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.
Yeah it’s easy to get mad at boomers. It’s also easy to forget that medicare and social security are under attack. The divisionthat matters isn’t between generations, it’s between the rich and the poor.
Boomers voted to gut the services they need now.
Really? Every single one of them?
Please realize you’re talking about individuals, not a collective consciousness.
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I repeat, “every single one of them?”
My coworker is in her 60s and as progressive as they come. She hates Trump, supports public healthcare and a social safety net. She also doesn’t make enough to save for retirement and plans to work until she dies. Is she reaping what she sowed?
You’re wishing harm on people because their generation “trended” a certain way. That is textbook dehumanization.
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Really? Because you literally said all boomers deserve the suffering that a portion of their age group has caused. Sounds more like you’re just an asshole who likes to justify their hatred by dehumanizing an entire age group (a group that cannot be opted into) so you can condemn them collectively for the actions of the worst members.
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“As a whole”? So all boomers got together and voted the same way? Or do you mean that they all deserve to suffer because of what the majority voted for?
Depending on which you meant, you’re either a moron who thinks invoking basic rhetorical concepts counts as an argument, or you’re just an evil person.
“Every single one of them?”
No that’s not how voting works. That’s never how it has worked. It DOESN’T REQUIRE all of them.
Almost no one is DIRECTLY blaming all the boomers, We’re just pissed at them because they’ve done LESS THAN NOTHING to help these problems. Boomers told us to bootstrap it.
Where’s our empathy?? Where the FUCK is theirs?! It is totally fine to dislike someone willfully ignoring problems even if they didn’t directly create them.
This is occurring specifically because of the choices they collectively made.
It’s hard to be sympathetic.
Treating an entire generation as a collective is incredibly ignorant. I know boomers who vote for socialist policies, so kindly take your reductionist attitude of human beings and trade it in for a conscience.
Since I agree with you, I’m interested in your opinion of where a potential cut-off point would be. Say X% of people between the ages 18 and 25 get into a car crash yearly, when is it okay to assume that because you are between 18 and 25 you shouldn’t be allowed to drive? Is it when X = 75, lower/higher or is there never a point for you and you’d still prefer to judge an individual?
Not that it has any relevance to the rest of this thread, but that’s exactly why some states require people over a certain age (say 75) to retest for their drivers license. So you assess the individual while looking at data on the whole group.
Same could be said about this broader topic. It’s unfair to lump an entire group together like this. It would be like saying that since most young people don’t vote in elections, we should just disregard that entire block of voters.
Nailed it.