Our descendants are likely to bash the rich old people in the future. It might be us, but it will more likely be the limited fraction of us that actually inherited the bulk of the assets from the boomers.
The real fear is that the pie will be smaller all around, there won't be much wealth even in total, the Golden Age is a distant memory. So much future value may be destroyed from the bad policies of today. And it will be too late for us to tell the Boomers "we told you so".
I think Boomers had well sufficient amount of time to disengage the engine of managerial decline by not prioritizing short-term benefits to long-term investments. Proof: They (being an electoral supermajority for 70 years) have managed to conveniently vote into power only the candidate which promised the most amount of stuff in the immediate. Having fomented themselves a belief system in which, assets can magically increment in value without taking a cost elsewhere (if they sit in AMF portfolio controlled by magician Larry Fink).
They literally turned tangible based currency into debt-credited index to fiscally imbue into their lavish lifestyle. "Oh! but we worked hard", they say! Which i guess means previous generations didn't do that really, just sat all day long eating chips. Also, they turned sex into a mean not an instrument of companionship, being the most divorced, most single mother, most STD afflicted (look at cruse numbers), symbol of their primitive ideas of sell-fulfillment.
He's not "my guy". I don't know what national television thing you're referencing. The one after that I'm familiar with, but nobody at the time claimed it was a matter of pedophilia, nor the entry after that. Epstein was not "the greatest pedo in US history" or even really a pedophile https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-real-target-of-pedophile-hysteria though he was in the upper-tiers of well-connected people.
Is this a recent thing? If I look at Google trends for "okay boomer", which I associate with peak "blame boomers for stuff", I see a peak in 2019 and then a gradual fall off since, which matches my impression of boomer discourse.
IME, yes, the trend Scott is describing is absolutely alive and well: "okay boomer" was one particular memetic iteration of it and that particular meme has faded, but the "Boomer Theory of Everything" has stayed as a consistent part of the online discourse, particularly in places like Reddit. (And I assume X/Bluesky)
Boomer-hating has a long pedigree (I haven't read Copeland's Generation X book, but my understanding is that it was based on hating boomers), but the current trend is probably the rise of affected extreme boomer-hating particularly among fringe right-wing types.
But neither those claims, nor the reality that a non-zero number of the fringe right hate on Boomers, change the reality that most of the Boomer-hating comes from the left.
"illegal immigrants still need to be housed, even in sanctuary cities"
Firstly population increases of this scale (presuming you mean the US) shouldn't cause this issue unless you have other more serious issues with your housing market preventing supply from meeting demand.
Secondly I have seen no evidence that undocumented people are an especially large contributing factor here, and I can think of reasons they would have less of an impact than the average person: like multiple generations living together, and thus using less housing. So if anything you should expect the richest immigrants to be the one's to have by far the largest impacts on housing prices, especially once you consider all the luxury properties foreign buyers leave empty most of the time.
You're letting the culture war distract you here, because regardless of our disagreements about immigration in other areas: There's just no plausible way that any action related to immigration is going to meaningfully address any of the larger underlying problems in the housing market here in the US.
The underlying issue is that we have artificially constrained the housing supply and built most of the country up as a suburban ponzi scheme that is totally financially unsustainable and requires suburbanites have their lifestyle subsidized by the inner city which is the only area that actually brings in any net property taxes: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-8-28-the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course
Don't you think a generational cohort which since 1971 hold hegemonic guardianship of the three branches of governance: justice, legislative and executive (and its preponderant <90%). Courtesy of their unmatched demographic weight in a electoral system, ensuring their interests consolidated by electing representatives by margin ( representing their sole interest ).
Not only this, but Boomers (with Civil Rights) ensured the further dissolution of democratic majoritarianism through elevating minorities synthetically. Voted for mass-immigration (because growth of estate and pensions) deferring no regard to future societal endangerment, despite isolating themselves from any of the consequences to their lifestyle (gated communities).
It takes only a custodial inquiry into what 60 years of uncontested Boomer leadership have done to the prosperous secure nations they inherited to conclude their rightful place in historical infamy (Moloch worshippers literally). I would much rather have inherited a nation not "enlightened", or rather subverted, by Boomer LSD's "John Lennon's imagine" morality civilizational enterprise.
Look at Eastern Asia where Boomers didn't act as self-indulgent
solipsistic renegades, but rather as custodians of a highly prized civilizational baggage to pass down; the survival of their nations is somehow today, not in question. Now, if the: "You would have done the same in our position", serve any logical purpose, it's overshadowed by what it protects of the fragile ego of Boomers, over sensitive to criticism.
The hatred is awfully deserved and history will remember what a generational parasitic force they truly were.
I see much more boomer hate on reddit in the last couple years. It is possibly related to our current shitty job market for young people, combined with the fear that they will never own a house.
And since I am in California, boomers get blamed for prop 13, even though it was created by and for the "greatest generation".
You can't look up a literal meme phrase to gauge relevance. Memes go in and out of style, we all know this. IMO the sentiment has only increased since cost of living has gotten more expensive.
I think it's a fair piece of evidence for this position being *not novel* - I too was surprised to see an article in late 2025 begin with "Hating Boomers is the new cool thing."
The problem is that wage income is becoming an ever smaller proportion of national wealth, and capital investment an ever greater share. It's gotten harder and harder to earn your way up into social mobility. This isn't a new trend, it's just coming home to roost this generation.
Do you think Boomers, over sensitive zealots they are, would acquiesce to logic as you made clear in your argument. Boomers have made an industrial complex of confirming their denial of reality. They live in secluded areas, snapshot suburbs of what they grew up in, while afflicting the rest of us with infinity mass-migration, the consequences of which are of civilizational proportions. As long as their pensions, housing, social security and services keep increasing (literally communism) they are gleefully willing to sacrifice their daughters and sons to unlock.
The image of Moloch comes to mind when identifying their divine providence, and they will be talked about in history in the same manner the Ammenites, or the Hittites are treated currently.
I remember differently. A conversation I had with my dad in the 90s:
Him: Get a law degree since you like debating
Me: But there are so many lawyers already!
Him: But there are always only a few that are REALLY good
He also encouraged me to acquire computer literacy and paid for tech classes in early 2000s, and we both understood that it's a lifelong learning in any profession.
Everyone around me seemed to understand that college is just a launching pad, but you still need to be able to jump higher than others to get ahead, like in any profession.
"MAGA Boomer: At your age in 1970 | paid off college & bought a house with hard work.
Millennials: In 1970 college was 5% of median salary. Now it's 44%. A median home was $24K. Now it's $417K. The top marginal tax rate was 70%. Now it's 37%.
Sure maybe you did work hard-but then you closed the door behind you."
The cost of a TV and clothing went down, but other expenses had went up.
My biggest frustration with the "OK, Boomer" meme is that the name USS Oklahoma was used for an attack sub rather than a ballistic missile sub at approximately the peak of the meme's popularity, which seems like a missed opportunity.
Ken Wilber wrote _Boomeritis_, a book on "boomer disease" (combined with his specualtive spiritual theories) back in 2002 already.
Quoting Wikipedia: Wilber characterizes this as the deadly combination of a modern egalitarian worldview with a deep unquestioned narcissism commonly held by Baby Boomers and their children.
It's... simplistic, to say this is about hate. It's a shifting equilibrium, and while the greatest/boomers built most of what we would call the modern world, it is not difficult to recognize that they're operating on shorter time frames than most of the rest of us have to, and this drives some of their politics as a bloc.
I see this as the same argument against (overwhelmingly the low-skilled segment of) immigration: WEIRD societies tend to be cooperative and trusting and think in longer time frames. This is a fragile equilibrium and is threatened by a demographic shift towards those who are more opportunistic and think in short time frames. Look at trust studies across countries. Yes, there's significant impact based on the government and support structures in place, but there's population-level effects too. Age is just a very obvious indicator of the same kinds of prioritization.
I don't think this actually touches anything cruxy.
That advancing age pushes timelines shorter is orthogonal to whether you have kids.
Intergenerational research is pretty consistent that cohorts still do pursue self-interest, and when one's interest ends in 5 years, the rest just follows.
There's a recent British survey showing their older generation cares more about their children when they assess the children's financial situation to be a negative one ("Family Matters", Cambridge 2025), but this showed Boomers-with-struggling-kids dont become less pro-elderly, they just want more spending in general. Budget constraints aren't psychologically salient, here.
You got anything to contest with? Not thrilled about incipient generational warfare, happy to be wrong.
Well, I put this into google and Gemini told me I was right, but didn't give a single link backing that up, so I suspect it's hallucinating and you are correct. Still, I am a bit skeptical about this because in terms of spending, I don't actually see much of a constituancy among younger voters for slashing entitlement spending for older Americans.
Well a lot of people younger than boomers are in favor of changing the way social security is set up so that the wealthiest elderly people aren't able to draw as much as they can now in payments. Which would be making the SS system operate as progressive taxation, rather than everybody getting similar amounts out to what they paid in. Since the lack of investment of the funds means money paid in the past can't cover current expenses.
"While the public opposes (67%) only paying seniors in financial need, Americans are open to reducing the benefits of higher earners (61%) and cutting benefits that exceed what workers and their employers paid into the system (59%). Americans would also accept slowing the pace at which benefits increase each year (58%) "
Fertility rates collapsed circa 1970 in most developed countries. This means a net aging population, which obviously means a larger shift of resources to the old relative to the young, proportionally speaking. This can become a very vicious feedback loop, as most famously observed in Korea, where a large and fairly poor elderly bloc just vote for their immediate needs and younger people are crushed. Japan, Italy, Canada, and other countries are in varying stages of progress in this trap. The details of how it plays out are all particular to each society, but the effect is the same.
These societies are wealthier, and thus have more resources to share, so we certainly aren't talking about famine or anything here. However, the fact is people have stopped reproducing at scale, and that has huge consequences. Bailouts via protectionist policies and/or immigration and its trade offs fill in the gaps to save the elderly from disasters they themselves set in motion 50 years ago. Note that these issues are only going to get much worse as younger generations age, barring massive structural reforms. I agree with the piece when it argues that Millennials and Gen Z are likely to be much worse tyrants. I was born in 1991 FWIW.
> it is not difficult to recognize that they're operating on shorter time frames than most of the rest of us have to,
For me it is difficult to recognize, that greatest and boomers operate on a shorter timeframe than others. Is this because they are old and will die sooner? Or are you saying that GenZ thinks farther into the future than previous generations?
I'd like to see some evidence that immigrants are more opportunistic and think in shorter time frames. Americans are pretty famously short term thinkers (esp. when it comes to business). Incentives probably matter much more.
Also, the greater the economic stress, the shorter the time frame one will think. We are all under a lot of stress right now.
I didn't say "all immigrants" I said overwhelmingly the segment of low-skilled immigrants. Long term prioritization correlates hard with education and skill acquisition (obviously).
So isn't this just saying that immigrants plan for the future exactly as much as you'd expect for anyone at their income level? Though I'd expect that once you control for income immigrants would actually end up looking better than native born citizens: Since other metrics like addictions, family connection and crime rate would all lead one to expect the immigrants to come out looking better here.
There's genetic, cultural, and environmental factors all at play here.
And there's a stable attractor for short term thinking and one for long term thinking that becomes unstable as the proportion of short term thinkers rises in the population.
And don't put words in my mouth. My original point wasn't about "all immigrants" - just low skilled ones. There's correlation with low income, certainly, but causality flows both ways. This is why it's a *stable* attractor.
>My original point wasn't about "all immigrants" - just low skilled ones
That's what I responding to. That this result seems to just suggest low skill immigrants have in the ballpark of the same time discounting as you'd expect for similarly skilled native citizens.
Though like I said I strongly suspect that immigrants would actually come out looking somewhat better than native born citizens who have the same level of education and wealth.
For instance the average household savings rate in Sri Lanka is %24.3 (it varies by year and was %33 in 2017) so I would bet money that the average immigrant from Sri Lanka not only plans for the future better than comparably rich Americans, but also plans for the future better than either the average or the median American. Since Americans have a lot of debt and a savings rate of only %3-5
If a person was good at planning for the future, they'd tend to be a higher-skilled and educated person, all else equal, wouldn't you agree?
Countries have very little reason to want to admit immigrants equally distributed across all SES of the source country. I want to select for the best long-term thinkers to maintain the current WEIRD environment, and those aren't evenly distributed.
And one outlier nation does not invalidate a trend? Sri Lanka is a significant outlier within South Asia on nearly all human development indicators, likely due to the amount of colonial investment of education infrastructure and its subsequent impact on post-independence policy.
Can we have a source on the claim that immigrants are more likely to be "opportunistic and think in short time frames"? That's a pretty controversial thing to just assert as true.
I didn't say "all immigrants" I said overwhelmingly the segment of low-skilled immigrants. Long term prioritization correlates hard with education and skill acquisition (obviously).
People break brexit down along age lines, but it's a similar story if you do english/scottish lines, urban/rural lines etc etc etc.
I mean age _is_ salient, but mostly because the people who voted for it have actually died off such that more people are alive who would want to rejoin, but similar arguments to Scott's about white people + old people both being against taxes apply in this case too.
It wasn't mentioned because Scott seems genuinely confused about the origin of alot of Boomer hate, which is explicitly tied to European welfare systems and how they redistribute money away from young middle class earners into the pockets of the wealthiest generation, i.e. Boomers by means of pension transfers.
If Scott had broadened his research horizon a bit, he would see that the average pension in France is now higher than the average salary - which is obviously an unjustifiable disaster, especially when old people are way less likely to rent at high prices or experience childcare expenses.
The fact that "Nicolas, 30 ans", wasn't even mentioned in this entire essay speaks to the extremely limited amount of research he made for this text and how it mainly stems from a contrarian impulse, not a quest for truth.
"If Scott had broadened his research horizon a bit, he would see that the average pension in France is now higher than the average salary - which is obviously an unjustifiable disaster, especially when old people are way less likely to rent at high prices or experience childcare expenses"
It isn’t true: the average pension is quite a lot lower than the average salary. What may be true is that the standard of living of pensioners — pensions plus rents and other capital income, boosted the absence of dependent children — can end up a bit higher than the average standard of living of working-age people.
That being said, I agree that pensions in France are too high and that this is a problem, but I disagree that boomers are particularly at fault. Most French people, whatever their age, seem to think that poverty among the old is a big problem and that pensions — if anything — are too low. They may be wrong; I think they are wrong. But this subject doesn’t look like age-war stuff to me. Frankly, if the general perception of older people’s material situation were to change, I wouldn’t be that surprised if boomers revealed themselves to be relatively selfless.
Probably most of this is true, but there is one point I would take issue with, concerning the idea of "sitting on assets not being used for market labor." This kind of does seem like an issue, or something? And I agree one should not expropriate too many assets from boomers in order to impoverish them, or anything, but if there is a group of people with a large number of assets not being employed productively, there _is_ an issue there, right? (I think this belief is downstream of a lot of leftist anxiety about the superwealthy, though of course in general they are employing those assets productively). More of an issue if those with fewer assets are being taxed in order to provide "what is owed" in some abstract sense to those who are already not employing assets productively.
Were I old, I think it totally would be reasonable to say "You can live in a 5-bedroom house, but since you're just a married couple these days, probably it's better if you get by with a 3-bedroom, and probably it doesn't need to be so central to the city, unless you can afford it. We are going to raise taxes higher." And to means-test social security payments to some extent (phased in, over time)? Or is that going too far in my demagoguery?
I agree there's an argument for forced house downsizing. But I also think we're the types of people who the Right calls rootless cosmopolitans, and that people with more attachments might not be so amenable.
My grandparents-in-law built significant parts of their house with their own hands, and lived in it for ~50 years. They planted saplings in the garden and lived to see them become trees. They know the neighbors and probably knew the neighbors' parents before them. Their daughter, my mother-in-law, lives a few blocks away. When I last visited, they could show me their son's old bedroom, their daughter's old bedroom, and the bedroom where their granddaughter (my wife) used to stay with them. My grandfather-in-law is cognitively about 70% there, to the point where (until recently) he could live on his own, but only through having a very predictable routine, knowing where everything was, and being in an incredibly friendly and familiar environment. Their area has now skyrocketed in cost. I can see your side of the argument - but I also can't blame them for being against some hypothetical policy that would force them to move to a strange apartment in the nearest affordable town 50 miles away so that some striver DINK couple could turn their spare bedroom into a gym.
Sure, I mean it wouldn't be some sort of forced movement, it'd be more like higher property taxes. If you can afford it then that's fine, don't think we should do some centralized planning boomer hatred. And it should hit everyone equally. It's just about measuring productive use of houses. But it would end up falling hardest on boomers (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective).
But this is maybe more reasonable as a policy idea than "lynch the boomers" which is perhaps the bailey you're arguing against. I don't want to be the motte, just this is (I think?) an actually good policy.
Yeah, I understand it's just higher property taxes, I'm saying there's no way my retired and slightly-demented grandfather-in-law could afford normal property taxes on his house he bought in 1970-something in a desirable California college town. He's been coasting off whichever California proposition it was that says old people's property taxes don't go up while they own the home.
(although age has taken his toll and he now lives in a nursing home, so this is more of a hypothetical example drawing inspiration from a real situation)
I don't mean to sound heartless, but like, every policy has bad outcomes and good outcomes. Of course with housing policy the core issue is that bad outcomes for those already there are salient, and for those not already there they are much less so. I mean my grandparents have had similar issues, I agree there would be pain. It's just about finding the right balance on the margin. But individual stories shouldn't necessarily guide policy-making (I mean "plural of anecdote" etc etc, but you see what I mean?). I am sorry about your granddad in law though, dementia sucks.
Yeah, I agree with this, and it still might be good on net, I just can't bring myself to hate Boomers for opposing it.
I still think that instead of facing these tough tradeoffs, we should just build more housing, and that every person who we force to make these tradeoffs is in some sense a policy failure, even if we take the right side of them.
I feel nervous because I'm neutralish on something where there's basically a unanimous consensus on smart people, but to me it does seem to make sense that rising house values shouldn't be able to make your current home unaffordable - both because as someone in a state where house values have pentupled in a generation this seems like a recipe for constant forced turmoil, and because it gives NIMBYs one more reason to oppose density (if someone upzones your area, that increases the value of your land, and therefore your property taxes, and might force you to leave your house - therefore, you should fight upzoning unless you want to be forced out).
Of course, "build more" is the natural synthesis of 90% of policy arguments! Would much rather that than pass this.
Edit: To respond to your final paragraph: Yeah sure, "if one does not feel a twinge of pain about property taxes one has no heart, if one does not support them nonetheless one has no brain" or something. I mean I support it, but I think you're considering the second order effect instead of the first, which is the massive incentive for government to build (/permit) more. And building more will end up being good, but there will be pain in the meantime, I mean many good policies do end up causing pain. It is a sad reality. But anyway, we agree on the correct solution which is YIMBYism I think. I don't hate Boomers (I meme about it occasionally, perhaps that is to be avoided in the developing climate), but was just posing the biggest issue I saw which is real estate.
A halfway house solution to this is to increase property taxes but make them payable on death/sale. It has less of an effect of actually forcing people out, so the allocation effect isn't as strong, but it would encourage people to move at the margin. e.g. those who want to free up equity, without penalising the "asset rich, cash poor." It's just about the only wealth tax that works, and those gains are largely CGT exempt.
This is usually discussed in a UK context as we don't have percentage property taxes, and this is a potential way of introducing them, given in some places nominal values have 10x'd.
Note that if we have to build more housing, it's because we have too many people. Or, sure, not enough houses. But they're the same thing, arithmetically.
So, someone notices that we have a society that (a) is overpopulated and (b) directs an increasingly large share of its material resources to keep elderly people alive longer. And they're supposed to ignore that because someday they too can take advantage of living a few more decrepit years at overwhelming expense?
Old people are also often stubborn. I’d personally love additional incentives for my parents or I laws to downsize and move closer to me, where it would be easier to care for them later, and where they could provide childcare and connect with us now.
This is indeed I think the main rational complaint with Boomers. They are just rotting away in their big ass houses by themselves and doomscrolling. This is both a bad allocation of houses but ALSO a bad allocation of old people!
>but to me it does seem to make sense that rising house values shouldn't be able to make your current home unaffordable.
The reason why property taxes should rise with the value of the house is that property taxes pay for the amenities that the government provides for people that live in the house (infrastructure, roads, emergency services, schools etc.). All of these get more expensive with inflation, which is what drives the increase in value of the house. When property taxes don't rise, then non-homeowners are suddenly subsidizing homeowners which seems like obviously terrible policy.
The property tax debate would be less heated if seizure of property was not the preferred enforcement mechanism.
I insist that all citizens should pay their fair share in property taxes. I also insist that seizure of property is inhumane and it (rightfully) erodes public trust in the government. We have plenty of more humane enforcement mechanisms we could use, like brief imprisonment, public shaming, seizure of other assets, etc. As a worst case scenario, you could seize the property after the owner's death. But snatching the deed from a living elder is so heartless that this act provides empowers extremists who oppose property taxes on principle.
I marvel that local governments do not simply garnish people's bank accounts when they have the money but refuse to pay. The IRS has no qualms about doing that, right? Is there an issue here wherein only the Feds have the clout to face the ire of the banking industry?
Someday your grandfather in law is going to die, and that house will go on the market. I'm fine with him living there until that happens--I don't think that this situation is some sort of social problem at scale. The issue is starter homes--there aren't enough of them. Would your GFiL oppose someone building townhouses down the street? *That's* the real problem.
Where, exactly, are we supposed to build more housing in a state where boomers keep their 1970s era tax basis and pass it on to their children and childrens's children in perpetuity?
But can we build more housing? When rates skyrocketed a lot of new home builds stopped because:
1) Building homes became more expensive
2) People wouldn't be able to afford new homes at new prices
New builds are expensive these days with all the codes they need to comply with (but we also don't want to go back to what we had 100 years ago, I've seen my old home's frame and was not impressed). And also the land in desirable places is expensive.
There are probably some policies that could help build more housing like removing the "minimum home size" requirement or allowing to convert SFHs into duplexes like CA did. But we can't really build more unless we can build it really cheap and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, isn't it?
Being old is extremely terrible in and of itself. Throw all the pain imaginable from any policy proposal onto young hip attractive 25 year olds, and they are still in the superior position.
And in this case, it's particularly absurd to force misery onto the elderly, because we're less than a decade from a massive die-off that is going to flood the market with housing. For god's sake, I think you can wait 5 years while the glut of 40s babies age out of these places on their own, let 'em have the best ending they can. These young people are so disgustingly greedy, they have the most precious commodity in life and they grumble that old folks who are going to literally cease to exist in a few years are holding onto houses?
"we're less than a decade from a massive die-off that is going to flood the market with housing."
People have been fantasizing about this a long time to no effect; meanwhile, the country borrows trillions of dollars a year *solely* to employ an army of expensive professionals to keep old people alive as long as possible. Seems ... very stupid? How would you describe it.
We shouldn't be indifferent between now and 5 years from now. If fertility is reduced because young people can't afford to marry & settle down somewhere with space for kids (something the @MoreBirths account seems quite confident of), then waiting that time means missing a highly valuable window for having children.
THAT TOO.. the property taxes in FFX are outrageous. well I am going to play powerball... see ya. Scott you are onto to something. :) Happy New Year too.
I've never understood this take. If the value of the house has gone up, so has your net worth, making it effectively an easy-to-administer unrealized capital gains tax.
Toy example: say I bought a house for $100k in 1990, now it's appraised at $1m. Property tax is 1%/yr. It sucks I have to pay $10k/yr, but I also have $1m worth of assets that I can borrow against (and, realistically, knowing how conservative appraisals are it's probably more like $1.5m market rate, at least where I'm from).
If we don't want to force people to understand personal finance enough to do this kind of financial engineering, that's fine: give the homeowner the option to check a box on their taxes to pay the bill directly out of home equity, which the government could then sell to institutional investors on a secondary market.
Intuitively, it feels odd to me that we have to go far out of our way to protect people with rapidly appreciating assets (good) from the taxes thereon (bad, but small in comparison)
The thing about capital gains taxes is that they're usually assessed on completed transactions. I.e. you know what actual value changed hands and so you can assess the tax on that.
"Unrealized capital gains" taxes don't have that.
"We think your house is worth eleventy squillion and so you owe us more than you can pay" is going to go wrong.
Valuation on illiquid assets is really hard, and government is really quite bad at this stuff. Especially when they have incentive to do it badly.
Private enterprise has more incentive to do it right, since it's their money. Even then they get it wrong.
Mortgages are based on the money that changed hands. About the only analogous thing would be home equity loans. And you might notice that lenders tend to leave lots of elbow room on the amount they'll lend you versus the supposed value.
The only thing is that it is not hard, even for the government, which has no problem at all assessing and collecting property taxes from hundreds of millions of people in the U.S.
I don't know if I can formalize an argument, but it seems like one thing to have property taxes to fund government and a very different thing to have property taxes to force people out of their houses.
While I'm on the subject, what do people make of the argument that suburbs are intrinsically unsustainable because they need a lot of infrastructure but can't raise enough tax money to support it?
I think it depends on the suburb. My reading of Radley Balko's reporting on Ferguson Missouri was that the town no longer had the fiscal capacity to support an independent municipal government, and should probably merge with St. Louis. The suburbs of Atlanta, on the other hand, are very happy to keep their tax dollars to themselves.
There's an option, in Texas at least, for old folks to defer all property tax payments as long as they live in the same spot, with the bill coming due after they move out or die. Seems like that could patch the problem - folks who need the stability can get it, with no cash cost up front, but it's not a tempting loophole for speculative investors.
There's a simple policy fix for the "poor gramps can't afford the Georgian land value tax / property tax hike" -- make it possible to defer until death, when gramps' hiers can either (a) pay the back taxes and keep the property or (b) sell the property and use the proceeds to pay the back taxes.
Unless the higher property taxes are aimed only at the 65 and older crowd, I'm thinking the higher property taxes will hurt younger generations more -- the people who are saddled with student debt, multiple care payments, are raising kids, paying for childcare, and trying to save for retirement.... as well as who need larger homes for growing families.
I don't know how many old people are hanging onto huge homes, but it's a very common thing that older people who are now on fixed incomes and do not have opportunities to increase their income anymore are squeezed out of their homes by rising property taxes, rising healthcare costs, and inflation on the same fixed incomes. Not to mention old people just tend to downsize over time because they want less to maintain and one-story living for safety.
The other place old people have their assets is through their 401(k)s and IRAs invested in the market. Arguably those assets are productive because they are providing capital for public companies to grow and hire more people.
I genuinely don't want you to take this personally. When you or someone over on Slow Boring starts speculating about how I, a young boomer, should be forced out of my nice house that I bought with my own money, it truly makes me want to get a gun and shoot you. Scott, I'm not going to do that, so please don't ban me. I'm explaining how murderously angry it makes me feel. So every other age group gets to have whatever goods and services are available at a market rate, but old people have to move to shitty apartments because we're worth so much less than young people?
I will take every legal means at my disposal to prevent you from doing this. I will block you in the courts, I will vote for evil totalitarian bastards if they support my property rights, I will seriously do anything to keep you from patting me on the head and telling me to move on because I suddenly don't have a right to my own house, because some younger person suddenly wants it.
Downthread, you say essentially, "Sure it's sad, but all policies have good and bad consequences!" Why don't have just take 70% to 80% of your current earnings and give that money to GiveWell? Sure, it will be sad that you have less stuff, that you don't have a right to your property, but all policies have good and bad consequences.
Sure, yeah, sorry I’m not advocating for violently forcing anything. If I were I think you should oppose that violently, that would be a crazy violation of property rights and you should in such a case defend your property, with violence if necessary. But that is not what I am advocating for.
I am advocating for levying property taxes on everyone alike. In the hopes that this causes more older people to realize that it is better for them (and also society as a whole) to downsize. If they are unable to afford it then they will have to move, of course if they can afford it then they can stay — they are playing by the same rules as everyone else.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I pay tons of property tax. Do you know a lot of old people who don't pay property tax? In California I guess people who have owned their houses for 50 years pay extremely low property taxes, but in most places, the local government assesses the worth of your house, sends you a tax bill, and you pay it.
If you're not in california then much of the property tax criticism doesn't really apply to you. This seems like there's mostly just a misunderstanding, certainly not entirely on your part. There are a number of misguided anti-boomers who don't really understand property taxes, but outside of those types I think most people either 1. focus their ire on California Prop 13, or 2. want to move towards taxing land values instead of property to encourage development. Neither of those is unfairly targeting boomers or forcing them to leave their homes discriminatorally.
I’m somewhat curious as to how you think a hypothetical “Boomers vs everyone younger” gun battle would look like, because the post seems to imply that the Boomers can still take on everyone else with ease :-)
If higher property taxes mean that a significant number of people can't afford their houses, it's forced removement even if it's slower and smoother than the police showing up at your door.
I don’t mean to dismiss your view, I think there’s a point to incentivizing increased value in society, but I don’t think your view achieves that. For one, I don’t think value of unimproved land taxes would amount to anything worth the cost it would take to extract that value in the first place. Ie, having a government to tax value of unimproved land is a much worse cost than the benefit received from the taxes. I think another issue with property taxes is that it disincentivizes productive activities such as discovery and surveillance of land in the first place. We should strive to achieve greater outcomes on net all else being equal and in order to do that, decreasing property taxes appears to have better long term consequences than increasing them. For example, old people (specifically those with assets that they are just “sitting on”) do not just have all of their net worth hiding as cash under their mattresses. Most people have their retirement money invested into the market, benefiting others to be able to grow. This is the view on the pure efficiency outlook disregarding any moral factors.
Accounting for moral factors would seem to overwhelmingly oppose property taxes even more so. Suppose for example that you have worked for 20 years and acquired some nice land with a bunch of nice houses on it (regardless of what you plan on doing with any of it). Then imagine that someone came up to you and said that they want to make it easier for them to buy a nice house for themselves, so they say you are obligated to give them some of your net worth. Does that seem true? Suppose they threaten you with coercion to get you to give over the money, or kidnap you if you refuse. Are they justified in doing so? It appears quite obvious to me that they aren’t. Why should we view the governments behavior with property taxes any differently?
Kind of hard to tell if you’re responding to me or not because of substack comment nesting. But FWIW, I am advocating for property taxes, not unimproved land taxes.
That’s fair there are quite a lot of threads and replies to you, but yes I was attempting to reply to you. Apologies if I mistakenly replied to someone else. I take unimproved land taxes to be the most charitable interpretation of supporting property taxes, but my critiques don’t rely on that. I just wanted to address what I believe to be the most charitable form of property taxes, as well as what I believe to be more obviously horrendous of you see the rest of my reply.
Yeah I mean to be honest the framing of taxes where it’s someone coming along and stealing something from you just doesn’t really move me. Like, we have chosen as a society to have taxes for many reasons, some pigouvian (carbon tax), some funding-related (income tax), some because of our moral values (alcohol tax) etc.
I think property taxes clearly have a good allocative profile, and that’s really the question. It’s not a moral question about “is this thing ‘objectively wrong’ to levy taxes on.” There is no such thing. There are only better and worse taxes due to their downstream effects. I think the downstream effects of property taxes are good, but that’s basically an empirical question.
I don’t know if your edit makes much sense, and just sounds like the kind of self-reinforcing selfish logic, one would use. Any societal-level intervention will inconvenience some people, for every grandpa holding on to the 5-bedroom house he bought for a twig of sticks, there are dozens or hundreds of young families looking for a home closer to their place of work or in a nice community with a good school.
I don’t know of any argument that isn’t just sparsely clothed selfishness with a hint of confirmation bias. And selfishness is normal, of course, but understanding what it is allows a democracy make better decisions
"For every grandpa holding on to the 5-bedroom house he bought for a twig of sticks, there are dozens or hundreds of young families looking for a home closer to their place of work or in a nice community with a good school. "
Isn't this false? When I look at the demographic pyramid, I think there are more grandpas than young families. Although I'm not sure what it changes if it's true.
100% upzoning and building more is the most effective policy answer. We agree on most.
Partly, the idea of one person taking up a 5-bedroom house in a desirable area annoys my sensibilities. But I'm a fan of individual rights and market forces so property taxes hit a nice middle.
There is still a case to be made that liquidity in the housing market is important. I don't think the tradeoffs are always a policy failure. One may have to choose between living next to the awesome natural beach, or living next to their work; naturally, both are desirable and have limited land stock.
There could be an inverse relationship between upzoning and higher property taxes like you said. In my ideal world, we'd have a Land Value Tax as a replacement for any property tax and fix these issues without the same trade-offs. Zoning-agnostic assessments would be difficult but possible, I believe.
A single young person making unproductive use of the same amount of space would be just as much of a problem, but that situation doesn't come up nearly as often.
As an almost elderly person, I must say the demographic pyramid is absolutely a problem, and I don't want my kids to starve after I'm gone, but it's complicated. I don't mind retiring a few years later, provided the jobs are there for someone like me. You can reduce my benefits if you can also bring prices down, esp. healthcare. Or you can tax the wealthy (since I'm not wealthy, I can support that). Or some combination of those.
Does your NIMBY argument say what you claim? I read this exactly opposite. When asked, "can we build apartments near transit centers?" (I.e. away from suburbia where rich Boomers can afford to live) they said yes. When asked, "can we build multi-family units in the suburbs, or make them more crowded with smaller yards?" the Boomers said no. This is exactly what we'd expect to see if they're out of touch, hand waving to the youth to go fix their problems themselves somewhere else, not my fault not my problem.
It's what you would expect humans to say, locked as they are within their own point of view. The answer is to form a large enough political coalition and outvote them.
Back-of-the-napkin math with googled stats from various sources suggests there’s 25 million boomer homeowner households and 15 million renter families with kids. I can’t help but imagine the social good of somehow freeing up 3/5th of boomer homes and letting families live there at the same cost as boomers.
But maybe property tax is theft or something. If granps can somehow take his house somewhere else, I’d be fine, but I don’t think one should have a right to land. One does not “earn” land, and unlike other wealth, land is not really created*
*sure, you can reclaim land from ocean, blah blah. Not a good point really
One may not earn land, but "everyone has an equal claim to land" also ends up being isomorphic to "other people had a bunch of kids in a way that increased the opportunity cost of the land you were quietly occupying, and now that's your problem rather than theirs or their parents' despite you having nothing to do with it."
Instead of "other people had a bunch of kids," why not think of it as "other humans were born" just the same way you and I were born. A democracy should concern itself with the well-being of its people. Those children are its people. Humanity will grow. I don't see that as a problem.
In fact, the second sentence actually reads quite selfish and narcissistic to me.
yes, exactly this! this entire argument is downstream of the population being too large.
There are various ways to approach that problem: historically, the solution was to have a war where a lot of young people died, or to have some plagues that killed indiscriminately. But when combined with a population that's also anomalously *old*, surely other, better solutions present themselves, like "get out of Nature's way."
Many of the benefits that the Boomer generation enjoy are only made possible *by growth caused by a bunch of births.* Pensions, Social Security, the fact that your house is now in a great place to live, the hospitals that have the capacity to care for a larger aging population, etc. are largely due to that same growth.
For an example, my grandfather lives off of a pension that no longer pays out new benefits (because, it turns out, it was based on the premise of continuing/accelerating growth). It didn't matter when he bought his house because he was young, but the closest hospital is now only 15 minutes from his place instead of an hour away. He has assets that appreciated at a pretty consistent 10% for the last 50 years.
That's what makes this so tough: my grandfather is a huge beneficiary of population growth, while also not being directly responsible for it. So it is both unfair to make him pay for that growth, but also (seemingly) unfair to allow him to continue being a major beneficiary of that growth.
It doesn't seem like you are arguing for a single land tax. It seems like you're arguing that the retired couple should pay higher taxes than a different resident would because they are failing to fully use their house. You can favor that sort of tax policy, but it seems strange to claim that you can't think of any legitimate arguments on the other side.
It already costs the couple something to live there, insofar as they are paying to own and maintain a more expensive house when they could downsize, pay lower taxes, and pocket the price difference. It seems perfectly reasonable to argue against an additional "underutilization" tax on grounds of basic justice.
"It seems like you're arguing that the retired couple should pay higher taxes than a different resident would because they are failing to fully use their house."
I am not making that argument
In a perfect world, given scarce resources, we would have perfect resource allocation and perfect resource utilization. The government can't enforce that but we can incentivize it. Let's not pretend like this is the first instance of using taxes as a market force.
"It already costs the couple something to live there, insofar as they are paying to own and maintain a more expensive house when they could downsize, pay lower taxes, and pocket the price difference."
unless the property taxes and/or land taxes are already so low... which is what I'm arguing against. I misunderstand where the miscommunication is happening here.
And what is selfishness, if not individual rights?
Due to a population boom following an enormous war there were a lot of babies born. And now there’s too many old people. There are competing issues. What you are suggesting to me is to give some committee of persons the power to decide who gets screwed. It doesn’t matter what course of action you come up with it will inevitably be a rationalization of who you’re screwing and why it’s a good idea.
Most people don't agree that Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction is the essence of politics. I do though. (And I DO advocate for laissez-faire or anarchism, and recognize everything else as minor distinctions in shades of tyranny.)
Which is exactly how governments work, anyway. The problem is there is absolutely zero future for any sociaty that has low fertility, screws over its young, and simply shores things up for the oldest generation. That can only happen once. What comes next? We need to figure that out, and the sooner the better.
Well there’s committees that get voted in and out and then there’s other kinds of committees. I realize that might be a distinction without a difference sometimes; the staus quo is stubborn when a sufficient number of people are fat and happy.
What comes next? I don’t know- but a difficult period of “adjustment” is my guess. The tide comes in and goes out again.
A more enlightened view of dying wouldn’t hurt but it’s always someone else who should get out of the way.
I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE..and downsize.. and give whatever I have left to my grown children or anyone else.. :) who shows up.... and move where it is warm.. I am over 70 now and all I want is a warm place to read.. quietly... and some sunshine.. and read my Bible.. in peace. :)
> They know the neighbors and probably knew the neighbors' parents before them. Their daughter, my mother-in-law, lives a few blocks away.
Imo this is a better argument for allowing a mix of home sizes in the same area. If they could move to a smaller home just down the street, then that would resolve this downside.
Not to say that the other reasons aren't valid, but not everyone has built their home and has this level of attachment. My grandparents really should downsize and move to a 2 bedroom place (since they live with an equally old family friend), but there's no way to do that while staying in their familiar neighborhood with their friends.
I agree this is a real issue, how neighborhoods tend to be more or less the same size of houses and single-family home owners resist multi-unit dwellings near them. There are exceptions, but there's a lot of this. I gather not as much so in Europe where all dwellings are smaller and cities and towns denser, but they have their own housing problems.
> My grandparents-in-law built significant parts of their house with their own hands, and lived in it for ~50 years.
I am surrounded by century+ old buildings that would be illegal to rebuild and prohibitively expensive to even remediate. Yet they're all occupied. Qui bono? With every year that passes, "I literally built this with my own two hands" gets less respect from me and more poorly-supressed rage.
This is why I'm a big believer in family compounds. One main house (4 bedrooms), and three small apartments (1 bedroom 1 bathroom) on the same plot of land.
Young kids and their family live in the mian house, then when they're single adults they stay in a small apartment. Then the other three are used for grandparents or young adults.
Providing people have 2 kids each, that should be enough houses for everyone.
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But a simpler and actually practical solution. Abolish all taxes on the sale of homes, so if people like your grandfather-in-law realise they can't maintain a big property and want to downsize, or need to move into a care home, they're not disincentivised from doing so.
Multi-generational living can be a cost-effective hack, but US culture isn’t wired for it. If you marry into a family like this, many of the problems that lead to divorces between spouses will be present between you and your various in-laws, plus the many problems of HOA living. The market is instead selecting for greater and greater atomization over collectivization.
The last paragraph is just "such a nice house you have, wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to it?"
I can totally see "We have to raise taxes if you have voted to stymie development" happening. But FDR had very specific political reasons for not means-testing social security. The moment you do this you are signing its death warrant
Yeah maybe, I really mean we should just raise property taxes so that staying in a house is not as incentivized (but I live in the UK, where we have this crazy law called stamp duty, which actually _punishes_ you for trading down, so the situation is much worse here).
I do think not means-testing can function as a useful schelling point, i don't know the history of why FDR didn't means test social security, but that seems like the best argument to me, so perhaps you are right. Optimally though, we could find a better Schelling point, (e.g. richest 10%). But perhaps humans are not capable of such feats. :(
FDR's point about social security was that it was not a giveaway, it was an old-age insurance scheme applicable to everyone so it gave everyone a stake. The moment you means test it you get two things -- people who are excluded have all the incentives to kill it and the government has all the incentives to lower the bar to save money (so increasing the number of people who want to kill it)
Yeah but in Singapore for example, LKY implemented it as an _actual_ insurance scheme (i.e. you get what you pay in). Might be too late to do that now, but our system is fundamentally different, it is not actually an insurance scheme (if it were you may want to pay in more earlier, but everyone is actually taxed at basically the same rate, up to a cap so you are incentivized to always drain the youth more (not saying that happens but if we're looking at cold hard incentives)).
It cannot be implemented as a full insurance scheme in the US because it is essentially a redistribution scheme. Your argument is to drop the pretense and my point is that it will kill SS.
People also used to have a lot of kids. The various kinds of unfunded elder benefits that exist across the world are relics of a different time entirely.
If people don't want to have so many kids now, why do they feel so entitled to mid-century social security systems that implicitly assumed a certain kind of population pyramid? Paying "into it", when there is nothing to actually pay into (unfunded systems), while also not having kids (the *actual* resource needed to sustain the system) is obvious failure.
It's not "insurance". Insurance is for low-probability high-cost events, and people buy it voluntarily rather than being charged taxes for it. Nor was FDR right that a program for the poor is a poor program: the Earned Income Tax Credit keeps getting increased!
Ok, social security is a social insurance (also unemployment insurance is definitely an insurance but you are charged taxes for it)
Total spending on EITC in 2023 (last year for which I could find numbers in 1 minute) was $64b. Total spending on SS in the same year $1.38t. Come back with this argument when they are at least within an order of magnitude.
Unemployment "insurance" is supposed to insure against losing your job (causing an unpredictable drop in income). What is Social Security supposed to insure against?
EITC was not created to cover most of the population, whereas the expectation is that the typical person will eventually live long enough to collect SS. That difference in magnitudes does not show that EITC is a poor program as a result of serving the poor!
Wealth isn't zero-sum. If you earn money by increasing total social wealth, and the choose not to spend it (or not spend it well enough as judged by others), that doesn't hurt anyone. It only does if you believe that the more wealth one person has, the less someone else has to have.
Further: if you believe that creating wealth also creates a (potentially legally enforcable) obligation to spend it in a prosocial way, that sounds a lot like "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
No I just mean taking up property imposes a cost on other more productive uses of that property so there could be good reason to tax it. It's basically an argument from pigouvianness. Though I do get the appeal of "a man's home is his castle" style reasoning, I just happen to think it's not the best policy on the margin.
I disagree. Having something doesn't impose a cost on someone else because they therefore don't have that thing.
If we discovered, tomorrow, a new island in the Caribbean which was covered with beautiful, dense, walkable cities, mostly inhabited by retired Islanders who didn't need all that space, that new knowledge would not make anyone worse off.
It does if your counterfactual is "we take away all the excess wealth by force and redistribute it to the people," but that is not a good counterfactual. That seems to me to be the basic logic behind the French Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, etc. I think most people agree those were not salutary movements.
Oh no, it's more of a social cost, due to more inefficient allocation of labour and capital. But also a cost to individuals for sure, I think a young couple wanting to start a family with 3 kids is more deserving of a 5bd house than a 75 year old couple with kids all having flown the nest. This just seems pretty clear.
I agree forced expropriation is bad. French revolution and bolshevik revolution both bad. I'm just saying property taxes.
I am not arguing against property taxes. I am arguing against the notion that a retired old man living in a large house alone has thereby done society harm, is worthy of resentment, or that he somehow deserves to have higher taxes as a result. You can think his taxes should be higher, but I don't think it's legitimate to think of this as anything other than a bad thing (taking the possessions to which he has every right) which is outweighed by some social good. He doesn't deserve to be punished for the generational crime of owning a large home, and to think otherwise seems illiberal.
If someone claimed all the land in the US, that would be imposing costs on everyone else. And by taxing the unimproved value of that land, we'd experience no negative supply-side effects, while obtaining the revenue that our government would otherwise require from other taxes.
I disagree. If someone appropriated all land in the US by force, that would impose a cost on everyone else. Theft is zero-sum. If someone bought every piece of land in the US from its owner in a voluntary transaction, and didn't acquire their wealth through theft, that would imply they created an incredible amount of wealth that didn't previously exist. In that case, no, it doesn't impose a cost on someone. Voluntary transactions generally benefit both parties, or they wouldn't occur.
Land is zero sum though, especially land in hot real estate markets in California. The point isn't to hate Boomers, but that the policy of Prop 13 rewarding existing owners of land in California has been disastrous for young families.
People don't need land, they need housing. On virtually 100% of land in the United States, the density of housing is very low. By area, our country is almost entirely composed of farms, woods, wilderness, low density residential, and low-density commercia (big box stores, parking lots, sprawling industrial parks, etc). Even in the hottest real estate markets in the country, we could build far more densely than the status quo. Even Manhattan is mostly low-rises.
I agree that policies like Prop 13 are terrible. Elderly landowners are not to blame for such policy.
The only "boomer" asset about which this non-productivity complaint makes sense is real estate. Generally, financial assets are either employed productively, or don't represent the hoarding of a resource in the first place (e.g., hoarding cash en masse will just cause the Fed to expand the money supply). You could argue that hoarding cash is a harbinger of a future imbalance where there aren't enough workers per retiree, but that imbalance will occur whether people hoard cash or not.
(There are various "superwealthy" assets about which this non-productivity complaint makes sense, e.g., superyachts.)
Oh yeah indeed. I mostly am talking about real-estate. If they just sell their house, rent somewhere, and invest the difference in stocks that seems great.
So if a 37-year-old couple buys a 5 bedroom house, and, by hypothesis, you know they're not going to have children, can we ("we") force them out too? Or is it only old people?
Oh, no. Sorry if that wasn’t clear but I’ve said it elsewhere in the thread. I don’t advocate forcing anyone out of their homes. I just think we should raise property taxes and levy them on everyone equally.
Old people actually benefit the most from living in central locations. They can walk to the grocery store or park without a car, are around people and not socially isolated, are within short distances to health care and (should) have more options to downscale while remaining in the neighborhood.
Being from a city with a ton of old people (Buenos Aires) I would never in a million years suggest old people move further out.
When I share this view with my American friends they look at me like I'm crazy.
Yes, urbanization is actually a fantastic tool for providing services and quality of life to elders. I strongly support there being some kind of priority policies for older folks in cities, but ONLY if they are matched with even more policies that prioritize young families in other spaces. This is necessary simply for the continuation of society. I am in Canada, and the status quo here is that the benefits flow one way, in an extraordinarily unoptimized way.
In my view (and the views of the financially savvy people I know), the generational wealth disparity isn't due to boomer hoarding so much as it's downstream of bad Fed policy. We had over a decade of irresponsibly low interest rates which resulted in an insane runup in asset prices. If you weren't already significantly invested in capital assets in 2009 then you essentially got locked out of the capital class. In my view this is one of the major causes of current political polarization. The solution IMO is to take our economic medicine and let a serious recession happen. The 2020 Covid epidemic would have been a great time to do that but instead the Fed decided to pump $2T into the economy, which is the real reason that Elon Musk is worth $500b now. The stock market needs to lose 40-60% of its value to bring P/E's in line with historic norms. Unfortunately political incentives make that impossible and Trump keeps saying things like the interest rate should be zero forever, which is just insane. Bad monetary policy has sunk many empires throughout history and we will be no different.
Two things that would help with this are (1) a more functional social safety net around housing and (2) more efficiency in the residential real estate market. People "hoard" their home partly for sentimental reasons, true, but also because the whole process of buying/selling/moving is just so daunting ... and because often there aren't a lot of other appealing options out there. As a society, we don't exactly make it easy on old people who may be open to downsizing, which means most people make the reasonable decision (or non-decision) to stay put.
The following is distilled from my 2022 Columbia University Press book "Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture".
Hating Boomers (and talking about hating Boomers) is uninteresting and I agree morally dubious.
But it is *emphatically* false that "Boomers were a perfectly normal American generation". They have served far more terms in Congress than any generation before or since (and we currently have the oldest average age of elected officials in a legislative body IN THE WORLD other than apparently Cambodia), they have dominated the presidency (look up the birthdate of every major party candidate since the 2000 presidential election...), they controlled the commanding heights of major companies, cultural institutions (especially academica).
