I'm not making this thread to call Boomers selfish or blame anything on them or seeking to have Millennials painted as lazy or to dogpile on poor generation Z (they're in need of love and sympathy, they never had a chance). Blaming and fingerpointing and bitter fighting across generations is going to fuel farther divide that aggravates problems rather than leads to solutions (in my opinion).
Trust & Will article wrote:Millennials own 10 times less wealth compared to boomers. To help paint the picture, let’s explain what millennials don’t have.
To put it simplyTrust & Will article wrote:In a recent article, Bloomberg ran a comparison of wealth accumulated by the eldest millennials at the age 40, relative to what boomers had when they were aged 40. Here are some interesting facts:
A year of college costs millennials $24,600, while it only cost Boomers $10,300.
61 percent of millennials own a home, while boomers owned 66 percent at their age.
Today, the median cost of a home is $328,000. When boomers were 40, homes only cost $216,000.
The millennial middle age net worth is $91,000 compared to the boomers’ $113,000.
14% of 40-year-old millennials own stocks, compared to the 17% of boomers when they turned 40.
https://trustandwill.com/learn/generational-wealth-gapTrust & Will article wrote:Overall, Millennials are behind when benchmarked with the wealth boomers had accumulated around the same age. Building wealth for millennials has been stunted and delayed by a variety of economic events, meaning that they have much less time than boomers had to play catch-up. This is a real concern when thinking about the financial future, such as retirement.
Something neglected in the article (from what I saw) is the harsh reality of many boomers being unable to afford retirement and the skyrocketing expenses and resources we should expect to need to provide healthcare to them in their medically taxing final few decades of life
Relevant recent Glenn Beck remarks wrote:At one point, we had enough people working that could pay for the older people. We used to have a bunch of young people working and they all contributed to social security--I think it was 16 to 1. So 16 people were working and their portion of social security would go to the 1. It's now 2.5 to 1. How are you going to keep that up? Especially when people start losing their jobs. How are you going to do that? The most logical thing to do right now is to begin telling everyone when you hit 65 you've got to keep working....... Now this is going to be a real problem because, I paid social security my whole life, why don't I get it? Because it doesn't work. I fought against it. We could never get it changed. Okay.
Glenn wrote: We have social security. It's collapsing. No one's going to do anything about it..... Americans care. We have, I believe, stopped caring as much because the government has just, I think destroyed so much of our responsibility that we think 'well someone's going to care of it'. No. We're supposed to be taking care of our elderly. We're supposed to be taking care of the widow. We're supposed to be doing these things. So social security is collapsing, then you find that Millennials are not finding jobs, then the last piece, the perfect storm, more Americans can not afford their car payments today than during the peak of the financial crisis of 08. Now what's happening with that?
It's clear to me that this system is broken and the screws holding the wheels in place of this moving cart are losing their hold and the wheels will be falling off of this cart that is our world and our way of living.