportunities and so boomers paid less tax. The net result is a substantial wealth disparity and opportunities disparity between boomers and younger generations.

Riggerjack wrote:In my opinion, boomers tend to have all the failings I associate with progressives...

Try again. http://www.gallup.com/poll/181325/baby- ... ative.aspx

Ego wrote:The Boomers will go down in history as the generation that had their cake, ate it too and tried to sneak another cake into the grave with them. We've got to give kids permission to take away their cake and not feel bad about doing it.

If only wealthy moderate liberal voters had given us this permission in 2016 instead of ignoring us, berating us, and clinging to the neoliberal status quo... That would have been nice. The suppression of Bernie Sanders and disenfranchisement of his voters perfectly encapsulates the reaction of Baby Boomers (and Gen X) to Millennials' struggle for our future. I hope my generation is starting to wake up to the idea that waiting for "permission" is not going to work.

Ego wrote:A Generation of Sociopaths
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/03/ ... by-boomers

Truly spot on.

Yup. Even back when I was a little Gen-X girl, my Silent Generation parents told me "Do not go into the woods (small pockets not yet dozed into suburban lawn) where the teenagers hang out." Of course, I am getting back some of my cut of the pie now, because I never even consider offering to go Dutch on anything with a man born prior to 1965.