They are a historically *unique* generation, for three intersecting reasons: 1. They are a uniquely large generation 2. they came of age as the country and its institutions were maturing 3. they are sticking around because of increased longevity. These are analytical facts, and they produce what I call "Boomer Ballast" -- a concentration of our societies resources in one, older generation that increases the tension we are experiencing from technological innovation. Our demography is pulling us towards the past, the internet is pulling us into the future, and this I think is the major source of the anti-Boomer frustration.
On the specifics of social security and why we might think Boomers have played things to their advantage (not bc they're specifically evil but bc they have the political power to do so) -- the key thing is that they have prevented forward-thinking politicians from fixing the inevitable hole in social security that comes from our demographic pyramic. It would have been relatively painless to increase the rate or incidence of the social security payroll tax at any point in the past 25 years, the looming demographic cliff was obvious and the increased burden could've been shared more equally. Instead, they prevented reforms and all of the fiscal pain from demographic shifts will be borne by younger generations.
> Boomers were a perfectly normal American generation". They have served far more terms in Congress than any generation before or since (and we currently have the oldest legislative body IN THE WORLD other than apparently Cambodia).
Where can I learn more about the legislative body of Cambodia? I was under the impression that they had multiple discontinuities with French Indochina, Polpot, and whatever was there before French Indochina.
the whole paper is great, by the way, just came out in a top 5 econ journal:
Compared to those of other countries, politicians in the United States are among the oldest. U.S. campaign finance offers one potential explanation for the distribution of political representation by age.
Linking big public data on campaign contributions and registered voters, we find that the median campaign donor in U.S. federal elections is 66 years old. Older donors are also much more ideologically conservative than younger donors.
Results from within-district and within-donor analyses suggest that individuals are more likely to donate and to donate more to candidates closer to their age.
I misinterpreted. I thought you meant that we had the oldest continuous legislative body except for Cambodia (as in, how long a legislative body has continually existed) rather than oldest average age.
Still interesting though. I’ll check out the link.
Older donors are more ideologically conservative, but it is notable that boomers actually shifted significantly to the left in recent years (in the US) and are now more likely to vote for Democrats than Gen X-ers.
They haven't fixed SS because it's unfixable. There is no way to get around the decrease in the ratio of workers to retirees that doesn't include massive benefit cuts or tax increases which are politically impossible. Previous generations didn't manage SS any better, they just didn't face this fatal problem.
no...it totally is fixable, in exactly the way I outlined. It's an algebra problem...as the ratio of workers to non-workers goes down, we either have to increase the tax rate on the workers or decrease the benefits. The sooner we do either, the less severe the problem is in the future. We did neither (thanks to extremely effective lobbying by the AARP, who fun fact operate the largest circulation magazine in the US), and so younger generations will have to suffer the entirity of either benefit cuts or tax increases (or, as seems likely, a generally worsened economy when the government inflates their way out of the problem by printing money)
We did that. My lifetime SS benefits will be 20-25 percent less than they would have been under previous law, and I voted for that. My SS tax rate went up itself, and has been well over 15% since the changes took effect, and the cap on earned income subject to that went up a lot. And I voted to accept all that because it was projected to be sufficient.
Then the immigrant haters decided we needed fewer workers in the country, or at least fewer paying SS taxes, so they slowed legal immigration and pushed illegals into the underground economy, so they don't pay taxes to support social security. And social security is going to get whacked again, plus the evils the SS system was intended to alleviate -- people too old to work and too poor to live -- will return.
By definition immigrants either assimilate to their host culture, in which case their TFR is going to hit the same below-replacement level as native-born americans and you will have to repeat the Great Importation every 20-30 years ad infinitum, or they don't, in which case you are by definition replacing the host culture. The "far right" reactionary position on this topic is correct.
A steady stream of new blood, at around 1% of existing population coming in per year, would be fine. Canada assimilates closer to 2% per year, without any apparent dilution of Canadian culture.
And while the immigrants themselves don't completely assimilate, their children do, and their grandchildren aren't even fully aware of the immigrants original culture.
How popular is reducing benefits to match contribution shortfalls? What if you frame it as *delaying* benefits? What about delaying benefits for everyone except your specific age cohort? Eliminating the tax cap? Means-testing benefits?
There are so, so many ways to square the fiscal circle. Which do you think does a better job predicting policy - popularity among the public, or popularity among the beneficiaries?
If our country is to succeed in rescuing itself from the present free fall we are all going to need to cooperate and not divide into factions that blame each other.
A phrase whose sentiment varies wildly depending on the audience, no?
The country is not in freefall. It *has* accumulated a large number of dysfunctions, concentrated gains and socialized losses that have outlived any benefit they might have had. Whether you call that Defection or special interests or whatever - unwinding them inherently means challenging an identifiable, politically successful constituency.
Refusing to do so to preserve political capital, or out of politeness, or an ill-serving reflex for fairness are all common. But don't call it Cooperation.
I guess I'll just have to take your word for it, but if you're worth more than $10MM and think you're paying enough taxes, I don't know what to say, except that you're completely out of touch with reality and your opinion on it doesn't really matter.
Wealth taxes are a terrible idea. Even in a relatively functional country like Norway. Pigovian & Georgist taxes are much better, as basically any economist will tell you.
If your wealth is in the form of assets rather than currency, it's unaffected by inflation. If your wealth is in the form of money in a bank account, it can still collect interest.
We have got to increase the numbers of working-age people. That's one good argument for (thoroughly planned and managed) immigration since birthrates here have declined. I can't think of any way the present childbearing-age demographic can be incentivized to have more kids.
If we are _really_ lucky and AGI is both developed successfully and stays under human control, we might be able to finesse the issue with robots. ( My guess is we have 50/50 odds. )
The SS "problem" is really a nothingburger. The can will get kicked down the road until the last possible hour because nobody wants to cut benefits, but the law has a benefit-cut time-bomb built in which nobody will ever permit either. The necessary fixes are very mundane; add some minor means testing to SS benefits, increase the SS tax rate by 0.5-1.0% (points), and gradually increase retirement age by a few years. Poof, trust fund solvent again.
This feels like as close to a good steelman of Boomer exceptionalism as can be made.
I would only add that 4. they appear to be the start of the tip into demographic decline via falling birth rates. Which is itself a double edged sword for younger generations - on the one hand it means that there are comparatively few Millennials around to pay for Boomers’ ever increasing pension and medical tabs. But on the other, fewer kids meant each Millennial got a larger percentage of parental resources growing up and stand to inherit a larger percentage when the Boomers do start dying off.
Yes but the point is that getting money when are in your 60s definitely doesn’t have the same utility as much earlier in your life. Especially when you had to spend years of time and a considerable amount of money to study in order to manage a decent position.
The real problem is that the boomers enriched themselves with much lower standards and then they made their kids pay for it. Now that they are more than rich enough, they refuse to share and ask for more.
That’s just not sustainable and the falling fertility is the partly the result of this (there are other factors of course).
It's nothing but envy. Boomers are the richest generation, and the reason that they are is simply because they have been around the longest to accumulate wealth. But rational explanations like that will never deter the envious. All the theories you debunked are irrelevant because they aren't the actual reason for the boomer hate. They are just the justifications the envious come up with to convince themselves they are being rational.
You're framing this as if the objection is merely that they are rich, but the objection is that their wealth and power is used in ways that serves themselves at the expense of everyone else. The claim is that they cause direct harm through the wealth and power they've accumulated, not merely that they have it.
If you are bidding to buy one of 10 houses against a field of 15 people, and then the government sends 10 of those people $1M checks due to some new policy, it is not 'envy' to be upset about this. You're not just upset because you envy their good fortune, you have been directly materially harmed by this turn of events!
That's an unfalsifiable thesis and a pretty weak one. I suspect it keeps popping up everywhere (geopolitics, econ policy, whatnot) _exactly_ because it's unfalsifiable: one can generate all the data and facts they want, and you can still ignore them bc "ah well you'd have done the same".
And even if it _were_ true? So what? Maybe there is enough hatred within our hearts that we would go out and kill someone during the Purge. This is much more of an argument against having the Purge than for pardoning murderers.
What do you think anyone wants wealth for other than to use it in ways that serve themselves? That's the entire point of wealth. The envious, as always are as bad as the people they envy. Worse, actually, because they are hypocrites too.
Imagine that there is a wealthy person living in a pleasure palace on Mars. The two of you are almost entirely causally isolated from each other by distance, save from you knowing about their luxurious and decadent life.
There is also a wealthy person living in a pleasure palace 2 blocks from your house. His lavish parties play blaring music that keep you awake most nights, and he has bribed the local cops to harass *you* when you complain about it. He has a private security detail that sets up checkpoints at the end of your road and stops you every time you try to enter or leave your neighborhood for a 15 minute search and interview, and aren't very friendly about it. Your last 5 girlfriends got lavish offers to come work as 'entertainment' at his pleasure palace, and you never head from them again. Etc.
It is entirely likely that you resent both of these people.
But your resentment towards the *first* person is probably primarily about envy.
And your resentment of the second person is probably *not* primarily about envy. It's about their direct material impact on your life.
Wealth disparities are not harmless. Power disparities are not harmless. Living in a society with people a million times richer and more powerful than you is not harmful only because of envy, it is harmful because all humans have competing interests with those around them to some extent, and every time that happens you are going to lose.
But the rich people are basically the people on Mars. They never bother me one bit. And you say you're worried about power disparities, but your solution is to have even more powerful people (the government) take money from the rich people?
Cool, whatever, Nietzsche already said whatever you're babbling but better.
Still, I'd like to live in the sort of country where policy is based on some impersonal considerations and the wealthy do not encroach themselves and pull up the ladder to make themselves unmovable overlords. Partly because I don't like having overlords, but mostly because this process always cripples the wealth-generating process. Which is exactly what the Boomers did.
"Envy" = "My family needs to eat." Human nature is such that we all weigh our own needs more heavily than others, and if the needy outnumber the have's, historically we all know where that ends up.
I am slowly eating into my savings largely paying for groceries. I can put it off for a few years, but eventually we are going to be faced with some very difficult choices, unless my kids turn out to be unusually successful.
If you think that things have gone or are going off the rails, on net, in extraordinary ways (e.g., economic inequality, climate change, bad outcomes in rural and previously industrial areas, growing political polarization/dysfunction/extremism that has led among other things to inadequate governance of social media or AI or pandemic preparedness and, now, democratic backsliding), I don't think there is anything wrong with accurately attributing blame to the generation(s) who were minding the store at that time. This isn't to say that they didn't achieve some progress as well.
I think there are many problems, but fewer than in previous generations, and I don't want to condemn every human who has ever lived. Our few problems are potentially scarier, because we now have so much technology that they look more like "we might accidentally destroy the world" instead of just "oops, our crusade went off the rails and sacked Constantinople even though it's technically Christian". But I don't think we can blame the Boomers for happening to live at that technological inflection point.
I don't think it was especially evil to act as the boomers did when they did act, or to word it differently i know that what i lay at their feet i do so in hindsight and i might have done the same. But that does not invalidate the anger at them and the frustration with the bad consequences of their decisions by future generations. Foremost, them stopping to have children for individualist reasons.
Hormonal birth control only became widely available during Boomers' reproductive years. For the first time in history, women could control how many kids they produced. Millennials and Zoomers are still enjoying the benefits of that choice.
The french gradually stopped having children at the end of the 18th century. So no to, the pill is unprecedented, but yes there were reasons why the history was as it was. I can totally understand why you would not want to have children, i myself also do not babymax. And wealth wise having few siblings is advantageous as well. But the path they chose lead to today, today there still are problems; is all I am saying. Even if hormonal birth control was unique in its allure to chose a marginally more hedonistic/easier path. Being obese was not possible for most people at 1950 food prices or the 1950 food price/taste combination still the revelation that becoming obese showed a character that is not to be judged as good. I know, that is unfair, in that earlier peoples also had the genetic or socio-cultural inheritance to ballon on Big Macs arrival and future generations will just get optimally titrated ozempic so there was just a narrow historical time during which your girth showed your character but why not just judge?
Well, under that theory, I guess no one is to be blamed for anything? (Which I actually agree with on some level!) The murderer standing over the body with a gun is no more responsible than someone who merely threw a punch (because he didn't have a gun) and didn't cause mortal wounds?
(Also, I'm not sure I would blame entire generations for the Crusades, in the same way that I might in a putative democracy.)
Both are responsible, though punishments will differ. But what has that to do with anything here? I did not murder someone nor did I punch more than my fair share. - Mark Zuckerberg (41) seems the youngest 'oligarch', not a Boomer. Somehow, his contributions to humanity seem much less positive.
How could my parents or me have done that? How are people in the 21 century who grew up with the Internet unable to do so? LOLs, really. Get the GenZ to agree on whatever to regulate fb and we elders will only ask to leave whatsapp working (which was bought, not developed by Zuck). The elders left you with Clinton and Obama. Try to do better. Trump did not win on old vs. young but college vs. none. Boomers did a lot to expand college education.
They left us with a large swath of the country that was deindustrialized and forgotten and easily exploited by demagogues (including many Boomers) who had no interest in responsible government.
"Blame" is a rhetorical device used to win arguments. If you want reform look to the incentive structure. We punish murderers in order to lower the murder rate. When punishing someone won't fix the problem, then punishment isn't the solution.
Wait, I'm confused - is the analogy "we don't blame the Venetians for the sack of Constantinople, therefore we shouldn't blame Boomers for inadequate responses to modern problems"? Because if we start with the amount of blame I give the Venetians and scale up from there, it's EXTREMELY nonzero!
Yes, and I think the technological aspect is reason enough to be against the anti-boomer narrative. Realistically, the narrative doesn’t exist to identify the truth, but to give it an identity politics frame that mobilizes people against a scapegoat in the classic Girardian sense. Technological developments further threatens epistemic integrity by incentivizing the provocation of emotional reactivity as the easiest means to spread a message and accomplish things—which is exactly what this narrative does. Even if it doesn’t cause harm to boomers, the issue is that it further obscures how the technological element itself plays into the popularization of the narrative (including algorithmic ranking and potential memetic warfare).
Even if it “gets the job done,” why would I want to support something that feeds into a society in which getting people to remain tribal and emotionally reactive—unquestioning of a causal mechanism—paves the way to problem solving? To be honest I’m a bit surprised and somewhat disappointed by some of the “intellectuals” in the space who claim to want a more rational, truth-aligned society duplicitously using this tribal narrative, and it’s refreshing to see you call it out.
For greater context, it’s widely acknowledged in information operations spaces that we’re entering an age of unprecedented risk with cyberspace operations. Like you said in your article, I think we need to move towards a practical, intellectually honest approach to assessing the problem, potential solutions, etc.
I personally think one of the obstacles to reducing technology risks in the long-term is how much critical thought and literacy has been eroded. In general, I think we’re in dire need of educating people on how rhetoric and algorithms work, and how to assess claims/evidence in order to protect them from disinformation. So creating an oversimplified, classic identity-based scapegoat narrative as a supposed means of accelerating progress rubs me the wrong way. Just because it’s unlikely to spark violence against boomers doesn’t mean it’s harmless—if you feed this habit to blame/attack a scapegoat in people, it can backfire. It’s not so easy to keep it “just about boomers” when you’ve opened the floodgates for a variety of alternative “us vs them” frames (including class warfare and racist/antisemitic ones).
Other countries have their own influence operations, electronic warfare and CNO, and—so long as people remain cognitively uncurious and epistemically ignorant—could theoretically highjack this framing (or others) and mutate it into something else. If we want progress and radical transparency, let’s pursue more housing and have an honest look at the real solutions and how to overcome obstacles.
There’s a way to have resonant storytelling without perpetuating reliance on identity politics. I, like you, am sick of it. Thanks for the sanity boost with this piece.
Yes, there absolutely is a problem with attributing blame to the generations who were "minding the store at the time." Blame requires more than just being around when something happened. Climate change, to take one example, is incredibly obviously downstream of technological and demographic trends that have been in play since the industrial revolution. Do Millenials and Zoomers themselves make choices that, if adopted by Boomers, would solve climate change? They do not.
Blaming Boomers for this stuff is historically illiterate. In answer to your down-thread question -- "I guess no one is to be blamed for anything?" -- to a first approximate I'd say yes. It is utter moral vanity to imagine that different generations would have behaved in any way differently under similar circumstances. That doesn't mean we have to agree with Boomer (or anyone's) political preferences, but vilifying them is generally just pointless.
There are policies that could have (and still could) mitigate climate change. It would not even have been that costly. They weren't taken. They were eminently possible.
You are just saying that no one can be blamed for anything, because anyone else in that position (genetics, mind-state, technological and demographic trends, etc.) would have done the same thing. I don't necessarily disagree.
I'm really not saying that, though. I think you can blame a specific cohort of Germans for WWII. Even if in some sense their actions were determined because we live in a clockwork universe (which I do in fact believe), it makes sense to assign them moral culpability.
This doesn't work at all for climate change, because it is a collective action problem in which Boomers are behaving like pretty much everyone else on the planet. So if you want to say that humans are morally culpable for climate change, sure I can endorse that. But Boomers specifically? No, that's special pleading.
This is how it goes with most (all?) of these accusations toward Boomers. People are pointing at them and say, "Hey, this thing is bad, and you've been alive for a while, so this is your fault." It's worth noting that people never seem to do this in reverse. "Hey, check out all this progress we've made on civil rights and new technology and GDP growth and reduced war. Thanks, Boomers!" (To be clear, nor should they, but pick a lane.)
I think there was a period of time when Boomers were in power and when action on climate change (and many other things) was eminently possible - and when the U.S. was a hegemonic superpower with the ability to do something, as had happened with, e.g., CFCs.
What were they going to do about the economic rise of China? Most of the world's population does not live in the US, and is thus not subject to US laws.
Solar was astronomically expensive then. And the do-gooders/wokes of people then believed nuclear power, nukes and DDT are the greatest evils. As Greta today is a person who would wreck max havoc on humanity if we let her.
>There are policies that could have (and still could) mitigate climate change. It would not even have been that costly. They weren't taken. They were eminently possible.
In that case, a large chunk of your argument is with anti-nuclear Greens of all ages, not with Boomers. ( I'm writing from the USA. France got this particular decision right. )
The problem is that describes every generation. I'm old enough to remember how angry the young were back during the 1960's counter-culture. Human nature is such that we weight the present more heavily than the past. We can't help ourselves, it's how people think.
Weren't they the Boomers? They (or some of them) protested during the 60s, and then they seemed to kind of sell out, get complacent, and leave us with some catastrophic problems.
Does it describe the Greatest Generation? Did they do a better job, on net? I don't know - pretty hard to compare across cohorts.
That's my point. If every generation does something stupid and short-sighted, it isn't a generational problem, it's a human problem. Blaming boomers for being human won't solve that problem.
I don't know, though. I'd be open to the possibility that the Greatest Generation over-performed and the Boomers under-performed. Though obviously many exceptions in both cases.
The Greaters don't get off the hook--they elected Nixon. They were the "White Flighters." They invaded Vietnam. Those choices are still having consequences to this day.
I agree with your overall point, and I think it’s also an incentives problem, in that if you want people to do something that’s less selfish/more work, the system should produce incentives and/or norms for doing so. After all, people do plenty of things (good and bad) that they otherwise wouldn’t be inclined to do, given the right incentives.
But one thing I would say is that even though I wouldn’t have voted for Nixon, if I had to be morally held accountable for all the outcomes tied to anyone I did vote for, I probably wouldn’t vote. Maybe locally at most, but in general, I’ve never had a choice that fully aligns with my morals/desired outcomes; it usually comes down to whoever I find to be “the lesser of two evils.” And most Americans’ own voting choices come down to shallow things like campaign messaging, charisma, and perceived similarity to their own background (for example some people voted for Nixon because they felt they could relate to him more), so it’s not like they actively knew how much harm the person they chose would do. I think there should be better incentives for being an educated voter as well.
Out of curiosity, what do you gain by lumping in all boomers and venting frustrations at them? I know working class boomers who do not own their own homes and are in the same position paying expensive monthly rent as millennials and Gen Z. Some of them are still struggling to pay of debt from medical expenses. Not to mention, some of them have literally helped younger people through mentorship, cooking/sharing food, providing work (like employing young neighbors to mow their lawn or repair things), etc. Good people who give back to their communities however they can exist amongst all generations—shouldn’t we encourage such decisions?
Even if these boomers I described may be a minority, what good does it do anyone to blame a class of people who are not all to blame? Does it make sense to call boomers—some of whom themselves struggle with healthcare expenses for basic medical care—as some sort of oppressor that gets rich off of the system at the expense of others?
The reason this narrative exists is to channel hate and frustration at a scapegoat, to alleviate tension. Such tactics are profitable to many who themselves benefit from these narratives—that’s why they persist. Some of those who push this anti-boomer narrative are themselves big fans of Girard, so they know what they’re doing, and it’s not because they want to uncover the truth or improve epistemic integrity
It also seems highly irrational and emotion-fueled to prioritize blaming a group over actually looking at potential solutions across the board. I want to live in a more rational society of problem solvers, not a society in which stoking people’s reactive emotions remain the strongest means of getting anything done.
I don't think I have ever said anything about Boomers in my life. I just responded to Scott's article, saying that, if a generation collectively failed at some unusually major things, I'm not sure there was a problem in stating that, if it's accurate.
I don't think anyone is saying that less well-off members of the generation are particularly responsible if they couldn't/can't even make their own ends meet.
If the Greatest Generation defeated the Axis powers and built a new world order that was better than those that came before (international institutions that formed the basis for unprecedented peace and prosperity) and their children, on average, coasted and built themselves nice nest eggs and left us with major catastrophic risks and the conditions that may destroy the world, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that. (Even if that's true, there are plenty of exceptions. And I'm also open to the possibility that those those generalizations are unfair or wrong - but I think they're plausible.)
Where I have doubts is with the statement: “If a generation collectively failed.” How does one determine the truth of that statement—that the generation itself, and not a variety of other factors, is to blame, especially when there will always be many exceptions who tried to do their part to help? Why even push a story that an entire generation responsible, as opposed to those who actually are directly responsible? If we found out that the mafia negatively impacted housing and zoning, would Italian people be to blame?
My point is that such a narrative requires one to demonstrate a causal mechanism, and must take an honest look at the factors that led to the outcome. Thus, in this case, I’m skeptical that the “blame the generation” narratives even seek to understand the core causal issues or correct them efficiently, given that they fail to examine incentives, motivations, culture, and mechanisms within the system that led to the circumstances we want to change.
People do not act in a vacuum; they’re influenced by norms, institutions, geopolitical events, and existing socioeconomic conditions themselves, along with interpretations of said events in the form of media narratives. Incentives are often not chosen by the generation influenced by them, and may be more impacted by specific institutions or groups than the generation as a whole. And if other people are deciding to acquire homes and wealth, a rational actor will generally do the same to “get ahead.”
Furthermore, most people are not economic experts and could not have been expected to have the foresight of the consequences of their actions, especially in a society in which rugged individualism, wealth accumulation, and prioritizing one’s nuclear family are all strong cultural norms. Institutions/education systems may have failed to educate people or prepare more sufficiently for the long-term. So how would one determine if the generation has failed, or the system and norms?
And is it not the case that incentives at the time generally favored prioritizing immediate growth/wealth/stability over thinking ahead? If the same incentives and circumstances existed today, the younger generations would recreate the same mistake. Most of those allocating blame would have done the same.
All in all, the reality is that many people feel powerless to affect the system much. Even voting choices are often based in “the lesser of two evils.” As time passed, it became increasingly difficult to achieve the “American dream” or have upward mobility, but this is not something that the boomers would’ve necessarily thought of. In many ways I see the decisions they made as being perfectly in-line with American values.
And now today, a millennial who has coasted through life and bought an oversized home and maintains other boomer-like conditions has the same general affect as a boomer in the same situation. A boomer who rents a home and has no upward mobility is in a more similar position to those supposedly hurt by boomers than young people born into wealth buying up real estate to rent out Airbnbs.
So I’m curious, how are the boomers to blame over those who actually made the decisions affecting policy, or, why boomers as a whole rather than the system that encouraged it?
Why not blame the norms/incentives/whatever else was shown to contribute to it, and then and jump towards finding solutions for housing—without wasting time trying to pin it on identity-based scapegoats? blame?
This reads as fair enough in relation to America, but I'd like to nominate France as the exception, where:
1. Boomers voted for stupid negative economic policies for 40 years starting with Mitterand who was so bereft of any independent thought or spine that when his communist party allies asked to lower the retirement age from 65 to 61, said yes
2. Continuing with the sacralisation of employment to the point that it is a major risk to hire someone, so young people and minorities are often just not hired
3. Not to mention making benefits so generous that if free time has any value at all working is often negative expected value
4. Doubling down on ruin by making many benefits available to immigrants _unconditionally_!
5. Giving buckets of public money to unions who represent perhaps 6% of the population if you squint
Don't forget the restrictions on immigration, which reduced the workforce as well as the consumer base, the weakening of progressive taxation, which undermined the social safety net, and austerity during economic crises, which strengthened recession and undermined economic productivity. Stupid boomers.
OK, I am confused. I assume that you are just being very unclear, but to avoid anyone else's confusion, I thought I had best make this response.
I made a comment about the boomers' "contribution" to France, to which you replied. Your reply referred to 1) restrictions on immigration, 2) weakening of progressive taxation, and austerity during economic crises.
So perhaps my French policy knowledge has some gaps, but as far as I am aware, in the past 40 years
2) I assume you are referring to the introduction of the flat tax and the change from the wealth tax (ISF) to the property wealth tax (IFI). Putting aside that these were drops in the ocean of French tax progressivity, you are also forgetting, if so, that the flat tax "cut" was both an increase in progressivity (i.e. rich households paid more tax) _and_ very profitable, because every tax in France except the taxe foncière and the VAT are far to the wrong side of the Laffer curve. As for the ISF, this was a relatively marginal tax and the change to the IFI was exactly what Piketty's book suggested (although he author never drew the link explicitly himself). In addition, you have perhaps forgotten as well that shortly after those "cuts", France also introduced the CDHR, which of course increased the "progressivity" of the tax system.
I made a mistake, I referred to the very recent CDHR not the CEHR which was what I meant to. Too many new taxes increasing the progressivity of the tax system to keep track of!!
Not to be a punisher reader but this article treats the 1946 generation as if they're representative of the boomers. In reality boomers are 1946-1964. Only the very oldest of them were sent to Vietnam _or_ were responsible for Woodstock etc. Boomers should be weighed and measured by the youth culture of the late sixties to mid 80s (less so). So Woodstock is fairly theirs, but so is the inward individualist turn on the 1970s.
Hmm, I suppose not. Not a boomer himself and his median voters would not have been either. Boomers were median voters I suppose from 1996 to about 2020 or 2024.
I was too young to vote myself. By the time I could, the die was cast. I remember not agreeing with everything Clinton did, but he seemed to know what he was doing economically, so we all went along with it. All the expert economists at the time seemed to agree. And what the Republicans wanted to do seemed worse. There didn't seem to be much of a choice.
<shrug> all his stuff seems reasonable enough to me looking back. Bringing China into the WTO and decimating American manufacturing is looking critically bad in retrospect but perhaps at the time it was a good bet on China opening up, strategically rewarding them for opening up in a way that was humanitarian for China, a bet that just didn't work out but could have.
I don't think we disagree on much when it comes to the crux of this issue. Sounds like we both agree it seemed like a good idea at the time and doesn't seem like a good idea now. You sound a bit more concerned about the impacts on American manufacturing workers whereas I'm a bit more concerned about weakening American hard power due to losing industry.
The Boomer generation was incredibly large, and by the standards of historical trends, uniquely large. Forget about the US, just look at the generational differences in East Asia. On the basis of that alone, assuming zero difference in any disposition toward selfishness or selflessness, political polarity, ambition or laziness, there is going to be huge difference in effect size in just about any dimension from the sheer size alone. Of course a cohort that disproportionately large will wield more political power, hold onto power longer, etc.
I liked this but was surprised by the implication in the last few paragraphs that Millennials or Gen Z are responsible for some unique harm. This would have seemed a bit more plausible a few years ago when it was easier to imagine wokeness spiraling into a perpetual cultural force, but that's clearly not happening. And the decline of state capacity seems odd to blame on people who are only now beginning to occupy meaningful roles in government. I don't think there's a good basis to suggest that any generation is particularly bad - anti-generational sentiment seems like an outgrowth of that odd human tendency to think that whatever moment we are living in is uniquely bad even when it is objectively better and will probably be seen as a golden era in 30 years, just like people now love the 90s but spent the whole decade making movies about how soulless and bad it was.
doesn't make any sense to me: If you'd held the last election with just millenials and gen z, I think harris would have won in a walk. If you'd held the last election with just boomers, she wouldn't have been a viable candidate. Boomers are, and have been, the most powerful political actors since the early 2000s, up to the present. This is their era, not ours, ours is some later time.
>it was easier to imagine wokeness spiraling into a perpetual cultural force, but that's clearly not happening
Well, MAGA & co. are essentially the reversed stupidity of wokeness, and while this does diminish the magnitude of certain impacts, it's still the dominant cultural force that decides what both its adherents and opponents think. I do agree that no generation in particular is to blame for this, but in order to avoid the collapse of civilization somebody would have to start doing better at some point.
"Americans will always do the right thing, after every other alternative has been exhausted." So the question is, have we exhausted the alternatives yet?
I just don’t get the “we actually have way more money even when accounting for housing” argument when places like NYC, SF, Seattle, LA, etc. exist and many other major cities seem to also be wildly expensive. Are people in these cities getting paid post-tax amount that has risen with the cost of housing? It just doesn’t feel like that’s true.
Is it that people in rural Appalachia are suddenly making 3x what they did 15 years ago, housing has somehow gotten relatively cheaper for them, and therefore changing the numbers for all the people in SF and NYC?
Since the Boomers bought houses, a number of major cities have seen house prices collapse; to pick three, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. You can pick up a house in all three cities for $50k or less.
Yes, nationally, house prices have stayed, on average, basically stable, at least on a square footage basis. For every city seeing a surge in house values, there's another that's seeing a collapse.
In most post-industrial Midwest urban areas, you definitely need a car. There is no infrastructure for public transportation. And be wary of the local school district. Still, housing is generally more affordable, as is food. Don't know about healthcare, as I've always had pretty good insurance and never had to pay out of pocket.
"I can't afford to buy a house that is large and near good public transit and in a fashionable city where everybody wants to move to" is a substantially different problem from "I can't afford to buy a house".
As for the other point, today, yes, you're quite right - but you're pretty much just describing why house prices there are low. This wasn't necessarily the case when the boomers were buying houses, however, and for every boomer whose house they bought for less than a hundred thousand which is now worth millions, there's two or three boomers whose houses have lost much of their original value over the last few decades.
If you are only going to count the cities where people want to move -to-, and ignore the cities where people are moving -from-, then you've just limited your sample such that the only houses you count are the ones which are increasing in value. So of course house prices will always appear to be increasing.
>Are people in these cities getting paid post-tax amount that has risen with the cost of housing?
No. The extreme runup in big city housing prices is downstream of broad asset inflation caused by a decade+ of near-zero interest rates. That leads to geographically concentrated influxes of wealth as e.g. the top ~1000 Facebook employees are suddenly worth $5m+ simply by virtue of having worked for the company for a few years. Multiply that by a few dozen companies whose employees are all concentrated in a few metro areas and you see housing prices that decouple wildly from average incomes. The covid-induced Zoom revolution then spread that effect around the rest of the country, leading to housing in places like Boise doubling as California remote workers moved in.
Meanwhile, commercial property values collapsed. My admittedly anecdotal impression is that small businesses have a harder time with work from home (they don't have the digital infrastructure). So the pandemic had an effect on the rate of new businesses. Someone should check that, though.
>Are people in these cities getting paid post-tax amount that has risen with the cost of housing?
In at least some relevant cases, yes. The house I lived in in Menlo Park, CA in late high school recently sold for about 3.6x what my mother bought it for as new construction in mid 1999. I visited an open house when it was on the market, and it has had some renovations and is in good repair but is still fundamentally the same house. This does not seem to be an outlier: the Case Schiller index for the greater San Francisco metropolitan area is about 3.8x what it was then.
My mother worked as a Director-level UX Designer at a big tech company at the time. I am currently a software engineer at a different big tech company, also working in the Bay Area. I am about two pay grades below where she was, and I think I make 3x in nominal dollars terms what she made 25 years ago. Directors at my company today make more like 5-10x what she made in 1999.
The is not just the case for people at higher career/management levels in big tech. Minimum wage in California today is $16.50/hour, about 3.2x what it was in 1999 ($5.15/hour), which is also proportional to that particular house. Not that many minimum wage earners are probably buying houses in Menlo Park the or now, but the increase in nominal terms is closer to being proportional to nominal housing prices than I would have thought before checking.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a gap of lower-middle-class or middle-class jobs that haven't kept pace with housing prices, but I don't have good numbers for that ready to hand.
That does have an effect, but it's far from the only factor. Interest does have a big effect on monthly payments for a 30-year mortgage, with payments at 3% being about three quarters of payments on the same mortgage at 6%. The effects level.off for very low interest rates because below around 4.5%, a majority of your payments over the life of the loan are principal rather than interest.
But you also need to make a downpayment to buy a more expensive house., which lower interest rates don't really help with. In a low interest rate environment where low-down payment loans are relatively hard to come by (i.e the world of roughly 2008-2022), downpayments are likely to be the more binding constraint. I've noticed that housing prices don't seem to have dropped precipitously since interest rates.have been going back up, and I suspect this is a big part of why.
Income is also a factor. A higher income goes a long way towards making both monthly payments and downpayments affordable. I don't think it's been a coincidence that housing prices in the Bay Area seem to have been roughly tracking growth in tech salaries.
Another factor is the supply side, both nee construction and houses sold by people moving to a different housing market or looking to downsize. Construction costs probably more or less keep pace with income to the extent they're driven by labor costs, and if there is land available to build on (which is not the case in the Bay Area, for combinations of geographical and political reasons), then this limits how much people being able to afford more actually drives up prices for the same house.
Housing prices also tend to give people who already own houses but who might consider moving to a cheaper market or a smaller or less desirable housde n the same market an incentive to do so, because higher prices mean you cash out more dollar of equity by moving to a cheaper house.
Senior software engineer even at faang isn’t enough to purchase a home in Menlo Park though. Maybe two of them. If you’re senior staff or something then who knows but the typical $400k/yr won’t do it.
I'm a senior software engineer at a non-FAANG big tech company. I could buy a house in Menlo Park if I wanted to. I see a few condos and small townhouses on the market that are cheaper than my current house.
A medium-to-large single family house would be more of a stretch. I would need a second professional-class income to qualify for a mortgage with a 20% downpayment, but I can afford much more than a 20% downpayment and I cpuld afford the payments with a larger downpayment.
It seems like you're proposing the blame that's currently directed at boomers is (in part?) the fault of population collapse. It's not that the boomers are stealing on the wealth; they just have all the power because they're so populous.
Could it be that this is a legitimate sort of boomer-hate, though? Not that they didn't leave enough to their kids, but that they didn't leave *enough kids* to leave things to? I'm not sure how one would check the age distribution for this; maybe Kids These Days should be blaming Gen X for that instead. But the older generations would take some responsibility for the shape of the age distribution.
Is that a Boomer problem? Hasn't fertility been declining in all wealthy societies for many decades before and after the peak childbearing years of the Boomers?
Well no, hence the whole "baby boom" thing. ://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/?srsltid=AfmBOoooR_-urQ40wSy6NuskidLsEaLs_KDoWyT18OOPZMrzf2XgZ8kZ
Long term yes, but the Baby Boom represented a serious and sustained uptick in fertility.
Shame on them for failing to collectively so manage their desire for children to suit the economic needs of a future generation 40 years later. Are young people today having more kids?
Sure, but it hardly seems fair to be angry at the boomers in particular because they returned to the trendline of declining fertility, just like the generations after them did.
population *collapse*? No, the problem of high housing costs is not one of population *collapse*. Our population is larger than it was last year, when it was larger than the prior year; it's larger than it was 5, 8, 10, 12, 20, and 30 years ago, respectively. That's not what a metric that's "collapsing" looks like.
The collapse is happening, but it's a slow process. The inversion of the demographic pyramid is the most immediate and visible effect. The baby boomers didn't have high fertility rates; they were at or slightly below replacement rate. Gen X was only slightly lower. Millennial fertility rate is significantly lower, well below replacement, and Zoomers, while still too young to say for certainly, look to be continuing the trend and will likely be well below replacement, with Gen Alpha expected to be 30-40% smaller than Gen Z (ignoring immigration).
But just because fewer babies are being born doesn't mean the total population immediately begins declining, and it wouldn't even if longevity were constant. Hans Rosling provided a marvelous visual explanation of why this is so in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg. He's also pretty entertaining.
The upshot is that while population collapse (or at least significant reduction) is happening, the effect won't be visible in the population totals for a few decades yet. But the pyramid inversion is already beginning to bite, and will bite a lot harder well before we see total population declining.
Like it's a problem! This entire thread is about how severe and damaging the problem of our excessive population is. And people like you panic about the possibility that, decades from now, the severe pain might start to reduce a little??
I mean, good lord, there's soon going to be TEN BILLION HUMANS on the planet. If there were half as many we'd still be (a) an extremely successful and secure species and even (b) more populous than we've been for 99.9% of our species' history.
What an astonishingly mule-headed response. Speaking of not thinking, what do you think the fertility rate would look like if the population was half what it is today (again, a level that would be larger than it's been for over 99.9% of the species' history?)
> a level that would be larger than it's been for over 99.9% of the species' history?
The global fertility rate today is 2.2 children per woman. The long-run historic average is somewhere between 5 and 7. Replacement level is 2.1, and we'll fall below it within the next decade. We'd be below it now if it weren't for regions of the world that are still living at the subsistence farming level. The developed world is already below replacement, some areas far below.
If you want to reduce the fertility rate even faster, the very best thing you can do (other than mass murder) is to work to increase the wealth and education level of the average African woman, because wealth and education reduce fertility.
The problem is the rate of that decline. Having a steady TFR of 1.9 is probably fine - you slowly depopulate over several generations. But at current US levels (1.6 and falling) we're on course to shrink by 25% per generation. None of our economic or cultural institutions are designed for such a world. A healthy complex society probably can't survive in a world of sustained economic contraction.
Are we really supposed to imagine that the factors that led TFR to decline (like the extremely shitty state of our overpopulated planet) will remain constant as the population declines over the course of centuries?
The decline is mainly influenced by social and political factors so no, I think they're unlikely to remain constant. I'm not saying that the world wouldn't be better with fewer people, I'm just pointing out that we have to be careful about how we get there. It's completely rational to be concerned about crashing fertility.
TFR didn't decline because of "the extremely shitty state of our overpopulated planet". It has declined more in richer countries, and within rich countries higher TFRs are found among groups like the Amish & ultra-Orthodox. It's CLEARLY cultural.
(oh and I wouldn't be so rude as to point out that the population of this country isn't determined solely -- or even primarily -- by how many babies the people in this country have, because doing that might possibly suggest you're valuing some future people over others)
I do value some future people over others. The genetic profile of a population is the single most significant factor that influences its long term future. Demographics is destiny.
While I agree that 'hating boomers' is like many things a thing that primarily people that are too online do, I do think the social payments discrepancy is more prominent in other countries, like Germany.
Germany nominally has a very bullet-proof pension system: All working people are taxed and the money from this pension tax is directly disbursed to everyone in need of a pension. This is nice in theory, the economy usually goes up, so there is enough money to pay everyone a dividend, and if it goes down, no one is saddled with debt and the pain is distributed fairly.
However, in practice people hate when their pensions don't increase enough, and since the 90s politicians keep on running on "keeping the pensions safe" and keep getting electing. But where is that money coming from? In violation of the original plan, hundreds of billions are taken out of the general state budget to keep pensions high. Money that should have been used for industry, infrastructure and all the other things only young people care about. As such, the country grows less, less taxes are received and pensions have to be propped up even more.
And this is popular, of course. The majority of the county spiritually feels close to retirement and will always vote not to change this. This has been obviously wrong for 20 years now and a fix is not in sight, before the state goes bankrupt.
Are the boomers at fault here, maybe not, or maybe just the populist politicians? Maybe it's Moloch.
I'd broadly agree with your assessment, and think the core part of it is that things are obviously wrong but still not taken anywhere near serious enough.
That is, even without group dynamics, there might be an adjacent and deeper question about a specific failure mode of democracy under demographic decline. That, at least, is the sentiment I mostly see online: It's not only boomer hate, it mixes with deep distrust of elites and the entire democratic system.
And while I do not share that sentiment, I think it is really easy to see how one could - in some ways, we even had solutions in place, like the Stabilitätsfaktor which would have pushed back retirement age over time, and lowered pensions (or rather, slowed their increase) over time. But it's application gets continually postponed. Meanwhile, lots of things get markedly worse, especially in publically visable areas like public infrastructure.
I think it is slightly different for genuinely hard problems like climate change or anything else involving international politics, but to see how even very obvious and already solved things get fumbled really takes away trust both in democracy and the social contract.
This was no accident either, it's been German economic policy since the 2000s to depress wages. The social systems, which depend on the wages as you correctly noted, are suffering as a result. Cutting pensions in of course unpopular with the ageing electorate and increasing them is popular, yes, but there is a real problem of age poverty in Germany, so buffing pensions from the federal budget is to a degree objectively necessary:
The top earners can more easily afford to opt out of the state pension system and live off, for example, stock dividends or other financial investments, further hurting the pension system. The system is no longer bullet-proof, because the wealthy can easily opt out of both the pension system and the healthcare system and leave the low earners behind instead of doing their share. It's perfectly in the trend of accumulating wealth at the top.
Agreed, I just think when it comes to policy we should prioritize older people less. Perhaps we shouldn't have age-based restrictions on benefits generally, and benefits should just go to the poorest people (many of which would still happen to be old).
The good news for Boomer-haters is that Boomer control mostly over. Using age 60 as the lower cutoff for Boomers, and as near as I can tell from various probes using LLMs, ~59 % of corporate CEOs in the Russell 3000 index are Generation X or younger. The Fortune 500 numbers are harder to determine (without a lot of digging), but Fortune magazine has stated that GenX has the largest cohort of CEOs, with Boomers being in second place, and Millennials only starting to make the ascent to corporate power.
Likewise, it looks like ~56% of the Trump's cabinet is under 60. Trump himself was born one month before the July 1946 start date for the Boomer generation (according to many demographers). Technically, he might be considered one of the Silent Generation. (If only he were silent), but I think we can consider him to be Boomer.
And if we look at Congress, ~57 percent of House Republicans are under 60 (there seems to be questions about the ages of one or two of them), and 57 percent of Dems are under 60.
Even in the categories where GenX is not the largest cohort, the Boomers clearly no longer hold the majority of power in the US, as they're outnumbered by GenX, Millennials, and the occasional Gen Z.
I think the age discourse is good in as much as it can motivate people who don't like spreadsheets and "actually land value taxes have no deadweight loss and property taxes approximate LVT" tends to be bad politics, I don't think any politician since the implementation of primaries successfully ran a campaign based "well I created this spreadsheet and it said increasing tax A by 2% and decreasing tax B by 2% would maximize GDP growth"
It would be nice if we could simply advocate for "any and all policies which pass the cost benefit analysis" but the reality of politics is you need to frame it in a way that will win over actual voters
> any and all policies which pass the cost benefit analysis
How about making medicare payments for drugs and services explicitly proportional to the expected medical / societal benefit - with ongoing incremental Bayesian updates as studies become available - disregarding (for better or worse) cost to develop and provide?
That way, MMR vaccines, and IV fluids for someone on the brink of hypovolemic shock, and similar cheap stuff that's overwhelmingly beneficial, can score a high profit margin, meaning hospital administrators will be eagerly hunting for ways to provide such things to more people with less friction... while heroic intervention on terminal cases, where costs are high and the QUALY-based payout is close to zero (rather than the current policy of almost mindlessly matching that cost), they'd soon enough find ways to de-prioritize.
I mostly disagree with the piece (bc the Boomers were really bad in a spreadsheet way) but you can win over voters without whipping up animus toward someone else.
I know that this page hate cringe-libbism with fierce passion, but come on, it's hard to argue that Obama (or Bush Sr. or Romney for that matter) was not _mostly_ framing their message in terms of common good and a sensible way forward for the whole country. Sure, there were some dibs at wall street and racists and whatnot, but it's really small beans compared to the previous regime fanning up the flames of discord between True Judeo-Christian Patriots and Heathen Terrorist Lover Traitors, or the successor ideologies which were pretty much all based on some kind of essentialist division of society (be it along racial, economic or ideological lines).
I think part of both this and a “Vibecession” is that there *are* some very important things that have gotten more expensive relative to inflation and wages, and they are things whose cost impacts younger adults the hardest: post secondary education, home ownership, and child care. The one ballooning cost that hits Boomers harder, medical care, they are somewhat insulated from since it is largely covered by younger generations via public subsidy.
I dunno. My beef with Boomers is kind of adjacent to all the points made here.
As a GenXer who was "raised" by Boomers at work, there are many cultural artifacts of that generation that simply rub my sensibilities the wrong way:
1. An unearned success arrogance: An assumption that their individual successes were based purely on merit vs. system-wide advantages of being of a certain age during one of the best times to be economically successful in the history of modern society (post-cold war military, economic, and cultural dominance).
2. Unearned strategic arrogance: An assumption that "being technical" was a signal that your value was actually lower than being "a manager." Boomers honed a belief system that their job was to go golfing and make deals while plebes did the grunt work like sending emails and printing out emails for them so that they could read them like they wanted to. It's a lot more than this, obviously, but they seemed as a culture to be fairly resistant to technical change and adoption. But worse, they felt that anything to do with emergent technology was grunt work (vs the transformative capabilities it represented).
3. Unbridled and unhinged optimism: They had such a good run for so long (business in general) that they were blind to the catastrophic outcomes of being glib about everything (see: the Great Recession).
4. Narcissistic tendencies: As the largest generation to-date at that time, there were enough of them to create entire social movements that captured the attention of the entire country/globe. Give Peace A Chance was the first Boomer cultural innovation. I nice idea but clearly unsustainable and quickly undermined by events and their own maturity. Next, Jazzercise and Swinging. Next, the sexual revolution. None of these things are bad per se. But after a successful run of all of these cultural results, this generation is just stuck in a place where they think they (and their children) are all that matter. Which brings me to...
5. Their offspring: Young millennials and elder GenZ are, like their Boomer Parents, super confident in their convictions, but their vibes are ahead of data and historical context, and tend to throw up a middle finger to what has been built prior to them entering the world. It feels like the Boomers all over again... instead of Give Peace a Chance, it's now Give The Oppressed Freedom.
Importantly, I'm not saying it's the Boomer's fault - it's more of a collection of understandable behaviors from a generation that was big, powerful, and influential in ways that they're probably blind to on a daily basis and just take for granted.
But that doesn't mean their entire culture doesn't have significant baggage tied to it as a result.
You have written a grab bag of generalizations and assumptions about an entire generation, similar to the typical anti-boomer rants I encounter on reddit. As a late boomer I missed out on that supposed easy career success that boomers had. And as a parent I am aware that the job market for young people is dramatically different than when I was 20.
1. When talking about a generational profile, generalizing is the entire point. Same with talking about any cultural profile. Yes, generalizations are fraught. Agreed. But they're also a useful analytical device at macro analysis.
2. I'm basing my generalizations based on hundreds of individual data points that lead to summary judgements. Hundreds of data points in a sea of 1 billion or so Boomers is clearly not statistically sound, but I'm not claiming to make statistically sound arguments. I'm aiming to share my impressions of the nature of the Boomer Generation based on my lived experience.
Richard Hanania, who has tried hating every group once,,,, how about RICHARD HANANIA
LOOK IN THE MIRROR... he was one of the first people I ever met on Substack and was also ONE OF THE RUDEST AND SELF ABSORBED BRAGGARTS .. I was shocked and never went back and never will go back to his substack if he is on it. He is not smart enough to hold my interest.
i didn't even know he was still around. My son who is 44 and a software engineer..working on his Phd in a subject I won't talk about for now, calls me an outlier.. because I am a "boomer" by age but I am not by the way I think.. I am a retired scientist.. and I understand that categorizing all people by a generation/age/ time/ space "fake construct" leads to division. Yes ... I am as disgusted by some people of my generation too.. money could be one of the reasons.. but I will say this: WE GOT ALONG.. regardless of party affiliation.. religion.. money.. and MUSIC and CULTURE were a big part of it. This is my second post in ages on Astral Codex... thanks for coming out of your shell.. Merry Christmas.. :) Isabell
Hanania is pretty interesting, actually, mostly because he's actually growing as a person as we watch. Unlike so many pundits he has enough intellectual integrity not just to change, but to admit that he did. He's got a ways to go before he'll be someone I'd want my daughter to date [*] (if ever), but his willingness to stake out and strongly state an unorthodox position just because it makes logical sense, and then to revise his position when new evidence comes in is quite refreshing, and he really is pretty smart.
You do you, of course, but I think you'd find value in giving him another shot.
[*] I don't mean this literally. My daughter is too old for him, and married, and my granddaughter is too young.
He's more motivated by trolling than logic, otherwise he wouldn't have written https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-do-i-hate-pronouns-more-than in the first place. He already basically acknowledged having a history of bad political judgement in his years as "Richard Hoste", then endorsed Trump in 2024 before denouncing his choice the very next year (which wasn't even the first time Trump was elected President!).
I agree, Hanania is insufferably narcissistic, unsympathetic, and acts as if the evolution of his politics is some important intellectual journey that future generations will read about. I have no idea what the man does for real work or income, if he does anything at all, or inherited money or made good investments, but I've never found any reason to take his opinions seriously. As best I can tell, he exists now just to attract social media followings, and he shifts his positions strategically to attract readers, then makes up some narrative for why this is really an inevitable trend and all right-thinking people will eventually follow him to embracing [thing his new followers believe this month].
On the latter point, boomer culture has been prolific, especially music, and it's undeniable that the oldest boomers (and some war baby older brothers) advanced popular music form and technique more in the decade of their prime from '66-76 then music has advanced in the 50 subsequent years all put together. Having such large numbers allowed lots of eccentric people to find each other even before the internet was around, to collaborate on weird new ideas, and this produced superior art and culture to what has come after it. I'm a very very late GenX baby, but the bulk of literature and music I've consumed has always been made by boomers. If there was a downside to that generation's size, I think it was that culture shifted in the 60s to the modern youth-obsessed culture because they were among the first to have the size and disposable income and cultural power to make it profitable to focus on the youth market. Given how little of one's life is lived in that phase of it, we put an outsized importance on the taste and opinions of youth culturally, in a way that has harmed adult life and mature art.
I too would like to sign on to the anti Hanania declarations here for many of the same reasons you mention.
I would just add as a total cheapshot that the podcasts of his that I've heard are uniformly awful. Every third word is "like" as if he's still in high school and Skyping with a guy in his third period math class to gossip about girls on the cheerleaders squad. Develop some friggin' public speaking skills if you're going to try your hand at multimedia, ya tit!
How are young people supposed to react in places like the UK or France where boomers are setting up completely unsustainable policies for their benefit? I think you really, really underestimate how messed up those countries are regarding pensions
As an Italian, the answer I found is "leave". This seems to be the answer most of my connationals around my age and with similar aspirations also found. For the UK, there are some hints in that direction (plenty of Brits in Australia, and their media seems to have finally started to notice, only a decade too late), while for France... I think they got a better chance? Leaving is not really an option for most French youth (they're way too chauvinistic), but at the same time unlike Italy and the UK, they are experiencing sustained productivity growth, their fertility is not as bad, and the French political class seems to have taken notice and some change is happening in that direction.
I have no thoughts on Boomers in general, but the Schrodinger’s Immigrant / Schrodinger’s Boomer fall flat to me. A steelman of this argument is:
- There are many immigrants. Some of them are on welfare and others of them are taking jobs
- There are many Boomers. Some Boomers pushed too hard to neoliberalism in some aspects of the economy and others focused on over-regulating the environment in other parts of the economy
I also have no particular thoughts on whether or not this argument is correct, but I think it would be better to present actual steelman arguments.
If immigrants were merely parasites at the same rate as natives, there would be no reason to disprefer them to natives, so I think the anti-immigration argument must claim that they are more often parasites - and, by the same logic, more likely to take jobs. I don't think they can be both. In the same way, I think it's hard for Boomers as a generation to be both contemptibly liberal and contemptibly conservative. I admit there's a possible case where they take the country from uniform moderation to a crazy mix of far-left and far-right policies, but I don't think that's the case most critics are making.
I think most of the critics provide bad arguments.
A steelman for the immigrant case would be:
- A small fraction of immigrants are taking _high paying, desirable jobs_
- A large fraction of immigrants are welfare taking
This can be consistent with a net social benefit, but simultaneously being worse for a certain job segment and a lot of welfare takers.
I don't know about far-right/left but if you purely look at the environmental case, the Sierra club, etc. have simultaneously made regulation much worse while hurting climate with their policies. I don't think it's that unusual to have a crazy mix of policies.
The claim needs data - but it would be worth estimating numbers about how many immigrants are both using welfare (formally or informally, like St Vincent de Paul or food banks) and taking jobs, because they work under the table.
>"If immigrants were merely parasites at the same rate as natives, there would be no reason to disprefer them to natives"
Wrong. A country is run for the benefit of its citizens. Because of this, some citizens are "allowed" to be parasites. Society has decided that there is a collective benefit in having a social safety net. A predictable and understood consequense of this is the fact that some citizens will take more than they provide.
However, because the country has the additional capability of deciding which immigrants to allow in and remain, there is no reason to allow ANY immigrants who are net negative to the public welfare to remain in the country and continue recieving benefits. A policy which either kicks out net-negative immigrants or stops providing them benefits will be strictly superior for the welfare of the citizens of the country to a policy which allows net-negative immigrants to remain and recieve benefits.
If we've decided that a given native parasite/worker ratio is a net positive, then increasing the numbers at the same ratio results in a greater net positive. This is is just arithmetic.
Sure, a policy that removes the net-negatives would increase it still further, but that assumes that you can identify the net-negatives, and that you can do so reasonably-cheaply.
In practice, identifying and removing the net-negatives is hard, and the net-positives are so massively positive (far more than natives) that we're better off accepting lots of immigrants and then putting a reasonable amount of effort into removing the net-negatives who are easy to identify (e.g. because they're found to commit crimes, caught defrauding the welfare system, etc.). This strategy maximizes the total benefit to natives.
Such logic only holds up if they're equivalent in every respect. Someone who behaves as badly as the worst established citizen on all routinely-measured metrics, and has some further vice which immigration officials didn't think to check for due to lack of local precedent, might thereby become a disproportionate negative influence.
To be clear, I'm broadly pro-immigration in general. I only think the unknown-unknowns angle justifies holding immigrants to a somewhat higher standard than citizens, not strangling the flow overall or denying them equal protection under the law.
>there is no reason to allow ANY immigrants who are net negative to the public welfare to remain in the country and continue recieving benefits.
That is both false and wrong. Societies can (and many do) decide that, for example, humanitarian reasons are sufficient, such as refugees from war or ecological devastation, or the spouse/children of accepted immigrants.
The anti-anti immigrant argument seems to rely on the assumption that the distribution of immigrants is the distribution of the citizens. Which just doesn't seem to be true. You can totally imagine a gaussian distribution of citizen and bimodal distribution of immigrant "parasitism" that can explain both complaints
Such a bimodal distribution sounds plausible enough from an economic standpoint. Folks from the middle of the curve mostly stay close to home, minding their own business in unremarkable ways. Nearly all immigrants come to the country in search of opportunity, but some such opportunities are prosocial careers, while others might be better described as "unpatched security holes."
Why should a country be required to subsidize parasites from outside of it at the same rate as its internal parasitism? Frankly, the standard should be way lower?
People making this argument tend to perceive the people in their own country as more important than the people outside it, and don't see immigrants as having an automatic claim to a place in this country or to its social services.
To steelman the Shrodinger's immigrant argument, which tbc is empirically false if we're talking about the US, it could theoretically be that immigrants are employed at the same rate as native, but since they mostly do low-wage jobs, they still drain welfare despite being employed (and their unemployed/inactive drain welfare more than their native couterparts bc they don't have significant assets and their family members don't earn enough to support them). The reason it does not happen (again, in the US) is simply because immigrants do not earn much less than natives, their inactivity rate is basically non-existent and their unemployment much lower, and are legally barred from accessing most of welfare, so they're basically bound to be net contributors.
The Shroedinger's boomer instead is historically true, and understanding it relies on a more fine-grained understanding of the ideological milieu of the 70s than modern public discourse allows. Basically, what we usually call "Neoliberalism" (the Mont Pelerin society, Hayek, Friedman, whatnot) was not only about policy in a vacuum, but about institutional or even constitutional design. Sure, like everyone else, they thought that their preffered institutions and procedural rule would seamlessly translate into good (ie, pro-market) policy, but they operated on a much deeper level than just repealing regulations or lowering taxes. They advocated and to a large extent successfully obtained institutional fragmentation, much broader judicial review, a significant re-weight of precedents against statutes in jurisprudence, much more localized decisions in a number of areas (Hayek's "dispersion of the state"), etc. But instead of unleashing the free-market paradise they hoped for, this institutional re-design consigned America to an interventionist nightmare arguably worse than the New Deal state it replaced. Judges used their newfound powers and discretion to block state action, but also gave themselves license to micromanage private action to a degree unthinkable before, and now economic actors fear spurious litigation and lawfare much more than they ever feared the dictum of regulatory agencies. Local control did not result in the Archipelago, the Utopia of Utopias, but in most of the country being frozen in amber as incumbents rationally voted so. The fragmented regulatory state was defangled in certain aspects, but in the areas still under its remit, the lack of unified priorities made agencies much more capricious than before. Much regulation was transfered from transparent and somehow negotiable loci to unappellable and opaque ones: many political priorities that once would have been enacted through civilian agencies and legislation, under public scrutiny, are now enancted on purpoted national security grounds. So yes, the boomers got Neoliberalism, and Neoliberalism then killed neoliberalism (together with many other things, from cities to nuclear to fucking being able to build something without having to pay off any busybody with a lawyer on speed dial).
> It’s not even clear that Boomers are that much more likely to be NIMBYs. From Pew:
Sorry to nitpick, but I don't like using support for very general policies to measure NIMBYism. The whole point of it is *my* backyard. Lots of people are willing to support all of these measures elsewhere, just not near them. But everyone does that, and there is no "elsewhere." And housing seems to relate to some of the most concrete claims against Boomers--that they bought cheap houses, and then made houses too expensive for later generations while lining their own pockets.
> Maybe they should suck it up and take the sacrifice. You’d do this, right? Voluntarily give up money which is yours by right, in order to help other generations?
FDR's idiocy did leave us with a ticking time bomb. It's going to have to be handled at some point. Some people made out like bandits, and that can't be undone, so someone is going to have to get screwed. How this should happen should at least be a topic of discussion, rather than "lol got mine, work harder young'ins" from people who haven't had to look for a job since the Soviet Union existed.
However, I will agree with many of the economic arguments that Boomers weren't actually better off. People say things like "you could own a home and support a family on 1 salary" but they were impoverished by today's standards. You probably can't even legally build or live in housing from then--in 1950, for example, 1/3 of Americans didn't have indoor plumbing. Many of those houses were basically shacks. Yes, there was a growing suburbia, but this was mostly reserved for above-average income earners at first.
I basically agree with this. However, I will point out that every generation tends to have groups that vilify their parents so the trend isn't new. The boomers themselves used to say things like "don't trust anyone over 30."
I think this oddly dodges the two big complaints about boomers.
One, not mine but it needs to be addressed, is housing. There's no end of content online about boomers and housing, no need to reiterate, I'm just surprised not to see it referenced when it (to me) seems such a large part of the discourse.
The second is that the boomers engaged in a lot of...social transformations that were very good for them and had really bad effects on subsequent generations and the boomers refused any limiting factor.
The best example is probably dating and "sexual liberation". The best of all dating worlds is to grow up in the 1950s, when everyone is strongly habituated to forming stable marriages, then be given the opportunity to defect out and have tons of "free love" in your 20s, then settle down in your late 20s into a stable relationship because, well, all your peers came from stable families with strong marriage norms and 3-7 years of "free love" isn't going to overcome that cultural background. Once the next generation rolls around and gets raised in a "free love" culture, though, rather than the stable marriage norms of the 50s, marriage starts to break down. It doesn't take much to notice how horrific modern dating is yet it's worth noting that even by the 80s it was obvious that something was wrong; divorce was skyrocketing and Gen X got hit hard.
I think a similar story is true of immigration, especially from what I hear from Canada. If you're in an essentially ethnically homogenous country, the first immigrant you let is awesome. Most immigrants are awesome. Yet when this scales from individual immigrants to immigrant communities, the boomer's children find themselves growing up in increasingly multiethnic societies which are...far more fractious and far less ideal than we'd hoped.
The meme I see going around on this right now is "The Lost Generation" from Compact magazine, which tells the story of many media companies turning "woke", meaning young white men were locked out of job opportunities in favor of women and minority applicants but only younger white men; the older Boomer/Gen X directors and executives all kept their jobs. And whether or not you fully buy this critique, it perfectly captures the "vibe" of Boomer criticism I see.
Which I think is the guts of the...mmm, "conservative critique" of the Boomers; that they embarked on ambitious social reform movements where the costs fell on subsequent generations and the Boomers experienced either benefits or no cost from these changes.
I'm surprised to see neither of these critiques addressed.
Having said that, I do think Boomer hate is overblown and I'm not looking forward to the, uh, "Millennial Age". My generation is defined by the internet, the greatest tool of mass communication ever, which we immediately turned into ragebait cancel culture trying to get each other fired and engaging in constant purity spirals. There are fair criticisms of Boomers, yes, but they'll be followed by the Twitter generation and then whatever Nick Fuentes/Hasan Piker Gen Z slop follows that.
I think your second point is spot on. Boomers inherited a lot of high trust functional institutions of government, culture, and social engineering. They torched many of them, and now complain that younger generations can't make those things work right.
There's a secret method of liking a comment, now that many are on the app the value has been lost, but I was proud to get 4-5 secret likes on the blog back then
You forgot to mention another transformation that hurt people who weren’t able to plan for it nor did they have time to pivot: the boomers shipped their parents off to old people’s homes and defected from the compact where your parents take care of you when you’re young and you do the same when they get old and frail. Boomer homes didn’t have olds hanging about. No time for wiping old people’s butts, there are films to see on the telly! My grandparents didn’t know this was coming and didn’t have any idea they’d need to save the money to pay strangers to do what family members had done for every single generation up to the boomers.
Good thing I scrolled through the list before writing my own reply; you said this better than I could have.
I'll also add the decline and fall of academia. The Boomers, at least the ones who went to college, got what through the mists of nostalgia at least looks like almost the best possible college experience. See e.g. the range of campus comedy movies made by boomer filmmakers drawing on their experience, from "Animal House" to "Real Genius". The reality, as I understand it, was not quite so awesome but still quite good. But the cohort of new professors and administrators brought on board to placate idealistic young boomers, were I think central to much of the enshittification of higher education in recent decades.
As you say, there are plenty of cases where we can tell a story of boomers demanding that the rules be rewritten and the institutions reshaped to appeal to their desires and interests, in a way that seriously damaged the social trust those institutions would need to keep serving the interests of future generations.
But worth noting that these stories work best if we apply them to the earliest subset of boomers. The ones born in 1964, who didn't even reach college until 1982, don't really fit this narrative. I think there's a distorted stereotype where the "typical" boomer is seen as someone who was born in the late 1940s, and is now in their early 60s.
Millennial here. Came here to say something similar re: “sexual liberation” — there’s no addressing the Boomer divorce epidemic etc and its effect on their children and children’s children. Surely a source of a lot of this anti-Boomerism is the destruction of people’s families (I know multiple millennials whose parents are now divorcing in their 60s and 70s, in addition to friends of mine whose families were destroyed when they were in middle and high school by parents who wanted to “live their dream” — that is, leave low-conflict marriages and let the kids pick up the pieces.) It’s hard to pass on a high-trust society when you’ve destroyed the smallest unit of social trust, your own family.
The comment by WoolyAl to Scott's blog post about boomers is a very perceptive. I refer to the observation: "...the boomers engaged in a lot of...social transformations that were very good for them and had really bad effects on subsequent generations and the boomers refused any limiting factor."
You can build it into a general theory of what happens when something new hits a society.
Such as the idea that "divorce is ok" in a society with very strong matrimonial norms (US in the 1950s). Or "foreigners are great" (European societies where almost everyone looked alike, in the 1950s).
First, people - in particular the young & educated - think the new thing is awesone. And it is awesome, because it upends the staid and limited life choices in a society ruled by rigid societal rules/social mores/stong ethnic homogeneity/ stuff like that.
Then the new thing gradually becomes the new normal. Because those against the new thing, are seen as hopelessly backward and/or bent on maintaining the staid, suffocating, homogenous society that everyone - and in particular the young & educated - are quietly suffering from. (And they are not wrong, either - this is not a story about heroes and villains, but about a certain societal logic.)
As the new thing becomes a new normal (divorce laws are liberalized, immigration - of exotic foreigners in particular - is encouraged) , what was liberating on a small-scale or for the first generation that experienced it, becomes a source of irritation and discontent and also worse psychological stuff. Society sort-of "sours", not in a grand way but in a small, everyday way.
For example & as you point out, divoce is freedom for the first generation who get easy access to divorce. (They themselves grew up in two-parent families held together by the stiff upper lips of their parents - who carried their suffering in quiet & hid it from their children. Meaning that their children did not suffer the emotional scars of their parents making their own suffering visible to their children.) Well and good.
...However, guilt-free divorce is not as great for the children of the first generation who enjoyed gult-free divorce (and even less when the grandchildren generation arrives). The children of the first generation who enjoyed guilt-free divorce face a dating scene where they themselves, and most of their love interests, have parents who divorced - with all the emotional fall-out that has wrought on the now grown-up children. (Not always, but often, and the sheer increase in the scale of divorce means it becomes more potent as a source of videspread emotional vulnarability & emotional cynicism & stuff like that.)
This leads - over the generations - to a society that is more "open", but also more characterized by a certain type of emotional irritation, or stress, and lack of emotional trust. The general feeling is that the degree of petty "sourness" in society increases.
That's where we are, and there does not seem to be a way out. You cannot press toothpaste back on the tube, I guess. And it is not even clear if you should try. Since it is not terrible in a large-scale way - and the previous, homogenous and normatively rigid society was unpleasant as well, although unpleasant in a different way. Increased scope for promiscuity and multiculturalism and stuff like that just taints society with a certain general sourness. I expect this low-key sourness to increase further, as new generations continue to grown up and replace the old.
Again, it is not terrible. One can live with it. The US is perhaps slightly ahead of Europe with regard to this socio-cultural transformation, but not by much.
It could even turn out to be the end point of "modernity" , from a psychological point of view. Future generations will find out.
Thank you for the generous reply. I found much to agree with in what you said but agreement is boring so let me focus on a point of disagreement :)
"That's where we are, and there does not seem to be a way out. You cannot press toothpaste back on the tube, I guess."
I would point to abortion as a counterpoint to this. Not only has "Roe v Wade" been overturned but abortions are down from ~1.4 million at their 1990 peak to ~613k in 2022. (1) I think it's incorrect to say that we can return to the 1950s but widespread changes to the law, both de facto and de jure (2) will definitely have profound societal effects.
This leads to more of a...personal theory than a general one I think some of the current anti-Boomer rhetoric is based around younger, more radical generations eager to dramatically change US laws and being stifled by the sheer voting power of the Boomers. As Dan Hochberg so helpfully pointed out above, much of the radical action of the 2010s was driven less by Boomers and more by radical millennials. With a passing reference to both the SJW phenomenon in corporate America and Groypers working as congressional aides in Washington DC, the younger generations are in general far less unified and far more radical than their parents (or at least the political elite are). Yet, for now, the Boomers remain a potent voting block.
I don't want to predict too much doom or radicalism but...I question the inherent stability of Boomer/liberal norms. Whether it's abortion in America or the reversal of liberalism in China/Russia, many of the liberal policies we've inherited are looking far more fragile than they did in the 90s.
Yes, we agree on many things. And let's also agree that it is hard to predict with any certainty what the future will bring. There are many megatrends at work at present, not all in the same direction.
But follwing up on your comment to my comment:
A possible difference between us is that you seem to hope for some kind of return to the stiffer norms and larger degree of cultural homogeneity of the 1950s/early 60s. While I do not, really. That era was not nice for many, just like the present era is not nice for many. The type of society-induced individual-psychological suffering was different, but probably not less of it.
...Although it is difficult to get data on this, obviously, so the above is just my sort-of educated guess. Plus, I am perhaps temperamentally more of a cultural fatalist than you. We must take the present with good humor, since the only alternative is to take it with bad humour, and that is worse. Amor fati and all that.
Just a note on abortion law in the US. You seem to think the new legislation is the proverbial canary in the coal mine, heralding a larger cultural reversal. While my hypothesis is that it is a backlash derived from the US being "too early" introducing free abortion back in 1973, given the US socio-cultural environment of early 1970s. In short, you introduced free abortion before the country was socio-culturally ready for it. Also indicated by the way it was done - through a US Supreme Court decision, rather than an act in Congress & Senate.
...based on degree of religiousness & similar socio-cultural indicators, the US should have introduced free abortion at roughly the same time as Catholic-conservative South European countries - such as Spain and Portugal. Not at the same time as Denmark and even before Sweden, the protestant-secular North European countries.
My prediction is that abortion will stay a State decision (not a Federal decision) in the future, but that the restrictive US states - mainly Southern states (your equivalent to Southern Europe)- will gradually liberalize their new, restrictive, abortion laws in the decades ahead. With Alabama probably being the last in the pack:-).
..it's an empirical question who of us will be right. Unfortunately, boomers are unlikely to live long enough to find out. But probably gen Z'ers will.
The general theory of what happens when a new thing hits society involves the new thing being primarily adopted by the youngest adolescent/adult generation, who are a distinct minority. The new thing is thus somewhat constrained by the attitudes of the older generations, traditionally more conservative and having experience with shiny new things not turning out quite so well. The needle moves relatively slowly, the new thing isn't fully adapted before the problems start to appear, and the next generation gets to decide what to do with a partially-adopted new idea that's visibly less shiny than it first appeared.
The boomers, had disproportionate numbers from the start (because check out the name), and disproportionate political influence because the politics of Vietnam resulted in a higher level of political activism and voter turnout than had been normal for the young. So the new ideas were adopted faster and with less pushback.
Cultural change usually takes place through hierarchical diffusion (re: good old Everett Rogers' magnum opus "Diffusion of innovations", 5th edition). In all countries, watch the (changing) belief system of urban, young, educated people. They herald what becomes the larger culture, some decades further along.
I agree with you that boomer influence has been particularly large and long-lasting, in the US and elsewhere. But this is not only due to their sheer size plus period effects (the Vietnam war). Probably even more important has been the tremendous increase in demand & supply of tertiary eduction between 1950 and 1990, which landed so many boomers top jobs in universities & university colleges early in their lives. This is important since universities are where new birth cohorts of young, urban, intelligent people meet and are (re)socialized into their value system/s - which then diffuse to the larger society.
The piece you are missing here is income inequality. Millennials are the most unequal generation so far. A handful of wealthy are skewing the average. Most people are not doing as well as their parents. https://inequality.org/article/generational-wealth-inequality/
To make the contrarian argument, which I don't necessarily hold: The generations in modern history before boomers were building the real economy, fighting wars/sending the youth off to wars that were important in some moral or spiritual or some such sense (I disagree here but others don't), creating the structures of the world that lead to all those graphs deciding to go L shaped.
Note: As someone who actually came from one of the places supposedly being lifted out of poverty, I don't believe most of those graphs, I think the whole thing is a map/territory/bullseye drawn around the arrow exercise, but I am granting them in this case.
The boomers on the other hand work in the financialized economy trading dog fart futures to each other at 15%, fight in wars/send the youth off to wars that are meaningless quagmires, benefit from the structures that exist and create new structures that mainly exist to centralize wealth and de-democratize as much as possible.
The boomers from this perspective are the ultimate free riders.
It has shaken out that the boomers happened to occupy the point where the wealth had been redistributed and society had been democratized and all these trees that previous generation didn't get to enjoy the shade of were ready to be chopped down and sold at a profit.
Depends on the age of hater, I'm not that young, my parents were def did not have me very young, and was raised by Gen Xers acutely aware that they got in after the party was over and they had to pay for Boomer exuberance (they did not get to enjoy '68 but were subjected to the moralistic backlash of the late 70s, they did not get jobs bc they knew someone's friend's cousin but they were paying taxes or working double shifts to pay for that over-hiring, when the Iron Courtain fell they were in no position to buy Romanian castles or Ukranian factories for a couple truckloads of blue jeans but saw many of the entry-level jobs they aspired to shipped away etc)
So you hate your grandparents instead? Ask your parents if they hate their parents. You can't escape the fact that, for boomer hating to make sense, at some point at least one entire generation of parents would have to have earned the hatred of their children and you'd have to explain how that one generation of parents came to be so exceptionally bad in a way that you imagine that your generation wouldn't have been in their place.
That's pretty naked emotionally manipulation, do you really expect it to work? "If you believe this easily provable fact, then you are in fact feeling ::contemptible emotion::, thus this fact must be false, and if you insist to believe your own eyes and math you must be contemptible and I can thus dismiss you".
A majority of boomers set up mechanisms that benefitted them at the expense of future generations, used them to keep power much longer than previous generations did, and never alter such mechanisms. They also created a self-refential culture where such entitlements were portrayed as sacrosant, and any demand by their younger instead as unreasonable and absurd.
Does it mean I *hate* them? No, not really, and even if I did it would not change the facts one bit.
This is focusing too much on oversimplifying data which is, to begin with, too sparse and vague to really draw meaningful conclusions from. All of charts presented look like "<shrug> not much difference between generations" because they're all full of watered down averages that aren't helpful except for shallow analysis. These are massive, heterogenous, dynamic population groups, and it would require a lot more detailed data collection and organization to come up with useful insights. I suspect that size of that challenge is a big reason it hasn't been tackled, and when people try to, it becomes trivial to cherry pick data to tell any of various narratives.
For years, the gripes I hear and witness about boomers—and which are not captured or even hinted at anywhere in this post—almost always include the pervasive attitude (real or perceived? either way it's there) among boomers that "I got mine, screw you", and the associated lack of empathy, generosity, or accountability that the generation seems to consistently exhibit across every sphere. Whether they really are selfish or not, reasonably or not, they just don't care, and that's pathetic.
I think this gets at it best. I'm 57, but occasionally I'll see someone my age or even a few years younger opining about something and reflexively think "who cares what that old guy says."
I second that. The aging of the entire political elite creates a very visible and easy target to connect all unwanted political/economic/social developments to the ruling political class (picking whichever side you hate most) and then to generalize that back to the regular old folk who look like the ruling political elite.
Ironically that is a very boomer attitude. It's a human cultural norm to care very much about what the old guy says because the old guy -- normally -- has experience and wisdom and is concerned with directing those toward the well being of his posterity. Dismantling the practice of respecting those who came before and taking responsibility for those who will come in the future is yet another innovation the boomers dumped on us.
It may also be a natural effect of the ridiculously accelerated advancement of technology in our times. Old people's experience was made in a world without internet.
I read Hanania's article, which you refer to, when it came out and I just reread it. I see nothing in there to indicates that he hates or even dislikes boomers. I noticed on my first reading that older people prefer maintaining benefits and Gen Z prefers reducing them, but I shrugged my shoulders. After all, I'm benefiting and Gen Z is paying. Why would one even expect the polls to indicate otherwise? But I don't Hanania even criticizing boomers.
Anyway, "the common people" have always hated boomers. They it's just that they called us hippies back then....
Sometimes I think the cure to this kind of discourse better education on recent history.
There seems to be this myth of a "boomer golden age", that's usually cherry-picked by citing a few statistics on the things that genuinely have gotten worse (housing, education costs) and pointing to some specific modern problems; but most of the people talking about it aren't people who lived through the era, (disclaimer: neither did I).
And that "boomer golden age" myth is obviously a big part of the boomer discourse, but also vibecession stuff and a lot of the generic "everything sucks nowadays" talk, in general.
But as Scott mentions, the Boomers were the Vietnam generation and also dealt with huge cultural changes, large amounts of civil unrest, disruptive technologies, the Cold War and the associated nuclear war threat, serious economic issues like stagflation, lots of international conflict, etc, etc.
Also the song "We didn't Start the Fire" is a good example of a lot of the otherwise-mostly-unknown-to-the-current generation problems, and largely exists because of exactly this sort of "the previous generation had it easy" discourse:
> Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!". Joel replied: "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful". The friend replied: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties". Joel retorted: "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?"
That HH Addendum was FANTASTIC and really an interesting view into the current times. Also, so much of what happened in '68 was not something my generation knows much about. (Born in 1980)
> You can find others where the Boomers look downright saintly compared to their kids:
This is a graph showing Boomers and Millennials disagree a lot about very important issues.
Why would you expect that such a chart would convince Millennials that Boomers are good actually?
Like, regardless of what issues the chart was measuring, it's showing that Millennials and Boomers disagree on those issues. Surely such a chart could only ever make the two sides like each other less, as it confirms a difference in their values and beliefs?
You seem to be citing things that you personally, and by extension your presumed audience, agree with Boomers more than Millennials about. But isn't this just evidence that you and your audience are out of step with most Millennials, and they should view you the same way they view Boomers?
Support for democracy, opposition to censorship and political violence?
To the degree that average Millennials and Zoomers disagree with average Boomers on those issues, average Millennials and Zoomers are just plain wrong. Sadly, I think over the next decade or two they're going to have their noses rubbed in just how wrong they are. And those of us who already know why they're wrong are going to get to "enjoy" the experience right along with them.
I don't think it actually was time that persuaded people of the virtues of democracy, free-speech etc. Rather, King John of England ticked off his barons enough to rebel long ago, eventually Parliament was strong enough to defeat King Charles I, and that political movement eventually spawned the US, which worked out very well. But other societies lived through the same amounts of time without developing in the same way.
It’s probably a bad idea to hate a whole generation, but I will say a couple of things against Boomers.
I once wrote a piece on Stand by Me pointing out that the movie is about a Boomer who went on a grand adventure and yet won’t let his own kid bike to the pool. Anyone growing up under a Boomer hegemony had to have been aware of this, the feeling that Boomers were pulling doors shut behind them and then celebrating the beforetimes, when the doors were open. “When I did drugs it was so cool, but you better not do drugs.” “I hitchhiked across America to see the country, but hitchhiking is bad and fortunately illegal now.” If you went to school at a certain time, or worked at a certain time, you were guaranteed to encounter a teacher or coworker who claimed to have been at Woodstock (ha!) and who expressed contempt at you, the young, for not having been at Woodstock. It was weird and also really grating!
Boomers suffered a tendency to self-mythologize, and it never ends! Remember that Boomer-centered bank ad from a few years ago: “A generation as unique as this deserves a bank etc.”? Boomers were the first generation to have and be an identity (broadly across the whole US at least). This isn’t even their fault, as the identity was invented by marketers to sell pop records, but Boomers fell in love with the idea.
It’s hard to hate the Greatest Generation, not because they were great (whatever) but because someone outside their generation declared them to be the Greatest. When Leonard Steinhorn wrote The GREATER Generation about how amazing Boomers were, he did it because he, a Boomer, wanted more credit. Look at me! Look at me! There have been so many years of Look at me!
I like to watch old sitcoms from the ‘80s, and it is hilarious how much Boomer indulgence goes on. Murphy Brown reminiscing about her time in “The Revolution.” Howard Hesseman on Head of the Class kicking Dan Schneider out fo class for making irreverent jokes about the ’60s. Kate from Kate and Allie forbidding her daughter from dating a boy who didn’t support ’60s peace protesters. Just watch the opening credits of Family Ties—it’s like a nightmare!
There's an updated list from 2024: https://www.ascap.com/press/2024/12/12-10-top-holiday-songs. I don't see "Last Christmas" on the list, but yeah, "All I want for Christmas is You" is up there. But with 23/25 songs, I'd say the comic holds up very well.
So weird: A couple of years ago I wrote a book of alternate history scenarios (Impossible Histories by Hal Johnson, grab one for the history buff on your Christmas lists) and in a couple of chapters, sure, I vent my spleen about Boomers, but in a different chapter, one about scurvy and Polar exploration, both Boomer-free topics, I cite that xkcd comic. It's everywhere!
I agree that broad hate for boomers is bad. I'd stick to very narrow and specific objections like:
They saw the problem with social security funding coming 30 years ago. For 30 years they failed to address it. It's pretty messed up that they expect current workers to fix the problem at the last moment by paying more taxes. They were the ones who voted out any politicians that proposed any solutions with the real kinds of costs that would help address the problem.
Also this is just unfair: "Richard Hanania, who has tried hating every group once, has decided that hating Boomers is his favorite." The last paragraph of the article you link to agrees with your thesis here that all demagoguery is bad and wrong including anti-old demagoguery. He just contends that this is just the least bad option:
"Public opinion is mostly terrible, but that can’t be an excuse to let the country decline. Trying to have a well-functioning, free society means engaging in a constant struggle to change, subvert, or work around it. If successful democratic movements usually need to be demagogic, then let’s pick the forms of demagoguery that get us closest to the truth. To say old people are destroying America is of course an oversimplification. But it’s one that has more potential to inspire people to fight for positive change than almost any other narrative."
Part of the issue is that Boomers tend to engage with the debate in a way that younger people find extremely irritating. I’ve noticed this both online and in person.
Elon Musk’s framework of “reasoning via analogy versus reasoning via first principles” is useful here. In these debates, boomers and younger people generally talk past each other because they’re approaching the argument in different ways.
The younger people tend to reason via first principles (“my job pays A, I owe B in student loan payments, rent is C, which leaves me with D in monthly savings for a down payment on a house, which means that it will take me 17 years to actually afford one, unless I commute four hours a day or move to rural Indiana, in which case I’ll lose my job…etc.”) They’re laying out the actual math as they understand it, and saying that it doesn’t add up to middle-class success.
The boomers almost invariably hear this as “my life is tough” and they immediately respond with “So? Do you think WE didn’t have to work hard when we were young?? When I was twenty-four, I had to…” They’re reasoning by analogy, and they almost never engage with the actual math that the younger people present to them.
Where some of the younger people go wrong is that they claim that boomers had it easy, when a more reasonable view would be that the boomers did work hard but had good opportunities to benefit from their hard work.
Where the boomers go wrong is that they find it difficult to incorporate new information into their mental models, instead reflexively responding to every complaint with a story about how they had to work hard in their twenties, which just angers the younger people more, making the debate nastier.
I feel like this could have benefitted from a little more analysis of areas where boomers are legitimately different from other generations and making/made things worse, for reasons that are pretty hard to justify.
For example: housing.
Per NPR:
> Baby boomer empty nesters own twice as many of the country's three-bedroom-or-larger homes, compared with millennials with kids, according to a recent analysis from Redfin. That means those larger homes aren't hitting the market, one factor limiting the supply for the younger generations who could use those extra bedrooms.
They don’t need to do this, obviously. And it’s kind of hard to explain away in terms that don’t involve at least some selfishness/disagreeableness. Of course you can argue it’s a financial issue (locked in from selling by an unfavorable mortgage rate environment). And the NPR article makes this case:
> Some baby boomers, the generation now between the ages of 60 and 78, are happy in their large homes, using the extra bedrooms for hobbies and visiting family. Others say they want to downsize, but it just doesn't make sense financially.
But for many of them, the house they’ve been in for 2-3 decades has essentially 1.5xed to doubled in value, adjusted for inflation. You can’t take a little haircut to downsize and let the next generation of families use the space? What do you need 3+ bedrooms for (even if we’re being charitable)? The few weekends a year when lots of family visit?
In fact, while the norm for their parents generation was down downsize in retirement (moving to a smaller house, condo, or retirement community) when they do move house for retirement, they’re the first generation in which a large proportion are UPSIZING:
> According to a recent Merrill Lynch and Age Wave retirement study of more than 3,600 respondents, 49% of retirees didn’t downsize in their last move, and 30% actually ended up moving into larger homes… According to a recent Del Webb survey conducted among 50- to 60-year-olds, 22% are looking to move to bigger homes. The study also found that 43% want to remain in their existing home or move to a new location with comparable space. This change marks the first time such a significant majority of retirees have gone against real estate norms.
What’s the charitable explanation for this? Just their sheer wealth and the fact that people are more inclined to value personally advantageous financial decisions than the greater good? I could buy this, and empathize, but why wasn’t this true of their parents? It’s seems like more of a social norm thing boomers bucked, which tracks pretty well with the reputation they’ve gotten as a generation, IMO.
Considering that boomers are 20% of the population, but own anywhere from 35-45+% of the US single family housing stock, can we really argue that this isn’t haven’t a meaningful impact on the housing crisis for young families?
There are other things too, like their politics, which you don’t really touch on that much.
For instance, their overwhelming embrace of Reaganism/Thatcherism, and the fact that DJT’s voter base is significantly more boomer heavy than either Clinton’s or Biden’s.
They seem to have a much more hardline conservative, selfish, revanchist politics than the generations that preceded them, which has led to some of the lowest taxes in US history, the weakest welfare state, and among highest concentrations of wealth in the top 10-1% than any of our peer nations. Most of the politics that got us there were driven by boomer political sentiment.
Plus they refuse to let go of political power, staying in office far longer than any previous generation, and consequentially making up a strikingly outsize fraction of Congress, for their population size. We vote them in, sure, but considering the role that party level campaign financing plays in our electoral system you can’t chalk these things up entirely to voter apathy, these are often choices being made at the party level to benefit themselves. Every presidential candidate for the last 30 years almost, besides Obama, has been a boomer, many of them born within a year of each other (decisions made largely at the party level).
Again, it’s not hard for me to imagine why people piece together an unflattering image of them as a generation, given this. But idk. Maybe I’m also deranged by this stuff and not seeing clearly.
This sounds a lot like what was addressed by this part of the post:
> You’d do this, right? Voluntarily give up money which is yours by right, in order to help other generations? Oh, sorry, you didn’t hear the question, you were too busy writing your 500th “You don’t hate Boomers enough, why won’t they hurry up and die, we need to declare intergenerational warfare and seize our rightful inheritance” post.
We’re talking about refusing to sell you home because even though the house has gone up in value by 1.5-2x adjusted for inflation, the mortgage payment on a house the same size would be more than you’re happy with, when you don’t need to move in to a house the same size for any reason.
Would I, when I’m 65 and in the same position, have the same priorities? I honestly don’t think so.
In fact we recently moved in to a house previously owned by a silent generation widow who instructed her estate not to think this way — sell the house for a reasonable price, and find a young family to sell it to. The (boomer) family was furious, and tried legal shenanigans to force the executor to ignore this aspect of the will. They (thankfully) refused.
You don't need to wait till you're 65 to realize you have very similar priorities. As long as you own any asset you'd rather hold than sell at current market value, you get the idea.
The old widow in your story screwed her children and their families over for a stranger's benefit. If you think that's admirable, I wonder if YOUR children will agree.
She screwed them how? By owning an asset for over 30 years which probably more than doubled in value in real terms, and then let them keep the profits, save maybe a 10% bump they could have enjoy through a bidding war, which could have ended in the property being a bought by commercial interests and perpetually rented, or used as a vacation home? What a monster.
What I was getting after is that many of them would like to move but are inclined to wait not because they wouldn’t make a profit off the home but because they wouldn’t make as much profit as they’d like.
> They don’t need to do this, obviously. And it’s kind of hard to explain away in terms that don’t involve at least some selfishness/disagreeableness
I don't find it hard at all. Moving is a huge pain, so the fact that - barring some specific reason to move - many boomers would rather stay in the houses where they're already settled in, comfortable in, and nostalgically attached to is something I find very unsurprising and would not call "selfishness" or "disagreeableness".
If you're saying that they should read about the housing crisis and take it upon themselves to move, primarily to free up housing stock for the younger generation: I think that's a huge life change to expect someone to make for fairly abstract/nebulous reasons and an unreasonable place to put the bar for "selfishness".
Also, if you believe that the primary issue with housing is "we're not building enough housing" (and I do), it also makes sense that they're not downsizing because they're also affected by limited housing supply: there's less of it than there should be so downsizing is harder and more expensive than it should be.
And yeah, fundamentally, I don't think we should be relying on previous generations to vacate housing out of the goodness of their hearts: we should build more housing to meet demands.
I don’t think we should rely on this either but I do think their generation is different from previous ones in meaningful ways (which I think I laid out somewhat straightforwardly) which contribute to the reputation they have
Did previous generations sell their houses and move when they got older? None of my grandparents, or great-grandparents did, nor my wife's, nor those of anyone else I know well enough to know their family histories. Did yours?
Those previous generations did die younger, however. Perhaps that's the meaningful difference?
In other words: moving house has always been a huge pain, and people have always been nostalgically attached to their family homes, so why are their retirement housing behaviors so different from previous generations? And is there a charitable case for why they’re different in the ways they are (staying in houses much larger than what they need as empty nesters or moving to larger ones). I could by a housing constraint argument. But I’m not sure it’s the whole picture.
> people have always been nostalgically attached to their family homes, so why are their retirement housing behaviors so different from previous generations?
Are they different though? Where's the evidence of this? I don't mean this in a snarky [citation needed] way, I'm just not convinced that their retirement housing behaviours are so different from previous generations.
From my youth in the 1980s I remember a lot of (~1920s-born) old people living in the houses they'd occupied for decades.
The surveys I cited above show some evidence, perhaps not of them staying in their houses at higher rates, but certainly downsizing less and the upsizing behavior is genuinely new.
> so why are their retirement housing behaviors so different from previous generations
Personally, I find wanting to stay in your house to be a perfectly natural instinct ("A homeowner at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted on by an outside force", perhaps), so maybe it's more productive to ask the opposite question of why previous generations downsized more often and why those factors might be less relevant today.
Speaking based on my (and wife's) grandparents (silent generation, not boomers), they only moved out when it more-or-less became medically necessary, so I wouldn't be surprised if modern medicine and increased life-spans has made older people more mobile and less inclined to downsize due to health reasons.
Homes being easier to maintain nowadays also may also affect that from the other direction - if it's easier to maintain the home, that also delays the point where it's no longer feasible to keep living in it. People being able to afford better lawn mowers or lawn care services (among many other decreases in labor needed to maintain a home) probably has a big effect.
I think "previous generations were less selfish than boomers" is an unlikely answer and a bit of a thought-ending cliche.
One problem I see about the housing stock is that middle-to-well-off old people sitting on big homes that younger families need -- those old people need to be able to buy smaller homes that are nonetheless still nice enough to live in and in nice enough neighborhoods. Where we live, to downsize (which we want to do soon-ish, still a child at home) would require us to either buy a much smaller house for the exact same price closer to town (which would be good for us old people who like to walk) or to buy a smaller, cheaper house much further out of town and would have us driving long distances to get near amenities, which is not a great way to age well.
But we can't afford *not* to liquidate assets out of our house to cover cost of living expenses in retirement, so that first option -- a lateral move to a smaller house in town -- isn't an option for us. When I look at our entire real estate market in our entire state, I don't see many houses for sale that are houses half our size at half the cost (or even 2/3 the cost) within striking distance of town amenities (I'm not talking big city amenities). That's a problem of housing stock availability and lack of regulation of people using smaller homes as Airbnb income sources, which is rampant here.
If we want oldens to move to smaller places and these oldens own fairly high-value properties, we need to have options for them. Many of those options are being used as short-term rentals and second homes only occasionally occupied. Either we need to regulate that more or we need to build more small homes. Young people with small or no families also need small home options so they can buy into the market and start accruing value from an earlier age.
What really pisses me off about this argument, is that I paid for the house that I live in _to be built_ , using savings from my wages. My home would not _EXIST_ if I hadn't paid to have it built. If someone begrudges me my home, fuck them.
I want to offer a side argument for the lazy socialist use of "capitalism." Today we tend to use ideology as a pejorative - like we say "that's ideological" as a way of saying it's a bad partisan argument you should ignore. But Marx doesn't use it this way. To Marx, an ideology is just a package of ideas that tend to go together.
Marx understands capitalism to be an ideology that develops in response to certain material conditions, specifically the conditions of modernity and the industrial revolution. So any idea anyone has in a modern industrial economy is part of capitalism. It doesn't matter if it has anything specifically to do with markets, or if it has anything to do with politics or economics at all. Capitalism is just defined as the type of ideas people tend to have in their heads when they live in a modern industrial economy.
> Capitalism is just defined as the type of ideas people tend to have in their heads when they live in a modern industrial economy.
Where by "modern industrial economy" he means the economies of the more advanced parts of 19th century Europe, which has very little in common with Western economies today?
Obviously there's been a lot of social change. But I think Marx would argue the meat of capitalism is an ontology that includes things like:
- jobs
- employers
- employees
- factories
- banks
- markets
- income
- investments
- corporations
Prior to the IR these things existed but were marginal to the overall economy, which was mainly agrarian and traditional. An agrarian peasant wasn't an "employee" in the modern sense, nor did they have a "job." They were mostly subsistence farmers.
The ideas that were starting to dominate the advanced parts of 19th c. have come to dominate most of the world, and I think it's reasonable to call this collection of ideas "capitalism."
“Why do so many believe that old people have discovered a vote-themselves-infinite-benefits hack?”
I’m a tail-end Boomer myself, and I mostly agree with your overall take.
But the above quoted concern is actually valid when it comes to the old-age entitlements.
Congress changed SS in the 1970s to have ever-increasing benefits (going up with average wage growth, not merely with CPI) where they don’t have to vote each year on the benefits.
Medicare was never self-funding.
As the number of retirees has grown and there are ever fewer number of workers to pay into the Ponzi-like scheme that is SS, people correctly fear that the Boomers will get all of theirs, but then the Ponzi-scheme will likely end (Medicare is actually in far worse shape than SS (which could still be saved by eliminating that increase by average wage growth provision - would address 80% of the problem).
Because math. [And the massive debt and ongoing trillion dollar+ deficits.] and because all Dems plus Trump have taken any changes to entitlements off the table.
Throw in the higher cost of housing because of NIMBYism, for which Boomers might not be totally responsible but are disproportionately so, and the idea that Boomers got themselves a benefits hack… ain’t whack.
Despite you otherwise being correct about the rest of it.
I did not blame Boomers for creating the law, I said the benefit BIGLY from it.
Politicians refuse to address it, because first essentially *every* Democrat and now in response Trump have taken all discussion of remorming old age entitlements off that table.
You can say this is in response to what voters want, but of course Boomers are the most instrumental in this being the case now.
Re the bit about how "you're going to be old too" ("But you will be in the position, vis-a-vis the younger generation, that the Boomers are in now...")
When I point out that the planet is overpopulated, online people love to retort "so just die then." A weird kind of cargo-cult Categorical Imperative: if you think there's a policy problem, implement the fix _just on yourself_, not in policy. But if the planet is overpopulated, and I die, it's still overpopulated, by just as much, realistically.
Similarly: if you believe that, as currently constituted, society *is bad because* it directs too much of its resources to the decrepit elderly generation, then you believe it'd be better if it didn't do that. If it impoverishes just you, then that's not going to help anyone. But if you think that having happy healthy young people is good in general, then YES you'd want A POLICY change that accomplished that. Expecting individuals to just unilaterally sacrifice because of a policy change they want doesn't make sense.
> A weird kind of cargo-cult Categorical Imperative: if you think there's a policy problem, implement the fix _just on yourself_, not in policy. But if the planet is overpopulated, and I die, it's still overpopulated, by just as much, realistically.
Well, at the very least it wouldn't be your problem anymore. Either way, it's good to focus on actually accomplishable goals that you can achieve yourself. For example, if you know wealth is concentrated in older generations, find a way to extract it from them. Old people love slot machines!
I don't know if this is a peculiarly American problem or if people are just generally like this, but I get the sense that other nations have large numbers of people who are able to think about "society" as something that exists and that they'd like to improve, rather than always insisting that each individual make their own decisions while gaming out what all the other individuals are going to do.
Spending what we spend on the elderly is a policy choice. But we're not even supposed to talk about policy choices. They just happen somehow, from our rulers, and the rest of us just need to either kill ourselves or cheat even harder than our neighbors. It's dystopian and sociopathic.
The problem is that discussing policy in this case is worthless because the boomers completely outnumber you, and they are inevitably going to act in their self-interest. Or whatever they think is in their self-interest, anyways. Given the remaining years they have left, they are making the correct decisions here.
What the hell are you even expecting here, man? You're not entitled to fairness, or for others to act the way you want them to. If the current system is flawed to the point that ruin is inevitable, all you can do is let it fall so something else can take its place. But you can still make decisions so you can survive and maybe even benefit from the decay!
The boomers do not outnumber the non-boomers, no, and besides, I don't think it's inevitable that literally zero boomers actually want to improve society.
My impression of why people "hate" Boomers is this that considered from the perspective of a Western Millennial or Zoomer, the Boomers grew up in a West that still had social cohesion, a lot of young people, a flourishing economy; and what they did with that was destroy the social cohesion, create an increasingly competitive economy, and pass on an increasingly degenerated culture full of commercialization, porn and loneliness -- and a lot of old people. That is, they used up the heritage they had inherited from the previous generations (that they despised for being "square").
How many Zoomers are advocating that that social cohesion be resurrected by restricting pornography or re-instituting norms like rigorous dress and grooming expectations, church attendance, higher marriage and birth rates and the like? Your comment reads to me like an ad hoc rationalization, because I don't see these dissatisfied people being in favor of anything that could even plausibly solve the problems that apparently have them so distraught. In fact, it seems like the opposite from my point of view.
Part of the point is that you can't just get them back, just as you can't just get your ancestral home back if your parents gave it away. That's why it's a cause of resentment.
How can you re-institute social cohesion when the thing you would need to institute anything like that would be social cohesion?
Even leaving aside the generational question, lots of people are worried about things like low birth rates and social isolation (the "bowling alone" issue). No one has any particularly good idea of what to do about it.
As for how many Zoomers etc. -- I have no idea. But I guess some of the young people who support Trump or the far right parties in Europe do want authoritarian solutions to these issues. Or on the left, the climate change activists.
I don't know what you mean when you say "post hoc rationalization". What am I rationalizing? I am offering my interpretation of why some people resent the Boomer generation.
Right, and to go a step further, I believe Boomers get more resentment for two reasons. One, their sheer size and cultural weight gave them disproportionate influence over the cultural zeitgeist. America's last really unified popular culture was mostly Boomer. That makes it more apropos to lay perceived negative cultural trends at their door.
Two, I feel like Boomers' perceived collective "voice" or attitude is often disappointment that the younger generations can't or haven't "succeeded" or "achieved" as much as the Boomers claim they did. But this disapproval gets very irritating when many stumbling blocks for younger folks were laid by the Boomers themselves. For example, "harumph, everyone gets a trophy these days" - who demanded that their kids get trophies? Not the kids. "Oh, young people today don't know how to do anything." Did you ever get out of the way and let young people learn on the job? "In my day we played outside all day and didn't get home until dark, kids these days aren't independent." Who wrote laws that means you would get your kids taken away if you tried a Boomer-style free range childhood? "This generation doesn't know how to pair off and produce the next generation." Who normalized no-fault divorce, two-income households, looser sexual mores, "kids are resilient," fulltime daycare from infancy on, etc. because it was more fun or convenient for them at the time? (In fairness the Silent Generation may have started this but Boomers ran with it). "No work ethic anymore." Who presided over the trends of extracurriculars instead of school jobs, administrative bloat, financialization of almost every sector of the economy?
I think today's younger generations see the Boomers having inherited a surplus of functional institutions and cultural capital, tearing down lots of Chesterton's fences, squandering much of the social reserves to enrich themselves, and then turning around and criticizing the youth for causing or at least not reversing the inevitable decay in the societal fabric that Boomers themselves set in motion.
I gotta disagree again. You definitely can get back your ancestral home. You make the people who currently own it an offer above its current market value. In terms of building social cohesion, I agree it's tough, but you can do it at small scales in a lot of different ways. For example, different religious groups like the Mormons and Orthodox Jews are able to do this anew with each generation of young people. Likewise, the military is able to take young people of fairly diverse backgrounds and mold them into cohesive units. I am sure you've been through some lame team building activities at work, as I have, but at least some companies are able to foster their own internal cultures and build cohesive groups internally over time. Again, nationally speaking, social cohesion is hard to foster and the US may just never have that again absent the Chinese invading the West Coast or what have you, but at a local level it's actually not so challenging, given somebody has the motivation to do so.
That's well said really. I think the problem though with blaming an entire group is that the people who had power to shift those trends were the economic and political elites of the time, just as our current economic and political elites are driving changes. The vast majority of people are living as best they can within the structures they've been given, and as individuals or family groups. they're doing the best they can to find economic security and to provide for their children, as every generation has ever done. What defined the robber baron era in the US was robber barons and not all the people having to live through that kind of economic inequality and despair.
The people most likely to hate on boomers are also the people least likely to suggest that SS and Medicare benefits be curtailed in any way, so the "sucking up resources" angle seems off from the get-go. Rather, the more likely scenario is that these younger people feel entitled to the benefits of Medicare (Medicare For All I think is a rallying cry I've heard once or twice before) and are resentful of the people who currently enjoy those benefits and won't simply vote en masse to extend them to everyone else.
Unmentioned in this piece is I think the idea back around 2015 or so that the boomers were, politically speaking, the last gasp of 20th century America. The new, more diverse America reflected in younger generations was going to give us dozens more Obama types to be president while the GOP, currently only being kept afloat by wealthy boomers, could only offer stodgy old John McCain and Mitt Romney types. Once the boomers shuffled off this mortal coil, American conservatism would be toast, and a new golden era of progressivism would emerge to transform the US into the European style social democracy it always should have been. This line of thinking became outright vicious after Donald Trump, a boomer himself, was the surprise winner of the 2016 election, because it must have been the boomers who elected him, based on Pauline Kael logic (yes I know the quote is apocryphal), which had a grain of truth to it. Now, they were outright rooting for Boomers to die, because the Boomers deserved it for their sins, but of course justifying this hatred just based on voting patterns is juvenile and stupid, so they had to retcon a bunch of historical reasons why the Boomers deserved all this opprobrium all along, even though nobody had ever mentioned them up til now.
In general, this all was just a piece of a larger pattern. A lot of what made wokism so detestable was that the people subscribing to it spent much of the 20-teens and early 2020s inventing reasons why the petty bigotries born of their particular brand of identity politics were perfectly justifiable while at the same time they were decrying anything and everything else as racist, sexist, etc.
And yet, the Zoomers are the first generation in recent history to be more conservative than their parents. And many of them rabidly so. My sister (mid Gen-X) was recently told by her early-20s son that he wants a revolution. According to him, saving the country requires shooting the libs. My sister is firmly progressive and told him "Well, that includes me. Would you shoot me?". His response was to shrug and say "Probably not, but somebody will".
Is sitting around whining about how the world sucks and not being able to do anything about it really preferable? Because that's what most men are doing, and I have a feeling they'd feel a lot more satisfied with their life if they were actively doing something about it, one bullet at a time. There was that post a while back about how much fun fighting in Ukraine was, and the writer didn't even have that much personal stake in that fight beyond general self-righteousness. Imagine how great it must feel for the people fighting for their own futures!
A dumbass who wasted their life to kill some professor and some random college students? God damn, at least kill someone who matters...
Reading his profile, I still can't tell exactly what his beef was with his targets, but surely there was a more productive way to vent his frustrations. He's not alone in resenting academia, after all. And if he waited just a bit longer, he might've gotten an opportunity to do some socially acceptable murder instead! Then he might've been able to kill people, survive, and even get celebrated for it! But nope, didn't even push for the circumstances to make that happen. Moron.
> So have we finally discovered the fabled Boomer selfishness? Call it what you want. But remember that the Boomers did pay money into Social Security to support their own parents, believing that they would be supported in turn. Learning that yours is the generation where the pyramid collapses is a hard pill to swallow. Maybe they should suck it up and take the sacrifice. You’d do this, right? Voluntarily give up money which is yours by right, in order to help other generations? Oh, sorry, you didn’t hear the question, you were too busy writing your 500th “You don’t hate Boomers enough, why won’t they hurry up and die, we need to declare intergenerational warfare and seize our rightful inheritance” post.
The problem here is that we've known the pyramid was going to collapse for a long time. We cannot say that the Boomers didn't know this problem was coming, there have been attempts at entitlement reform in past decades to address this problem, and they have never had the political will to succeed (https://x.com/JessicaBRiedl/status/2002061946217226398). The system has been doomed to insolvency for a very, very long time. This was destined to be a program where one generation received benefits at the expense of another generation who would not be compensated for it and never had a choice in the matter by the dint of not being an of age voting bloc or even born yet? Taking from one and giving to another by force and without consent - how could any of that money belong to a recipient *by right* under that system?
Do you want to blame the Greatest and Silent generations for Social Security and Medicare, since they started it? Sure, no problem. But the boomers had the option to do something about this, to reform, and instead decided to pass along the costs to the millenials and the zoomers. They decided that they were fine with benefiting from an unjust system, and passing the costs along to someone else. That's wrong! I won't have the option of passing the costs along to Gen Alpha and the generations that follow, the pyramid is going collapse when I'm on the clock. But if I was able to do so, to benefit at their expense, that would be wrong! The appropriate thing to do is to never start an unjust system like this. The next best thing to do is to end it as soon as possible, and break the chain.
What a wonderful post! I truly believe we need more inter-generational "age gap" friendships.
One point I disagree with, though: I really believe that the point on your chart that claims that boomers are more against censorship than millenials is meaningless. I used to be sympathetic to boomer's belly-aching about millenials being pro-censorship and anti-free-speech.
Then at Texas A&M University a professor said there were more than two genders. As a result, she was fired, the head of her department and the dean of her college were removed from their positions, and the president of the university (a beloved-by-the-students four star general of the US air force!!) was forced to step down.
And the politicians forcing all this? Overwhelmingly boomers, and not just that, but self-described pro-free-speech-on-campus boomers at that.
At the height of the supposed millenial assault on free-speech-on-campus I never heard of a professor saying something politically incorrect and it resulting it not only her firing, but also the removal of the department head, college dean, and the president of a large R1 university.
In related news, after the death of Charlie Kirk, a professor at Austin Peay State University shared, on his personal social media, a post someone else made quoting a headline from a Newsweek article from 2023. He was fired within a day of this post.
And the person behind his being fired? Sen Marsha Blackburn, a boomer who LAUNCHED the Senate Campus Free Speech Caucus.
Of course, I personally know pro-free-speech boomers who do NOT support these firings, but still. But unless I know them personally, I will never believe what boomers say about their support for free speech again, haha
> Then at Texas A&M University a professor said there were more than two genders. As a result, she was fired, the head of her department and the dean of her college were removed from their positions, and the president of the university (a beloved-by-the-students four star general of the US air force!!) was forced to step down.
Except that's not what happened. She didn't just "say" something about more than two genders. She repeatedly taught her gender ideology during her child literature class. Which was contrary to the class' description. Normaly I am on the side that if you sign for an optional class called "Transgender Intersectionality in Communist Liberation of Palestine 101" then you have no standing to complain if that's what is taught there. But if it says "Children Literature" on the tin and what you get is "Advanced Transgenderism" then the students have a standing to demand to match the content to the advertisement, otherwise it is a fraud. I am all for academic freedom, but if you pay for a course on one thing, and get a course on another thing, then you have grounds for demand to get what you paid for. I am not sure whether or not the student had specific valid claim, but the situation is definitely not "she just said there are two genders and were fired for it".
And also from the press reports it looks like Welsh and Texas A&M were a target of controversy for their discriminatory DEI policies for a while (which surprises no one knowing anything about the current state of US academia). Last time it was about the university officially promoting a conference which had a racially exclusionary admission policy, and paying its employees to attend it, which beyond being disgusting, may also be illegal in Texas, as this is a public school. Again, saying that the university's president dismissal was a direct result of McCoul's "saying" "there were more than two genders" is omitting so much context that it approaches purposeful lying.
So this is the course description for McCoul's course from her syllabus (which was available to students before the first day of class so they could decide whether this was the course they wanted to take, you can find it here by searching under Summer 2025, with McCoul as instructor: https://howdyportal.tamu.edu/uPortal/p/public-class-search-ui.ctf1/max/render.uP#)
Maybe you grew up reading Harry Potter or Holes, Nancy Drew or the
Narnia stories. Maybe you were a comic-book kid. Whatever your
personal predilections, you probably already have a pretty good sense
of what children's literature is. But as soon as you try to define it, you'll
find that safe-seeming category becomes slippery. In this course, we
will begin to tease out the boundaries of this capacious category called
“children's literature.” What counts? Who decides? What
differentiates writing for children from writing for adults? Why should
we, as adults, read children’s literature?
In this course, we will explore a range of children’s literature in English,
including picture books, poetry, contemporary novels, historical
fiction, and fantasy. Our task is to think critically about what these
books can tell us about how we (and others) understand childhood,
how those definitions have changed over time, and how these books
participate in larger movements of history, culture, and literature.
-
In other words, this is not a course where you just read random children's stories. It makes this clear right on the tin. This is a course about "teasing the boundaries" of children's literature and about understanding different childhoods. It is not unreasonable that considerations about gender would go into that, since that is a part of childhood for many people.
Re your claim that "She repeatedly taught her gender ideology during her child literature class."
I'll be honest, I could not find credible evidence either for or against this claim, but the reading list is also in the syllabus: Only 1 out of the 9 books on the reading list is about a trans/nonbinary child. There are a couple others that feature other LGBT characters, but that's not too out there for a course billed as being about pushing the boundaries of children's literature and about different understandings of childhood.
(Or maybe you think that is too out there, but that's subjective, but also really? out there enough to be worthy of firing a university president, who actually fired the professor once he figured out what had happened?)
Re your claim that Welsh was actually secretly forced to step down for some other reason: I mean, maybe, I'm not too familiar with the case, but that doesn't contradict the claim that all these pro-free-speech boomers were calling for his ouster for this situation specifically, which is what my comment was about.
Re the specific claim about the PhD Project conference: University employees advertise conferences to their colleagues all the time. Nobody actually goes through and investigates how discriminatory the conferences admissions policies are; it's not like the PhD Project explicitly says that they don't allow white and Asian participants, so you'd need to do some in depth investigation to figure this out. Once the university found out about this, they rescinded the offer of funding. I think firing a university president because some employee unknowingly promoted a conference without doing this in depth investigation is even crazier than firing him for the McCoul situation.
Also re the University's DEI practices in general: At the time of this McCoul situation in the summer, Texas A&M University had zero DEI offices or officers--Welsh in fact presided over the complete dismantlement of DEI policies on campus. This is more than can be said about many tech companies and financial institutions like hedge funds (which provide most of the funding for DEI math and computer science enrichment programs like Girls Who Code).
> I think firing a university president because some employee unknowingly promoted a conference without doing this in depth investigation is even crazier than firing him for the McCoul situation.
Again, you are trying to pretend as if a single isolated incident caused it, without any context. That was clearly not the case - there was a history of university doing all kinds of DEI stuff the government did not like, and the government repeatedly clashing with university management about that. If I spent time on it, I surely could find more instances. Does it mean Walsh had to go, does the pattern amount to firing offense? Not for me to decide, but it clearly wasn't caused by one single incident. And it's clearly not about free speech but about the government wanting certain policy implemented and Walsh not implementing it to their satisfaction. Being a public institution, supported by public funds, means being to some measure beholden to the public policy. You may not like a particular public policy, and that's fine. But if certain public university president, in, say, California, would refuse to implement any DEI policies in the middle of DEI frenzy led by California government, and had been fired for that, you would not likely claim that he was fired because somebody said something about genders. There's no basis for such claim here either.
> Only 1 out of the 9 books on the reading list is about a trans/nonbinary child
Imagine a liberal signing to a children literature course and finding out one of the 9 books the course is going to teach and explain how to introduce to children is Mein Kampf. And it's not taught as an example of something historically terrible, but rather straight - the children are supposed to be introduced to Hitler's thinking and legacy, explained the importance of hating Jews and caring about the purity of the race, they are expected to study how to be a good fascist and become a proper heir to the Fuhrer, and eventually strive to restore the Third Reich in all its glory, all the package. But not to worry, it's only one book out of nine, 90% of the course would be totally not Nazi propaganda. Would that be satisfactory to a liberal student? To a liberal non-student learning about that? To a non-liberal non-student for that matter? Would they be fine with just mere tiny 10% of the course dedicated to enable future teachers to teach kids to do a proper Sieg Heil and to learn how to find a hidden Jew, or would they demand to scrap the whole course, fire everybody, burn down the building and salt the earth?
Also re: my original point about boomers and free speech. I realize that the other case I mentioned (the Austin Peay one) was rendered less strong because I added some insider knowledge, but I have since found confirmation in the press about these details:
Would he be fired if he shared the same type of thing about George Floyd? Would he support firing a colleague who shared the same type of content with regard to George Floyd? If the answer to these is "yes", then he is only got what he believes is just. I would be happy to live in the world where nobody gets fired for posting on Twitter, but we have left that world many, many years ago - and people like Austin Peay contributed a lot to that happening. Now some of them reap what they have sown. When they are ready to go back to the good old times, let them say "we are sorry for what we did, please accept our deepest apologies, we made a terrible mistake and we are willing to atone for it" - and then we can talk about how to fix it. But that doesn't seem to be happening.
And of course Marsha Blackburn did not force anybody to fire him - she has no such power, unlike the power of Texas government over Texas public institutions. She may have called attention to his (public, notably - social media exists explicitly to share things you want to be seen publicly) actions, but she could not force anybody to fire him. She could exercise her right of free speech to influence this decision - but that is the right of every person to do so.
> Would he support firing a colleague who shared the same type of content with regard to George Floyd?
I was originally not planning to answer your question because I was starting to doubt whether you were asking this question in good faith, but then I remembered that here in the ACX comment sections, we are meant to assume good faith, so.
I don't know this professor personally, but if he's anything like the mutual friend I have with him (who is not an academic), or like all the tenured professors I know, then no, he would certainly not support firing a colleague for sharing a mainstream news headline to their personal social media.
Call it a purely selfish motive to keep the concept of tenure strong, if you will, but the vast majority of tenured professors do not support firing other tenured professors for their social media posts. (For better or worse, these tenured professors constitute most of the boomers I mentioned in my original comment who are genuinely supportive of free speech.)
When you read in the news about professors getting fired for saying offensive things about George Floyd, it's usually *students* who agitated to have them fired, and admin who wanted to avoid tarnishing the school's reputation. (Notice that at no point did I claim that Gen Z cares about free speech, or that they care more than boomers. This isn't about them. This is specifically about whether boomers care as much about free speech as they claim to.)
The one or two tenured professors who support the student-led efforts to get professors fired sometimes get their voices amplified (especially since they have the support of the students), but they are not usually the ones behind it.
> And of course Marsha Blackburn did not force anybody to fire him - she has no such power, unlike the power of Texas government over Texas public institutions.
Austin Peay, full name Austin Peay State University, is a public Tennessee university, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn is a senator representing Tennessee. Her influence is surely comparable to that of the students she decries in her Senate Campus Free Speech Caucus.
But also, how much power she actually wielded is not relevant to this discussion. We are discussing whether the boomers who overwhelmingly claim to care deeply about free speech genuinely do. The fact that Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the boomer who launched the Senate Campus Free Speech Caucus, tried to have a professor fired over their social media posts does not suggest that they do.
> then no, he would certainly not support firing a colleague for sharing a mainstream news headline to their personal social media.
There were some studies which suggested if people are warned to be honest before a test, they are less likely to cheat on the test. Ironically, I think those turned out to be fake or non-reproducible. Why did I remember it? Because you started with scolding me about good faith, and then described justifying political murder (and let's not be cute there, that's exactly what he did) as "sharing a mainstream news headline". We both know very well he didn't just share an arbitrary headline. So is pretending that's all that has happened engaging in good faith?
But if you want to put it in that framework, I am sure you can find headlines about Floyd being a criminal and about high crime among AA population and many other headlines, which in the context of Floyd's murder would be considered racist. If somebody shared such a headline (in the context where it would be absolutely clear he is justifying what happened and lays the blame on Floyd) and was cancelled for it, would he object?
> When you read in the news about professors getting fired for saying offensive things about George Floyd, it's usually *students* who agitated to have them fired
I did not do any research about who is most often initiating the cancelling, but I am ready to believe it's students - after all, there's a lot of them, they have very low inhibitions and experience, and they are trained for political activism. However, students complaining is not the end of the story, but the beginning. Students have complained about all kinds of stuff since there was such thing as students. The admin decides what to do with it, and the faculty has significant input into these decisions - if the faculty were adamant in not letting the cancellings happen, they wouldn't happen. We can see examples as academy is willing to risk billions in funding in defense of that they really care about - such as racist policies and DEI curriculums. They are able to take a stand when they want to. It's just somebody getting cancelled for saying something that the Party does not approve is not a stand-worthy cause. Now if somebody is getting cancelled for something the Party does approve - like murdering political opponents - that's entirely different business. Now is the time to speak up.
> We are discussing whether the boomers who overwhelmingly claim to care deeply about free speech genuinely do.
I am not a boomer (I'm older but not that old) but I do care about free speech a lot. But when somebody who was fine with cancelling for a decade, gets cancelled for endorsing a political murder, and other people who are fine with cancellings in all cases but this particular one because this particular one is one of them - I am not going to stand with them. I am going to point out they are all a bunch of huporcites which do not care about any free speech or any larger political point - they care about them winning the power, and being able to do to their opponents what their opponents are powerless to do to them. It's not about a noble cause, it's about using a pretense of caring about a noble cause as a cudgel to achieve their partisan goals - and then proceed to throw the noble cause aside as a used condom. I can see through it, and I am calling it out.
Re specifically "Ok, Boomer" near as I can tell/remember, that started as a response to all the "millenials bad" stuff that had been going around. Articles/memes/etc that blaimed/looked down on millenials for stuff eventually provoked a counter of "Okay Boomer."
I may be misremembering, but that is how I seem to remember that starting, at least.
I agree that if we’re just looking at the ability to buy a flat-screen TV or a flight to Europe, Millennials are technically "winning." But you can't vibecession your way out of the fact that a 20% down payment now requires over 100% of a typical annual salary, compared to just 58% in the 1960s. Even if the Boomers didn't consciously "steal" the future, they presided over a transition where the cost of entry into the middle class doubled. It’s hard to preach inter-generational respect when the younger generation is priced out of the stability the Boomers used to build their peace and prosperity.
Individual anecdotes about Pittsburgh don't negate national benchmarks. In 1980, the median house in the U.S. was 3x the median income. Today, that national relationship has doubled.
Even if you find a $60,000 fixer-upper in a specific zip code, the sacrifice required today is objectively higher. In the 80s, you didn't have to move to a different rust-belt city or spend your weekends doing $20k in renovations just to reach a baseline level of affordability. That was the standard experience for a middle-class earner in their own backyard.
It's not a functional market when the entry-level option requires a cross-country move and a year of manual labor. You're looking at a generation forced to jump through twice as many hoops to reach the same level of stability their parents achieved by simply showing up to work.
So your solution is for people to simply lower their standards or move to a different economic ecosystem? You're living up to your handle.
In the 1980s, you didn't have to seek out a "random place nearby" to find a 3x ratio; that was the national median. The "sacrifice" of moving to the suburbs in the 80s was a commute; the "sacrifice" you’re suggesting now is moving to a specific rust-belt borough with entirely different labor market realities.
As for the "year of manual labor," I’m referring to the opportunity cost. In 1980, the median starter home was "turn-key" for a single-income family. If the only "affordable" entry point today requires an FHA fixer-upper and a DIY renovation schedule, the barrier to entry has still fundamentally changed. We’ve moved from a system where stability was the default to one where it's a "prize" you have to move across state lines and spend your weekends tiling to achieve. That’s the definition of a broken escalator.
Aristocat, the "just move to a lower-cost metro" advice is rapidly hitting a wall of institutional capital. You mentioned Ohio, but look at Cleveland: nearly one-quarter of all single-family homes are now being snapped up by out-of-state investors and hedge funds. I know this from personal experience. In Pittsburgh, your turf, the "escape hatch" is also under siege. Investors bought nearly 18% of all residential properties in Allegheny County in recent years, with a heavy focus on the exact "affordable" starter homes you are suggesting.
Investors aren't buying because they want to settle down; they are buying to flip into rentals, creating a price floor that prices out the very "starter" buyers you're talking about. Even in the Rust Belt, the entry-level inventory is being converted from a path to stability into a permanent extraction of rent.
Regarding your point about the Boomers benefiting from a wrecked global economy, sure, they had the 'tailwinds of history'. But pointing to a one-time geopolitical advantage doesn't justify the current structural choice to prioritize housing as a high-yield investment vehicle over a social necessity. We haven't just lost our "hyper-normalcy"; we’ve built a system where even the supposedly "cheap" escape hatches are being professionalized and sold back to us at a premium.
A 3x ratio in 1980 at 15% had TWICE the payments it would have had at 6%. That’s why the ratio was lower. Our current interest rates are low enough to allow people to buy with lower salaries.
We dis not have nearly as high a percentage of people trying to all jam into the most expensive cities.
The sacrifice literally millions of people have been making is to move to really nice small and medium cities, exurbs, and towns, not necessarily in the rust belt but more often in the sun belt or mountainous west.
In 1980, no, most starter homes absolutely were not turn key. Most people expected to paint, do minor repairs, and fix or replace flooring. That was the norm.
Lisa, you’ve perfectly described the financialization trap. You’re arguing that lower interest rates "allow" people to buy with lower salaries. What that amounts to is a systemic tax, not a benefit.
When interest rates drop, the "savings" don't stay in the buyer's pocket; they are immediately absorbed into the sticker price. The result is that the current generation is forced to take on twice the debt to secure the exact same level of stability.
Here is the math you aren't accounting for: equity vs. debt. > * In 1980, because the principal was low (3x), a buyer could pay off their home or build massive equity in a decade. In 2025, because the principal is high (6x), the buyer is a "debt slave" to that principal for twice as long.
You can eventually refinance a 15% interest rate, which the Boomers did brilliantly in the 90s, pocketing the difference as wealth. But you can never "refinance" a 6x price-to-income multiple.
As for the "fixer-upper" argument: a 1980s fixer-upper cost 60% of an annual salary for a down payment. Today, a 20% down payment on a "starter" home requires over 100% of the median annual salary. We aren't complaining about "linoleum"; we're pointing out that the time-cost of the exit ramp from renting to owning has doubled. We’ve traded a middle class built on equity for one built on leverage, and you’re calling that an "improvement" because the monthly payment is the same?
This really isn’t correct. In the early 80s, interest rates were so high (up to 16%) that houses were simply not affordable. In the late 80s and 90s, as rates dropped, people very much picked cities based on affordability. People routinely chose not to move to expensive places like DC or NYC in the first place because of cost.
Buying a fixer upper was not at all unusual. It’s even a plot point in movies like Ghost.
Entry level options were much smaller (1600 sq feet) and less luxurious, with linoleum and carpet instead of hardwood and formica counter tops, limited closet space, etc. Most people buying a home expected to paint and do minor repairs themselves.
Lisa, you’re right that 15% interest rates in the 80s were a massive hurdle for monthly cash flow. But high interest rates actually kept the sticker price suppressed.
The fundamental difference is the barrier to entry. A 20% down payment in 1980 took about 60% of an annual salary. Today, that same 20% down payment requires over 100% of an annual salary.
You can eventually refinance a 15% mortgage when rates drop (as the Boomers did in the 90s), but you can't "refinance" the fact that it now takes twice as many years of labor just to save the entry fee. We aren't complaining about hardwood floors; we're pointing out that the time-cost of the exit ramp from renting to owning has doubled.
Lisa, you’re exactly right that we’ve lowered the barrier to entry by moving from 20% down payments to 3% with PMI. But that’s a symptom of the problem, not a solution.
When you say "the multiple is higher because you can afford more house at a lower interest rate," you are describing the financialization of housing. Because rates dropped, the "savings" didn't stay in the buyer's pocket...it was immediately baked into the sticker price. The result is that the next generation has to take on massive amounts of debt just to secure the same four walls that a boomer bought with a much smaller loan and a higher rate.
Lowering the down payment to 3% 'isn't affordability'; it’s just a workaround for a broken ratio. It means the younger generation starts their lives with significantly less equity and higher monthly debt obligations. You can refinance a 15% rate, but you can't "refinance" a 6x price-to-income multiple. We've replaced genuine affordability with extreme leverage, and as the data shows, that leverage is now being outbid by institutional investors who don't need a 3% FHA loan to win.
> In the 80s, you didn't have to move to a different rust-belt city
People actually DID move to different states more often decades ago. It's been theorized that welfare systems going through state governments has discouraged that now. I suppose the male employment rate was also higher then.
TGGP, you're missing the distinction between moving for opportunity and moving for survival.
In the 1980s, people moved more often because the economic friction of doing so was low. You could sell a house with a 3x price-to-income ratio and buy another one with a similar ratio in a booming city. Your "equity" traveled with you.
Today, mobility has cratered because of the leverage trap. When a first-time buyer enters the market with 3% down on a 6x income principal (as Lisa was advocating for), they have zero "portability." If they need to move for a better job, the closing costs alone would wipe out their meager equity, forcing them to bring cash to the table just to leave.
As for the "welfare system" theory, it pales in comparison to the housing-as-investment model. We have turned homes into the primary store of middle-class wealth, which has the side effect of "locking" people into their geography. If you have a 3% mortgage on a house you bought in 2019, you are effectively "location-bound" because moving to a new city would mean doubling your interest rate and paying a 2025 price premium.
The "mobility" of the past was a sign of a dynamic economy; the "immobility" of today is a sign of a stagnant, over-leveraged one where your house is no longer a home, but a debt-anchor.
In the 1980s, most cities had pretty decent opportunity. We did not see the narrowing of opportunity to fewer and fewer cities, so of course it was easier to move. More cities to move to. More good options.
Now we are increasingly trying to cram more and more people into fewer and fewer cities.
I did not suggest that a first time buyer enter the market on a 6x principal. That was you, not me. 240,000/80,000 is 3x. 280,000/80,000 is 3.5x. 3-3.5x is the Virginia average for the 80s, BTW.
Any first time buyer is going to be underwater if they sell in the first year or two. Paying out of your down payment equity for closing costs is still underwater.
Lisa, you can’t have it both ways. You claim you aren't suggesting buyers enter at a 6x ratio, but then you defend Louisa and Roanoke, where the median prices ($370k and $300k) against the median incomes ($80k and $53k) are exactly that: 4.6x to 5.6x ratios. You are nostalgic for the "good options" of the 80s while telling 2025 buyers to accept a significantly worse version of those options today.
In the 80s, a 3x ratio bought a turnkey home in a city with "decent opportunity."
In 2025, a 3x ratio (your $240k figure) buys a gut-rehab fixer-upper in a rural county 90 minutes from that same opportunity.
You are admitting the standard of living has dropped, that we are "cramming into fewer cities", yet you still insist the math is better now because of interest rates. If a buyer has to move further away, drive longer, and buy a lower-quality asset just to keep their "payment" similar to yours, they have lost. They are working harder for less.
The 1980s buyer was paying for a house. The 2025 buyer is paying for the scarcity created by 40 years of bad policy. No amount of amortization-table magic can turn a decline in quality of life into a "win" for the next generation.
Technically true, but I think the math holds up even if you look at the Boomers' prime buying window. In 1980, when the oldest Boomers were in their 30s, the median home price was roughly $63,000 against a median household income of $21,000, maintaining that 3x price-to-income ratio.
Whether you compare against 1960 or 1980, the result is the same: the generation currently holding the keys to the economy entered a market that was twice as accessible as the one today. You can argue about specific birth years but I don't think you can successfully argue with the fact that the cost of entry to the American Dream has effectively doubled.
The biggest differences were that in 1980, the economy was far less agglomerated, and in 1980, there were FAR fewer two income households.
A much lower percentage of people lived in major cities or MSAs, with the result that many many Boomers were buying houses in smaller cities or towns. If you wanted a comparison, price out houses today in places like Roanoke, Lynchburg, Greensboro, etc. rather than in places like DC or NYC.
1980 was right between the 1970s stagflation and the early 80s recession, which is another reason prices were low. In the 1970s stagflation, inflation peaked at 14.5% (not a typo) and unemployment at nearly 9%. Then a few years later, the 1980s recession saw unemployment hit 10.8%. Prices were low in part because people were broke.
No, it was not an idyllic time. But your point about two-income households is exactly the problem. In 1980, a single median income could support a 3x price-to-income mortgage. Today, even with dual incomes, families are struggling to hit that same baseline of stability. We’ve moved from a "one-earner" middle class to a "two-earner" middle class just to stay in the same place. That’s a massive increase in the labor cost of a home.
As for geography, even "affordable" secondary markets like Greensboro or Roanoke have seen prices outpace local wages. It’s not just a DC or NYC problem; it’s a systemic decoupling of land value from labor value.
The 1980s had high interest rates and unemployment, but they had a low floor for entry. Today, we have better employment numbers but a high wall for entry. For a young person starting out, a temporary recession is often easier to navigate than a permanent, structural doubling of the price-to-income ratio. We aren't asking for an "idyllic" past. We’re just pointing out that the math of peace and prosperity doesn't work if you can't afford the dirt under your feet.
Ah, great: we can transitional seamlessly from intergenerational war to gender war and argue over whether women ought to be barred from having careers.
Shankar, this is a classic straw man fallacy: distorting a structural economic argument into a social grievance to avoid addressing the math. Identifying that it now takes two full-time careers to purchase the same standard of living that one used to buy isn't a "gender war." It’s an autopsy of the middle class.
We aren't debating who "should" work; we are highlighting that labor has been devalued to the point where the family unit must now provide twice the output to secure the same basic "dirt" the Boomer generation bought with half the effort.
OTOH, in 1980 the average 30-year mortgage was at 13.5% interest. Downpayment sizes really aren't that relevant. First-time buyers qualify for FHA loans which require almost nothing down, so it's really about mortgage payments.
The median house price in 2025 is $415k and median household income is $84k, or $7k/month (gross). With an FHA first-time home buyer loan with 3.5% down and 6% interest, that's $14.5k down (two months' gross income) and a $2776 payment (39% of monthly gross income).
In 1980, a $63k home and $21k median income ($1750/month) gives us a downpayment of $2205 (1.25 months' gross income) and at 13.5% interest a $1071 payment (61% of monthly gross income).
Of course, these numbers aren't quite right because first-time home buyers make less than the median income, but the income distribution by age favors recent generations, so if anything this is a conservative view.
It's probably also worth considering the fact that the median 2025 house is a lot bigger and a lot nicer than the median 1980 house. In 2025 the median new house is 2100 ft^2, while in 1980 it was 1600 ft^2, so 2025 buyers are getting 31% more house for their smaller (relative to income) payment. Modern house quality is higher, too.
The people who got a good deal were the late Gen-Xers and early Millennials who were buying their first homes in the 2010s when interest rates were insanely low and house prices hadn't yet experienced the COVID bump. I bought my current home (third home purchase overall) in 2014 for $425k for an interest rate in the 4s, then refinanced to 2.125% in late 2020. Now I have $900k in equity.
The classic "affluent math" where you use your own massive windfall as proof that the system works. You literally admit to ending up with $900k in equity thanks to a lucky refinance, then turn around and tell everyone else that down payments aren't relevant.
You perfectly illustrate the wealth gap rather than proving affordability. You’re focusing on the "monthly payment" to argue that things are easier now, but you’re ignoring the most important part of your own story: Equity.
In your 1980 example, that $1,071 payment (61% of income) was brutal, but it was going toward a tiny principal. When interest rates inevitably dropped in the 90s, those 1980 buyers refinanced and saw their "burdensome" payment turn into massive disposable income and home equity.
Contrast that with a 2025 buyer. They are starting with a 6x price-to-income ratio and a 3.5% down payment. They have zero margin for error. Because the principal is so high, they are paying mostly interest for the first decade. They can’t "refinance" their way into $900k of equity like you did, because they started at the top of the market with extreme leverage.
Also, your comparison of 1,600 sq ft vs. 2,100 sq ft is a red herring. People aren't "choosing" 2,100 sq ft luxuries; they are being forced into them because NIMBY zoning has made it illegal to build the 1,200 sq ft "spartan" starter homes that used to cost 3x income.
The "late Gen-X/Early Millennial" window you mentioned wasn't just a "good deal." It was the last time the ladder was actually touching the ground. Telling a 2025 buyer they are "getting 31% more house" while they spend 40% of their gross income on a massive debt-load, with no hope of the equity windfall you just described. Survivor bias, not an economic analysis.
Interest rates didn't really drop until the mid-90s, halfway through that 1980 boomer's loan, and they paid massive amounts of interest during those 15 years. My first home loan was in 1992, at 9%, though I was actually able to refinance into lower rates within only a few years.
And the late Gen-X/early Millennial window was an unusually good deal... it was not only the last time homes were that cheap, all elements considered, it was also the first time in a very long time they were that cheap.
And this is the crux of the matter. You're comparing the unusually-good situation from a decade ago to the slightly-worse-than-usual situation that exists now and saying that past generations had it so much better... but they really didn't. It only looks that way if you focus on price relative to income but ignore interest rates.
Shawn, you’re suggesting this is just a "slightly-worse-than-usual" dip, but the data says otherwise. We aren't just in a bad cycle; we are at the highest Price-to-Income ratio in American history.
You mentioned that the 1980s buyer paid "massive amounts of interest" for 15 years. That’s true. But you’re missing the tax on mobility. Because their principal was only 3x their income, they could still save, they could still move, and they could eventually refinance, which, as you admitted, led to a $900k equity windfall for you.
A 2025 buyer at 6x income with 3.5% down has no equity to harvest. If they stay for 15 years, the sheer size of the principal means they are still barely chipping away at the loan. They are "locked in" to their houses because any move would require them to port a massive debt-load into an even more inflated market.
You’re asking us to ignore price and only look at the monthly payment, but that’s like saying it doesn’t matter if a car costs $20k or $100k as long as the lease payment is $400. One of those people owns an asset; the other is just renting from the bank. The Boomers had high "rent" (interest) but low "cost" (principal). We have high "cost" and moderate "rent," which leaves us with no path to the $900k safety net you’re currently standing on. Calling that "slightly worse" isn't an economic reality. It’s just a refusal to acknowledge that the ladder you climbed has been replaced by a treadmill.
I would like to see these comparisons go back past the 1960s. I have a sneaking suspicion that the period of cheap housing near big cities was a one-time phenomenon caused by the adoption of the car, which shortened commutes and made it possible to build a million or so new detached houses on cheap land surrounding each major city. Once we ran out of this cheap land, house prices went back up.
What did it cost to acquire your first house in the 1930s? The 1910s? The 1890s?
Melvin, you’ve hit on the "Car-Sized Loophole" theory. You’re right, the mid-century was a geographical anomaly. Before the car, you paid a massive premium to live near a streetcar line or within walking distance of a factory.
In the 1890s and 1910s, housing in urban hubs was actually quite expensive relative to wages, often forcing multi-generational living or crowded tenements. The 1940s–1970s "reset" happened because cars suddenly turned worthless scrublands into prime real estate.
But here is the counter-point: even if the Boomers benefited from a one-time land rush, the current generation is facing a double squeeze. We aren't just out of land; we’ve now got a thick crust of zoning laws, environmental regs, and NIMBY-ism that makes it illegal to build the modern equivalent of those 1950s starter homes.
We can't repeat the car-driven expansion of the 1950s, but we could allow the density that 1910s cities used to manage their own growth. The fact that we don't do either is why that 3x vs. 6x ratio feels less like an inevitable return to the mean, and more like a ladder being pulled up.
Remote work is indeed driving growth in places like Louisa County, but that’s exactly where the problem is most visible.
Re Louisa County, I've just checked: In 2020, the median home in Louisa was around $235k. Today, it’s closer to $400k - $500k. While a remote worker from DC might see that as a "deal," for the local population whose median income is $80k, the price-to-income ratio has effectively doubled in 48 months.
If we aren't out of land, we are out of affordable entry points. When affluent workers migrate to rural areas, they don't just "find" affordability; they bring the price-to-income ratios of the major cities with them. You’re not describing a solution to the housing crisis. You’re describing the gentrification of the entire countryside.
The fact that a "starter home" in a rural county now costs 6x the local median income is the ultimate proof that the Boomer-era math (where you could afford to live where you worked) has fundamentally collapsed.
I live in another exurban area in the same region that has had a huge influx of remote workers and long distance hybrid commuters. The price to income ratio has not doubled for local people.
There are multiple high end developments specifically catering to attracting new people. Existing home prices have not doubled. Prices for those are up some, but not anywhere close to the increase in the median, and increases varies widely with type of property. Waterfront and luxury are up a lot. The rest have seen less increase.
The biggest impact is, it’s harder to find vacant land or bigger parcels for horses or hobby farms. Oh, and, new housing is largely luxury homes.
For Louisa County, it’s within commuting distance of three small or medium cities and about 90 miles to DC. It has a large lake with many lakefront communities. A LOT of communities were built specifically to attract new people.
At realtor.com, today, prices in Louisa ranged from 150k for a 3br/1ba farmhouse fixer upper on 13.5 acres, to just under 3 million for a huge lakefront luxury home. Those are two different markets in one county. 150k is probably a higher entry point there than 10 years ago, but it’s not outrageous.
In 2025, if 13 acres and a house are selling for $150k, it’s almost certainly because the "house" is a shell that won't qualify for a standard mortgage, or it has environmental/zoning liabilities that cost another $150k to fix.
At any rate, you're also making my point for me by mentioning that "new housing is largely luxury homes." When the only new supply is luxury, the "spartan" legacy homes don't stay cheap, they become the only options for everyone else, which drives their prices up regardless of their quality.
Even if the ratio hasn't "doubled" in your specific backyard yet, the trend across the exurbs is clear: when remote workers bring DC or Bay Area salaries into local markets, they don't just occupy the "luxury" tier. They compress the entire market. The "local" buyer isn't just competing with other locals anymore; they are competing with global capital and geographic arbitrage. You might see two different "markets" in the listings, but they are both drawing from the same finite pool of land and labor, and the "ladder" is being pulled up into the luxury tier.
“Danville’s downtown revitalization is one that other localities are trying to mirror.
Locals say that Craghead Street used to be like a ghost town, and now it’s home to restaurants, apartments, a brewery and a science center. The city’s downtown, called the River District, alone has seen about $300 million in public and private investment in the last decade.”
“Here’s how big Danville’s net in-migration is: That 1,533 surplus of newcomers since 2000 is bigger than any other locality in Southwest or Southside. You have to go east to Isle of Wight County, northeast to Chesterfield County, or northwest to Bedford County to find a locality with more net in-migration since the last census. These trends represent an affirmation of the policies that Danville has been pursuing to remake itself.”
In other words, your calling Danville a dying industrial town is inaccurate. True in 2009, not true today.
I cited Louisa County as the fastest growing county in the state, at 7.5% since 2020. I did NOT bring it up as an example of affordability, although it is pretty affordable. YOU are the one who started talking about affordability re Louisa and then kept talking about it after I repeatedly told you this. Review the thread.
In other words, no, there has not been an increase in the percentage of two income married households, although wives now earn a higher percentage of family income than before.
Danville started losing jobs in the 70s. Boomers who bought then were typically factory workers at Dan River Mills. People who move to Danville now are often remote workers helping revitalize the area, or working in the newer manufacturing plants for things like EVs and lithium batteries, or in healthcare, or in education, or in distribution, or in entertainment and recreation.
“For Danville and Pittsylvania County, 2024 was a monumental year.
In November 2024, battery-component manufacturer Microporous broke ground on a $1.3 billion plant at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill, where it expects to create 2,015 jobs. The following month in Danville, Caesars Virginia hosted the grand opening of its $750 million casino.
“All indicators point to continued growth and momentum,” says Corrie T. Bobe, Danville’s director of economic development and tourism.
It’s a long way from Danville’s past as a textile manufacturing town, an identity that collapsed by the early 2000s as Dan River Mills entered bankruptcy and closed.
Partnering with Caesars Entertainment to bring a casino to the city has proven to be a winning hand for Danville. It received more than $34 million in gaming tax revenue and supplemental payments from when Caesars opened a temporary casino in Danville in May 2023 through December 2024, according to City Manager Ken Larking.
The casino had 1,200 employees on opening day, according to Barron Fuller, regional president for Caesars Entertainment. It’s projected to attract more than 2 million visitors annually.”
20% downpayment is a barrier if you want it to be, but 3% is a viable alternative if you want to get into a home sooner. That is not financial illiteracy. Further, you can pay as big a down payment as you want - 3% is the minimum, not the only option to 20%. You can also pay down the principal as much as you want.
Claiming that remote work and good jobs in thriving small cities is somehow not being productive is just silly. Large cities do not have magic dirt that makes you more productive - you can be productive, and make really good salaries, many places, including many very affordable places.
I did not suggest lowering expectations anywhere in this discussion.
Remote workers and people in Danville do not have long commutes.
I am suggesting that there are affordable areas with high quality of life and good job options today. No compromise required.
If the American Dream is now reduced to 'winning' by moving to a town whose economic revival is based on a casino and remote-work arbitrage, you’ve effectively proven my point that the system is in terminal decline. Over, and out.
Danville’s revival was not built on remote work or the casino, which you would know if you bothered to read the articles before opining.
It has become a regional modern manufacturing hub, notably of EV components and batteries, advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, large scale 3d printing, etc. It’s now the home of one of the Navy's Additive Manufacturing Centers of Excellence.
It has significant employment in higher ed, healthcare, and distribution and logistics.
The casino has a decent number of employees, but it’s definitely not number one in the area. Biggest individual local employer is Goodyear manufacturing. Second is the regional medical center, then either local schools or the city government. Total employment for manufacturing is much higher but spread over multiple companies. Same pattern for higher ed and distribution - total numbers high, multiple employers.
The casino is just a plus.
Also, Danville is an independent city, not a town.
Danville MSA has a median income of 49,223, not 43k. The surrounding county has a higher population and income than the city.
As I mentioned before, with independent cities in Virginia, you have to remember to include the surrounding counties in the MSA. They are not automatically included although generally the “city” extends far beyond the limits of the independent city. Virginia city limits have been frozen since the 1980s, by law.
Poverty rate for the MSA is around 17%. Not 29%.
Danville is coming out of a decades long economic slump. Higher skilled jobs like advanced manufacturing, higher ed, and healthcare are in place. Lower skilled manufacturing jobs, distribution, and yes, the casino, offer opportunities for lower skilled workers, and that part of the revitalization, now heating up, helps eliminate poverty.
Danville’s MSA has a bit of a bifurcation, with more seniors and more people without high school degrees than average. That’s in part because younger people with more education and skills moved away during the lean years when jobs were disappearing,
As it revitalizes as an advanced manufacturing hub and medical hub and education hub, and people move in for those jobs, it also has a very decent population of highly educated skilled workers.
Danville was recently given as an example of a top micropolitan area by site selection professionals.
“Site Selection Magazine has recognized Danville as one of the top micropolitan areas in the United States, a distinction that city leaders say affirms the community's significant progress.
A micropolitan area is defined as a city with a population of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000 residents. In the 2024 issue, Danville was ranked 8th, a substantial leap from its 44th position in 2023. This honor is attributed to Danville and Pittsylvania County's eight economic development announcements last year, including the RBW EV Cars expansion, EPL America's expansion, and Microporous' $1.3 billion investment, which is expected to create more than 2,000 jobs.”
> even when their benefits per capita per year are stable or declining
It looks very different if you look at it by the household level instead of individual
A meaningful share of the increase in total costs comes from composition.
As women shifted from spouse only benefits to worker or dual entitlement, more households now receive two lifetime worker benefits rather than one worker plus a spousal benefit. Average household payouts rise as a result.
This creates bifurcated outcomes. Households with two lifetime earners receive higher total payments, while single earner and spousal benefit households account for a smaller share of distributions(and directly effected by cuts). Individual averages are skewed by survivorship and changing household structure.
The result is a shift in where Social Security dollars go. A larger share of total payouts now flows to higher lifetime earnings households, which also tend to have lower fertility on average, affecting the system wide distribution of a fixed payroll tax base.
Basically the ratio of working to pay not for your own parents but someone else's parents who are quite possibly richer than your own has gone up quite a bit.
There is one aspect of the Boomer generation vis-à-vis institutional power that I don't see touched upon is this essay that I see as another force driving anit-Boomer sentiment. It's that Boomer's as a cohort have remained in leadership roles for an exceptionally long time in congress, as executives, etc whereas other generations were faster to transition leadership to others.
This Boomers vs Millennials framing is explained very well in this email exchange between Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg, I recommend the whole email exchange but I'll heavily quote this reply from Thiel.
>What I would add to Mark's summary is that, in a healthier society, the handover from the Boomers to the younger generations should have started some time ago (maybe as early as the 1990s for Gen X), and that for a whole variety of reasons, this generational transition has been delayed as the Boomers have maintained an iron grip on many US institutions. When the handover finally happens in the 2020s, it will therefore happen more suddenly and perhaps more dramatically than people expect or than such generational transitions have happened in the past. And that's why it's especially important for us to think about these issues and try and get ahead of them.
>One example of such an "iron grip" from my colleague Eric Weinstein: Of the 67 top research universities in the US, 62 have Baby Boomer presidents (three are Silent Generation and only two are Generation X). Today, the median age of these 67 university presidents is 65 years-old... And this is very different from the recent past. Only thirty years ago, in 1990, the median age of these same university presidents was a much lower 52-years old; the older generation did not completely refuse to give up power; and therefore much greater generational diversity was to be found in university leadership.
Given historical trends you would expect to see much more Gen X leaders in Congress, as presidents, or even as business owners than you do today.
On the other hand I feel like the average age of CEOs and big company executives has gone down.
Then again I started looking for evidence of this by looking up some prominent CEO ages and was surprised to find that Jensen Huang is 62 and Tim Cook is 65; I'd have guessed significantly younger. So maybe the real change is the Paul Rudd phenomenon that rich old people are much better-preserved than they used to be.
>Everyone knows that some groups are richer than others, that the rich groups are more likely to oppose redistribution, and that the poor groups more often support it. You can reframe this as a story of whites vs. blacks, or Boomers vs. Millennials, or the educated elite vs. the working class, or the abled vs. the disabled, or Jews vs. Gentiles, or any of a thousand other dichotomies that all correlate with wealth and with one another. Is this valuable? Does it dry a single human tear? I haven’t noticed.
Yes, exactly, I agree! Everyone wants to devolve the conflict between the wealthy and the poor into identity politics and culture wars, but it's really a class war! The enemy is the capitalists, they're the ones with genuinely conflicting class interests against the rest of us, they're the ones we have to carefully focus our attention on and...
>But it gets worse. Consider the way that “capitalism” gets used in socialist spaces. Although there are still a few classical Marxists with a clear conception of what capitalism is and why they hate it, most lefties just use “capitalism” to mean *gestures around expansively at everything*, with no concern about whether it involves market processes at all. Israel bombing Palestine? That’s capitalism. Trump arresting immigrants? Somehow that’s capitalism too. It’s true that our society is very capitalist, and that capitalism touches in some way upon almost everything. But that gets laundered into an excuse to believe you’re being a good communist by hating everything about everything.
... oh.
So, do you agree that lots of poor people and working class people have some type of legitimate interest in government policy and market/cultural norms that affect their material well-being, or not? Do you agree that there's a genuine conflict, not just a mistake, between the interests of the rich and powerful vs. the poor and working class, or not?
Because if the poor and working class are not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against any particularly rich identity group with interests and actions on net opposed to them, and they're also not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against the economic class of capitalists who are in direct economic conflict with them or the system of capitalism that creates and maintains that conflict and advantages their opponents, then... what exactly are they allowed to do?
How are they allowed to identify and talk about the problem, how are they allowed to identify and talk about their opponents, how are they allowed to identify and talk about solutions?
And let me caveat the obvious response - yes, I believe *you* are smart and nuanced enough to describe how they *should* visualize and discuss and address the problem, if you're given a short blog post in which to define terms and sort nuance. I believe your audience is smart enough to understand and appreciate that approach and nuance. And I believe that's a very, very important thing for intellectuals and academics to be doing in any society.
But 'illegal immigrants are eating dogs and cats' won the last Presidential election.
Nuance and careful definitions are important for actually solving problems. But clear enemies and pithy, one-sentence slogans pitched at a fourth-grade reading level actually *are* important for winning elections. And elections determine which problems get solved and which interests are served.
I have a lot of sympathy for the people who care about an issue enough to actually try to solve it, instead of being the most correct in public discussions about it. They have an extremely hard job against extremely tough opponents.
I would love it i someone could offer them a strategy other than 'pick an enemy and villainize them using slogans that are short, quippy, and wrong'.
I haven't seen anyone win with any alternate strategy, so far.
Maybe I'm wrong in that perception. I'd love to be wrong about it.
But until someone shows me I am, I still have sympathy for the people using the strategies that work to achieve the ends I care about. I may get annoyed, but I'll be slow to chastise them.
> Because if the poor and working class are not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against any particularly rich identity group with interests and actions on net opposed to them, and they're also not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against the economic class of capitalists who are in direct economic conflict with them or the system of capitalism that creates and maintains that conflict and advantages their opponents, then... what exactly are they allowed to do?
Sure, but if the poor and working class can do that, then the rich and middle class can do it too. We can call out the poor and working class as being contrary to our own class interests, and start fighting them too.
I would rather have peace. But if we must have class war, then I'm going to be a fearless warrior on behalf of the Upper Middle.
The first is the typical 'I wrote an article telling one side to put down their gun, while not telling the other side to change anything' problem. If the people you're castigating put down their gun while their opponents don't, they just lose. Articles talking about how both sides can mutually disarm or even collaborate are good, articles castigating only one side an expecting them to take that on board and change their tactics are kinda naive for this reason.
The second is that the wealthy and powerful don't need slogans and elections to advance their interests, they already hold the reins of power. Definitionally!
If both sides stop trying to vie for power with politics and rhetoric, then the people already in power win by default. This is part of the reason a lot of people react to calls for moderation and civility as inherently conservative and oppressive - if you're opposing extreme actions that could change things, then you're sort of inherently favoring those who rule under the current status quo, and opposing those who are punished by it.
> So, do you agree that lots of poor people and working class people have some type of legitimate interest in government policy and market/cultural norms that affect their material well-being, or not? Do you agree that there's a genuine conflict, not just a mistake, between the interests of the rich and powerful vs. the poor and working class, or not?
The kind of person who complains about capitalism is typically not a poor/working-class person. Even if they are unemployed or broke, they have an education and cultural upbringing that matches higher classes.
Moreover, there is no contradiction in what you quoted and letting them talk about their problems. If people organize and say "these tax cuts help the wealthy, not the poor", that's very different than saying "man, these capitalists are destroying us poors, we need socialism."
> But 'illegal immigrants are eating dogs and cats' won the last Presidential election.
It did not win the last election. What won the last election was a promise to reassert control over the Southern border and immigration in general, a promise to lower the cost of living, and to a lesser degree, a promise to end "wokeness".
>The kind of person who complains about capitalism is typically not a poor/working-class person. Even if they are unemployed or broke, they have an education and cultural upbringing that matches higher classes.
If you work for a salary you are a worker. If you make your money from owning and investing capital, you are a capitalist.
(and, of course, many people own investments and property that represent a larger or smaller portion of their wealth, and where you land along that scale will moderate your interests and positions, which is one of the biggest differences between the old who have accumulated capital for decades and the young who live almost entirely off their labor)
Yes, rich/poor is a relevant social and political factor that we need to keep an eye on, as is educated/uneducated. And yes, they correlate somewhat with labor vs. capital, but nowhere near perfectly.
But they're different factors than labor vs. capital. And the vast majority of those who complain about capitalism are primarily workers.
>If people organize and say "these tax cuts help the wealthy, not the poor", that's very different than saying "man, these capitalists are destroying us poors, we need socialism."
Sure, we tried targeting 'The 1%' explicitly. That was also called 'identity politics' and criticized along exactly the same lines.
To be fair, maybe Scott would say 'attacking the 1% is totally fine, in a way that attacking Boomers and Capitalism is not'. But my impression is strongly that the vast majority of people who defend capitalism, would also defend the 1%.
> What won the last election was a promise to reassert control over the Southern border and immigration in general, a promise to lower the cost of living, and to a lesser degree, a promise to end "wokeness".
Was any of that discussed without short misleading slogans and oversimplified arguments and attacks on villainized outgroups?
Like, yeah, I agree they did the same thing I'm talking about to a lot of issues at once; that doesn't dispute my point that this is how politics is done.
> If you work for a salary you are a worker. If you make your money from owning and investing capital, you are a capitalist.
This is not the way that the public defines those things. The public is wrong in this case and you are correct, but this only highlights the difference - the fact that you consider any "owner of capital" a capitalist is a sign of higher-class education.
> And the vast majority of those who complain about capitalism are primarily workers.
In the literal sense, yes. But they are not complaining in the way that a socialist means they are. Their issue is not that capital is privately owned. In fact, I suspect most would not care if they just happened to be the owners of capital themselves. They want to be rich, not tearing down the system.
> Sure, we tried targeting 'The 1%' explicitly. That was also called 'identity politics' and criticized along exactly the same lines.
By right-wingers, maybe. The colloquial definition of "identity politics" is about the reduction of politics along race/sex/gender/similar lines.
> But my impression is strongly that the vast majority of people who defend capitalism, would also defend the 1%.
As in, their existence? Yes, most people who defend capitalism are okay with the some amount of income or wealth inequality.
> Was any of that discussed without short misleading slogans and oversimplified arguments and attacks on villainized outgroups?
The discussion is not relevant. What's relevant is people's reason for voting how they did. The polls we got after the election were clear that people's choices were as I described. They may not like Tony Hinchcliff calling Puerto Rico garbage, but they'll hold their noses and vote R because they don't trust Dems to handle the border or inflation.
The working class has a "revealed preference" via voting-with-their-feet in favor of living with the capitalist class, and not under socialist governments.
I think if your actual complaint is about capitalism, you are certainly *allowed* to make the complaint and call out capitalists (in a way where I would consider it illegitimate to sublimate the complaint onto Jews or whoever). I just don't think most of those anti-capitalist complaints are valid.
On this blog, I'm mostly trying to say true things, not come up with politically-useful slogans. My guess is that sloganspace doesn't actually contain anything good enough to get what you want, and you will have to work things out some other way.
I'm very happy that this blog is a place where the focus is on actual understanding and solutions, rather than sloganeering - that's why I'm here.
I guess my concern is just the difference between 'this is not a place for sloganeering' and 'sloganeering is a bad practice that no one should do'.
Or I guess more specifically, 'sloganeering is a bad practice, and everyone on this one side should stop doing it (probably it's bad on the other side too, but I don't talk about that as much because I don't run into it to be annoyed by it as often)'
Like, my take is that war is bad, and if you can get both sides to stop shooting you should. But if you try to get one side to stop shooting while ignoring the other than you're just trying to make that side lose.
And I think this analogy applies to sloganeering. It's bad, yes, but if one side stops and the other doesn't I think they categorically lose immediately.
That's why I care when it feels like the implication is more 'this side is annoying because they sloganeer' instead of 'everyone who sloganeers is annoying'.
And I guess it's why I'm also a little bristly when someone demeans everyone who sloganeers as dumb and venal, as if that's the only reason anyone would ever use those tactics. Like a soldier or police officer, I have some respect for the people who do terrible but necessary things to support a cause they believe in.
Curious whether you disagree, though - do you think a side could actually win national elections with only nuanced, measured discussions at *every* level, and no sloganeering at all?
(Also, re: validity of critiques of capitalism, I expect I think they're more valid than you do, but I also expect it to come down to semi-boring semantic and rhetorical differences rather than an interesting crux. For To take the Trump example from your post: Obviously Trump got famous and respected for being a Capitalist and playing a Capitalist on TV, if our society didn't love and revere Capitalists as part of our central mythology he wouldn't be in office, and even if the Republicans had elected someone else who promised to be strict on immigration they probably wouldn't be dragging people off the street the way ICE has been. I am *guessing* our crux will be something like 'non-capitalist societies drag people off the street all the time, that's not a unique problem with capitalism,' to which I would say I think it's rhetorically valid to critique the problems of a system so that people can notice and try to patch the system to fix them, even if other systems have the same problem and wouldn't be better. IE, I think you can criticize capitalism (or anything) without implicitly calling for it to be replaced with something different.)
I agree, but the valid criticism that remains is more personal.
Boomers divorced more than other generations. The children of divorced Boomers are mad about that, understandably. It feels like their parents abandoned them.
Boomers also provide less childcare to their grandchildren than other generations. The children of deadbeat grandparents are mad about that too, although to be fair some of it is due to Millennials moving away or having kids later in life. This is part of what's fueling sad/costly childcare decisions and the fertility decline. It feels like Boomers abandoned their children and grandchildren yet again.
Sam Kriss and Louise Perry write: "'When they were young, the Baby Boomers broke apart the multi-generational community: untempered youth, wild youth leading itself towards its own ends. Now, they’re doing it again. They have absconded from their duty as old people, which is to be the link between the future and the past—because the world doesn’t have a past anymore, and precious little future either.'"
"These Baby Boomers escaped the extended family when it suited them to do so, and some of them are still rich enough to find pleasure in what liberal individualism insists is the 'true purpose of human life': that is, their leisure time, free from unwanted social obligations. For these lucky few, there are still just enough migrant workers to provide cheap care, and the state pension is still arriving reliably in their bank accounts every month, courtesy of working age tax payers. In a material sense, they don’t need the traditional family. Of course this will not be true for future generations, given that the pyramid scheme that is the welfare state is starting to collapse."
> Boomers divorced more than other generations. The children of divorced Boomers are mad about that, understandably. It feels like their parents abandoned them.
I agree that some of this discourse is just people taking their legitimate criticisms of their own parents, who were lousy, and broadening it to include my parents, who were great.
I agree having kids later and more moving away are important parts of the story. Gen X and Millenials are really experiencing that sandwich exhaustion between taking care of elders and taking care of children. When we were raising little kids, one set of grandparents had already died and the other was too aged to be able to provide any help. If I'd chosen to have kids in my 20s, and not moved away, I would have had more support.
Boomers were likely the first generation to take advantage of liberalized divorce laws in the 70s and 80s, at least at scale. Their kids may feel "abandoned" but i'm not sure they would have wanted to live in a house with all the problems associated with a failing marriage.
Looking at some 'wealth by generation over time' graphs, I have an intuition that there's a stable and repeating pattern in the US of the elderly accumulating all the wealth and power while the young are struggling and disenfranchised. And that this creates a legitimate and perpetual intergenerational conflict where the old people really are hurting the young by keeping wealth away from them and passing policies that benefit themselves and their preferences. Plus probably the gerontocracy genuinely slows down progress and improvement by resisting new ideas and paradigm shifts for as long as physically possible.
(and yes, I'm saying this *despite* material conditions improving over time in general - this is a separate point about relative positions and interests at a given timepoint)
Assume that pattern is true, you *could* look at each generation noticing this dynamic with their parents/grandparents generation, blaming that older generation as particularly bad, and failing to notice and address the repeating pattern and the structural factors that cause it, and say they are being foolish and unfair and mistaken.
And you wouldn't exactly be *wrong*, but, I still have two basic objections to this take.
The first is that it seems to hold people to a very high standard. At a societal level, I'm glad they even noticed the conflict and tried to take coordinated action to address it at all, a lot of problems never make it that far. And expecting people with no background in history to notice historical trends extending into times they weren't alive for, especially ones going back before modern digital record-keeping that they can easily Google, is a lot to ask.
The second is that... well, imagine there's a slave on a southern plantation being whipped. Yes, in a certain sense, the master holding the whip is not unusual from any other master holding any other whip on any other plantation, and the system of slavery implemented across all of those plantations is not unusual from many other systems of slavery that have existed across human history.
In a sense, yes, the slave's *real* problem is with the institution of slavery itself, or the facets of human nature and economics that make it a recurring pattern across human societies. That's the *real* villain, here.
But I don't think he's *wrong* to also hate, or to blame, the individual person holding the whip.
Even if the societal pattern is the overarching problem here, even if the master in questions wouldn't even be holding a whip if they were born into a different system with different institutions and different incentives... I still think it's right to hate and attack that person.
Some of the Boomer hate takes the form of people complaining about Boomers selfishly spending their offspring’s inheritance on cruises (unlike what their parents supposedly did not do).
[this isn't to argue with you -- I know you're just offering up a mindset out there, and not necessarily supporting it]
I have some trouble with the idea that children are entitled to their parents' assets and that parents' shouldn't enjoy their retirement savings after 40-50 years of labor. But of course this resentment from children will vary a lot based on circumstances.
As a Gen X person, I certainly never felt entitled to my mom's hard-earned savings nor did I ever resent her for enjoying her retirement nor for her splurges before retirement. It wasn't my money and my task was to go out and find my own way.
The whole idea of "my inheritance" as it relates to parents who are still living strikes me as repulsive. Many oldens wind up having to spend down their assets (at least in the US) on things like healthcare or nursing home care. None of us knows what's waiting for us. As it happened, my mom died three years after retiring and I inherited money that should have gone to supporting her old age. I would have definitely chosen the other option -- no inheritance and my mom alive to have known my children.
“I have some trouble with the idea that children are entitled to their parents' assets and that parents' shouldn't enjoy their retirement savings after 40-50 years of labor. But of course this resentment from children will vary a lot based on circumstances.”
Calling it “entitlement” is editorializing (expressing an opinion).
Parents choosing to pass on wealth instead of spending it “selfishly” (just) have different values. They might not be for everyone but they might not be wrong either.
My "entitled" was intended to simply echo your framing of "their offspring's inheritance" -- grown adult children who see the assets or income of their still-living parents as "theirs" are *by definition* considering themselves to be entitled to those assets. That's what entitlement means -- "that thing over there is rightfully mine." The rest of what I wrote is my opinion entirely, yes.
I also get that my opinion is pretty culturally bound and that these bonds of mutual obligation between parents and children vary so widely all over the planet. Even here in the US, among a fairly homogeneous group that I work with in my therapy practice, I see a wide range of opinions and conflict based on differing assumptions and expectations. I know from working with people from other parts of the world that cross-generational expectations are often much more rigid in other countries, and they usually don't run in the direction of kids expecting to get more money out of the parents, but quite the reverse.
“grown adult children who see the assets or income of their still-living parents as "theirs" are *by definition* considering themselves to be entitled to those assets.”
There is a whole lot of assuming going on here.
Not all adult children are seeing the assets as “theirs”. Some parents see this as an important goal regardless of whether their children expect it.
(Certainly, some children might expect it. But it isn’t all of them.)
(Personally, I’m not a fan of any “expectation/entitlement”.)
Very confused about this interaction, we seem to be misunderstanding each other in some basic way.
Nowhere did I say that all adult children are seeing the assets as theirs. My whole second paragraph would seem to make that clear. Yes I agree with you that parents vary as to their morals and expectations around passing assets on, as do children.
You said my use of the word "entitlement" was editorializing and I responded that those children who do view their living parents' assets as "theirs" are *by definition* (without any need for editorializing) describing the thing that entitlement means. To feel entitled to something is to believe it is rightfully yours.
I don't think we have any disagreement at all. You would need to clarify for me what assumptions you think I'm making. I'm definitely not assuming that all children bring these expectations/entitlements. And yes quite obviously, some parents expect this of themselves while others do not.
“Nowhere did I say that all adult children are seeing the assets as theirs.”
You only mentioned this group.
You could have said (something like) “While it’s not all of them, …” and your point would have been more clear. This would have indicated that you knew the other group existed but you weren’t commenting about them. As it was, no one has any idea you realize this other group exists.
“To feel entitled to something is to believe it is rightfully yours.”
??? Was there any indication that I didn’t know what “entitled” meant?
The people who are arguing that boomers should pass wealth to their children aren’t advocating “entitlement”. So, you aren’t understanding something fundamental here.
“And yes quite obviously, some parents expect this of themselves while others do not.”
The reason the vitriol falls on boomers is not because they’re any worse than younger generations, but that they’re far worse than the generation that preceded them.
I think people rise to the circumstances they've been handed. The Greatest Generation was given the Depression and WWII to cut their teeth and their moral commitments on. They provided a safer and more stable world for their children. We all want safety and stability for our children and yet it's suffering that creates wisdom. From my perspective, there's no value to blame and no whole group of people is worse. We are a product of our experiences.
I do not think the Boomers as a group did leave a better world for the next generation. Nor do I think that Gen X or the Millennials will or even are capable of doing so either. The difference is that the inheritance of the Boomers was significantly better than that of previous generations, but they failed to pass it forward.
Our descendants are likely to bash the rich old people in the future. It might be us, but it will more likely be the limited fraction of us that actually inherited the bulk of the assets from the boomers.
The real fear is that the pie will be smaller all around, there won't be much wealth even in total, the Golden Age is a distant memory. So much future value may be destroyed from the bad policies of today. And it will be too late for us to tell the Boomers "we told you so".
I think Boomers had well sufficient amount of time to disengage the engine of managerial decline by not prioritizing short-term benefits to long-term investments. Proof: They (being an electoral supermajority for 70 years) have managed to conveniently vote into power only the candidate which promised the most amount of stuff in the immediate. Having fomented themselves a belief system in which, assets can magically increment in value without taking a cost elsewhere (if they sit in AMF portfolio controlled by magician Larry Fink).
They literally turned tangible based currency into debt-credited index to fiscally imbue into their lavish lifestyle. "Oh! but we worked hard", they say! Which i guess means previous generations didn't do that really, just sat all day long eating chips. Also, they turned sex into a mean not an instrument of companionship, being the most divorced, most single mother, most STD afflicted (look at cruse numbers), symbol of their primitive ideas of sell-fulfillment.
We should hate pathogens, humanity's oldest enemy. A genocide against viruses!
Pedophiles really are a tiny aberrant minority, and not actually pulling the strings behind everything.
Trump is known for sleeping with & marrying numerous women, not children.
He's not "my guy". I don't know what national television thing you're referencing. The one after that I'm familiar with, but nobody at the time claimed it was a matter of pedophilia, nor the entry after that. Epstein was not "the greatest pedo in US history" or even really a pedophile https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-real-target-of-pedophile-hysteria though he was in the upper-tiers of well-connected people.
I never voted for nor endorsed Trump. But the overwhelming majority of people I oppose are also not pedophiles!
Banned for this comment.
Is this a recent thing? If I look at Google trends for "okay boomer", which I associate with peak "blame boomers for stuff", I see a peak in 2019 and then a gradual fall off since, which matches my impression of boomer discourse.
IME, yes, the trend Scott is describing is absolutely alive and well: "okay boomer" was one particular memetic iteration of it and that particular meme has faded, but the "Boomer Theory of Everything" has stayed as a consistent part of the online discourse, particularly in places like Reddit. (And I assume X/Bluesky)
Boomer-hating has a long pedigree (I haven't read Copeland's Generation X book, but my understanding is that it was based on hating boomers), but the current trend is probably the rise of affected extreme boomer-hating particularly among fringe right-wing types.
lol, it ain’t the right-wing types from where the greatest amount of boomer-hating springs…
I don’t disagree with your claims.
And lament the fact that they are true.
But neither those claims, nor the reality that a non-zero number of the fringe right hate on Boomers, change the reality that most of the Boomer-hating comes from the left.
I agree with all but your bit about “building suburbs and commuting all the time” being “very wasteful”.
I’m guessing from this part of your comment that you are European-born rather than U.S. born.
"illegal immigrants still need to be housed, even in sanctuary cities"
Firstly population increases of this scale (presuming you mean the US) shouldn't cause this issue unless you have other more serious issues with your housing market preventing supply from meeting demand.
Secondly I have seen no evidence that undocumented people are an especially large contributing factor here, and I can think of reasons they would have less of an impact than the average person: like multiple generations living together, and thus using less housing. So if anything you should expect the richest immigrants to be the one's to have by far the largest impacts on housing prices, especially once you consider all the luxury properties foreign buyers leave empty most of the time.
You're letting the culture war distract you here, because regardless of our disagreements about immigration in other areas: There's just no plausible way that any action related to immigration is going to meaningfully address any of the larger underlying problems in the housing market here in the US.
The underlying issue is that we have artificially constrained the housing supply and built most of the country up as a suburban ponzi scheme that is totally financially unsustainable and requires suburbanites have their lifestyle subsidized by the inner city which is the only area that actually brings in any net property taxes: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-8-28-the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course
Well, yes: that's why I was specifically fingering it as a rise of a *new* tendency.
Don't you think a generational cohort which since 1971 hold hegemonic guardianship of the three branches of governance: justice, legislative and executive (and its preponderant <90%). Courtesy of their unmatched demographic weight in a electoral system, ensuring their interests consolidated by electing representatives by margin ( representing their sole interest ).
Not only this, but Boomers (with Civil Rights) ensured the further dissolution of democratic majoritarianism through elevating minorities synthetically. Voted for mass-immigration (because growth of estate and pensions) deferring no regard to future societal endangerment, despite isolating themselves from any of the consequences to their lifestyle (gated communities).
It takes only a custodial inquiry into what 60 years of uncontested Boomer leadership have done to the prosperous secure nations they inherited to conclude their rightful place in historical infamy (Moloch worshippers literally). I would much rather have inherited a nation not "enlightened", or rather subverted, by Boomer LSD's "John Lennon's imagine" morality civilizational enterprise.
Look at Eastern Asia where Boomers didn't act as self-indulgent
solipsistic renegades, but rather as custodians of a highly prized civilizational baggage to pass down; the survival of their nations is somehow today, not in question. Now, if the: "You would have done the same in our position", serve any logical purpose, it's overshadowed by what it protects of the fragile ego of Boomers, over sensitive to criticism.
The hatred is awfully deserved and history will remember what a generational parasitic force they truly were.
I see much more boomer hate on reddit in the last couple years. It is possibly related to our current shitty job market for young people, combined with the fear that they will never own a house.
And since I am in California, boomers get blamed for prop 13, even though it was created by and for the "greatest generation".
You can't look up a literal meme phrase to gauge relevance. Memes go in and out of style, we all know this. IMO the sentiment has only increased since cost of living has gotten more expensive.
I think it's a fair piece of evidence for this position being *not novel* - I too was surprised to see an article in late 2025 begin with "Hating Boomers is the new cool thing."
No, it's been going on for a while.
There was the belief that Boomers were getting benefits which wouldn't be there for younger people.
There was also the problem (possibly real) of boomers saying "go to college and you'll be secure" when it wasn't working like that any more.
"Okay Boomer" possibly started as a way of fending off unwelcome advice, but became a way of ignoring anything a Boomer might say.
Also, the language shifted to Boomer became an insult which could applay to Millennicals.
'boomers saying "go to college and you'll be secure"'
We believed it when we said it. We weren't trying to deceive the young people.
It absolutely wasn't deceitful or malicious. It also wasn't true.
I can see that it would be infuriating, especially if forcefully repeated.
Sure, as it turned out, the economy changed. We were trying to be helpful. We were wrong about the direction of the economy.
Did we say "you'll be secure"? Or did we say "it will be worth it in the long run"?
Too soon to say this was false I think.
My own Greatest Gen parents said, "You'll have access to much more interesting jobs," which turned out to be true. It might still be true.
I never heard that particular one but it's definitely turned out to be true for me, for my wife, for one of my siblings and for my adult son.
Did not turn out particularly true for my ex-wife nor my other two siblings so, clearly YMMV.
Still though....thinking of other "veteran adults" of my acquaintance it feels more true than not.
My father would say "You have to get that piece of paper." No context.
The problem is that wage income is becoming an ever smaller proportion of national wealth, and capital investment an ever greater share. It's gotten harder and harder to earn your way up into social mobility. This isn't a new trend, it's just coming home to roost this generation.
Do you think Boomers, over sensitive zealots they are, would acquiesce to logic as you made clear in your argument. Boomers have made an industrial complex of confirming their denial of reality. They live in secluded areas, snapshot suburbs of what they grew up in, while afflicting the rest of us with infinity mass-migration, the consequences of which are of civilizational proportions. As long as their pensions, housing, social security and services keep increasing (literally communism) they are gleefully willing to sacrifice their daughters and sons to unlock.
The image of Moloch comes to mind when identifying their divine providence, and they will be talked about in history in the same manner the Ammenites, or the Hittites are treated currently.
I remember differently. A conversation I had with my dad in the 90s:
Him: Get a law degree since you like debating
Me: But there are so many lawyers already!
Him: But there are always only a few that are REALLY good
He also encouraged me to acquire computer literacy and paid for tech classes in early 2000s, and we both understood that it's a lifelong learning in any profession.
Everyone around me seemed to understand that college is just a launching pad, but you still need to be able to jump higher than others to get ahead, like in any profession.
Just saw this the other day:
"MAGA Boomer: At your age in 1970 | paid off college & bought a house with hard work.
Millennials: In 1970 college was 5% of median salary. Now it's 44%. A median home was $24K. Now it's $417K. The top marginal tax rate was 70%. Now it's 37%.
Sure maybe you did work hard-but then you closed the door behind you."
The cost of a TV and clothing went down, but other expenses had went up.
I wonder how this square off with that vibecession graph that Scott has brought up twice now
My biggest frustration with the "OK, Boomer" meme is that the name USS Oklahoma was used for an attack sub rather than a ballistic missile sub at approximately the peak of the meme's popularity, which seems like a missed opportunity.
This is a pretty OK dad joke!
It's comments like this when I truly miss the "Like" button in here.
Ken Wilber wrote _Boomeritis_, a book on "boomer disease" (combined with his specualtive spiritual theories) back in 2002 already.
Quoting Wikipedia: Wilber characterizes this as the deadly combination of a modern egalitarian worldview with a deep unquestioned narcissism commonly held by Baby Boomers and their children.
Pattern of behaviors is just much more noticeable than grievances
It's... simplistic, to say this is about hate. It's a shifting equilibrium, and while the greatest/boomers built most of what we would call the modern world, it is not difficult to recognize that they're operating on shorter time frames than most of the rest of us have to, and this drives some of their politics as a bloc.
I see this as the same argument against (overwhelmingly the low-skilled segment of) immigration: WEIRD societies tend to be cooperative and trusting and think in longer time frames. This is a fragile equilibrium and is threatened by a demographic shift towards those who are more opportunistic and think in short time frames. Look at trust studies across countries. Yes, there's significant impact based on the government and support structures in place, but there's population-level effects too. Age is just a very obvious indicator of the same kinds of prioritization.
Not sure this is right. Having kids tends to extend one's time horizon, no? And having grandkids extends it further, I would expect.
I don't think this actually touches anything cruxy.
That advancing age pushes timelines shorter is orthogonal to whether you have kids.
Intergenerational research is pretty consistent that cohorts still do pursue self-interest, and when one's interest ends in 5 years, the rest just follows.
There's a recent British survey showing their older generation cares more about their children when they assess the children's financial situation to be a negative one ("Family Matters", Cambridge 2025), but this showed Boomers-with-struggling-kids dont become less pro-elderly, they just want more spending in general. Budget constraints aren't psychologically salient, here.
You got anything to contest with? Not thrilled about incipient generational warfare, happy to be wrong.
Well, I put this into google and Gemini told me I was right, but didn't give a single link backing that up, so I suspect it's hallucinating and you are correct. Still, I am a bit skeptical about this because in terms of spending, I don't actually see much of a constituancy among younger voters for slashing entitlement spending for older Americans.
Well a lot of people younger than boomers are in favor of changing the way social security is set up so that the wealthiest elderly people aren't able to draw as much as they can now in payments. Which would be making the SS system operate as progressive taxation, rather than everybody getting similar amounts out to what they paid in. Since the lack of investment of the funds means money paid in the past can't cover current expenses.
Do you have any polling data to support that? 'Cause that'd be news to me.
"While the public opposes (67%) only paying seniors in financial need, Americans are open to reducing the benefits of higher earners (61%) and cutting benefits that exceed what workers and their employers paid into the system (59%). Americans would also accept slowing the pace at which benefits increase each year (58%) "
https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/new-poll-most-americans-expect-social-security-benefit-cuts-third-believe-program
It is already highly progressive, "everybody getting similar amounts out to what they paid in" is not at all what happens
Fertility rates collapsed circa 1970 in most developed countries. This means a net aging population, which obviously means a larger shift of resources to the old relative to the young, proportionally speaking. This can become a very vicious feedback loop, as most famously observed in Korea, where a large and fairly poor elderly bloc just vote for their immediate needs and younger people are crushed. Japan, Italy, Canada, and other countries are in varying stages of progress in this trap. The details of how it plays out are all particular to each society, but the effect is the same.
These societies are wealthier, and thus have more resources to share, so we certainly aren't talking about famine or anything here. However, the fact is people have stopped reproducing at scale, and that has huge consequences. Bailouts via protectionist policies and/or immigration and its trade offs fill in the gaps to save the elderly from disasters they themselves set in motion 50 years ago. Note that these issues are only going to get much worse as younger generations age, barring massive structural reforms. I agree with the piece when it argues that Millennials and Gen Z are likely to be much worse tyrants. I was born in 1991 FWIW.
> it is not difficult to recognize that they're operating on shorter time frames than most of the rest of us have to,
For me it is difficult to recognize, that greatest and boomers operate on a shorter timeframe than others. Is this because they are old and will die sooner? Or are you saying that GenZ thinks farther into the future than previous generations?
The former.
I'd like to see some evidence that immigrants are more opportunistic and think in shorter time frames. Americans are pretty famously short term thinkers (esp. when it comes to business). Incentives probably matter much more.
Also, the greater the economic stress, the shorter the time frame one will think. We are all under a lot of stress right now.
I didn't say "all immigrants" I said overwhelmingly the segment of low-skilled immigrants. Long term prioritization correlates hard with education and skill acquisition (obviously).
But across country lines, here's some data: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245692.g001
(drop the '.g001' for the paper)
Link doesn't work. Can you give me the author and title?
Universal time preference
Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang, Thorsten Hens
So isn't this just saying that immigrants plan for the future exactly as much as you'd expect for anyone at their income level? Though I'd expect that once you control for income immigrants would actually end up looking better than native born citizens: Since other metrics like addictions, family connection and crime rate would all lead one to expect the immigrants to come out looking better here.
There's genetic, cultural, and environmental factors all at play here.
And there's a stable attractor for short term thinking and one for long term thinking that becomes unstable as the proportion of short term thinkers rises in the population.
And don't put words in my mouth. My original point wasn't about "all immigrants" - just low skilled ones. There's correlation with low income, certainly, but causality flows both ways. This is why it's a *stable* attractor.
>My original point wasn't about "all immigrants" - just low skilled ones
That's what I responding to. That this result seems to just suggest low skill immigrants have in the ballpark of the same time discounting as you'd expect for similarly skilled native citizens.
Though like I said I strongly suspect that immigrants would actually come out looking somewhat better than native born citizens who have the same level of education and wealth.
For instance the average household savings rate in Sri Lanka is %24.3 (it varies by year and was %33 in 2017) so I would bet money that the average immigrant from Sri Lanka not only plans for the future better than comparably rich Americans, but also plans for the future better than either the average or the median American. Since Americans have a lot of debt and a savings rate of only %3-5
If a person was good at planning for the future, they'd tend to be a higher-skilled and educated person, all else equal, wouldn't you agree?
Countries have very little reason to want to admit immigrants equally distributed across all SES of the source country. I want to select for the best long-term thinkers to maintain the current WEIRD environment, and those aren't evenly distributed.
And one outlier nation does not invalidate a trend? Sri Lanka is a significant outlier within South Asia on nearly all human development indicators, likely due to the amount of colonial investment of education infrastructure and its subsequent impact on post-independence policy.
Tell me about South America.
Can we have a source on the claim that immigrants are more likely to be "opportunistic and think in short time frames"? That's a pretty controversial thing to just assert as true.
I didn't say "all immigrants" I said overwhelmingly the segment of low-skilled immigrants. Long term prioritization correlates hard with education and skill acquisition (obviously).
But across country lines, here's some data: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245692.g001
(drop the '.g001' for the paper)
This take has been imported in part from the EU + the UK where the pension system is not the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Pension_(United_Kingdom)#Pensions_Act_2007
There is a lot of similar things in France that I could dig up, such as all attempts to tax benefits being defeated.
Speaking of the UK, I was surprised to not see Brexit addressed
People break brexit down along age lines, but it's a similar story if you do english/scottish lines, urban/rural lines etc etc etc.
I mean age _is_ salient, but mostly because the people who voted for it have actually died off such that more people are alive who would want to rejoin, but similar arguments to Scott's about white people + old people both being against taxes apply in this case too.
People who remember the UK before it joined the EU were more likely to favor Brexit.
This isn't necessarily true; those alive in WW2 voted overwhelmingly to remain, almost as much as millennials.
I had only heard of Brexit votes increasing with age https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/ Perhaps there aren't enough of the Greatest Generation around to show up much in most polls.
Yes, there just weren't enough of them left.
Britain’s wartime generation are almost as pro-EU as millennials - LSE BREXIT https://share.google/CTs3Ee67CFbJZo47E
Exactly, when I think of boomer hate I think of one of the few French memes to break it through to the anglosphere: Nicolas, 30 ans
https://img.ifunny.co/images/b2e709bc03ff4a410d9ea18b2ca8fa0921bdb07de813471a2a764ae4193e45c1_1.jpg
This meme also immediately came to my mind and I was surprised it was not mentioned at all.
It wasn't mentioned because Scott seems genuinely confused about the origin of alot of Boomer hate, which is explicitly tied to European welfare systems and how they redistribute money away from young middle class earners into the pockets of the wealthiest generation, i.e. Boomers by means of pension transfers.
If Scott had broadened his research horizon a bit, he would see that the average pension in France is now higher than the average salary - which is obviously an unjustifiable disaster, especially when old people are way less likely to rent at high prices or experience childcare expenses.
The fact that "Nicolas, 30 ans", wasn't even mentioned in this entire essay speaks to the extremely limited amount of research he made for this text and how it mainly stems from a contrarian impulse, not a quest for truth.
https://www.chosun.com/english/market-money-en/2025/10/07/JUTTDLP3MNFTZBDPL7ALRL3WH4/#:~:text=The%20FT%20analyzed%2C%20%E2%80%9CThe%20phenomenon,their%20children's%20generation%20upon%20retirement.%E2%80%9D
"If Scott had broadened his research horizon a bit, he would see that the average pension in France is now higher than the average salary - which is obviously an unjustifiable disaster, especially when old people are way less likely to rent at high prices or experience childcare expenses"
It isn’t true: the average pension is quite a lot lower than the average salary. What may be true is that the standard of living of pensioners — pensions plus rents and other capital income, boosted the absence of dependent children — can end up a bit higher than the average standard of living of working-age people.
That being said, I agree that pensions in France are too high and that this is a problem, but I disagree that boomers are particularly at fault. Most French people, whatever their age, seem to think that poverty among the old is a big problem and that pensions — if anything — are too low. They may be wrong; I think they are wrong. But this subject doesn’t look like age-war stuff to me. Frankly, if the general perception of older people’s material situation were to change, I wouldn’t be that surprised if boomers revealed themselves to be relatively selfless.
https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2025-07/Fiche%2009%20-%20Le%20niveau%20de%20vie%20des%20retrait%C3%A9s.pdf
Funny how I can basically tell what the meme is saying without knowing what a single word of it means.
Probably most of this is true, but there is one point I would take issue with, concerning the idea of "sitting on assets not being used for market labor." This kind of does seem like an issue, or something? And I agree one should not expropriate too many assets from boomers in order to impoverish them, or anything, but if there is a group of people with a large number of assets not being employed productively, there _is_ an issue there, right? (I think this belief is downstream of a lot of leftist anxiety about the superwealthy, though of course in general they are employing those assets productively). More of an issue if those with fewer assets are being taxed in order to provide "what is owed" in some abstract sense to those who are already not employing assets productively.
Were I old, I think it totally would be reasonable to say "You can live in a 5-bedroom house, but since you're just a married couple these days, probably it's better if you get by with a 3-bedroom, and probably it doesn't need to be so central to the city, unless you can afford it. We are going to raise taxes higher." And to means-test social security payments to some extent (phased in, over time)? Or is that going too far in my demagoguery?
I agree there's an argument for forced house downsizing. But I also think we're the types of people who the Right calls rootless cosmopolitans, and that people with more attachments might not be so amenable.
My grandparents-in-law built significant parts of their house with their own hands, and lived in it for ~50 years. They planted saplings in the garden and lived to see them become trees. They know the neighbors and probably knew the neighbors' parents before them. Their daughter, my mother-in-law, lives a few blocks away. When I last visited, they could show me their son's old bedroom, their daughter's old bedroom, and the bedroom where their granddaughter (my wife) used to stay with them. My grandfather-in-law is cognitively about 70% there, to the point where (until recently) he could live on his own, but only through having a very predictable routine, knowing where everything was, and being in an incredibly friendly and familiar environment. Their area has now skyrocketed in cost. I can see your side of the argument - but I also can't blame them for being against some hypothetical policy that would force them to move to a strange apartment in the nearest affordable town 50 miles away so that some striver DINK couple could turn their spare bedroom into a gym.
Sure, I mean it wouldn't be some sort of forced movement, it'd be more like higher property taxes. If you can afford it then that's fine, don't think we should do some centralized planning boomer hatred. And it should hit everyone equally. It's just about measuring productive use of houses. But it would end up falling hardest on boomers (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective).
But this is maybe more reasonable as a policy idea than "lynch the boomers" which is perhaps the bailey you're arguing against. I don't want to be the motte, just this is (I think?) an actually good policy.
Yeah, I understand it's just higher property taxes, I'm saying there's no way my retired and slightly-demented grandfather-in-law could afford normal property taxes on his house he bought in 1970-something in a desirable California college town. He's been coasting off whichever California proposition it was that says old people's property taxes don't go up while they own the home.
(although age has taken his toll and he now lives in a nursing home, so this is more of a hypothetical example drawing inspiration from a real situation)
I don't mean to sound heartless, but like, every policy has bad outcomes and good outcomes. Of course with housing policy the core issue is that bad outcomes for those already there are salient, and for those not already there they are much less so. I mean my grandparents have had similar issues, I agree there would be pain. It's just about finding the right balance on the margin. But individual stories shouldn't necessarily guide policy-making (I mean "plural of anecdote" etc etc, but you see what I mean?). I am sorry about your granddad in law though, dementia sucks.
Yeah, I agree with this, and it still might be good on net, I just can't bring myself to hate Boomers for opposing it.
I still think that instead of facing these tough tradeoffs, we should just build more housing, and that every person who we force to make these tradeoffs is in some sense a policy failure, even if we take the right side of them.
I feel nervous because I'm neutralish on something where there's basically a unanimous consensus on smart people, but to me it does seem to make sense that rising house values shouldn't be able to make your current home unaffordable - both because as someone in a state where house values have pentupled in a generation this seems like a recipe for constant forced turmoil, and because it gives NIMBYs one more reason to oppose density (if someone upzones your area, that increases the value of your land, and therefore your property taxes, and might force you to leave your house - therefore, you should fight upzoning unless you want to be forced out).
Of course, "build more" is the natural synthesis of 90% of policy arguments! Would much rather that than pass this.
Edit: To respond to your final paragraph: Yeah sure, "if one does not feel a twinge of pain about property taxes one has no heart, if one does not support them nonetheless one has no brain" or something. I mean I support it, but I think you're considering the second order effect instead of the first, which is the massive incentive for government to build (/permit) more. And building more will end up being good, but there will be pain in the meantime, I mean many good policies do end up causing pain. It is a sad reality. But anyway, we agree on the correct solution which is YIMBYism I think. I don't hate Boomers (I meme about it occasionally, perhaps that is to be avoided in the developing climate), but was just posing the biggest issue I saw which is real estate.
It’s difficult for a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on not understanding it.
A halfway house solution to this is to increase property taxes but make them payable on death/sale. It has less of an effect of actually forcing people out, so the allocation effect isn't as strong, but it would encourage people to move at the margin. e.g. those who want to free up equity, without penalising the "asset rich, cash poor." It's just about the only wealth tax that works, and those gains are largely CGT exempt.
This is usually discussed in a UK context as we don't have percentage property taxes, and this is a potential way of introducing them, given in some places nominal values have 10x'd.
Note that if we have to build more housing, it's because we have too many people. Or, sure, not enough houses. But they're the same thing, arithmetically.
So, someone notices that we have a society that (a) is overpopulated and (b) directs an increasingly large share of its material resources to keep elderly people alive longer. And they're supposed to ignore that because someday they too can take advantage of living a few more decrepit years at overwhelming expense?
Old people are also often stubborn. I’d personally love additional incentives for my parents or I laws to downsize and move closer to me, where it would be easier to care for them later, and where they could provide childcare and connect with us now.
This is indeed I think the main rational complaint with Boomers. They are just rotting away in their big ass houses by themselves and doomscrolling. This is both a bad allocation of houses but ALSO a bad allocation of old people!
>but to me it does seem to make sense that rising house values shouldn't be able to make your current home unaffordable
This was my response to Lars Doucet's book review submission and series on Georgism, and I never got a satisfactory answer out of him on it
>but to me it does seem to make sense that rising house values shouldn't be able to make your current home unaffordable.
The reason why property taxes should rise with the value of the house is that property taxes pay for the amenities that the government provides for people that live in the house (infrastructure, roads, emergency services, schools etc.). All of these get more expensive with inflation, which is what drives the increase in value of the house. When property taxes don't rise, then non-homeowners are suddenly subsidizing homeowners which seems like obviously terrible policy.
The property tax debate would be less heated if seizure of property was not the preferred enforcement mechanism.
I insist that all citizens should pay their fair share in property taxes. I also insist that seizure of property is inhumane and it (rightfully) erodes public trust in the government. We have plenty of more humane enforcement mechanisms we could use, like brief imprisonment, public shaming, seizure of other assets, etc. As a worst case scenario, you could seize the property after the owner's death. But snatching the deed from a living elder is so heartless that this act provides empowers extremists who oppose property taxes on principle.
I marvel that local governments do not simply garnish people's bank accounts when they have the money but refuse to pay. The IRS has no qualms about doing that, right? Is there an issue here wherein only the Feds have the clout to face the ire of the banking industry?
The really bad CA policy is inheritance of low tax basis for your parent’s house if you play your cards right.
Someday your grandfather in law is going to die, and that house will go on the market. I'm fine with him living there until that happens--I don't think that this situation is some sort of social problem at scale. The issue is starter homes--there aren't enough of them. Would your GFiL oppose someone building townhouses down the street? *That's* the real problem.
Where, exactly, are we supposed to build more housing in a state where boomers keep their 1970s era tax basis and pass it on to their children and childrens's children in perpetuity?
But can we build more housing? When rates skyrocketed a lot of new home builds stopped because:
1) Building homes became more expensive
2) People wouldn't be able to afford new homes at new prices
New builds are expensive these days with all the codes they need to comply with (but we also don't want to go back to what we had 100 years ago, I've seen my old home's frame and was not impressed). And also the land in desirable places is expensive.
There are probably some policies that could help build more housing like removing the "minimum home size" requirement or allowing to convert SFHs into duplexes like CA did. But we can't really build more unless we can build it really cheap and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, isn't it?
Being old is extremely terrible in and of itself. Throw all the pain imaginable from any policy proposal onto young hip attractive 25 year olds, and they are still in the superior position.
And in this case, it's particularly absurd to force misery onto the elderly, because we're less than a decade from a massive die-off that is going to flood the market with housing. For god's sake, I think you can wait 5 years while the glut of 40s babies age out of these places on their own, let 'em have the best ending they can. These young people are so disgustingly greedy, they have the most precious commodity in life and they grumble that old folks who are going to literally cease to exist in a few years are holding onto houses?
"we're less than a decade from a massive die-off that is going to flood the market with housing."
People have been fantasizing about this a long time to no effect; meanwhile, the country borrows trillions of dollars a year *solely* to employ an army of expensive professionals to keep old people alive as long as possible. Seems ... very stupid? How would you describe it.
We shouldn't be indifferent between now and 5 years from now. If fertility is reduced because young people can't afford to marry & settle down somewhere with space for kids (something the @MoreBirths account seems quite confident of), then waiting that time means missing a highly valuable window for having children.
THAT TOO.. the property taxes in FFX are outrageous. well I am going to play powerball... see ya. Scott you are onto to something. :) Happy New Year too.
I've never understood this take. If the value of the house has gone up, so has your net worth, making it effectively an easy-to-administer unrealized capital gains tax.
Toy example: say I bought a house for $100k in 1990, now it's appraised at $1m. Property tax is 1%/yr. It sucks I have to pay $10k/yr, but I also have $1m worth of assets that I can borrow against (and, realistically, knowing how conservative appraisals are it's probably more like $1.5m market rate, at least where I'm from).
If we don't want to force people to understand personal finance enough to do this kind of financial engineering, that's fine: give the homeowner the option to check a box on their taxes to pay the bill directly out of home equity, which the government could then sell to institutional investors on a secondary market.
Intuitively, it feels odd to me that we have to go far out of our way to protect people with rapidly appreciating assets (good) from the taxes thereon (bad, but small in comparison)
The thing about capital gains taxes is that they're usually assessed on completed transactions. I.e. you know what actual value changed hands and so you can assess the tax on that.
"Unrealized capital gains" taxes don't have that.
"We think your house is worth eleventy squillion and so you owe us more than you can pay" is going to go wrong.
Valuation on illiquid assets is really hard, and government is really quite bad at this stuff. Especially when they have incentive to do it badly.
Private enterprise has more incentive to do it right, since it's their money. Even then they get it wrong.
Mortgages are based on the money that changed hands. About the only analogous thing would be home equity loans. And you might notice that lenders tend to leave lots of elbow room on the amount they'll lend you versus the supposed value.
The only thing is that it is not hard, even for the government, which has no problem at all assessing and collecting property taxes from hundreds of millions of people in the U.S.
I don't know if I can formalize an argument, but it seems like one thing to have property taxes to fund government and a very different thing to have property taxes to force people out of their houses.
While I'm on the subject, what do people make of the argument that suburbs are intrinsically unsustainable because they need a lot of infrastructure but can't raise enough tax money to support it?
I think it depends on the suburb. My reading of Radley Balko's reporting on Ferguson Missouri was that the town no longer had the fiscal capacity to support an independent municipal government, and should probably merge with St. Louis. The suburbs of Atlanta, on the other hand, are very happy to keep their tax dollars to themselves.
There's an option, in Texas at least, for old folks to defer all property tax payments as long as they live in the same spot, with the bill coming due after they move out or die. Seems like that could patch the problem - folks who need the stability can get it, with no cash cost up front, but it's not a tempting loophole for speculative investors.
There's a simple policy fix for the "poor gramps can't afford the Georgian land value tax / property tax hike" -- make it possible to defer until death, when gramps' hiers can either (a) pay the back taxes and keep the property or (b) sell the property and use the proceeds to pay the back taxes.
Unless the higher property taxes are aimed only at the 65 and older crowd, I'm thinking the higher property taxes will hurt younger generations more -- the people who are saddled with student debt, multiple care payments, are raising kids, paying for childcare, and trying to save for retirement.... as well as who need larger homes for growing families.
I don't know how many old people are hanging onto huge homes, but it's a very common thing that older people who are now on fixed incomes and do not have opportunities to increase their income anymore are squeezed out of their homes by rising property taxes, rising healthcare costs, and inflation on the same fixed incomes. Not to mention old people just tend to downsize over time because they want less to maintain and one-story living for safety.
The other place old people have their assets is through their 401(k)s and IRAs invested in the market. Arguably those assets are productive because they are providing capital for public companies to grow and hire more people.
I genuinely don't want you to take this personally. When you or someone over on Slow Boring starts speculating about how I, a young boomer, should be forced out of my nice house that I bought with my own money, it truly makes me want to get a gun and shoot you. Scott, I'm not going to do that, so please don't ban me. I'm explaining how murderously angry it makes me feel. So every other age group gets to have whatever goods and services are available at a market rate, but old people have to move to shitty apartments because we're worth so much less than young people?
I will take every legal means at my disposal to prevent you from doing this. I will block you in the courts, I will vote for evil totalitarian bastards if they support my property rights, I will seriously do anything to keep you from patting me on the head and telling me to move on because I suddenly don't have a right to my own house, because some younger person suddenly wants it.
Downthread, you say essentially, "Sure it's sad, but all policies have good and bad consequences!" Why don't have just take 70% to 80% of your current earnings and give that money to GiveWell? Sure, it will be sad that you have less stuff, that you don't have a right to your property, but all policies have good and bad consequences.
Sure, yeah, sorry I’m not advocating for violently forcing anything. If I were I think you should oppose that violently, that would be a crazy violation of property rights and you should in such a case defend your property, with violence if necessary. But that is not what I am advocating for.
I am advocating for levying property taxes on everyone alike. In the hopes that this causes more older people to realize that it is better for them (and also society as a whole) to downsize. If they are unable to afford it then they will have to move, of course if they can afford it then they can stay — they are playing by the same rules as everyone else.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I pay tons of property tax. Do you know a lot of old people who don't pay property tax? In California I guess people who have owned their houses for 50 years pay extremely low property taxes, but in most places, the local government assesses the worth of your house, sends you a tax bill, and you pay it.
Many of those assessments are administered badly.
If you're not in california then much of the property tax criticism doesn't really apply to you. This seems like there's mostly just a misunderstanding, certainly not entirely on your part. There are a number of misguided anti-boomers who don't really understand property taxes, but outside of those types I think most people either 1. focus their ire on California Prop 13, or 2. want to move towards taxing land values instead of property to encourage development. Neither of those is unfairly targeting boomers or forcing them to leave their homes discriminatorally.
+1
I’m somewhat curious as to how you think a hypothetical “Boomers vs everyone younger” gun battle would look like, because the post seems to imply that the Boomers can still take on everyone else with ease :-)
If higher property taxes mean that a significant number of people can't afford their houses, it's forced removement even if it's slower and smoother than the police showing up at your door.
I don’t mean to dismiss your view, I think there’s a point to incentivizing increased value in society, but I don’t think your view achieves that. For one, I don’t think value of unimproved land taxes would amount to anything worth the cost it would take to extract that value in the first place. Ie, having a government to tax value of unimproved land is a much worse cost than the benefit received from the taxes. I think another issue with property taxes is that it disincentivizes productive activities such as discovery and surveillance of land in the first place. We should strive to achieve greater outcomes on net all else being equal and in order to do that, decreasing property taxes appears to have better long term consequences than increasing them. For example, old people (specifically those with assets that they are just “sitting on”) do not just have all of their net worth hiding as cash under their mattresses. Most people have their retirement money invested into the market, benefiting others to be able to grow. This is the view on the pure efficiency outlook disregarding any moral factors.
Accounting for moral factors would seem to overwhelmingly oppose property taxes even more so. Suppose for example that you have worked for 20 years and acquired some nice land with a bunch of nice houses on it (regardless of what you plan on doing with any of it). Then imagine that someone came up to you and said that they want to make it easier for them to buy a nice house for themselves, so they say you are obligated to give them some of your net worth. Does that seem true? Suppose they threaten you with coercion to get you to give over the money, or kidnap you if you refuse. Are they justified in doing so? It appears quite obvious to me that they aren’t. Why should we view the governments behavior with property taxes any differently?
Kind of hard to tell if you’re responding to me or not because of substack comment nesting. But FWIW, I am advocating for property taxes, not unimproved land taxes.
That’s fair there are quite a lot of threads and replies to you, but yes I was attempting to reply to you. Apologies if I mistakenly replied to someone else. I take unimproved land taxes to be the most charitable interpretation of supporting property taxes, but my critiques don’t rely on that. I just wanted to address what I believe to be the most charitable form of property taxes, as well as what I believe to be more obviously horrendous of you see the rest of my reply.
Yeah I mean to be honest the framing of taxes where it’s someone coming along and stealing something from you just doesn’t really move me. Like, we have chosen as a society to have taxes for many reasons, some pigouvian (carbon tax), some funding-related (income tax), some because of our moral values (alcohol tax) etc.
I think property taxes clearly have a good allocative profile, and that’s really the question. It’s not a moral question about “is this thing ‘objectively wrong’ to levy taxes on.” There is no such thing. There are only better and worse taxes due to their downstream effects. I think the downstream effects of property taxes are good, but that’s basically an empirical question.
I don’t know if your edit makes much sense, and just sounds like the kind of self-reinforcing selfish logic, one would use. Any societal-level intervention will inconvenience some people, for every grandpa holding on to the 5-bedroom house he bought for a twig of sticks, there are dozens or hundreds of young families looking for a home closer to their place of work or in a nice community with a good school.
I don’t know of any argument that isn’t just sparsely clothed selfishness with a hint of confirmation bias. And selfishness is normal, of course, but understanding what it is allows a democracy make better decisions
"For every grandpa holding on to the 5-bedroom house he bought for a twig of sticks, there are dozens or hundreds of young families looking for a home closer to their place of work or in a nice community with a good school. "
Isn't this false? When I look at the demographic pyramid, I think there are more grandpas than young families. Although I'm not sure what it changes if it's true.
See also the NIMBY argument I made above at https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-against-boomers/comment/189624979
100% upzoning and building more is the most effective policy answer. We agree on most.
Partly, the idea of one person taking up a 5-bedroom house in a desirable area annoys my sensibilities. But I'm a fan of individual rights and market forces so property taxes hit a nice middle.
There is still a case to be made that liquidity in the housing market is important. I don't think the tradeoffs are always a policy failure. One may have to choose between living next to the awesome natural beach, or living next to their work; naturally, both are desirable and have limited land stock.
There could be an inverse relationship between upzoning and higher property taxes like you said. In my ideal world, we'd have a Land Value Tax as a replacement for any property tax and fix these issues without the same trade-offs. Zoning-agnostic assessments would be difficult but possible, I believe.
Does the idea of one young person taking up a large house offend your sensibilities to the same extent? Or is it just old people?
A single young person making unproductive use of the same amount of space would be just as much of a problem, but that situation doesn't come up nearly as often.
Property taxes can be means tested, of course, like anything else.
That sounds like the start of an argument that the demographic pyramid *is a problem*.
Decreasing material support to the elderly is then a very natural policy to support.
Be sure to revisit this comment when you are elderly yourself.
As an almost elderly person, I must say the demographic pyramid is absolutely a problem, and I don't want my kids to starve after I'm gone, but it's complicated. I don't mind retiring a few years later, provided the jobs are there for someone like me. You can reduce my benefits if you can also bring prices down, esp. healthcare. Or you can tax the wealthy (since I'm not wealthy, I can support that). Or some combination of those.
Does your NIMBY argument say what you claim? I read this exactly opposite. When asked, "can we build apartments near transit centers?" (I.e. away from suburbia where rich Boomers can afford to live) they said yes. When asked, "can we build multi-family units in the suburbs, or make them more crowded with smaller yards?" the Boomers said no. This is exactly what we'd expect to see if they're out of touch, hand waving to the youth to go fix their problems themselves somewhere else, not my fault not my problem.
It's what you would expect humans to say, locked as they are within their own point of view. The answer is to form a large enough political coalition and outvote them.
Back-of-the-napkin math with googled stats from various sources suggests there’s 25 million boomer homeowner households and 15 million renter families with kids. I can’t help but imagine the social good of somehow freeing up 3/5th of boomer homes and letting families live there at the same cost as boomers.
You're saying that the only argument against unlimited forced redistribution is selfishness? You don't place any value on individual rights?
Property taxes =/= unlimited forced redistribution
But maybe property tax is theft or something. If granps can somehow take his house somewhere else, I’d be fine, but I don’t think one should have a right to land. One does not “earn” land, and unlike other wealth, land is not really created*
*sure, you can reclaim land from ocean, blah blah. Not a good point really
One may not earn land, but "everyone has an equal claim to land" also ends up being isomorphic to "other people had a bunch of kids in a way that increased the opportunity cost of the land you were quietly occupying, and now that's your problem rather than theirs or their parents' despite you having nothing to do with it."
Instead of "other people had a bunch of kids," why not think of it as "other humans were born" just the same way you and I were born. A democracy should concern itself with the well-being of its people. Those children are its people. Humanity will grow. I don't see that as a problem.
In fact, the second sentence actually reads quite selfish and narcissistic to me.
yes, exactly this! this entire argument is downstream of the population being too large.
There are various ways to approach that problem: historically, the solution was to have a war where a lot of young people died, or to have some plagues that killed indiscriminately. But when combined with a population that's also anomalously *old*, surely other, better solutions present themselves, like "get out of Nature's way."
Many of the benefits that the Boomer generation enjoy are only made possible *by growth caused by a bunch of births.* Pensions, Social Security, the fact that your house is now in a great place to live, the hospitals that have the capacity to care for a larger aging population, etc. are largely due to that same growth.
For an example, my grandfather lives off of a pension that no longer pays out new benefits (because, it turns out, it was based on the premise of continuing/accelerating growth). It didn't matter when he bought his house because he was young, but the closest hospital is now only 15 minutes from his place instead of an hour away. He has assets that appreciated at a pretty consistent 10% for the last 50 years.
That's what makes this so tough: my grandfather is a huge beneficiary of population growth, while also not being directly responsible for it. So it is both unfair to make him pay for that growth, but also (seemingly) unfair to allow him to continue being a major beneficiary of that growth.
It doesn't seem like you are arguing for a single land tax. It seems like you're arguing that the retired couple should pay higher taxes than a different resident would because they are failing to fully use their house. You can favor that sort of tax policy, but it seems strange to claim that you can't think of any legitimate arguments on the other side.
It already costs the couple something to live there, insofar as they are paying to own and maintain a more expensive house when they could downsize, pay lower taxes, and pocket the price difference. It seems perfectly reasonable to argue against an additional "underutilization" tax on grounds of basic justice.
"It seems like you're arguing that the retired couple should pay higher taxes than a different resident would because they are failing to fully use their house."
I am not making that argument
In a perfect world, given scarce resources, we would have perfect resource allocation and perfect resource utilization. The government can't enforce that but we can incentivize it. Let's not pretend like this is the first instance of using taxes as a market force.
"It already costs the couple something to live there, insofar as they are paying to own and maintain a more expensive house when they could downsize, pay lower taxes, and pocket the price difference."
unless the property taxes and/or land taxes are already so low... which is what I'm arguing against. I misunderstand where the miscommunication is happening here.
It's less "theft" than labor taxes are. https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/service
The end does seem to argue against Georgism, but it's a weaker argument, as the arguments against taxing labor instead of land are more obvious.
And what is selfishness, if not individual rights?
Due to a population boom following an enormous war there were a lot of babies born. And now there’s too many old people. There are competing issues. What you are suggesting to me is to give some committee of persons the power to decide who gets screwed. It doesn’t matter what course of action you come up with it will inevitably be a rationalization of who you’re screwing and why it’s a good idea.
"What you are suggesting to me is to give some committee of persons the power to decide who gets screwed"
Isn't that like the definition of governing? If you're arguing for Laissez-faire or anarchism, I'm not a fan.
It is the definition of a certain kind of governance, and not one that we have approached yet in this country. Mao really knew how to do it right.
No, I am not an anarchist.
A monarch/dictator can govern without a committee, so not "the definition of governing".
Most people don't agree that Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction is the essence of politics. I do though. (And I DO advocate for laissez-faire or anarchism, and recognize everything else as minor distinctions in shades of tyranny.)
"Better never means better for everyone."
Sorry but I don’t understand what you’re pointing at.
Which is exactly how governments work, anyway. The problem is there is absolutely zero future for any sociaty that has low fertility, screws over its young, and simply shores things up for the oldest generation. That can only happen once. What comes next? We need to figure that out, and the sooner the better.
Well there’s committees that get voted in and out and then there’s other kinds of committees. I realize that might be a distinction without a difference sometimes; the staus quo is stubborn when a sufficient number of people are fat and happy.
What comes next? I don’t know- but a difficult period of “adjustment” is my guess. The tide comes in and goes out again.
A more enlightened view of dying wouldn’t hurt but it’s always someone else who should get out of the way.
I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE..and downsize.. and give whatever I have left to my grown children or anyone else.. :) who shows up.... and move where it is warm.. I am over 70 now and all I want is a warm place to read.. quietly... and some sunshine.. and read my Bible.. in peace. :)
https://villavieresidences.com/endless-horizons/
HTH, HAND
> They know the neighbors and probably knew the neighbors' parents before them. Their daughter, my mother-in-law, lives a few blocks away.
Imo this is a better argument for allowing a mix of home sizes in the same area. If they could move to a smaller home just down the street, then that would resolve this downside.
Not to say that the other reasons aren't valid, but not everyone has built their home and has this level of attachment. My grandparents really should downsize and move to a 2 bedroom place (since they live with an equally old family friend), but there's no way to do that while staying in their familiar neighborhood with their friends.
I agree this is a real issue, how neighborhoods tend to be more or less the same size of houses and single-family home owners resist multi-unit dwellings near them. There are exceptions, but there's a lot of this. I gather not as much so in Europe where all dwellings are smaller and cities and towns denser, but they have their own housing problems.
> My grandparents-in-law built significant parts of their house with their own hands, and lived in it for ~50 years.
I am surrounded by century+ old buildings that would be illegal to rebuild and prohibitively expensive to even remediate. Yet they're all occupied. Qui bono? With every year that passes, "I literally built this with my own two hands" gets less respect from me and more poorly-supressed rage.
This is why I'm a big believer in family compounds. One main house (4 bedrooms), and three small apartments (1 bedroom 1 bathroom) on the same plot of land.
Young kids and their family live in the mian house, then when they're single adults they stay in a small apartment. Then the other three are used for grandparents or young adults.
Providing people have 2 kids each, that should be enough houses for everyone.
-----
But a simpler and actually practical solution. Abolish all taxes on the sale of homes, so if people like your grandfather-in-law realise they can't maintain a big property and want to downsize, or need to move into a care home, they're not disincentivised from doing so.
Multi-generational living can be a cost-effective hack, but US culture isn’t wired for it. If you marry into a family like this, many of the problems that lead to divorces between spouses will be present between you and your various in-laws, plus the many problems of HOA living. The market is instead selecting for greater and greater atomization over collectivization.
The last paragraph is just "such a nice house you have, wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to it?"
I can totally see "We have to raise taxes if you have voted to stymie development" happening. But FDR had very specific political reasons for not means-testing social security. The moment you do this you are signing its death warrant
Yeah maybe, I really mean we should just raise property taxes so that staying in a house is not as incentivized (but I live in the UK, where we have this crazy law called stamp duty, which actually _punishes_ you for trading down, so the situation is much worse here).
I do think not means-testing can function as a useful schelling point, i don't know the history of why FDR didn't means test social security, but that seems like the best argument to me, so perhaps you are right. Optimally though, we could find a better Schelling point, (e.g. richest 10%). But perhaps humans are not capable of such feats. :(
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_(%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%91) (google translate does justice to the article) should be a required reading for people thinking about housing policy.
FDR's point about social security was that it was not a giveaway, it was an old-age insurance scheme applicable to everyone so it gave everyone a stake. The moment you means test it you get two things -- people who are excluded have all the incentives to kill it and the government has all the incentives to lower the bar to save money (so increasing the number of people who want to kill it)
Yeah but in Singapore for example, LKY implemented it as an _actual_ insurance scheme (i.e. you get what you pay in). Might be too late to do that now, but our system is fundamentally different, it is not actually an insurance scheme (if it were you may want to pay in more earlier, but everyone is actually taxed at basically the same rate, up to a cap so you are incentivized to always drain the youth more (not saying that happens but if we're looking at cold hard incentives)).
It cannot be implemented as a full insurance scheme in the US because it is essentially a redistribution scheme. Your argument is to drop the pretense and my point is that it will kill SS.
Killing SS and replacing it with the Singaporean system would be better.
Social Security was also implemented at a time when people died two years after retirement.
Now, they live another thirty years.
Pensions have the same problem.
Teachers, cops, and firefighters retire at 50 and live another forty years.
(Some of the above has been exaggerated a bit.)
Very much true. but it doesn't make politics any different
People also used to have a lot of kids. The various kinds of unfunded elder benefits that exist across the world are relics of a different time entirely.
If people don't want to have so many kids now, why do they feel so entitled to mid-century social security systems that implicitly assumed a certain kind of population pyramid? Paying "into it", when there is nothing to actually pay into (unfunded systems), while also not having kids (the *actual* resource needed to sustain the system) is obvious failure.
It's not "insurance". Insurance is for low-probability high-cost events, and people buy it voluntarily rather than being charged taxes for it. Nor was FDR right that a program for the poor is a poor program: the Earned Income Tax Credit keeps getting increased!
Ok, social security is a social insurance (also unemployment insurance is definitely an insurance but you are charged taxes for it)
Total spending on EITC in 2023 (last year for which I could find numbers in 1 minute) was $64b. Total spending on SS in the same year $1.38t. Come back with this argument when they are at least within an order of magnitude.
Unemployment "insurance" is supposed to insure against losing your job (causing an unpredictable drop in income). What is Social Security supposed to insure against?
EITC was not created to cover most of the population, whereas the expectation is that the typical person will eventually live long enough to collect SS. That difference in magnitudes does not show that EITC is a poor program as a result of serving the poor!
Wealth isn't zero-sum. If you earn money by increasing total social wealth, and the choose not to spend it (or not spend it well enough as judged by others), that doesn't hurt anyone. It only does if you believe that the more wealth one person has, the less someone else has to have.
Further: if you believe that creating wealth also creates a (potentially legally enforcable) obligation to spend it in a prosocial way, that sounds a lot like "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
No I just mean taking up property imposes a cost on other more productive uses of that property so there could be good reason to tax it. It's basically an argument from pigouvianness. Though I do get the appeal of "a man's home is his castle" style reasoning, I just happen to think it's not the best policy on the margin.
I disagree. Having something doesn't impose a cost on someone else because they therefore don't have that thing.
If we discovered, tomorrow, a new island in the Caribbean which was covered with beautiful, dense, walkable cities, mostly inhabited by retired Islanders who didn't need all that space, that new knowledge would not make anyone worse off.
It does if your counterfactual is "we take away all the excess wealth by force and redistribute it to the people," but that is not a good counterfactual. That seems to me to be the basic logic behind the French Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, etc. I think most people agree those were not salutary movements.
Oh no, it's more of a social cost, due to more inefficient allocation of labour and capital. But also a cost to individuals for sure, I think a young couple wanting to start a family with 3 kids is more deserving of a 5bd house than a 75 year old couple with kids all having flown the nest. This just seems pretty clear.
I agree forced expropriation is bad. French revolution and bolshevik revolution both bad. I'm just saying property taxes.
I am pretty certain that building houses in the NYC's central park is a much economical use of the space
I am not arguing against property taxes. I am arguing against the notion that a retired old man living in a large house alone has thereby done society harm, is worthy of resentment, or that he somehow deserves to have higher taxes as a result. You can think his taxes should be higher, but I don't think it's legitimate to think of this as anything other than a bad thing (taking the possessions to which he has every right) which is outweighed by some social good. He doesn't deserve to be punished for the generational crime of owning a large home, and to think otherwise seems illiberal.
If someone claimed all the land in the US, that would be imposing costs on everyone else. And by taxing the unimproved value of that land, we'd experience no negative supply-side effects, while obtaining the revenue that our government would otherwise require from other taxes.
I disagree. If someone appropriated all land in the US by force, that would impose a cost on everyone else. Theft is zero-sum. If someone bought every piece of land in the US from its owner in a voluntary transaction, and didn't acquire their wealth through theft, that would imply they created an incredible amount of wealth that didn't previously exist. In that case, no, it doesn't impose a cost on someone. Voluntary transactions generally benefit both parties, or they wouldn't occur.
Land is zero sum though, especially land in hot real estate markets in California. The point isn't to hate Boomers, but that the policy of Prop 13 rewarding existing owners of land in California has been disastrous for young families.
People don't need land, they need housing. On virtually 100% of land in the United States, the density of housing is very low. By area, our country is almost entirely composed of farms, woods, wilderness, low density residential, and low-density commercia (big box stores, parking lots, sprawling industrial parks, etc). Even in the hottest real estate markets in the country, we could build far more densely than the status quo. Even Manhattan is mostly low-rises.
I agree that policies like Prop 13 are terrible. Elderly landowners are not to blame for such policy.
The only "boomer" asset about which this non-productivity complaint makes sense is real estate. Generally, financial assets are either employed productively, or don't represent the hoarding of a resource in the first place (e.g., hoarding cash en masse will just cause the Fed to expand the money supply). You could argue that hoarding cash is a harbinger of a future imbalance where there aren't enough workers per retiree, but that imbalance will occur whether people hoard cash or not.
(There are various "superwealthy" assets about which this non-productivity complaint makes sense, e.g., superyachts.)
Oh yeah indeed. I mostly am talking about real-estate. If they just sell their house, rent somewhere, and invest the difference in stocks that seems great.
> "sitting on assets not being used for market labor"
aka retired and living off savings?
So if a 37-year-old couple buys a 5 bedroom house, and, by hypothesis, you know they're not going to have children, can we ("we") force them out too? Or is it only old people?
Oh, no. Sorry if that wasn’t clear but I’ve said it elsewhere in the thread. I don’t advocate forcing anyone out of their homes. I just think we should raise property taxes and levy them on everyone equally.
Old people actually benefit the most from living in central locations. They can walk to the grocery store or park without a car, are around people and not socially isolated, are within short distances to health care and (should) have more options to downscale while remaining in the neighborhood.
Being from a city with a ton of old people (Buenos Aires) I would never in a million years suggest old people move further out.
When I share this view with my American friends they look at me like I'm crazy.
Yes, urbanization is actually a fantastic tool for providing services and quality of life to elders. I strongly support there being some kind of priority policies for older folks in cities, but ONLY if they are matched with even more policies that prioritize young families in other spaces. This is necessary simply for the continuation of society. I am in Canada, and the status quo here is that the benefits flow one way, in an extraordinarily unoptimized way.
In my view (and the views of the financially savvy people I know), the generational wealth disparity isn't due to boomer hoarding so much as it's downstream of bad Fed policy. We had over a decade of irresponsibly low interest rates which resulted in an insane runup in asset prices. If you weren't already significantly invested in capital assets in 2009 then you essentially got locked out of the capital class. In my view this is one of the major causes of current political polarization. The solution IMO is to take our economic medicine and let a serious recession happen. The 2020 Covid epidemic would have been a great time to do that but instead the Fed decided to pump $2T into the economy, which is the real reason that Elon Musk is worth $500b now. The stock market needs to lose 40-60% of its value to bring P/E's in line with historic norms. Unfortunately political incentives make that impossible and Trump keeps saying things like the interest rate should be zero forever, which is just insane. Bad monetary policy has sunk many empires throughout history and we will be no different.
literally this.
If they're just financial assets, then it doesn't matter. See Landsburg on the miser Scrooge https://www.thebigquestions.com/2012/12/24/merry-christmas-2/ Real assets like housing are another story though.
Two things that would help with this are (1) a more functional social safety net around housing and (2) more efficiency in the residential real estate market. People "hoard" their home partly for sentimental reasons, true, but also because the whole process of buying/selling/moving is just so daunting ... and because often there aren't a lot of other appealing options out there. As a society, we don't exactly make it easy on old people who may be open to downsizing, which means most people make the reasonable decision (or non-decision) to stay put.
The following is distilled from my 2022 Columbia University Press book "Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture".
Hating Boomers (and talking about hating Boomers) is uninteresting and I agree morally dubious.
But it is *emphatically* false that "Boomers were a perfectly normal American generation". They have served far more terms in Congress than any generation before or since (and we currently have the oldest average age of elected officials in a legislative body IN THE WORLD other than apparently Cambodia), they have dominated the presidency (look up the birthdate of every major party candidate since the 2000 presidential election...), they controlled the commanding heights of major companies, cultural institutions (especially academica).
They are a historically *unique* generation, for three intersecting reasons: 1. They are a uniquely large generation 2. they came of age as the country and its institutions were maturing 3. they are sticking around because of increased longevity. These are analytical facts, and they produce what I call "Boomer Ballast" -- a concentration of our societies resources in one, older generation that increases the tension we are experiencing from technological innovation. Our demography is pulling us towards the past, the internet is pulling us into the future, and this I think is the major source of the anti-Boomer frustration.
On the specifics of social security and why we might think Boomers have played things to their advantage (not bc they're specifically evil but bc they have the political power to do so) -- the key thing is that they have prevented forward-thinking politicians from fixing the inevitable hole in social security that comes from our demographic pyramic. It would have been relatively painless to increase the rate or incidence of the social security payroll tax at any point in the past 25 years, the looming demographic cliff was obvious and the increased burden could've been shared more equally. Instead, they prevented reforms and all of the fiscal pain from demographic shifts will be borne by younger generations.
> Boomers were a perfectly normal American generation". They have served far more terms in Congress than any generation before or since (and we currently have the oldest legislative body IN THE WORLD other than apparently Cambodia).
Where can I learn more about the legislative body of Cambodia? I was under the impression that they had multiple discontinuities with French Indochina, Polpot, and whatever was there before French Indochina.
heh I don't know why this is the case -- but check figure A 1 in this paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4892936
the whole paper is great, by the way, just came out in a top 5 econ journal:
Compared to those of other countries, politicians in the United States are among the oldest. U.S. campaign finance offers one potential explanation for the distribution of political representation by age.
Linking big public data on campaign contributions and registered voters, we find that the median campaign donor in U.S. federal elections is 66 years old. Older donors are also much more ideologically conservative than younger donors.
Results from within-district and within-donor analyses suggest that individuals are more likely to donate and to donate more to candidates closer to their age.
I misinterpreted. I thought you meant that we had the oldest continuous legislative body except for Cambodia (as in, how long a legislative body has continually existed) rather than oldest average age.
Still interesting though. I’ll check out the link.
ahh lol ok -- I edited my comment to make this clearer
Older donors are more ideologically conservative, but it is notable that boomers actually shifted significantly to the left in recent years (in the US) and are now more likely to vote for Democrats than Gen X-ers.
They haven't fixed SS because it's unfixable. There is no way to get around the decrease in the ratio of workers to retirees that doesn't include massive benefit cuts or tax increases which are politically impossible. Previous generations didn't manage SS any better, they just didn't face this fatal problem.
no...it totally is fixable, in exactly the way I outlined. It's an algebra problem...as the ratio of workers to non-workers goes down, we either have to increase the tax rate on the workers or decrease the benefits. The sooner we do either, the less severe the problem is in the future. We did neither (thanks to extremely effective lobbying by the AARP, who fun fact operate the largest circulation magazine in the US), and so younger generations will have to suffer the entirity of either benefit cuts or tax increases (or, as seems likely, a generally worsened economy when the government inflates their way out of the problem by printing money)
Don't forget "Delay the retirement age" which results in fewer people receiving the same size benefits.
We did that. My lifetime SS benefits will be 20-25 percent less than they would have been under previous law, and I voted for that. My SS tax rate went up itself, and has been well over 15% since the changes took effect, and the cap on earned income subject to that went up a lot. And I voted to accept all that because it was projected to be sufficient.
Then the immigrant haters decided we needed fewer workers in the country, or at least fewer paying SS taxes, so they slowed legal immigration and pushed illegals into the underground economy, so they don't pay taxes to support social security. And social security is going to get whacked again, plus the evils the SS system was intended to alleviate -- people too old to work and too poor to live -- will return.
That, combined with the fact that Americans themselves have too few children to replace themselves, thus our dependence on immigrants.
By definition immigrants either assimilate to their host culture, in which case their TFR is going to hit the same below-replacement level as native-born americans and you will have to repeat the Great Importation every 20-30 years ad infinitum, or they don't, in which case you are by definition replacing the host culture. The "far right" reactionary position on this topic is correct.
A steady stream of new blood, at around 1% of existing population coming in per year, would be fine. Canada assimilates closer to 2% per year, without any apparent dilution of Canadian culture.
And while the immigrants themselves don't completely assimilate, their children do, and their grandchildren aren't even fully aware of the immigrants original culture.
If a solution is "politically impossible", it makes sense to blame the blocs responsible!
Yes, the voters are to blame.
*All* the voters? Is that the group that votes against social security reforms, that's most invested in maintaining a failing status quo?
To first approximation yes?
no
The failure of the opposition makes them responsible as well.
Social security is rather broadly popular, rather than just among senior citizens.
How popular is reducing benefits to match contribution shortfalls? What if you frame it as *delaying* benefits? What about delaying benefits for everyone except your specific age cohort? Eliminating the tax cap? Means-testing benefits?
There are so, so many ways to square the fiscal circle. Which do you think does a better job predicting policy - popularity among the public, or popularity among the beneficiaries?
No, just a plurality of them.
If our country is to succeed in rescuing itself from the present free fall we are all going to need to cooperate and not divide into factions that blame each other.
A phrase whose sentiment varies wildly depending on the audience, no?
The country is not in freefall. It *has* accumulated a large number of dysfunctions, concentrated gains and socialized losses that have outlived any benefit they might have had. Whether you call that Defection or special interests or whatever - unwinding them inherently means challenging an identifiable, politically successful constituency.
Refusing to do so to preserve political capital, or out of politeness, or an ill-serving reflex for fairness are all common. But don't call it Cooperation.
Tax the wealth of the wealthy.
Nah, fuck that. I pay enough taxes already.
That means you're not wealthy.
No, I am.
I guess I'll just have to take your word for it, but if you're worth more than $10MM and think you're paying enough taxes, I don't know what to say, except that you're completely out of touch with reality and your opinion on it doesn't really matter.
If there are more of us than there are of you, I am afraid that your statement is no longer true.
Wealth taxes are a terrible idea. Even in a relatively functional country like Norway. Pigovian & Georgist taxes are much better, as basically any economist will tell you.
Sure, I'm a fan of land value tax as well.
"as well"
I guess we have wealth tax already. It's called *inflation*. And it's actually worse since it also affects the poor so it can't be progressive.
If your wealth is in the form of assets rather than currency, it's unaffected by inflation. If your wealth is in the form of money in a bank account, it can still collect interest.
We have got to increase the numbers of working-age people. That's one good argument for (thoroughly planned and managed) immigration since birthrates here have declined. I can't think of any way the present childbearing-age demographic can be incentivized to have more kids.
We could add 4 more years to the working age by getting rid of the scam that is our university system.
We could incentivize more children by paying for them https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/win-win-babies-as-infrastructurehtml
If we are _really_ lucky and AGI is both developed successfully and stays under human control, we might be able to finesse the issue with robots. ( My guess is we have 50/50 odds. )
The SS "problem" is really a nothingburger. The can will get kicked down the road until the last possible hour because nobody wants to cut benefits, but the law has a benefit-cut time-bomb built in which nobody will ever permit either. The necessary fixes are very mundane; add some minor means testing to SS benefits, increase the SS tax rate by 0.5-1.0% (points), and gradually increase retirement age by a few years. Poof, trust fund solvent again.
This feels like as close to a good steelman of Boomer exceptionalism as can be made.
I would only add that 4. they appear to be the start of the tip into demographic decline via falling birth rates. Which is itself a double edged sword for younger generations - on the one hand it means that there are comparatively few Millennials around to pay for Boomers’ ever increasing pension and medical tabs. But on the other, fewer kids meant each Millennial got a larger percentage of parental resources growing up and stand to inherit a larger percentage when the Boomers do start dying off.
If Millennials are past their peak fertility years when they inherit, then it happened too late.
Yes but the point is that getting money when are in your 60s definitely doesn’t have the same utility as much earlier in your life. Especially when you had to spend years of time and a considerable amount of money to study in order to manage a decent position.
The real problem is that the boomers enriched themselves with much lower standards and then they made their kids pay for it. Now that they are more than rich enough, they refuse to share and ask for more.
That’s just not sustainable and the falling fertility is the partly the result of this (there are other factors of course).
Good counterargument. I think I'm still on Scott's side here, but you do a good job arguing the other side
Isn't that potentially explained by the IQ reduction of GenX thanks to lead poisoning, and the millennials being too young for office until recently?
Some examples. We didn't have a single GenX president or VP, it skipped directly to millennial this election.
Likewise we didn't have a single GenX NYC mayor, it skipped directly to millennial this election.
I'm sure there's more for the trend
I'd start with simple demography before jumping to the enviro-toxins (though I wouldn't rule out they play some role).
"Boomers peaked at nearly 79M, Millennials now number around 72M+, and Gen X around 65M+"
This skipping is more common in the political sphere, where demography is *extremely* important bc it affects both candidates and voters.
In contrast, I think there's plenty of gen x representation in the corporate world, where the voter-driven element is far less important
There is really no such thing as a “perfectly normal generation”
It's nothing but envy. Boomers are the richest generation, and the reason that they are is simply because they have been around the longest to accumulate wealth. But rational explanations like that will never deter the envious. All the theories you debunked are irrelevant because they aren't the actual reason for the boomer hate. They are just the justifications the envious come up with to convince themselves they are being rational.
You're framing this as if the objection is merely that they are rich, but the objection is that their wealth and power is used in ways that serves themselves at the expense of everyone else. The claim is that they cause direct harm through the wealth and power they've accumulated, not merely that they have it.
If you are bidding to buy one of 10 houses against a field of 15 people, and then the government sends 10 of those people $1M checks due to some new policy, it is not 'envy' to be upset about this. You're not just upset because you envy their good fortune, you have been directly materially harmed by this turn of events!
>the objection is that their wealth and power is used in ways that serves themselves at the expense of everyone else
Sure, but it's a hypocritical one. Other people would be just as selfish in this situation, so calling their sentiments "envy" seems appropriate.
That's an unfalsifiable thesis and a pretty weak one. I suspect it keeps popping up everywhere (geopolitics, econ policy, whatnot) _exactly_ because it's unfalsifiable: one can generate all the data and facts they want, and you can still ignore them bc "ah well you'd have done the same".
And even if it _were_ true? So what? Maybe there is enough hatred within our hearts that we would go out and kill someone during the Purge. This is much more of an argument against having the Purge than for pardoning murderers.
What do you think anyone wants wealth for other than to use it in ways that serve themselves? That's the entire point of wealth. The envious, as always are as bad as the people they envy. Worse, actually, because they are hypocrites too.
Ok, listen.
Imagine that there is a wealthy person living in a pleasure palace on Mars. The two of you are almost entirely causally isolated from each other by distance, save from you knowing about their luxurious and decadent life.
There is also a wealthy person living in a pleasure palace 2 blocks from your house. His lavish parties play blaring music that keep you awake most nights, and he has bribed the local cops to harass *you* when you complain about it. He has a private security detail that sets up checkpoints at the end of your road and stops you every time you try to enter or leave your neighborhood for a 15 minute search and interview, and aren't very friendly about it. Your last 5 girlfriends got lavish offers to come work as 'entertainment' at his pleasure palace, and you never head from them again. Etc.
It is entirely likely that you resent both of these people.
But your resentment towards the *first* person is probably primarily about envy.
And your resentment of the second person is probably *not* primarily about envy. It's about their direct material impact on your life.
Wealth disparities are not harmless. Power disparities are not harmless. Living in a society with people a million times richer and more powerful than you is not harmful only because of envy, it is harmful because all humans have competing interests with those around them to some extent, and every time that happens you are going to lose.
But the rich people are basically the people on Mars. They never bother me one bit. And you say you're worried about power disparities, but your solution is to have even more powerful people (the government) take money from the rich people?
Cool, whatever, Nietzsche already said whatever you're babbling but better.
Still, I'd like to live in the sort of country where policy is based on some impersonal considerations and the wealthy do not encroach themselves and pull up the ladder to make themselves unmovable overlords. Partly because I don't like having overlords, but mostly because this process always cripples the wealth-generating process. Which is exactly what the Boomers did.
I think you mean ensconce themselves and pull up the ladder? Encroachment upon the wealthy is more something the non wealthy would do, I think.
Yeah I meant "entrench" but there are some crossed wires in my Broca's area lol
Henry George said we should tax the unimproved value of land long before Boomers existed.
And that's actually a good idea.
It’s not their money or power, it’s that they are importing millions of third worlders into our countries.
"Envy" = "My family needs to eat." Human nature is such that we all weigh our own needs more heavily than others, and if the needy outnumber the have's, historically we all know where that ends up.
Is your family currently starving?
I am slowly eating into my savings largely paying for groceries. I can put it off for a few years, but eventually we are going to be faced with some very difficult choices, unless my kids turn out to be unusually successful.
Is your family currently wasting food?
So you are just going to sit there an not work until your money runs out? Sounds like your problem has nothing to do with rich people.
How do you know I'm not working?
Groceries are like 5% of a household budget. You are doing something wrong.
Citation needed.
If you think that things have gone or are going off the rails, on net, in extraordinary ways (e.g., economic inequality, climate change, bad outcomes in rural and previously industrial areas, growing political polarization/dysfunction/extremism that has led among other things to inadequate governance of social media or AI or pandemic preparedness and, now, democratic backsliding), I don't think there is anything wrong with accurately attributing blame to the generation(s) who were minding the store at that time. This isn't to say that they didn't achieve some progress as well.
I think there are many problems, but fewer than in previous generations, and I don't want to condemn every human who has ever lived. Our few problems are potentially scarier, because we now have so much technology that they look more like "we might accidentally destroy the world" instead of just "oops, our crusade went off the rails and sacked Constantinople even though it's technically Christian". But I don't think we can blame the Boomers for happening to live at that technological inflection point.
I don't think it was especially evil to act as the boomers did when they did act, or to word it differently i know that what i lay at their feet i do so in hindsight and i might have done the same. But that does not invalidate the anger at them and the frustration with the bad consequences of their decisions by future generations. Foremost, them stopping to have children for individualist reasons.
Hormonal birth control only became widely available during Boomers' reproductive years. For the first time in history, women could control how many kids they produced. Millennials and Zoomers are still enjoying the benefits of that choice.
Only the ones who were actually born get to enjoy those "benefits" :)
The french gradually stopped having children at the end of the 18th century. So no to, the pill is unprecedented, but yes there were reasons why the history was as it was. I can totally understand why you would not want to have children, i myself also do not babymax. And wealth wise having few siblings is advantageous as well. But the path they chose lead to today, today there still are problems; is all I am saying. Even if hormonal birth control was unique in its allure to chose a marginally more hedonistic/easier path. Being obese was not possible for most people at 1950 food prices or the 1950 food price/taste combination still the revelation that becoming obese showed a character that is not to be judged as good. I know, that is unfair, in that earlier peoples also had the genetic or socio-cultural inheritance to ballon on Big Macs arrival and future generations will just get optimally titrated ozempic so there was just a narrow historical time during which your girth showed your character but why not just judge?
Well, under that theory, I guess no one is to be blamed for anything? (Which I actually agree with on some level!) The murderer standing over the body with a gun is no more responsible than someone who merely threw a punch (because he didn't have a gun) and didn't cause mortal wounds?
(Also, I'm not sure I would blame entire generations for the Crusades, in the same way that I might in a putative democracy.)
Both are responsible, though punishments will differ. But what has that to do with anything here? I did not murder someone nor did I punch more than my fair share. - Mark Zuckerberg (41) seems the youngest 'oligarch', not a Boomer. Somehow, his contributions to humanity seem much less positive.
No fan of Mark's, but it was (mostly) the Boomers who could have left us with a politics that was capable of thoughtfully addressing social-media.
How could my parents or me have done that? How are people in the 21 century who grew up with the Internet unable to do so? LOLs, really. Get the GenZ to agree on whatever to regulate fb and we elders will only ask to leave whatsapp working (which was bought, not developed by Zuck). The elders left you with Clinton and Obama. Try to do better. Trump did not win on old vs. young but college vs. none. Boomers did a lot to expand college education.
They left us with a large swath of the country that was deindustrialized and forgotten and easily exploited by demagogues (including many Boomers) who had no interest in responsible government.
"Blame" is a rhetorical device used to win arguments. If you want reform look to the incentive structure. We punish murderers in order to lower the murder rate. When punishing someone won't fix the problem, then punishment isn't the solution.
Wait, I'm confused - is the analogy "we don't blame the Venetians for the sack of Constantinople, therefore we shouldn't blame Boomers for inadequate responses to modern problems"? Because if we start with the amount of blame I give the Venetians and scale up from there, it's EXTREMELY nonzero!
Yes, and I think the technological aspect is reason enough to be against the anti-boomer narrative. Realistically, the narrative doesn’t exist to identify the truth, but to give it an identity politics frame that mobilizes people against a scapegoat in the classic Girardian sense. Technological developments further threatens epistemic integrity by incentivizing the provocation of emotional reactivity as the easiest means to spread a message and accomplish things—which is exactly what this narrative does. Even if it doesn’t cause harm to boomers, the issue is that it further obscures how the technological element itself plays into the popularization of the narrative (including algorithmic ranking and potential memetic warfare).
Even if it “gets the job done,” why would I want to support something that feeds into a society in which getting people to remain tribal and emotionally reactive—unquestioning of a causal mechanism—paves the way to problem solving? To be honest I’m a bit surprised and somewhat disappointed by some of the “intellectuals” in the space who claim to want a more rational, truth-aligned society duplicitously using this tribal narrative, and it’s refreshing to see you call it out.
For greater context, it’s widely acknowledged in information operations spaces that we’re entering an age of unprecedented risk with cyberspace operations. Like you said in your article, I think we need to move towards a practical, intellectually honest approach to assessing the problem, potential solutions, etc.
I personally think one of the obstacles to reducing technology risks in the long-term is how much critical thought and literacy has been eroded. In general, I think we’re in dire need of educating people on how rhetoric and algorithms work, and how to assess claims/evidence in order to protect them from disinformation. So creating an oversimplified, classic identity-based scapegoat narrative as a supposed means of accelerating progress rubs me the wrong way. Just because it’s unlikely to spark violence against boomers doesn’t mean it’s harmless—if you feed this habit to blame/attack a scapegoat in people, it can backfire. It’s not so easy to keep it “just about boomers” when you’ve opened the floodgates for a variety of alternative “us vs them” frames (including class warfare and racist/antisemitic ones).
Other countries have their own influence operations, electronic warfare and CNO, and—so long as people remain cognitively uncurious and epistemically ignorant—could theoretically highjack this framing (or others) and mutate it into something else. If we want progress and radical transparency, let’s pursue more housing and have an honest look at the real solutions and how to overcome obstacles.
There’s a way to have resonant storytelling without perpetuating reliance on identity politics. I, like you, am sick of it. Thanks for the sanity boost with this piece.
But it wasn't boomers minding the store. It was a political movement that spanned multiple generations of voters.
Yes, there absolutely is a problem with attributing blame to the generations who were "minding the store at the time." Blame requires more than just being around when something happened. Climate change, to take one example, is incredibly obviously downstream of technological and demographic trends that have been in play since the industrial revolution. Do Millenials and Zoomers themselves make choices that, if adopted by Boomers, would solve climate change? They do not.
Blaming Boomers for this stuff is historically illiterate. In answer to your down-thread question -- "I guess no one is to be blamed for anything?" -- to a first approximate I'd say yes. It is utter moral vanity to imagine that different generations would have behaved in any way differently under similar circumstances. That doesn't mean we have to agree with Boomer (or anyone's) political preferences, but vilifying them is generally just pointless.
There are policies that could have (and still could) mitigate climate change. It would not even have been that costly. They weren't taken. They were eminently possible.
You are just saying that no one can be blamed for anything, because anyone else in that position (genetics, mind-state, technological and demographic trends, etc.) would have done the same thing. I don't necessarily disagree.
I'm really not saying that, though. I think you can blame a specific cohort of Germans for WWII. Even if in some sense their actions were determined because we live in a clockwork universe (which I do in fact believe), it makes sense to assign them moral culpability.
This doesn't work at all for climate change, because it is a collective action problem in which Boomers are behaving like pretty much everyone else on the planet. So if you want to say that humans are morally culpable for climate change, sure I can endorse that. But Boomers specifically? No, that's special pleading.
This is how it goes with most (all?) of these accusations toward Boomers. People are pointing at them and say, "Hey, this thing is bad, and you've been alive for a while, so this is your fault." It's worth noting that people never seem to do this in reverse. "Hey, check out all this progress we've made on civil rights and new technology and GDP growth and reduced war. Thanks, Boomers!" (To be clear, nor should they, but pick a lane.)
I think there was a period of time when Boomers were in power and when action on climate change (and many other things) was eminently possible - and when the U.S. was a hegemonic superpower with the ability to do something, as had happened with, e.g., CFCs.
What were they going to do about the economic rise of China? Most of the world's population does not live in the US, and is thus not subject to US laws.
Solar was astronomically expensive then. And the do-gooders/wokes of people then believed nuclear power, nukes and DDT are the greatest evils. As Greta today is a person who would wreck max havoc on humanity if we let her.
>There are policies that could have (and still could) mitigate climate change. It would not even have been that costly. They weren't taken. They were eminently possible.
In that case, a large chunk of your argument is with anti-nuclear Greens of all ages, not with Boomers. ( I'm writing from the USA. France got this particular decision right. )
The problem is that describes every generation. I'm old enough to remember how angry the young were back during the 1960's counter-culture. Human nature is such that we weight the present more heavily than the past. We can't help ourselves, it's how people think.
Weren't they the Boomers? They (or some of them) protested during the 60s, and then they seemed to kind of sell out, get complacent, and leave us with some catastrophic problems.
Does it describe the Greatest Generation? Did they do a better job, on net? I don't know - pretty hard to compare across cohorts.
That's my point. If every generation does something stupid and short-sighted, it isn't a generational problem, it's a human problem. Blaming boomers for being human won't solve that problem.
I don't know, though. I'd be open to the possibility that the Greatest Generation over-performed and the Boomers under-performed. Though obviously many exceptions in both cases.
The Greaters don't get off the hook--they elected Nixon. They were the "White Flighters." They invaded Vietnam. Those choices are still having consequences to this day.
I agree with your overall point, and I think it’s also an incentives problem, in that if you want people to do something that’s less selfish/more work, the system should produce incentives and/or norms for doing so. After all, people do plenty of things (good and bad) that they otherwise wouldn’t be inclined to do, given the right incentives.
But one thing I would say is that even though I wouldn’t have voted for Nixon, if I had to be morally held accountable for all the outcomes tied to anyone I did vote for, I probably wouldn’t vote. Maybe locally at most, but in general, I’ve never had a choice that fully aligns with my morals/desired outcomes; it usually comes down to whoever I find to be “the lesser of two evils.” And most Americans’ own voting choices come down to shallow things like campaign messaging, charisma, and perceived similarity to their own background (for example some people voted for Nixon because they felt they could relate to him more), so it’s not like they actively knew how much harm the person they chose would do. I think there should be better incentives for being an educated voter as well.
Out of curiosity, what do you gain by lumping in all boomers and venting frustrations at them? I know working class boomers who do not own their own homes and are in the same position paying expensive monthly rent as millennials and Gen Z. Some of them are still struggling to pay of debt from medical expenses. Not to mention, some of them have literally helped younger people through mentorship, cooking/sharing food, providing work (like employing young neighbors to mow their lawn or repair things), etc. Good people who give back to their communities however they can exist amongst all generations—shouldn’t we encourage such decisions?
Even if these boomers I described may be a minority, what good does it do anyone to blame a class of people who are not all to blame? Does it make sense to call boomers—some of whom themselves struggle with healthcare expenses for basic medical care—as some sort of oppressor that gets rich off of the system at the expense of others?
The reason this narrative exists is to channel hate and frustration at a scapegoat, to alleviate tension. Such tactics are profitable to many who themselves benefit from these narratives—that’s why they persist. Some of those who push this anti-boomer narrative are themselves big fans of Girard, so they know what they’re doing, and it’s not because they want to uncover the truth or improve epistemic integrity
It also seems highly irrational and emotion-fueled to prioritize blaming a group over actually looking at potential solutions across the board. I want to live in a more rational society of problem solvers, not a society in which stoking people’s reactive emotions remain the strongest means of getting anything done.
I don't think I have ever said anything about Boomers in my life. I just responded to Scott's article, saying that, if a generation collectively failed at some unusually major things, I'm not sure there was a problem in stating that, if it's accurate.
I don't think anyone is saying that less well-off members of the generation are particularly responsible if they couldn't/can't even make their own ends meet.
If the Greatest Generation defeated the Axis powers and built a new world order that was better than those that came before (international institutions that formed the basis for unprecedented peace and prosperity) and their children, on average, coasted and built themselves nice nest eggs and left us with major catastrophic risks and the conditions that may destroy the world, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that. (Even if that's true, there are plenty of exceptions. And I'm also open to the possibility that those those generalizations are unfair or wrong - but I think they're plausible.)
Where I have doubts is with the statement: “If a generation collectively failed.” How does one determine the truth of that statement—that the generation itself, and not a variety of other factors, is to blame, especially when there will always be many exceptions who tried to do their part to help? Why even push a story that an entire generation responsible, as opposed to those who actually are directly responsible? If we found out that the mafia negatively impacted housing and zoning, would Italian people be to blame?
My point is that such a narrative requires one to demonstrate a causal mechanism, and must take an honest look at the factors that led to the outcome. Thus, in this case, I’m skeptical that the “blame the generation” narratives even seek to understand the core causal issues or correct them efficiently, given that they fail to examine incentives, motivations, culture, and mechanisms within the system that led to the circumstances we want to change.
People do not act in a vacuum; they’re influenced by norms, institutions, geopolitical events, and existing socioeconomic conditions themselves, along with interpretations of said events in the form of media narratives. Incentives are often not chosen by the generation influenced by them, and may be more impacted by specific institutions or groups than the generation as a whole. And if other people are deciding to acquire homes and wealth, a rational actor will generally do the same to “get ahead.”
Furthermore, most people are not economic experts and could not have been expected to have the foresight of the consequences of their actions, especially in a society in which rugged individualism, wealth accumulation, and prioritizing one’s nuclear family are all strong cultural norms. Institutions/education systems may have failed to educate people or prepare more sufficiently for the long-term. So how would one determine if the generation has failed, or the system and norms?
And is it not the case that incentives at the time generally favored prioritizing immediate growth/wealth/stability over thinking ahead? If the same incentives and circumstances existed today, the younger generations would recreate the same mistake. Most of those allocating blame would have done the same.
All in all, the reality is that many people feel powerless to affect the system much. Even voting choices are often based in “the lesser of two evils.” As time passed, it became increasingly difficult to achieve the “American dream” or have upward mobility, but this is not something that the boomers would’ve necessarily thought of. In many ways I see the decisions they made as being perfectly in-line with American values.
And now today, a millennial who has coasted through life and bought an oversized home and maintains other boomer-like conditions has the same general affect as a boomer in the same situation. A boomer who rents a home and has no upward mobility is in a more similar position to those supposedly hurt by boomers than young people born into wealth buying up real estate to rent out Airbnbs.
So I’m curious, how are the boomers to blame over those who actually made the decisions affecting policy, or, why boomers as a whole rather than the system that encouraged it?
Why not blame the norms/incentives/whatever else was shown to contribute to it, and then and jump towards finding solutions for housing—without wasting time trying to pin it on identity-based scapegoats? blame?
This reads as fair enough in relation to America, but I'd like to nominate France as the exception, where:
1. Boomers voted for stupid negative economic policies for 40 years starting with Mitterand who was so bereft of any independent thought or spine that when his communist party allies asked to lower the retirement age from 65 to 61, said yes
2. Continuing with the sacralisation of employment to the point that it is a major risk to hire someone, so young people and minorities are often just not hired
3. Not to mention making benefits so generous that if free time has any value at all working is often negative expected value
4. Doubling down on ruin by making many benefits available to immigrants _unconditionally_!
5. Giving buckets of public money to unions who represent perhaps 6% of the population if you squint
Don't forget the restrictions on immigration, which reduced the workforce as well as the consumer base, the weakening of progressive taxation, which undermined the social safety net, and austerity during economic crises, which strengthened recession and undermined economic productivity. Stupid boomers.
I was talking about France
So was I. But my implication is that it applies beyond France.
OK, I am confused. I assume that you are just being very unclear, but to avoid anyone else's confusion, I thought I had best make this response.
I made a comment about the boomers' "contribution" to France, to which you replied. Your reply referred to 1) restrictions on immigration, 2) weakening of progressive taxation, and austerity during economic crises.
So perhaps my French policy knowledge has some gaps, but as far as I am aware, in the past 40 years
1) there has been no material restriction on immigration to France (see eg this chart from the national statistics offices, you have to scroll down: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/3633212#tableau-infographie).
2) I assume you are referring to the introduction of the flat tax and the change from the wealth tax (ISF) to the property wealth tax (IFI). Putting aside that these were drops in the ocean of French tax progressivity, you are also forgetting, if so, that the flat tax "cut" was both an increase in progressivity (i.e. rich households paid more tax) _and_ very profitable, because every tax in France except the taxe foncière and the VAT are far to the wrong side of the Laffer curve. As for the ISF, this was a relatively marginal tax and the change to the IFI was exactly what Piketty's book suggested (although he author never drew the link explicitly himself). In addition, you have perhaps forgotten as well that shortly after those "cuts", France also introduced the CDHR, which of course increased the "progressivity" of the tax system.
3) France has not practiced anything resembling austerity since the second world war, and definitely not since Mitterand. This chart from Le Monde conveniently highlights for you that in every "crise", France _increased_ spending, and that this was entirely deficit financed: https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2024/03/26/visualisez-l-evolution-de-la-dette-et-du-deficit-francais-depuis-1980_6224326_4355770.html.
I made a mistake, I referred to the very recent CDHR not the CEHR which was what I meant to. Too many new taxes increasing the progressivity of the tax system to keep track of!!
Not to be a punisher reader but this article treats the 1946 generation as if they're representative of the boomers. In reality boomers are 1946-1964. Only the very oldest of them were sent to Vietnam _or_ were responsible for Woodstock etc. Boomers should be weighed and measured by the youth culture of the late sixties to mid 80s (less so). So Woodstock is fairly theirs, but so is the inward individualist turn on the 1970s.
Question: Was electing Reagan a boomer thing? (Not asking if Reagan himself was a boomer).
Hmm, I suppose not. Not a boomer himself and his median voters would not have been either. Boomers were median voters I suppose from 1996 to about 2020 or 2024.
I was too young to vote myself. By the time I could, the die was cast. I remember not agreeing with everything Clinton did, but he seemed to know what he was doing economically, so we all went along with it. All the expert economists at the time seemed to agree. And what the Republicans wanted to do seemed worse. There didn't seem to be much of a choice.
<shrug> all his stuff seems reasonable enough to me looking back. Bringing China into the WTO and decimating American manufacturing is looking critically bad in retrospect but perhaps at the time it was a good bet on China opening up, strategically rewarding them for opening up in a way that was humanitarian for China, a bet that just didn't work out but could have.
Depends on your priorities. It has vastly improved the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings. It's just that most of them weren't American.
I don't think we disagree on much when it comes to the crux of this issue. Sounds like we both agree it seemed like a good idea at the time and doesn't seem like a good idea now. You sound a bit more concerned about the impacts on American manufacturing workers whereas I'm a bit more concerned about weakening American hard power due to losing industry.
The Boomer generation was incredibly large, and by the standards of historical trends, uniquely large. Forget about the US, just look at the generational differences in East Asia. On the basis of that alone, assuming zero difference in any disposition toward selfishness or selflessness, political polarity, ambition or laziness, there is going to be huge difference in effect size in just about any dimension from the sheer size alone. Of course a cohort that disproportionately large will wield more political power, hold onto power longer, etc.
I liked this but was surprised by the implication in the last few paragraphs that Millennials or Gen Z are responsible for some unique harm. This would have seemed a bit more plausible a few years ago when it was easier to imagine wokeness spiraling into a perpetual cultural force, but that's clearly not happening. And the decline of state capacity seems odd to blame on people who are only now beginning to occupy meaningful roles in government. I don't think there's a good basis to suggest that any generation is particularly bad - anti-generational sentiment seems like an outgrowth of that odd human tendency to think that whatever moment we are living in is uniquely bad even when it is objectively better and will probably be seen as a golden era in 30 years, just like people now love the 90s but spent the whole decade making movies about how soulless and bad it was.
doesn't make any sense to me: If you'd held the last election with just millenials and gen z, I think harris would have won in a walk. If you'd held the last election with just boomers, she wouldn't have been a viable candidate. Boomers are, and have been, the most powerful political actors since the early 2000s, up to the present. This is their era, not ours, ours is some later time.
>it was easier to imagine wokeness spiraling into a perpetual cultural force, but that's clearly not happening
Well, MAGA & co. are essentially the reversed stupidity of wokeness, and while this does diminish the magnitude of certain impacts, it's still the dominant cultural force that decides what both its adherents and opponents think. I do agree that no generation in particular is to blame for this, but in order to avoid the collapse of civilization somebody would have to start doing better at some point.
"Americans will always do the right thing, after every other alternative has been exhausted." So the question is, have we exhausted the alternatives yet?
I just don’t get the “we actually have way more money even when accounting for housing” argument when places like NYC, SF, Seattle, LA, etc. exist and many other major cities seem to also be wildly expensive. Are people in these cities getting paid post-tax amount that has risen with the cost of housing? It just doesn’t feel like that’s true.
Is it that people in rural Appalachia are suddenly making 3x what they did 15 years ago, housing has somehow gotten relatively cheaper for them, and therefore changing the numbers for all the people in SF and NYC?
Since the Boomers bought houses, a number of major cities have seen house prices collapse; to pick three, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. You can pick up a house in all three cities for $50k or less.
Yes, nationally, house prices have stayed, on average, basically stable, at least on a square footage basis. For every city seeing a surge in house values, there's another that's seeing a collapse.
There are loads for that cheap or less but they're all trashed inside. Typical case: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/419-Robinson-St-Pitcairn-PA-15140/11601655_zpid/
OK, this one's definitely in the municipality. Only $30K! https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/861-Vista-St-E-Pittsburgh-PA-15212/457451733_zpid/
Equally trash, mind you.
126 Overbeck St.
2 bedroom, 1 bath. Needs some work but it's in better shape than my first house.
In most post-industrial Midwest urban areas, you definitely need a car. There is no infrastructure for public transportation. And be wary of the local school district. Still, housing is generally more affordable, as is food. Don't know about healthcare, as I've always had pretty good insurance and never had to pay out of pocket.
"I can't afford to buy a house that is large and near good public transit and in a fashionable city where everybody wants to move to" is a substantially different problem from "I can't afford to buy a house".
He's overstating the case (I live in Detroit), but the overall point is that housing is much more affordable here than elsewhere in the country.
There’s way less people in those cities. Your Pittsburgh anecdote was also incorrect.
I literally found a house in Pittsburgh for 50k in about thirty seconds on Zillow.
Needs some work, but that's pretty much standard.
As for the other point, today, yes, you're quite right - but you're pretty much just describing why house prices there are low. This wasn't necessarily the case when the boomers were buying houses, however, and for every boomer whose house they bought for less than a hundred thousand which is now worth millions, there's two or three boomers whose houses have lost much of their original value over the last few decades.
If you are only going to count the cities where people want to move -to-, and ignore the cities where people are moving -from-, then you've just limited your sample such that the only houses you count are the ones which are increasing in value. So of course house prices will always appear to be increasing.
>Are people in these cities getting paid post-tax amount that has risen with the cost of housing?
No. The extreme runup in big city housing prices is downstream of broad asset inflation caused by a decade+ of near-zero interest rates. That leads to geographically concentrated influxes of wealth as e.g. the top ~1000 Facebook employees are suddenly worth $5m+ simply by virtue of having worked for the company for a few years. Multiply that by a few dozen companies whose employees are all concentrated in a few metro areas and you see housing prices that decouple wildly from average incomes. The covid-induced Zoom revolution then spread that effect around the rest of the country, leading to housing in places like Boise doubling as California remote workers moved in.
Meanwhile, commercial property values collapsed. My admittedly anecdotal impression is that small businesses have a harder time with work from home (they don't have the digital infrastructure). So the pandemic had an effect on the rate of new businesses. Someone should check that, though.
>Are people in these cities getting paid post-tax amount that has risen with the cost of housing?
In at least some relevant cases, yes. The house I lived in in Menlo Park, CA in late high school recently sold for about 3.6x what my mother bought it for as new construction in mid 1999. I visited an open house when it was on the market, and it has had some renovations and is in good repair but is still fundamentally the same house. This does not seem to be an outlier: the Case Schiller index for the greater San Francisco metropolitan area is about 3.8x what it was then.
My mother worked as a Director-level UX Designer at a big tech company at the time. I am currently a software engineer at a different big tech company, also working in the Bay Area. I am about two pay grades below where she was, and I think I make 3x in nominal dollars terms what she made 25 years ago. Directors at my company today make more like 5-10x what she made in 1999.
The is not just the case for people at higher career/management levels in big tech. Minimum wage in California today is $16.50/hour, about 3.2x what it was in 1999 ($5.15/hour), which is also proportional to that particular house. Not that many minimum wage earners are probably buying houses in Menlo Park the or now, but the increase in nominal terms is closer to being proportional to nominal housing prices than I would have thought before checking.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a gap of lower-middle-class or middle-class jobs that haven't kept pace with housing prices, but I don't have good numbers for that ready to hand.
That does have an effect, but it's far from the only factor. Interest does have a big effect on monthly payments for a 30-year mortgage, with payments at 3% being about three quarters of payments on the same mortgage at 6%. The effects level.off for very low interest rates because below around 4.5%, a majority of your payments over the life of the loan are principal rather than interest.
But you also need to make a downpayment to buy a more expensive house., which lower interest rates don't really help with. In a low interest rate environment where low-down payment loans are relatively hard to come by (i.e the world of roughly 2008-2022), downpayments are likely to be the more binding constraint. I've noticed that housing prices don't seem to have dropped precipitously since interest rates.have been going back up, and I suspect this is a big part of why.
Income is also a factor. A higher income goes a long way towards making both monthly payments and downpayments affordable. I don't think it's been a coincidence that housing prices in the Bay Area seem to have been roughly tracking growth in tech salaries.
Another factor is the supply side, both nee construction and houses sold by people moving to a different housing market or looking to downsize. Construction costs probably more or less keep pace with income to the extent they're driven by labor costs, and if there is land available to build on (which is not the case in the Bay Area, for combinations of geographical and political reasons), then this limits how much people being able to afford more actually drives up prices for the same house.
Housing prices also tend to give people who already own houses but who might consider moving to a cheaper market or a smaller or less desirable housde n the same market an incentive to do so, because higher prices mean you cash out more dollar of equity by moving to a cheaper house.
Senior software engineer even at faang isn’t enough to purchase a home in Menlo Park though. Maybe two of them. If you’re senior staff or something then who knows but the typical $400k/yr won’t do it.
I'm a senior software engineer at a non-FAANG big tech company. I could buy a house in Menlo Park if I wanted to. I see a few condos and small townhouses on the market that are cheaper than my current house.
A medium-to-large single family house would be more of a stretch. I would need a second professional-class income to qualify for a mortgage with a 20% downpayment, but I can afford much more than a 20% downpayment and I cpuld afford the payments with a larger downpayment.
It seems like you're proposing the blame that's currently directed at boomers is (in part?) the fault of population collapse. It's not that the boomers are stealing on the wealth; they just have all the power because they're so populous.
Could it be that this is a legitimate sort of boomer-hate, though? Not that they didn't leave enough to their kids, but that they didn't leave *enough kids* to leave things to? I'm not sure how one would check the age distribution for this; maybe Kids These Days should be blaming Gen X for that instead. But the older generations would take some responsibility for the shape of the age distribution.
Is that a Boomer problem? Hasn't fertility been declining in all wealthy societies for many decades before and after the peak childbearing years of the Boomers?
Well no, hence the whole "baby boom" thing. ://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/?srsltid=AfmBOoooR_-urQ40wSy6NuskidLsEaLs_KDoWyT18OOPZMrzf2XgZ8kZ
Long term yes, but the Baby Boom represented a serious and sustained uptick in fertility.
Shame on them for failing to have a world war to cause the next boom.
Shame on them for failing to collectively so manage their desire for children to suit the economic needs of a future generation 40 years later. Are young people today having more kids?
Sure, but it hardly seems fair to be angry at the boomers in particular because they returned to the trendline of declining fertility, just like the generations after them did.
population *collapse*? No, the problem of high housing costs is not one of population *collapse*. Our population is larger than it was last year, when it was larger than the prior year; it's larger than it was 5, 8, 10, 12, 20, and 30 years ago, respectively. That's not what a metric that's "collapsing" looks like.
The collapse is happening, but it's a slow process. The inversion of the demographic pyramid is the most immediate and visible effect. The baby boomers didn't have high fertility rates; they were at or slightly below replacement rate. Gen X was only slightly lower. Millennial fertility rate is significantly lower, well below replacement, and Zoomers, while still too young to say for certainly, look to be continuing the trend and will likely be well below replacement, with Gen Alpha expected to be 30-40% smaller than Gen Z (ignoring immigration).
But just because fewer babies are being born doesn't mean the total population immediately begins declining, and it wouldn't even if longevity were constant. Hans Rosling provided a marvelous visual explanation of why this is so in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg. He's also pretty entertaining.
The upshot is that while population collapse (or at least significant reduction) is happening, the effect won't be visible in the population totals for a few decades yet. But the pyramid inversion is already beginning to bite, and will bite a lot harder well before we see total population declining.
"bite." "bite harder."
Like it's a problem! This entire thread is about how severe and damaging the problem of our excessive population is. And people like you panic about the possibility that, decades from now, the severe pain might start to reduce a little??
I mean, good lord, there's soon going to be TEN BILLION HUMANS on the planet. If there were half as many we'd still be (a) an extremely successful and secure species and even (b) more populous than we've been for 99.9% of our species' history.
You can lead a horse to knowledge, but you can't make him think.
What an astonishingly mule-headed response. Speaking of not thinking, what do you think the fertility rate would look like if the population was half what it is today (again, a level that would be larger than it's been for over 99.9% of the species' history?)
> a level that would be larger than it's been for over 99.9% of the species' history?
The global fertility rate today is 2.2 children per woman. The long-run historic average is somewhere between 5 and 7. Replacement level is 2.1, and we'll fall below it within the next decade. We'd be below it now if it weren't for regions of the world that are still living at the subsistence farming level. The developed world is already below replacement, some areas far below.
If you want to reduce the fertility rate even faster, the very best thing you can do (other than mass murder) is to work to increase the wealth and education level of the average African woman, because wealth and education reduce fertility.
The problem is the rate of that decline. Having a steady TFR of 1.9 is probably fine - you slowly depopulate over several generations. But at current US levels (1.6 and falling) we're on course to shrink by 25% per generation. None of our economic or cultural institutions are designed for such a world. A healthy complex society probably can't survive in a world of sustained economic contraction.
Are we really supposed to imagine that the factors that led TFR to decline (like the extremely shitty state of our overpopulated planet) will remain constant as the population declines over the course of centuries?
The decline is mainly influenced by social and political factors so no, I think they're unlikely to remain constant. I'm not saying that the world wouldn't be better with fewer people, I'm just pointing out that we have to be careful about how we get there. It's completely rational to be concerned about crashing fertility.
TFR didn't decline because of "the extremely shitty state of our overpopulated planet". It has declined more in richer countries, and within rich countries higher TFRs are found among groups like the Amish & ultra-Orthodox. It's CLEARLY cultural.
(oh and I wouldn't be so rude as to point out that the population of this country isn't determined solely -- or even primarily -- by how many babies the people in this country have, because doing that might possibly suggest you're valuing some future people over others)
I do value some future people over others. The genetic profile of a population is the single most significant factor that influences its long term future. Demographics is destiny.
"This entire thread" is not, in fact, about that.
While I agree that 'hating boomers' is like many things a thing that primarily people that are too online do, I do think the social payments discrepancy is more prominent in other countries, like Germany.
Germany nominally has a very bullet-proof pension system: All working people are taxed and the money from this pension tax is directly disbursed to everyone in need of a pension. This is nice in theory, the economy usually goes up, so there is enough money to pay everyone a dividend, and if it goes down, no one is saddled with debt and the pain is distributed fairly.
However, in practice people hate when their pensions don't increase enough, and since the 90s politicians keep on running on "keeping the pensions safe" and keep getting electing. But where is that money coming from? In violation of the original plan, hundreds of billions are taken out of the general state budget to keep pensions high. Money that should have been used for industry, infrastructure and all the other things only young people care about. As such, the country grows less, less taxes are received and pensions have to be propped up even more.
And this is popular, of course. The majority of the county spiritually feels close to retirement and will always vote not to change this. This has been obviously wrong for 20 years now and a fix is not in sight, before the state goes bankrupt.
Are the boomers at fault here, maybe not, or maybe just the populist politicians? Maybe it's Moloch.
I'd broadly agree with your assessment, and think the core part of it is that things are obviously wrong but still not taken anywhere near serious enough.
That is, even without group dynamics, there might be an adjacent and deeper question about a specific failure mode of democracy under demographic decline. That, at least, is the sentiment I mostly see online: It's not only boomer hate, it mixes with deep distrust of elites and the entire democratic system.
And while I do not share that sentiment, I think it is really easy to see how one could - in some ways, we even had solutions in place, like the Stabilitätsfaktor which would have pushed back retirement age over time, and lowered pensions (or rather, slowed their increase) over time. But it's application gets continually postponed. Meanwhile, lots of things get markedly worse, especially in publically visable areas like public infrastructure.
I think it is slightly different for genuinely hard problems like climate change or anything else involving international politics, but to see how even very obvious and already solved things get fumbled really takes away trust both in democracy and the social contract.
The problem is not GDP, the problem is that real wages of all but the top earners are growing more slowly than GDP, or even falling:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/375206/gross-domestic-product-gdp-in-germany/
https://de.statista.com/infografik/18200/entwicklung-der-haushaltseinkommen-in-deutschland/
This was no accident either, it's been German economic policy since the 2000s to depress wages. The social systems, which depend on the wages as you correctly noted, are suffering as a result. Cutting pensions in of course unpopular with the ageing electorate and increasing them is popular, yes, but there is a real problem of age poverty in Germany, so buffing pensions from the federal budget is to a degree objectively necessary:
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1448740/umfrage/quote-der-empfaenger-von-grundsicherung-im-alter/
The top earners can more easily afford to opt out of the state pension system and live off, for example, stock dividends or other financial investments, further hurting the pension system. The system is no longer bullet-proof, because the wealthy can easily opt out of both the pension system and the healthcare system and leave the low earners behind instead of doing their share. It's perfectly in the trend of accumulating wealth at the top.
Agreed, I just think when it comes to policy we should prioritize older people less. Perhaps we shouldn't have age-based restrictions on benefits generally, and benefits should just go to the poorest people (many of which would still happen to be old).
The good news for Boomer-haters is that Boomer control mostly over. Using age 60 as the lower cutoff for Boomers, and as near as I can tell from various probes using LLMs, ~59 % of corporate CEOs in the Russell 3000 index are Generation X or younger. The Fortune 500 numbers are harder to determine (without a lot of digging), but Fortune magazine has stated that GenX has the largest cohort of CEOs, with Boomers being in second place, and Millennials only starting to make the ascent to corporate power.
Likewise, it looks like ~56% of the Trump's cabinet is under 60. Trump himself was born one month before the July 1946 start date for the Boomer generation (according to many demographers). Technically, he might be considered one of the Silent Generation. (If only he were silent), but I think we can consider him to be Boomer.
And if we look at Congress, ~57 percent of House Republicans are under 60 (there seems to be questions about the ages of one or two of them), and 57 percent of Dems are under 60.
Even in the categories where GenX is not the largest cohort, the Boomers clearly no longer hold the majority of power in the US, as they're outnumbered by GenX, Millennials, and the occasional Gen Z.
I think the age discourse is good in as much as it can motivate people who don't like spreadsheets and "actually land value taxes have no deadweight loss and property taxes approximate LVT" tends to be bad politics, I don't think any politician since the implementation of primaries successfully ran a campaign based "well I created this spreadsheet and it said increasing tax A by 2% and decreasing tax B by 2% would maximize GDP growth"
It would be nice if we could simply advocate for "any and all policies which pass the cost benefit analysis" but the reality of politics is you need to frame it in a way that will win over actual voters
> any and all policies which pass the cost benefit analysis
How about making medicare payments for drugs and services explicitly proportional to the expected medical / societal benefit - with ongoing incremental Bayesian updates as studies become available - disregarding (for better or worse) cost to develop and provide?
That way, MMR vaccines, and IV fluids for someone on the brink of hypovolemic shock, and similar cheap stuff that's overwhelmingly beneficial, can score a high profit margin, meaning hospital administrators will be eagerly hunting for ways to provide such things to more people with less friction... while heroic intervention on terminal cases, where costs are high and the QUALY-based payout is close to zero (rather than the current policy of almost mindlessly matching that cost), they'd soon enough find ways to de-prioritize.
I mostly disagree with the piece (bc the Boomers were really bad in a spreadsheet way) but you can win over voters without whipping up animus toward someone else.
I know that this page hate cringe-libbism with fierce passion, but come on, it's hard to argue that Obama (or Bush Sr. or Romney for that matter) was not _mostly_ framing their message in terms of common good and a sensible way forward for the whole country. Sure, there were some dibs at wall street and racists and whatnot, but it's really small beans compared to the previous regime fanning up the flames of discord between True Judeo-Christian Patriots and Heathen Terrorist Lover Traitors, or the successor ideologies which were pretty much all based on some kind of essentialist division of society (be it along racial, economic or ideological lines).
I think part of both this and a “Vibecession” is that there *are* some very important things that have gotten more expensive relative to inflation and wages, and they are things whose cost impacts younger adults the hardest: post secondary education, home ownership, and child care. The one ballooning cost that hits Boomers harder, medical care, they are somewhat insulated from since it is largely covered by younger generations via public subsidy.
I dunno. My beef with Boomers is kind of adjacent to all the points made here.
As a GenXer who was "raised" by Boomers at work, there are many cultural artifacts of that generation that simply rub my sensibilities the wrong way:
1. An unearned success arrogance: An assumption that their individual successes were based purely on merit vs. system-wide advantages of being of a certain age during one of the best times to be economically successful in the history of modern society (post-cold war military, economic, and cultural dominance).
2. Unearned strategic arrogance: An assumption that "being technical" was a signal that your value was actually lower than being "a manager." Boomers honed a belief system that their job was to go golfing and make deals while plebes did the grunt work like sending emails and printing out emails for them so that they could read them like they wanted to. It's a lot more than this, obviously, but they seemed as a culture to be fairly resistant to technical change and adoption. But worse, they felt that anything to do with emergent technology was grunt work (vs the transformative capabilities it represented).
3. Unbridled and unhinged optimism: They had such a good run for so long (business in general) that they were blind to the catastrophic outcomes of being glib about everything (see: the Great Recession).
4. Narcissistic tendencies: As the largest generation to-date at that time, there were enough of them to create entire social movements that captured the attention of the entire country/globe. Give Peace A Chance was the first Boomer cultural innovation. I nice idea but clearly unsustainable and quickly undermined by events and their own maturity. Next, Jazzercise and Swinging. Next, the sexual revolution. None of these things are bad per se. But after a successful run of all of these cultural results, this generation is just stuck in a place where they think they (and their children) are all that matter. Which brings me to...
5. Their offspring: Young millennials and elder GenZ are, like their Boomer Parents, super confident in their convictions, but their vibes are ahead of data and historical context, and tend to throw up a middle finger to what has been built prior to them entering the world. It feels like the Boomers all over again... instead of Give Peace a Chance, it's now Give The Oppressed Freedom.
Importantly, I'm not saying it's the Boomer's fault - it's more of a collection of understandable behaviors from a generation that was big, powerful, and influential in ways that they're probably blind to on a daily basis and just take for granted.
But that doesn't mean their entire culture doesn't have significant baggage tied to it as a result.
(typed on a phone - please excuse any typos!)
You have written a grab bag of generalizations and assumptions about an entire generation, similar to the typical anti-boomer rants I encounter on reddit. As a late boomer I missed out on that supposed easy career success that boomers had. And as a parent I am aware that the job market for young people is dramatically different than when I was 20.
Two things:
1. When talking about a generational profile, generalizing is the entire point. Same with talking about any cultural profile. Yes, generalizations are fraught. Agreed. But they're also a useful analytical device at macro analysis.
2. I'm basing my generalizations based on hundreds of individual data points that lead to summary judgements. Hundreds of data points in a sea of 1 billion or so Boomers is clearly not statistically sound, but I'm not claiming to make statistically sound arguments. I'm aiming to share my impressions of the nature of the Boomer Generation based on my lived experience.
Nothing more, nothing less!
Richard Hanania, who has tried hating every group once,,,, how about RICHARD HANANIA
LOOK IN THE MIRROR... he was one of the first people I ever met on Substack and was also ONE OF THE RUDEST AND SELF ABSORBED BRAGGARTS .. I was shocked and never went back and never will go back to his substack if he is on it. He is not smart enough to hold my interest.
i didn't even know he was still around. My son who is 44 and a software engineer..working on his Phd in a subject I won't talk about for now, calls me an outlier.. because I am a "boomer" by age but I am not by the way I think.. I am a retired scientist.. and I understand that categorizing all people by a generation/age/ time/ space "fake construct" leads to division. Yes ... I am as disgusted by some people of my generation too.. money could be one of the reasons.. but I will say this: WE GOT ALONG.. regardless of party affiliation.. religion.. money.. and MUSIC and CULTURE were a big part of it. This is my second post in ages on Astral Codex... thanks for coming out of your shell.. Merry Christmas.. :) Isabell
Hanania is pretty interesting, actually, mostly because he's actually growing as a person as we watch. Unlike so many pundits he has enough intellectual integrity not just to change, but to admit that he did. He's got a ways to go before he'll be someone I'd want my daughter to date [*] (if ever), but his willingness to stake out and strongly state an unorthodox position just because it makes logical sense, and then to revise his position when new evidence comes in is quite refreshing, and he really is pretty smart.
You do you, of course, but I think you'd find value in giving him another shot.
[*] I don't mean this literally. My daughter is too old for him, and married, and my granddaughter is too young.
He's more motivated by trolling than logic, otherwise he wouldn't have written https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-do-i-hate-pronouns-more-than in the first place. He already basically acknowledged having a history of bad political judgement in his years as "Richard Hoste", then endorsed Trump in 2024 before denouncing his choice the very next year (which wasn't even the first time Trump was elected President!).
I agree, Hanania is insufferably narcissistic, unsympathetic, and acts as if the evolution of his politics is some important intellectual journey that future generations will read about. I have no idea what the man does for real work or income, if he does anything at all, or inherited money or made good investments, but I've never found any reason to take his opinions seriously. As best I can tell, he exists now just to attract social media followings, and he shifts his positions strategically to attract readers, then makes up some narrative for why this is really an inevitable trend and all right-thinking people will eventually follow him to embracing [thing his new followers believe this month].
On the latter point, boomer culture has been prolific, especially music, and it's undeniable that the oldest boomers (and some war baby older brothers) advanced popular music form and technique more in the decade of their prime from '66-76 then music has advanced in the 50 subsequent years all put together. Having such large numbers allowed lots of eccentric people to find each other even before the internet was around, to collaborate on weird new ideas, and this produced superior art and culture to what has come after it. I'm a very very late GenX baby, but the bulk of literature and music I've consumed has always been made by boomers. If there was a downside to that generation's size, I think it was that culture shifted in the 60s to the modern youth-obsessed culture because they were among the first to have the size and disposable income and cultural power to make it profitable to focus on the youth market. Given how little of one's life is lived in that phase of it, we put an outsized importance on the taste and opinions of youth culturally, in a way that has harmed adult life and mature art.
I too would like to sign on to the anti Hanania declarations here for many of the same reasons you mention.
I would just add as a total cheapshot that the podcasts of his that I've heard are uniformly awful. Every third word is "like" as if he's still in high school and Skyping with a guy in his third period math class to gossip about girls on the cheerleaders squad. Develop some friggin' public speaking skills if you're going to try your hand at multimedia, ya tit!
How are young people supposed to react in places like the UK or France where boomers are setting up completely unsustainable policies for their benefit? I think you really, really underestimate how messed up those countries are regarding pensions
As an Italian, the answer I found is "leave". This seems to be the answer most of my connationals around my age and with similar aspirations also found. For the UK, there are some hints in that direction (plenty of Brits in Australia, and their media seems to have finally started to notice, only a decade too late), while for France... I think they got a better chance? Leaving is not really an option for most French youth (they're way too chauvinistic), but at the same time unlike Italy and the UK, they are experiencing sustained productivity growth, their fertility is not as bad, and the French political class seems to have taken notice and some change is happening in that direction.
I have no thoughts on Boomers in general, but the Schrodinger’s Immigrant / Schrodinger’s Boomer fall flat to me. A steelman of this argument is:
- There are many immigrants. Some of them are on welfare and others of them are taking jobs
- There are many Boomers. Some Boomers pushed too hard to neoliberalism in some aspects of the economy and others focused on over-regulating the environment in other parts of the economy
I also have no particular thoughts on whether or not this argument is correct, but I think it would be better to present actual steelman arguments.
If immigrants were merely parasites at the same rate as natives, there would be no reason to disprefer them to natives, so I think the anti-immigration argument must claim that they are more often parasites - and, by the same logic, more likely to take jobs. I don't think they can be both. In the same way, I think it's hard for Boomers as a generation to be both contemptibly liberal and contemptibly conservative. I admit there's a possible case where they take the country from uniform moderation to a crazy mix of far-left and far-right policies, but I don't think that's the case most critics are making.
I think most of the critics provide bad arguments.
A steelman for the immigrant case would be:
- A small fraction of immigrants are taking _high paying, desirable jobs_
- A large fraction of immigrants are welfare taking
This can be consistent with a net social benefit, but simultaneously being worse for a certain job segment and a lot of welfare takers.
I don't know about far-right/left but if you purely look at the environmental case, the Sierra club, etc. have simultaneously made regulation much worse while hurting climate with their policies. I don't think it's that unusual to have a crazy mix of policies.
The claim needs data - but it would be worth estimating numbers about how many immigrants are both using welfare (formally or informally, like St Vincent de Paul or food banks) and taking jobs, because they work under the table.
>"If immigrants were merely parasites at the same rate as natives, there would be no reason to disprefer them to natives"
Wrong. A country is run for the benefit of its citizens. Because of this, some citizens are "allowed" to be parasites. Society has decided that there is a collective benefit in having a social safety net. A predictable and understood consequense of this is the fact that some citizens will take more than they provide.
However, because the country has the additional capability of deciding which immigrants to allow in and remain, there is no reason to allow ANY immigrants who are net negative to the public welfare to remain in the country and continue recieving benefits. A policy which either kicks out net-negative immigrants or stops providing them benefits will be strictly superior for the welfare of the citizens of the country to a policy which allows net-negative immigrants to remain and recieve benefits.
This is the sanest comment I've seen on this post.
If we've decided that a given native parasite/worker ratio is a net positive, then increasing the numbers at the same ratio results in a greater net positive. This is is just arithmetic.
Sure, a policy that removes the net-negatives would increase it still further, but that assumes that you can identify the net-negatives, and that you can do so reasonably-cheaply.
In practice, identifying and removing the net-negatives is hard, and the net-positives are so massively positive (far more than natives) that we're better off accepting lots of immigrants and then putting a reasonable amount of effort into removing the net-negatives who are easy to identify (e.g. because they're found to commit crimes, caught defrauding the welfare system, etc.). This strategy maximizes the total benefit to natives.
When people look at different sources of immigrants, some of them are MUCH more likely to contribute tax-consumers vs tax-payers.
> This is is just arithmetic.
Such logic only holds up if they're equivalent in every respect. Someone who behaves as badly as the worst established citizen on all routinely-measured metrics, and has some further vice which immigration officials didn't think to check for due to lack of local precedent, might thereby become a disproportionate negative influence.
To be clear, I'm broadly pro-immigration in general. I only think the unknown-unknowns angle justifies holding immigrants to a somewhat higher standard than citizens, not strangling the flow overall or denying them equal protection under the law.
>there is no reason to allow ANY immigrants who are net negative to the public welfare to remain in the country and continue recieving benefits.
That is both false and wrong. Societies can (and many do) decide that, for example, humanitarian reasons are sufficient, such as refugees from war or ecological devastation, or the spouse/children of accepted immigrants.
I'm pretty sure they meant "good reason". "Humanitarian" reasons are not good reason.
The anti-anti immigrant argument seems to rely on the assumption that the distribution of immigrants is the distribution of the citizens. Which just doesn't seem to be true. You can totally imagine a gaussian distribution of citizen and bimodal distribution of immigrant "parasitism" that can explain both complaints
Such a bimodal distribution sounds plausible enough from an economic standpoint. Folks from the middle of the curve mostly stay close to home, minding their own business in unremarkable ways. Nearly all immigrants come to the country in search of opportunity, but some such opportunities are prosocial careers, while others might be better described as "unpatched security holes."
Why should a country be required to subsidize parasites from outside of it at the same rate as its internal parasitism? Frankly, the standard should be way lower?
People making this argument tend to perceive the people in their own country as more important than the people outside it, and don't see immigrants as having an automatic claim to a place in this country or to its social services.
To steelman the Shrodinger's immigrant argument, which tbc is empirically false if we're talking about the US, it could theoretically be that immigrants are employed at the same rate as native, but since they mostly do low-wage jobs, they still drain welfare despite being employed (and their unemployed/inactive drain welfare more than their native couterparts bc they don't have significant assets and their family members don't earn enough to support them). The reason it does not happen (again, in the US) is simply because immigrants do not earn much less than natives, their inactivity rate is basically non-existent and their unemployment much lower, and are legally barred from accessing most of welfare, so they're basically bound to be net contributors.
The Shroedinger's boomer instead is historically true, and understanding it relies on a more fine-grained understanding of the ideological milieu of the 70s than modern public discourse allows. Basically, what we usually call "Neoliberalism" (the Mont Pelerin society, Hayek, Friedman, whatnot) was not only about policy in a vacuum, but about institutional or even constitutional design. Sure, like everyone else, they thought that their preffered institutions and procedural rule would seamlessly translate into good (ie, pro-market) policy, but they operated on a much deeper level than just repealing regulations or lowering taxes. They advocated and to a large extent successfully obtained institutional fragmentation, much broader judicial review, a significant re-weight of precedents against statutes in jurisprudence, much more localized decisions in a number of areas (Hayek's "dispersion of the state"), etc. But instead of unleashing the free-market paradise they hoped for, this institutional re-design consigned America to an interventionist nightmare arguably worse than the New Deal state it replaced. Judges used their newfound powers and discretion to block state action, but also gave themselves license to micromanage private action to a degree unthinkable before, and now economic actors fear spurious litigation and lawfare much more than they ever feared the dictum of regulatory agencies. Local control did not result in the Archipelago, the Utopia of Utopias, but in most of the country being frozen in amber as incumbents rationally voted so. The fragmented regulatory state was defangled in certain aspects, but in the areas still under its remit, the lack of unified priorities made agencies much more capricious than before. Much regulation was transfered from transparent and somehow negotiable loci to unappellable and opaque ones: many political priorities that once would have been enacted through civilian agencies and legislation, under public scrutiny, are now enancted on purpoted national security grounds. So yes, the boomers got Neoliberalism, and Neoliberalism then killed neoliberalism (together with many other things, from cities to nuclear to fucking being able to build something without having to pay off any busybody with a lawyer on speed dial).
> It’s not even clear that Boomers are that much more likely to be NIMBYs. From Pew:
Sorry to nitpick, but I don't like using support for very general policies to measure NIMBYism. The whole point of it is *my* backyard. Lots of people are willing to support all of these measures elsewhere, just not near them. But everyone does that, and there is no "elsewhere." And housing seems to relate to some of the most concrete claims against Boomers--that they bought cheap houses, and then made houses too expensive for later generations while lining their own pockets.
> Maybe they should suck it up and take the sacrifice. You’d do this, right? Voluntarily give up money which is yours by right, in order to help other generations?
FDR's idiocy did leave us with a ticking time bomb. It's going to have to be handled at some point. Some people made out like bandits, and that can't be undone, so someone is going to have to get screwed. How this should happen should at least be a topic of discussion, rather than "lol got mine, work harder young'ins" from people who haven't had to look for a job since the Soviet Union existed.
However, I will agree with many of the economic arguments that Boomers weren't actually better off. People say things like "you could own a home and support a family on 1 salary" but they were impoverished by today's standards. You probably can't even legally build or live in housing from then--in 1950, for example, 1/3 of Americans didn't have indoor plumbing. Many of those houses were basically shacks. Yes, there was a growing suburbia, but this was mostly reserved for above-average income earners at first.
I basically agree with this. However, I will point out that every generation tends to have groups that vilify their parents so the trend isn't new. The boomers themselves used to say things like "don't trust anyone over 30."
The second best time to shut down a pyramid scheme is now.
I think this oddly dodges the two big complaints about boomers.
One, not mine but it needs to be addressed, is housing. There's no end of content online about boomers and housing, no need to reiterate, I'm just surprised not to see it referenced when it (to me) seems such a large part of the discourse.
The second is that the boomers engaged in a lot of...social transformations that were very good for them and had really bad effects on subsequent generations and the boomers refused any limiting factor.
The best example is probably dating and "sexual liberation". The best of all dating worlds is to grow up in the 1950s, when everyone is strongly habituated to forming stable marriages, then be given the opportunity to defect out and have tons of "free love" in your 20s, then settle down in your late 20s into a stable relationship because, well, all your peers came from stable families with strong marriage norms and 3-7 years of "free love" isn't going to overcome that cultural background. Once the next generation rolls around and gets raised in a "free love" culture, though, rather than the stable marriage norms of the 50s, marriage starts to break down. It doesn't take much to notice how horrific modern dating is yet it's worth noting that even by the 80s it was obvious that something was wrong; divorce was skyrocketing and Gen X got hit hard.
I think a similar story is true of immigration, especially from what I hear from Canada. If you're in an essentially ethnically homogenous country, the first immigrant you let is awesome. Most immigrants are awesome. Yet when this scales from individual immigrants to immigrant communities, the boomer's children find themselves growing up in increasingly multiethnic societies which are...far more fractious and far less ideal than we'd hoped.
The meme I see going around on this right now is "The Lost Generation" from Compact magazine, which tells the story of many media companies turning "woke", meaning young white men were locked out of job opportunities in favor of women and minority applicants but only younger white men; the older Boomer/Gen X directors and executives all kept their jobs. And whether or not you fully buy this critique, it perfectly captures the "vibe" of Boomer criticism I see.
Which I think is the guts of the...mmm, "conservative critique" of the Boomers; that they embarked on ambitious social reform movements where the costs fell on subsequent generations and the Boomers experienced either benefits or no cost from these changes.
I'm surprised to see neither of these critiques addressed.
Having said that, I do think Boomer hate is overblown and I'm not looking forward to the, uh, "Millennial Age". My generation is defined by the internet, the greatest tool of mass communication ever, which we immediately turned into ragebait cancel culture trying to get each other fired and engaging in constant purity spirals. There are fair criticisms of Boomers, yes, but they'll be followed by the Twitter generation and then whatever Nick Fuentes/Hasan Piker Gen Z slop follows that.
(1) https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/
I think your second point is spot on. Boomers inherited a lot of high trust functional institutions of government, culture, and social engineering. They torched many of them, and now complain that younger generations can't make those things work right.
If Scott allowed "likes" this would get one. Basically my thoughts.
I think you can get this feature by using the Substack app to read the comments.
(I am not saying this is a good idea.)
There's a secret method of liking a comment, now that many are on the app the value has been lost, but I was proud to get 4-5 secret likes on the blog back then
You forgot to mention another transformation that hurt people who weren’t able to plan for it nor did they have time to pivot: the boomers shipped their parents off to old people’s homes and defected from the compact where your parents take care of you when you’re young and you do the same when they get old and frail. Boomer homes didn’t have olds hanging about. No time for wiping old people’s butts, there are films to see on the telly! My grandparents didn’t know this was coming and didn’t have any idea they’d need to save the money to pay strangers to do what family members had done for every single generation up to the boomers.
That was a great article, a must read.
But could I note that much of the destructive woke movement is due to younger generations?
All of that is rooted in 20th century liberalism. Woke is only an extension of that.
Good thing I scrolled through the list before writing my own reply; you said this better than I could have.
I'll also add the decline and fall of academia. The Boomers, at least the ones who went to college, got what through the mists of nostalgia at least looks like almost the best possible college experience. See e.g. the range of campus comedy movies made by boomer filmmakers drawing on their experience, from "Animal House" to "Real Genius". The reality, as I understand it, was not quite so awesome but still quite good. But the cohort of new professors and administrators brought on board to placate idealistic young boomers, were I think central to much of the enshittification of higher education in recent decades.
As you say, there are plenty of cases where we can tell a story of boomers demanding that the rules be rewritten and the institutions reshaped to appeal to their desires and interests, in a way that seriously damaged the social trust those institutions would need to keep serving the interests of future generations.
But worth noting that these stories work best if we apply them to the earliest subset of boomers. The ones born in 1964, who didn't even reach college until 1982, don't really fit this narrative. I think there's a distorted stereotype where the "typical" boomer is seen as someone who was born in the late 1940s, and is now in their early 60s.
Millennial here. Came here to say something similar re: “sexual liberation” — there’s no addressing the Boomer divorce epidemic etc and its effect on their children and children’s children. Surely a source of a lot of this anti-Boomerism is the destruction of people’s families (I know multiple millennials whose parents are now divorcing in their 60s and 70s, in addition to friends of mine whose families were destroyed when they were in middle and high school by parents who wanted to “live their dream” — that is, leave low-conflict marriages and let the kids pick up the pieces.) It’s hard to pass on a high-trust society when you’ve destroyed the smallest unit of social trust, your own family.
Yep, the boomers are the kings at fucking everything good, for their « freedom ».
But they won’t forget you to pay for their bullshit and require help for stuff they can’t do in old age.
They really are the most egotistical generation in my experience.
+1 for this one too.
The comment by WoolyAl to Scott's blog post about boomers is a very perceptive. I refer to the observation: "...the boomers engaged in a lot of...social transformations that were very good for them and had really bad effects on subsequent generations and the boomers refused any limiting factor."
You can build it into a general theory of what happens when something new hits a society.
Such as the idea that "divorce is ok" in a society with very strong matrimonial norms (US in the 1950s). Or "foreigners are great" (European societies where almost everyone looked alike, in the 1950s).
First, people - in particular the young & educated - think the new thing is awesone. And it is awesome, because it upends the staid and limited life choices in a society ruled by rigid societal rules/social mores/stong ethnic homogeneity/ stuff like that.
Then the new thing gradually becomes the new normal. Because those against the new thing, are seen as hopelessly backward and/or bent on maintaining the staid, suffocating, homogenous society that everyone - and in particular the young & educated - are quietly suffering from. (And they are not wrong, either - this is not a story about heroes and villains, but about a certain societal logic.)
As the new thing becomes a new normal (divorce laws are liberalized, immigration - of exotic foreigners in particular - is encouraged) , what was liberating on a small-scale or for the first generation that experienced it, becomes a source of irritation and discontent and also worse psychological stuff. Society sort-of "sours", not in a grand way but in a small, everyday way.
For example & as you point out, divoce is freedom for the first generation who get easy access to divorce. (They themselves grew up in two-parent families held together by the stiff upper lips of their parents - who carried their suffering in quiet & hid it from their children. Meaning that their children did not suffer the emotional scars of their parents making their own suffering visible to their children.) Well and good.
...However, guilt-free divorce is not as great for the children of the first generation who enjoyed gult-free divorce (and even less when the grandchildren generation arrives). The children of the first generation who enjoyed guilt-free divorce face a dating scene where they themselves, and most of their love interests, have parents who divorced - with all the emotional fall-out that has wrought on the now grown-up children. (Not always, but often, and the sheer increase in the scale of divorce means it becomes more potent as a source of videspread emotional vulnarability & emotional cynicism & stuff like that.)
This leads - over the generations - to a society that is more "open", but also more characterized by a certain type of emotional irritation, or stress, and lack of emotional trust. The general feeling is that the degree of petty "sourness" in society increases.
That's where we are, and there does not seem to be a way out. You cannot press toothpaste back on the tube, I guess. And it is not even clear if you should try. Since it is not terrible in a large-scale way - and the previous, homogenous and normatively rigid society was unpleasant as well, although unpleasant in a different way. Increased scope for promiscuity and multiculturalism and stuff like that just taints society with a certain general sourness. I expect this low-key sourness to increase further, as new generations continue to grown up and replace the old.
Again, it is not terrible. One can live with it. The US is perhaps slightly ahead of Europe with regard to this socio-cultural transformation, but not by much.
It could even turn out to be the end point of "modernity" , from a psychological point of view. Future generations will find out.
Thank you for the generous reply. I found much to agree with in what you said but agreement is boring so let me focus on a point of disagreement :)
"That's where we are, and there does not seem to be a way out. You cannot press toothpaste back on the tube, I guess."
I would point to abortion as a counterpoint to this. Not only has "Roe v Wade" been overturned but abortions are down from ~1.4 million at their 1990 peak to ~613k in 2022. (1) I think it's incorrect to say that we can return to the 1950s but widespread changes to the law, both de facto and de jure (2) will definitely have profound societal effects.
This leads to more of a...personal theory than a general one I think some of the current anti-Boomer rhetoric is based around younger, more radical generations eager to dramatically change US laws and being stifled by the sheer voting power of the Boomers. As Dan Hochberg so helpfully pointed out above, much of the radical action of the 2010s was driven less by Boomers and more by radical millennials. With a passing reference to both the SJW phenomenon in corporate America and Groypers working as congressional aides in Washington DC, the younger generations are in general far less unified and far more radical than their parents (or at least the political elite are). Yet, for now, the Boomers remain a potent voting block.
I don't want to predict too much doom or radicalism but...I question the inherent stability of Boomer/liberal norms. Whether it's abortion in America or the reversal of liberalism in China/Russia, many of the liberal policies we've inherited are looking far more fragile than they did in the 90s.
(1) https://www.statista.com/statistics/185274/number-of-legal-abortions-in-the-us-since-2000/
(2) Again, to bring it back to abortion, it was heavily restricted and de facto illegal in much of the American South before the "Roe v Wade" repeal.
Yes, we agree on many things. And let's also agree that it is hard to predict with any certainty what the future will bring. There are many megatrends at work at present, not all in the same direction.
But follwing up on your comment to my comment:
A possible difference between us is that you seem to hope for some kind of return to the stiffer norms and larger degree of cultural homogeneity of the 1950s/early 60s. While I do not, really. That era was not nice for many, just like the present era is not nice for many. The type of society-induced individual-psychological suffering was different, but probably not less of it.
...Although it is difficult to get data on this, obviously, so the above is just my sort-of educated guess. Plus, I am perhaps temperamentally more of a cultural fatalist than you. We must take the present with good humor, since the only alternative is to take it with bad humour, and that is worse. Amor fati and all that.
Just a note on abortion law in the US. You seem to think the new legislation is the proverbial canary in the coal mine, heralding a larger cultural reversal. While my hypothesis is that it is a backlash derived from the US being "too early" introducing free abortion back in 1973, given the US socio-cultural environment of early 1970s. In short, you introduced free abortion before the country was socio-culturally ready for it. Also indicated by the way it was done - through a US Supreme Court decision, rather than an act in Congress & Senate.
...based on degree of religiousness & similar socio-cultural indicators, the US should have introduced free abortion at roughly the same time as Catholic-conservative South European countries - such as Spain and Portugal. Not at the same time as Denmark and even before Sweden, the protestant-secular North European countries.
My prediction is that abortion will stay a State decision (not a Federal decision) in the future, but that the restrictive US states - mainly Southern states (your equivalent to Southern Europe)- will gradually liberalize their new, restrictive, abortion laws in the decades ahead. With Alabama probably being the last in the pack:-).
..it's an empirical question who of us will be right. Unfortunately, boomers are unlikely to live long enough to find out. But probably gen Z'ers will.
The general theory of what happens when a new thing hits society involves the new thing being primarily adopted by the youngest adolescent/adult generation, who are a distinct minority. The new thing is thus somewhat constrained by the attitudes of the older generations, traditionally more conservative and having experience with shiny new things not turning out quite so well. The needle moves relatively slowly, the new thing isn't fully adapted before the problems start to appear, and the next generation gets to decide what to do with a partially-adopted new idea that's visibly less shiny than it first appeared.
The boomers, had disproportionate numbers from the start (because check out the name), and disproportionate political influence because the politics of Vietnam resulted in a higher level of political activism and voter turnout than had been normal for the young. So the new ideas were adopted faster and with less pushback.
Cultural change usually takes place through hierarchical diffusion (re: good old Everett Rogers' magnum opus "Diffusion of innovations", 5th edition). In all countries, watch the (changing) belief system of urban, young, educated people. They herald what becomes the larger culture, some decades further along.
I agree with you that boomer influence has been particularly large and long-lasting, in the US and elsewhere. But this is not only due to their sheer size plus period effects (the Vietnam war). Probably even more important has been the tremendous increase in demand & supply of tertiary eduction between 1950 and 1990, which landed so many boomers top jobs in universities & university colleges early in their lives. This is important since universities are where new birth cohorts of young, urban, intelligent people meet and are (re)socialized into their value system/s - which then diffuse to the larger society.
The piece you are missing here is income inequality. Millennials are the most unequal generation so far. A handful of wealthy are skewing the average. Most people are not doing as well as their parents. https://inequality.org/article/generational-wealth-inequality/
Information about income quartiles by generation would make this article better, I agree.
The graph of generational income is median, not mean. A handful of wealthy individuals would not skew it
So you're saying if there were some problem involving an excess of extremely wealthy individuals, that wouldn't be visible in the given data.
This is false, see the previous article I referred to in the post, which investigated this possibility in depth: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/vibecession-much-more-than-you-wanted
To make the contrarian argument, which I don't necessarily hold: The generations in modern history before boomers were building the real economy, fighting wars/sending the youth off to wars that were important in some moral or spiritual or some such sense (I disagree here but others don't), creating the structures of the world that lead to all those graphs deciding to go L shaped.
Note: As someone who actually came from one of the places supposedly being lifted out of poverty, I don't believe most of those graphs, I think the whole thing is a map/territory/bullseye drawn around the arrow exercise, but I am granting them in this case.
The boomers on the other hand work in the financialized economy trading dog fart futures to each other at 15%, fight in wars/send the youth off to wars that are meaningless quagmires, benefit from the structures that exist and create new structures that mainly exist to centralize wealth and de-democratize as much as possible.
The boomers from this perspective are the ultimate free riders.
It has shaken out that the boomers happened to occupy the point where the wealth had been redistributed and society had been democratized and all these trees that previous generation didn't get to enjoy the shade of were ready to be chopped down and sold at a profit.
Christopher Buckley's "Boomsday," published in 2008, is a hilarious and prescient satire of this timeline.
I'm unclear, do boomer haters hate their parents?
How do they imagine that such terrible people have managed to raise children so much better than themselves (for which they get no credit)?
Depends on the age of hater, I'm not that young, my parents were def did not have me very young, and was raised by Gen Xers acutely aware that they got in after the party was over and they had to pay for Boomer exuberance (they did not get to enjoy '68 but were subjected to the moralistic backlash of the late 70s, they did not get jobs bc they knew someone's friend's cousin but they were paying taxes or working double shifts to pay for that over-hiring, when the Iron Courtain fell they were in no position to buy Romanian castles or Ukranian factories for a couple truckloads of blue jeans but saw many of the entry-level jobs they aspired to shipped away etc)
So you hate your grandparents instead? Ask your parents if they hate their parents. You can't escape the fact that, for boomer hating to make sense, at some point at least one entire generation of parents would have to have earned the hatred of their children and you'd have to explain how that one generation of parents came to be so exceptionally bad in a way that you imagine that your generation wouldn't have been in their place.
That's pretty naked emotionally manipulation, do you really expect it to work? "If you believe this easily provable fact, then you are in fact feeling ::contemptible emotion::, thus this fact must be false, and if you insist to believe your own eyes and math you must be contemptible and I can thus dismiss you".
A majority of boomers set up mechanisms that benefitted them at the expense of future generations, used them to keep power much longer than previous generations did, and never alter such mechanisms. They also created a self-refential culture where such entitlements were portrayed as sacrosant, and any demand by their younger instead as unreasonable and absurd.
Does it mean I *hate* them? No, not really, and even if I did it would not change the facts one bit.
This is focusing too much on oversimplifying data which is, to begin with, too sparse and vague to really draw meaningful conclusions from. All of charts presented look like "<shrug> not much difference between generations" because they're all full of watered down averages that aren't helpful except for shallow analysis. These are massive, heterogenous, dynamic population groups, and it would require a lot more detailed data collection and organization to come up with useful insights. I suspect that size of that challenge is a big reason it hasn't been tackled, and when people try to, it becomes trivial to cherry pick data to tell any of various narratives.
For years, the gripes I hear and witness about boomers—and which are not captured or even hinted at anywhere in this post—almost always include the pervasive attitude (real or perceived? either way it's there) among boomers that "I got mine, screw you", and the associated lack of empathy, generosity, or accountability that the generation seems to consistently exhibit across every sphere. Whether they really are selfish or not, reasonably or not, they just don't care, and that's pathetic.
Using broad averages to dispute broad generalizations seems reasonable to me.
The US is a gerontocracy, it should not be surprising at all that younger people are critical of boomers.
I think this gets at it best. I'm 57, but occasionally I'll see someone my age or even a few years younger opining about something and reflexively think "who cares what that old guy says."
I second that. The aging of the entire political elite creates a very visible and easy target to connect all unwanted political/economic/social developments to the ruling political class (picking whichever side you hate most) and then to generalize that back to the regular old folk who look like the ruling political elite.
Ironically that is a very boomer attitude. It's a human cultural norm to care very much about what the old guy says because the old guy -- normally -- has experience and wisdom and is concerned with directing those toward the well being of his posterity. Dismantling the practice of respecting those who came before and taking responsibility for those who will come in the future is yet another innovation the boomers dumped on us.
It may also be a natural effect of the ridiculously accelerated advancement of technology in our times. Old people's experience was made in a world without internet.
At the risk of over-simplifying, I think it’s usually unwise to judge moral worth by birth date. (Apologies to the astrologers)
I read Hanania's article, which you refer to, when it came out and I just reread it. I see nothing in there to indicates that he hates or even dislikes boomers. I noticed on my first reading that older people prefer maintaining benefits and Gen Z prefers reducing them, but I shrugged my shoulders. After all, I'm benefiting and Gen Z is paying. Why would one even expect the polls to indicate otherwise? But I don't Hanania even criticizing boomers.
Anyway, "the common people" have always hated boomers. They it's just that they called us hippies back then....
Sometimes I think the cure to this kind of discourse better education on recent history.
There seems to be this myth of a "boomer golden age", that's usually cherry-picked by citing a few statistics on the things that genuinely have gotten worse (housing, education costs) and pointing to some specific modern problems; but most of the people talking about it aren't people who lived through the era, (disclaimer: neither did I).
And that "boomer golden age" myth is obviously a big part of the boomer discourse, but also vibecession stuff and a lot of the generic "everything sucks nowadays" talk, in general.
But as Scott mentions, the Boomers were the Vietnam generation and also dealt with huge cultural changes, large amounts of civil unrest, disruptive technologies, the Cold War and the associated nuclear war threat, serious economic issues like stagflation, lots of international conflict, etc, etc.
I really appreciated Dan Carlin's recent "Hardcore History Addendum" episode talking about just how crazy the late 1960s in America were: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/ep-30-so-you-say-you-want-a-revolution/ - if you don't want a whole podcast episode, one of the things it references is this "A Timeline of 1968: The Year that Shattered America": https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/timeline-seismic-180967503/
---
Also the song "We didn't Start the Fire" is a good example of a lot of the otherwise-mostly-unknown-to-the-current generation problems, and largely exists because of exactly this sort of "the previous generation had it easy" discourse:
> Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!". Joel replied: "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful". The friend replied: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties". Joel retorted: "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?"
And AIDS. What a fucking nightmare that was.
That HH Addendum was FANTASTIC and really an interesting view into the current times. Also, so much of what happened in '68 was not something my generation knows much about. (Born in 1980)
Banned for this comment.
> You can find others where the Boomers look downright saintly compared to their kids:
This is a graph showing Boomers and Millennials disagree a lot about very important issues.
Why would you expect that such a chart would convince Millennials that Boomers are good actually?
Like, regardless of what issues the chart was measuring, it's showing that Millennials and Boomers disagree on those issues. Surely such a chart could only ever make the two sides like each other less, as it confirms a difference in their values and beliefs?
You seem to be citing things that you personally, and by extension your presumed audience, agree with Boomers more than Millennials about. But isn't this just evidence that you and your audience are out of step with most Millennials, and they should view you the same way they view Boomers?
Support for democracy, opposition to censorship and political violence?
To the degree that average Millennials and Zoomers disagree with average Boomers on those issues, average Millennials and Zoomers are just plain wrong. Sadly, I think over the next decade or two they're going to have their noses rubbed in just how wrong they are. And those of us who already know why they're wrong are going to get to "enjoy" the experience right along with them.
>You seem to be citing things that you personally, and by extension your presumed audience, agree with Boomers more than Millennials about.
Yes, I already said that you would believe that.
My point is about why this would be expected to persuade the people you disagree with.
Time will persuade them. Learning some history would, too.
I don't think it actually was time that persuaded people of the virtues of democracy, free-speech etc. Rather, King John of England ticked off his barons enough to rebel long ago, eventually Parliament was strong enough to defeat King Charles I, and that political movement eventually spawned the US, which worked out very well. But other societies lived through the same amounts of time without developing in the same way.
I agree that people who aren't in my audience likely disagree with me on this!
Which is totally fair, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the article...
It feels like you could be arguing either 'Millenials are mistaken to resent Boomers' or 'Boomers aren't bad'.
I thought the article overall was arguing the former.
What I was inelegantly trying to say is that this graph is evidence in favor of the latter, 'Boomers aren't bad'.
But it's not evidence in favor of the former, 'Millenials are mistaken to resent Boomers.' Which is what I thought the article was arguing.
But if I misunderstood and the article was just arguing 'Boomers aren't bad', then yup, asked and answered.
It’s probably a bad idea to hate a whole generation, but I will say a couple of things against Boomers.
I once wrote a piece on Stand by Me pointing out that the movie is about a Boomer who went on a grand adventure and yet won’t let his own kid bike to the pool. Anyone growing up under a Boomer hegemony had to have been aware of this, the feeling that Boomers were pulling doors shut behind them and then celebrating the beforetimes, when the doors were open. “When I did drugs it was so cool, but you better not do drugs.” “I hitchhiked across America to see the country, but hitchhiking is bad and fortunately illegal now.” If you went to school at a certain time, or worked at a certain time, you were guaranteed to encounter a teacher or coworker who claimed to have been at Woodstock (ha!) and who expressed contempt at you, the young, for not having been at Woodstock. It was weird and also really grating!
Boomers suffered a tendency to self-mythologize, and it never ends! Remember that Boomer-centered bank ad from a few years ago: “A generation as unique as this deserves a bank etc.”? Boomers were the first generation to have and be an identity (broadly across the whole US at least). This isn’t even their fault, as the identity was invented by marketers to sell pop records, but Boomers fell in love with the idea.
It’s hard to hate the Greatest Generation, not because they were great (whatever) but because someone outside their generation declared them to be the Greatest. When Leonard Steinhorn wrote The GREATER Generation about how amazing Boomers were, he did it because he, a Boomer, wanted more credit. Look at me! Look at me! There have been so many years of Look at me!
I like to watch old sitcoms from the ‘80s, and it is hilarious how much Boomer indulgence goes on. Murphy Brown reminiscing about her time in “The Revolution.” Howard Hesseman on Head of the Class kicking Dan Schneider out fo class for making irreverent jokes about the ’60s. Kate from Kate and Allie forbidding her daughter from dating a boy who didn’t support ’60s peace protesters. Just watch the opening credits of Family Ties—it’s like a nightmare!
But I bet it was fun to be a Boomer.
The Stand by Me piece: https://haljohnsonbooks.substack.com/p/movie-explainer-what-is-stand-by
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/988/
I’d bet anything that comic is out of date and now “All I want for Christmas is You” and “Last Christmas” would both have surged up the list.
There's an updated list from 2024: https://www.ascap.com/press/2024/12/12-10-top-holiday-songs. I don't see "Last Christmas" on the list, but yeah, "All I want for Christmas is You" is up there. But with 23/25 songs, I'd say the comic holds up very well.
So weird: A couple of years ago I wrote a book of alternate history scenarios (Impossible Histories by Hal Johnson, grab one for the history buff on your Christmas lists) and in a couple of chapters, sure, I vent my spleen about Boomers, but in a different chapter, one about scurvy and Polar exploration, both Boomer-free topics, I cite that xkcd comic. It's everywhere!
I thought of this too.
I agree that broad hate for boomers is bad. I'd stick to very narrow and specific objections like:
They saw the problem with social security funding coming 30 years ago. For 30 years they failed to address it. It's pretty messed up that they expect current workers to fix the problem at the last moment by paying more taxes. They were the ones who voted out any politicians that proposed any solutions with the real kinds of costs that would help address the problem.
Also this is just unfair: "Richard Hanania, who has tried hating every group once, has decided that hating Boomers is his favorite." The last paragraph of the article you link to agrees with your thesis here that all demagoguery is bad and wrong including anti-old demagoguery. He just contends that this is just the least bad option:
"Public opinion is mostly terrible, but that can’t be an excuse to let the country decline. Trying to have a well-functioning, free society means engaging in a constant struggle to change, subvert, or work around it. If successful democratic movements usually need to be demagogic, then let’s pick the forms of demagoguery that get us closest to the truth. To say old people are destroying America is of course an oversimplification. But it’s one that has more potential to inspire people to fight for positive change than almost any other narrative."
Part of the issue is that Boomers tend to engage with the debate in a way that younger people find extremely irritating. I’ve noticed this both online and in person.
Elon Musk’s framework of “reasoning via analogy versus reasoning via first principles” is useful here. In these debates, boomers and younger people generally talk past each other because they’re approaching the argument in different ways.
The younger people tend to reason via first principles (“my job pays A, I owe B in student loan payments, rent is C, which leaves me with D in monthly savings for a down payment on a house, which means that it will take me 17 years to actually afford one, unless I commute four hours a day or move to rural Indiana, in which case I’ll lose my job…etc.”) They’re laying out the actual math as they understand it, and saying that it doesn’t add up to middle-class success.
The boomers almost invariably hear this as “my life is tough” and they immediately respond with “So? Do you think WE didn’t have to work hard when we were young?? When I was twenty-four, I had to…” They’re reasoning by analogy, and they almost never engage with the actual math that the younger people present to them.
Where some of the younger people go wrong is that they claim that boomers had it easy, when a more reasonable view would be that the boomers did work hard but had good opportunities to benefit from their hard work.
Where the boomers go wrong is that they find it difficult to incorporate new information into their mental models, instead reflexively responding to every complaint with a story about how they had to work hard in their twenties, which just angers the younger people more, making the debate nastier.
This seems fair to me. It also seems like the same failure of empathy that every older generation has had towards younger ones.
Is that reasoning from first principles? I'd call it reasoning from facts.
And the boomer is arguing from emotion.
I feel like this could have benefitted from a little more analysis of areas where boomers are legitimately different from other generations and making/made things worse, for reasons that are pretty hard to justify.
For example: housing.
Per NPR:
> Baby boomer empty nesters own twice as many of the country's three-bedroom-or-larger homes, compared with millennials with kids, according to a recent analysis from Redfin. That means those larger homes aren't hitting the market, one factor limiting the supply for the younger generations who could use those extra bedrooms.
They don’t need to do this, obviously. And it’s kind of hard to explain away in terms that don’t involve at least some selfishness/disagreeableness. Of course you can argue it’s a financial issue (locked in from selling by an unfavorable mortgage rate environment). And the NPR article makes this case:
> Some baby boomers, the generation now between the ages of 60 and 78, are happy in their large homes, using the extra bedrooms for hobbies and visiting family. Others say they want to downsize, but it just doesn't make sense financially.
But for many of them, the house they’ve been in for 2-3 decades has essentially 1.5xed to doubled in value, adjusted for inflation. You can’t take a little haircut to downsize and let the next generation of families use the space? What do you need 3+ bedrooms for (even if we’re being charitable)? The few weekends a year when lots of family visit?
In fact, while the norm for their parents generation was down downsize in retirement (moving to a smaller house, condo, or retirement community) when they do move house for retirement, they’re the first generation in which a large proportion are UPSIZING:
> According to a recent Merrill Lynch and Age Wave retirement study of more than 3,600 respondents, 49% of retirees didn’t downsize in their last move, and 30% actually ended up moving into larger homes… According to a recent Del Webb survey conducted among 50- to 60-year-olds, 22% are looking to move to bigger homes. The study also found that 43% want to remain in their existing home or move to a new location with comparable space. This change marks the first time such a significant majority of retirees have gone against real estate norms.
(https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/13/op-ed-more-boomers-are-choosing-to-upsize-their-homes-in-retirement.html)
What’s the charitable explanation for this? Just their sheer wealth and the fact that people are more inclined to value personally advantageous financial decisions than the greater good? I could buy this, and empathize, but why wasn’t this true of their parents? It’s seems like more of a social norm thing boomers bucked, which tracks pretty well with the reputation they’ve gotten as a generation, IMO.
Considering that boomers are 20% of the population, but own anywhere from 35-45+% of the US single family housing stock, can we really argue that this isn’t haven’t a meaningful impact on the housing crisis for young families?
There are other things too, like their politics, which you don’t really touch on that much.
For instance, their overwhelming embrace of Reaganism/Thatcherism, and the fact that DJT’s voter base is significantly more boomer heavy than either Clinton’s or Biden’s.
They seem to have a much more hardline conservative, selfish, revanchist politics than the generations that preceded them, which has led to some of the lowest taxes in US history, the weakest welfare state, and among highest concentrations of wealth in the top 10-1% than any of our peer nations. Most of the politics that got us there were driven by boomer political sentiment.
Plus they refuse to let go of political power, staying in office far longer than any previous generation, and consequentially making up a strikingly outsize fraction of Congress, for their population size. We vote them in, sure, but considering the role that party level campaign financing plays in our electoral system you can’t chalk these things up entirely to voter apathy, these are often choices being made at the party level to benefit themselves. Every presidential candidate for the last 30 years almost, besides Obama, has been a boomer, many of them born within a year of each other (decisions made largely at the party level).
Again, it’s not hard for me to imagine why people piece together an unflattering image of them as a generation, given this. But idk. Maybe I’m also deranged by this stuff and not seeing clearly.
> You can’t take a little haircut to downsize
This sounds a lot like what was addressed by this part of the post:
> You’d do this, right? Voluntarily give up money which is yours by right, in order to help other generations? Oh, sorry, you didn’t hear the question, you were too busy writing your 500th “You don’t hate Boomers enough, why won’t they hurry up and die, we need to declare intergenerational warfare and seize our rightful inheritance” post.
We’re talking about refusing to sell you home because even though the house has gone up in value by 1.5-2x adjusted for inflation, the mortgage payment on a house the same size would be more than you’re happy with, when you don’t need to move in to a house the same size for any reason.
Would I, when I’m 65 and in the same position, have the same priorities? I honestly don’t think so.
In fact we recently moved in to a house previously owned by a silent generation widow who instructed her estate not to think this way — sell the house for a reasonable price, and find a young family to sell it to. The (boomer) family was furious, and tried legal shenanigans to force the executor to ignore this aspect of the will. They (thankfully) refused.
You don't need to wait till you're 65 to realize you have very similar priorities. As long as you own any asset you'd rather hold than sell at current market value, you get the idea.
The old widow in your story screwed her children and their families over for a stranger's benefit. If you think that's admirable, I wonder if YOUR children will agree.
She screwed them how? By owning an asset for over 30 years which probably more than doubled in value in real terms, and then let them keep the profits, save maybe a 10% bump they could have enjoy through a bidding war, which could have ended in the property being a bought by commercial interests and perpetually rented, or used as a vacation home? What a monster.
"Refusing" is a strange phrase to use. If I'm not currently offering any of my belongings for sale, am I refusing to sell them?
Yeah good point
What I was getting after is that many of them would like to move but are inclined to wait not because they wouldn’t make a profit off the home but because they wouldn’t make as much profit as they’d like.
> They don’t need to do this, obviously. And it’s kind of hard to explain away in terms that don’t involve at least some selfishness/disagreeableness
I don't find it hard at all. Moving is a huge pain, so the fact that - barring some specific reason to move - many boomers would rather stay in the houses where they're already settled in, comfortable in, and nostalgically attached to is something I find very unsurprising and would not call "selfishness" or "disagreeableness".
If you're saying that they should read about the housing crisis and take it upon themselves to move, primarily to free up housing stock for the younger generation: I think that's a huge life change to expect someone to make for fairly abstract/nebulous reasons and an unreasonable place to put the bar for "selfishness".
Also, if you believe that the primary issue with housing is "we're not building enough housing" (and I do), it also makes sense that they're not downsizing because they're also affected by limited housing supply: there's less of it than there should be so downsizing is harder and more expensive than it should be.
And yeah, fundamentally, I don't think we should be relying on previous generations to vacate housing out of the goodness of their hearts: we should build more housing to meet demands.
I don’t think we should rely on this either but I do think their generation is different from previous ones in meaningful ways (which I think I laid out somewhat straightforwardly) which contribute to the reputation they have
Did previous generations sell their houses and move when they got older? None of my grandparents, or great-grandparents did, nor my wife's, nor those of anyone else I know well enough to know their family histories. Did yours?
Those previous generations did die younger, however. Perhaps that's the meaningful difference?
In other words: moving house has always been a huge pain, and people have always been nostalgically attached to their family homes, so why are their retirement housing behaviors so different from previous generations? And is there a charitable case for why they’re different in the ways they are (staying in houses much larger than what they need as empty nesters or moving to larger ones). I could by a housing constraint argument. But I’m not sure it’s the whole picture.
> people have always been nostalgically attached to their family homes, so why are their retirement housing behaviors so different from previous generations?
Are they different though? Where's the evidence of this? I don't mean this in a snarky [citation needed] way, I'm just not convinced that their retirement housing behaviours are so different from previous generations.
From my youth in the 1980s I remember a lot of (~1920s-born) old people living in the houses they'd occupied for decades.
The surveys I cited above show some evidence, perhaps not of them staying in their houses at higher rates, but certainly downsizing less and the upsizing behavior is genuinely new.
Maybe the upsizing corresponds with the possibility of younger generations needing to move in with them. It was certainly a factor for us.
> so why are their retirement housing behaviors so different from previous generations
Personally, I find wanting to stay in your house to be a perfectly natural instinct ("A homeowner at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted on by an outside force", perhaps), so maybe it's more productive to ask the opposite question of why previous generations downsized more often and why those factors might be less relevant today.
Speaking based on my (and wife's) grandparents (silent generation, not boomers), they only moved out when it more-or-less became medically necessary, so I wouldn't be surprised if modern medicine and increased life-spans has made older people more mobile and less inclined to downsize due to health reasons.
Homes being easier to maintain nowadays also may also affect that from the other direction - if it's easier to maintain the home, that also delays the point where it's no longer feasible to keep living in it. People being able to afford better lawn mowers or lawn care services (among many other decreases in labor needed to maintain a home) probably has a big effect.
I think "previous generations were less selfish than boomers" is an unlikely answer and a bit of a thought-ending cliche.
Yeah this is a totally reasonable take
Now I'm wondering how moving to a smaller house to free up space for a young family compares to selling your spare kidney.
One problem I see about the housing stock is that middle-to-well-off old people sitting on big homes that younger families need -- those old people need to be able to buy smaller homes that are nonetheless still nice enough to live in and in nice enough neighborhoods. Where we live, to downsize (which we want to do soon-ish, still a child at home) would require us to either buy a much smaller house for the exact same price closer to town (which would be good for us old people who like to walk) or to buy a smaller, cheaper house much further out of town and would have us driving long distances to get near amenities, which is not a great way to age well.
But we can't afford *not* to liquidate assets out of our house to cover cost of living expenses in retirement, so that first option -- a lateral move to a smaller house in town -- isn't an option for us. When I look at our entire real estate market in our entire state, I don't see many houses for sale that are houses half our size at half the cost (or even 2/3 the cost) within striking distance of town amenities (I'm not talking big city amenities). That's a problem of housing stock availability and lack of regulation of people using smaller homes as Airbnb income sources, which is rampant here.
If we want oldens to move to smaller places and these oldens own fairly high-value properties, we need to have options for them. Many of those options are being used as short-term rentals and second homes only occasionally occupied. Either we need to regulate that more or we need to build more small homes. Young people with small or no families also need small home options so they can buy into the market and start accruing value from an earlier age.
What really pisses me off about this argument, is that I paid for the house that I live in _to be built_ , using savings from my wages. My home would not _EXIST_ if I hadn't paid to have it built. If someone begrudges me my home, fuck them.
Surely you understand you’re a rarity, no? Otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree
Many Thanks!
I want to offer a side argument for the lazy socialist use of "capitalism." Today we tend to use ideology as a pejorative - like we say "that's ideological" as a way of saying it's a bad partisan argument you should ignore. But Marx doesn't use it this way. To Marx, an ideology is just a package of ideas that tend to go together.
Marx understands capitalism to be an ideology that develops in response to certain material conditions, specifically the conditions of modernity and the industrial revolution. So any idea anyone has in a modern industrial economy is part of capitalism. It doesn't matter if it has anything specifically to do with markets, or if it has anything to do with politics or economics at all. Capitalism is just defined as the type of ideas people tend to have in their heads when they live in a modern industrial economy.
> Capitalism is just defined as the type of ideas people tend to have in their heads when they live in a modern industrial economy.
Where by "modern industrial economy" he means the economies of the more advanced parts of 19th century Europe, which has very little in common with Western economies today?
Obviously there's been a lot of social change. But I think Marx would argue the meat of capitalism is an ontology that includes things like:
- jobs
- employers
- employees
- factories
- banks
- markets
- income
- investments
- corporations
Prior to the IR these things existed but were marginal to the overall economy, which was mainly agrarian and traditional. An agrarian peasant wasn't an "employee" in the modern sense, nor did they have a "job." They were mostly subsistence farmers.
The ideas that were starting to dominate the advanced parts of 19th c. have come to dominate most of the world, and I think it's reasonable to call this collection of ideas "capitalism."
That would make Marx a capitalist ideologist.
“Why do so many believe that old people have discovered a vote-themselves-infinite-benefits hack?”
I’m a tail-end Boomer myself, and I mostly agree with your overall take.
But the above quoted concern is actually valid when it comes to the old-age entitlements.
Congress changed SS in the 1970s to have ever-increasing benefits (going up with average wage growth, not merely with CPI) where they don’t have to vote each year on the benefits.
Medicare was never self-funding.
As the number of retirees has grown and there are ever fewer number of workers to pay into the Ponzi-like scheme that is SS, people correctly fear that the Boomers will get all of theirs, but then the Ponzi-scheme will likely end (Medicare is actually in far worse shape than SS (which could still be saved by eliminating that increase by average wage growth provision - would address 80% of the problem).
Because math. [And the massive debt and ongoing trillion dollar+ deficits.] and because all Dems plus Trump have taken any changes to entitlements off the table.
Throw in the higher cost of housing because of NIMBYism, for which Boomers might not be totally responsible but are disproportionately so, and the idea that Boomers got themselves a benefits hack… ain’t whack.
Despite you otherwise being correct about the rest of it.
> Congress changed SS in the 1970s
There would have been very few boomers in Congress in the 1970s, so we can't blame them for that.
I did not blame Boomers for creating the law, I said the benefit BIGLY from it.
Politicians refuse to address it, because first essentially *every* Democrat and now in response Trump have taken all discussion of remorming old age entitlements off that table.
You can say this is in response to what voters want, but of course Boomers are the most instrumental in this being the case now.
Re the bit about how "you're going to be old too" ("But you will be in the position, vis-a-vis the younger generation, that the Boomers are in now...")
When I point out that the planet is overpopulated, online people love to retort "so just die then." A weird kind of cargo-cult Categorical Imperative: if you think there's a policy problem, implement the fix _just on yourself_, not in policy. But if the planet is overpopulated, and I die, it's still overpopulated, by just as much, realistically.
Similarly: if you believe that, as currently constituted, society *is bad because* it directs too much of its resources to the decrepit elderly generation, then you believe it'd be better if it didn't do that. If it impoverishes just you, then that's not going to help anyone. But if you think that having happy healthy young people is good in general, then YES you'd want A POLICY change that accomplished that. Expecting individuals to just unilaterally sacrifice because of a policy change they want doesn't make sense.
> A weird kind of cargo-cult Categorical Imperative: if you think there's a policy problem, implement the fix _just on yourself_, not in policy. But if the planet is overpopulated, and I die, it's still overpopulated, by just as much, realistically.
Well, at the very least it wouldn't be your problem anymore. Either way, it's good to focus on actually accomplishable goals that you can achieve yourself. For example, if you know wealth is concentrated in older generations, find a way to extract it from them. Old people love slot machines!
I don't know if this is a peculiarly American problem or if people are just generally like this, but I get the sense that other nations have large numbers of people who are able to think about "society" as something that exists and that they'd like to improve, rather than always insisting that each individual make their own decisions while gaming out what all the other individuals are going to do.
Spending what we spend on the elderly is a policy choice. But we're not even supposed to talk about policy choices. They just happen somehow, from our rulers, and the rest of us just need to either kill ourselves or cheat even harder than our neighbors. It's dystopian and sociopathic.
The problem is that discussing policy in this case is worthless because the boomers completely outnumber you, and they are inevitably going to act in their self-interest. Or whatever they think is in their self-interest, anyways. Given the remaining years they have left, they are making the correct decisions here.
What the hell are you even expecting here, man? You're not entitled to fairness, or for others to act the way you want them to. If the current system is flawed to the point that ruin is inevitable, all you can do is let it fall so something else can take its place. But you can still make decisions so you can survive and maybe even benefit from the decay!
The boomers do not outnumber the non-boomers, no, and besides, I don't think it's inevitable that literally zero boomers actually want to improve society.
My impression of why people "hate" Boomers is this that considered from the perspective of a Western Millennial or Zoomer, the Boomers grew up in a West that still had social cohesion, a lot of young people, a flourishing economy; and what they did with that was destroy the social cohesion, create an increasingly competitive economy, and pass on an increasingly degenerated culture full of commercialization, porn and loneliness -- and a lot of old people. That is, they used up the heritage they had inherited from the previous generations (that they despised for being "square").
I think this is correct. Boomers ate the cultural and institutional seed corn.
How many Zoomers are advocating that that social cohesion be resurrected by restricting pornography or re-instituting norms like rigorous dress and grooming expectations, church attendance, higher marriage and birth rates and the like? Your comment reads to me like an ad hoc rationalization, because I don't see these dissatisfied people being in favor of anything that could even plausibly solve the problems that apparently have them so distraught. In fact, it seems like the opposite from my point of view.
Part of the point is that you can't just get them back, just as you can't just get your ancestral home back if your parents gave it away. That's why it's a cause of resentment.
How can you re-institute social cohesion when the thing you would need to institute anything like that would be social cohesion?
Even leaving aside the generational question, lots of people are worried about things like low birth rates and social isolation (the "bowling alone" issue). No one has any particularly good idea of what to do about it.
As for how many Zoomers etc. -- I have no idea. But I guess some of the young people who support Trump or the far right parties in Europe do want authoritarian solutions to these issues. Or on the left, the climate change activists.
I don't know what you mean when you say "post hoc rationalization". What am I rationalizing? I am offering my interpretation of why some people resent the Boomer generation.
Right, and to go a step further, I believe Boomers get more resentment for two reasons. One, their sheer size and cultural weight gave them disproportionate influence over the cultural zeitgeist. America's last really unified popular culture was mostly Boomer. That makes it more apropos to lay perceived negative cultural trends at their door.
Two, I feel like Boomers' perceived collective "voice" or attitude is often disappointment that the younger generations can't or haven't "succeeded" or "achieved" as much as the Boomers claim they did. But this disapproval gets very irritating when many stumbling blocks for younger folks were laid by the Boomers themselves. For example, "harumph, everyone gets a trophy these days" - who demanded that their kids get trophies? Not the kids. "Oh, young people today don't know how to do anything." Did you ever get out of the way and let young people learn on the job? "In my day we played outside all day and didn't get home until dark, kids these days aren't independent." Who wrote laws that means you would get your kids taken away if you tried a Boomer-style free range childhood? "This generation doesn't know how to pair off and produce the next generation." Who normalized no-fault divorce, two-income households, looser sexual mores, "kids are resilient," fulltime daycare from infancy on, etc. because it was more fun or convenient for them at the time? (In fairness the Silent Generation may have started this but Boomers ran with it). "No work ethic anymore." Who presided over the trends of extracurriculars instead of school jobs, administrative bloat, financialization of almost every sector of the economy?
I think today's younger generations see the Boomers having inherited a surplus of functional institutions and cultural capital, tearing down lots of Chesterton's fences, squandering much of the social reserves to enrich themselves, and then turning around and criticizing the youth for causing or at least not reversing the inevitable decay in the societal fabric that Boomers themselves set in motion.
I gotta disagree again. You definitely can get back your ancestral home. You make the people who currently own it an offer above its current market value. In terms of building social cohesion, I agree it's tough, but you can do it at small scales in a lot of different ways. For example, different religious groups like the Mormons and Orthodox Jews are able to do this anew with each generation of young people. Likewise, the military is able to take young people of fairly diverse backgrounds and mold them into cohesive units. I am sure you've been through some lame team building activities at work, as I have, but at least some companies are able to foster their own internal cultures and build cohesive groups internally over time. Again, nationally speaking, social cohesion is hard to foster and the US may just never have that again absent the Chinese invading the West Coast or what have you, but at a local level it's actually not so challenging, given somebody has the motivation to do so.
That's well said really. I think the problem though with blaming an entire group is that the people who had power to shift those trends were the economic and political elites of the time, just as our current economic and political elites are driving changes. The vast majority of people are living as best they can within the structures they've been given, and as individuals or family groups. they're doing the best they can to find economic security and to provide for their children, as every generation has ever done. What defined the robber baron era in the US was robber barons and not all the people having to live through that kind of economic inequality and despair.
The people most likely to hate on boomers are also the people least likely to suggest that SS and Medicare benefits be curtailed in any way, so the "sucking up resources" angle seems off from the get-go. Rather, the more likely scenario is that these younger people feel entitled to the benefits of Medicare (Medicare For All I think is a rallying cry I've heard once or twice before) and are resentful of the people who currently enjoy those benefits and won't simply vote en masse to extend them to everyone else.
Unmentioned in this piece is I think the idea back around 2015 or so that the boomers were, politically speaking, the last gasp of 20th century America. The new, more diverse America reflected in younger generations was going to give us dozens more Obama types to be president while the GOP, currently only being kept afloat by wealthy boomers, could only offer stodgy old John McCain and Mitt Romney types. Once the boomers shuffled off this mortal coil, American conservatism would be toast, and a new golden era of progressivism would emerge to transform the US into the European style social democracy it always should have been. This line of thinking became outright vicious after Donald Trump, a boomer himself, was the surprise winner of the 2016 election, because it must have been the boomers who elected him, based on Pauline Kael logic (yes I know the quote is apocryphal), which had a grain of truth to it. Now, they were outright rooting for Boomers to die, because the Boomers deserved it for their sins, but of course justifying this hatred just based on voting patterns is juvenile and stupid, so they had to retcon a bunch of historical reasons why the Boomers deserved all this opprobrium all along, even though nobody had ever mentioned them up til now.
In general, this all was just a piece of a larger pattern. A lot of what made wokism so detestable was that the people subscribing to it spent much of the 20-teens and early 2020s inventing reasons why the petty bigotries born of their particular brand of identity politics were perfectly justifiable while at the same time they were decrying anything and everything else as racist, sexist, etc.
And yet, the Zoomers are the first generation in recent history to be more conservative than their parents. And many of them rabidly so. My sister (mid Gen-X) was recently told by her early-20s son that he wants a revolution. According to him, saving the country requires shooting the libs. My sister is firmly progressive and told him "Well, that includes me. Would you shoot me?". His response was to shrug and say "Probably not, but somebody will".
Honestly, it's almost comforting to see people acting like people again. It was getting weird seeing people not murdering each other for so long.
Uh, no thanks. I like not having to kill or be killed. Though I have a lot of guns and ammunition, come to that.
Is sitting around whining about how the world sucks and not being able to do anything about it really preferable? Because that's what most men are doing, and I have a feeling they'd feel a lot more satisfied with their life if they were actively doing something about it, one bullet at a time. There was that post a while back about how much fun fighting in Ukraine was, and the writer didn't even have that much personal stake in that fight beyond general self-righteousness. Imagine how great it must feel for the people fighting for their own futures!
Yes, it's better to whine than have a civil war. The worst tend to rise to the top in such times.
Are we currently having one, or is Trump somehow not the worst?
How do you feel about Claudio Valente, the Brown/MIT shooter?
A dumbass who wasted their life to kill some professor and some random college students? God damn, at least kill someone who matters...
Reading his profile, I still can't tell exactly what his beef was with his targets, but surely there was a more productive way to vent his frustrations. He's not alone in resenting academia, after all. And if he waited just a bit longer, he might've gotten an opportunity to do some socially acceptable murder instead! Then he might've been able to kill people, survive, and even get celebrated for it! But nope, didn't even push for the circumstances to make that happen. Moron.
> So have we finally discovered the fabled Boomer selfishness? Call it what you want. But remember that the Boomers did pay money into Social Security to support their own parents, believing that they would be supported in turn. Learning that yours is the generation where the pyramid collapses is a hard pill to swallow. Maybe they should suck it up and take the sacrifice. You’d do this, right? Voluntarily give up money which is yours by right, in order to help other generations? Oh, sorry, you didn’t hear the question, you were too busy writing your 500th “You don’t hate Boomers enough, why won’t they hurry up and die, we need to declare intergenerational warfare and seize our rightful inheritance” post.
The problem here is that we've known the pyramid was going to collapse for a long time. We cannot say that the Boomers didn't know this problem was coming, there have been attempts at entitlement reform in past decades to address this problem, and they have never had the political will to succeed (https://x.com/JessicaBRiedl/status/2002061946217226398). The system has been doomed to insolvency for a very, very long time. This was destined to be a program where one generation received benefits at the expense of another generation who would not be compensated for it and never had a choice in the matter by the dint of not being an of age voting bloc or even born yet? Taking from one and giving to another by force and without consent - how could any of that money belong to a recipient *by right* under that system?
Do you want to blame the Greatest and Silent generations for Social Security and Medicare, since they started it? Sure, no problem. But the boomers had the option to do something about this, to reform, and instead decided to pass along the costs to the millenials and the zoomers. They decided that they were fine with benefiting from an unjust system, and passing the costs along to someone else. That's wrong! I won't have the option of passing the costs along to Gen Alpha and the generations that follow, the pyramid is going collapse when I'm on the clock. But if I was able to do so, to benefit at their expense, that would be wrong! The appropriate thing to do is to never start an unjust system like this. The next best thing to do is to end it as soon as possible, and break the chain.
What a wonderful post! I truly believe we need more inter-generational "age gap" friendships.
One point I disagree with, though: I really believe that the point on your chart that claims that boomers are more against censorship than millenials is meaningless. I used to be sympathetic to boomer's belly-aching about millenials being pro-censorship and anti-free-speech.
Then at Texas A&M University a professor said there were more than two genders. As a result, she was fired, the head of her department and the dean of her college were removed from their positions, and the president of the university (a beloved-by-the-students four star general of the US air force!!) was forced to step down.
And the politicians forcing all this? Overwhelmingly boomers, and not just that, but self-described pro-free-speech-on-campus boomers at that.
(Source: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/18/texas-am-university-president-mark-welsh-resigns/ )
At the height of the supposed millenial assault on free-speech-on-campus I never heard of a professor saying something politically incorrect and it resulting it not only her firing, but also the removal of the department head, college dean, and the president of a large R1 university.
In related news, after the death of Charlie Kirk, a professor at Austin Peay State University shared, on his personal social media, a post someone else made quoting a headline from a Newsweek article from 2023. He was fired within a day of this post.
And the person behind his being fired? Sen Marsha Blackburn, a boomer who LAUNCHED the Senate Campus Free Speech Caucus.
(Source: https://www.theleafchronicle.com/story/news/local/clarksville/2025/09/15/austin-peay-darren-michael-fired-charlie-kirk/86159781007/ (and a close friend of mine personally knows this professor, which is why I know details about this case not included in the news article, but I am 100% sure of them.))
Of course, I personally know pro-free-speech boomers who do NOT support these firings, but still. But unless I know them personally, I will never believe what boomers say about their support for free speech again, haha
> Then at Texas A&M University a professor said there were more than two genders. As a result, she was fired, the head of her department and the dean of her college were removed from their positions, and the president of the university (a beloved-by-the-students four star general of the US air force!!) was forced to step down.
Except that's not what happened. She didn't just "say" something about more than two genders. She repeatedly taught her gender ideology during her child literature class. Which was contrary to the class' description. Normaly I am on the side that if you sign for an optional class called "Transgender Intersectionality in Communist Liberation of Palestine 101" then you have no standing to complain if that's what is taught there. But if it says "Children Literature" on the tin and what you get is "Advanced Transgenderism" then the students have a standing to demand to match the content to the advertisement, otherwise it is a fraud. I am all for academic freedom, but if you pay for a course on one thing, and get a course on another thing, then you have grounds for demand to get what you paid for. I am not sure whether or not the student had specific valid claim, but the situation is definitely not "she just said there are two genders and were fired for it".
And also from the press reports it looks like Welsh and Texas A&M were a target of controversy for their discriminatory DEI policies for a while (which surprises no one knowing anything about the current state of US academia). Last time it was about the university officially promoting a conference which had a racially exclusionary admission policy, and paying its employees to attend it, which beyond being disgusting, may also be illegal in Texas, as this is a public school. Again, saying that the university's president dismissal was a direct result of McCoul's "saying" "there were more than two genders" is omitting so much context that it approaches purposeful lying.
So this is the course description for McCoul's course from her syllabus (which was available to students before the first day of class so they could decide whether this was the course they wanted to take, you can find it here by searching under Summer 2025, with McCoul as instructor: https://howdyportal.tamu.edu/uPortal/p/public-class-search-ui.ctf1/max/render.uP#)
Maybe you grew up reading Harry Potter or Holes, Nancy Drew or the
Narnia stories. Maybe you were a comic-book kid. Whatever your
personal predilections, you probably already have a pretty good sense
of what children's literature is. But as soon as you try to define it, you'll
find that safe-seeming category becomes slippery. In this course, we
will begin to tease out the boundaries of this capacious category called
“children's literature.” What counts? Who decides? What
differentiates writing for children from writing for adults? Why should
we, as adults, read children’s literature?
In this course, we will explore a range of children’s literature in English,
including picture books, poetry, contemporary novels, historical
fiction, and fantasy. Our task is to think critically about what these
books can tell us about how we (and others) understand childhood,
how those definitions have changed over time, and how these books
participate in larger movements of history, culture, and literature.
-
In other words, this is not a course where you just read random children's stories. It makes this clear right on the tin. This is a course about "teasing the boundaries" of children's literature and about understanding different childhoods. It is not unreasonable that considerations about gender would go into that, since that is a part of childhood for many people.
Re your claim that "She repeatedly taught her gender ideology during her child literature class."
I'll be honest, I could not find credible evidence either for or against this claim, but the reading list is also in the syllabus: Only 1 out of the 9 books on the reading list is about a trans/nonbinary child. There are a couple others that feature other LGBT characters, but that's not too out there for a course billed as being about pushing the boundaries of children's literature and about different understandings of childhood.
(Or maybe you think that is too out there, but that's subjective, but also really? out there enough to be worthy of firing a university president, who actually fired the professor once he figured out what had happened?)
Re your claim that Welsh was actually secretly forced to step down for some other reason: I mean, maybe, I'm not too familiar with the case, but that doesn't contradict the claim that all these pro-free-speech boomers were calling for his ouster for this situation specifically, which is what my comment was about.
Re the specific claim about the PhD Project conference: University employees advertise conferences to their colleagues all the time. Nobody actually goes through and investigates how discriminatory the conferences admissions policies are; it's not like the PhD Project explicitly says that they don't allow white and Asian participants, so you'd need to do some in depth investigation to figure this out. Once the university found out about this, they rescinded the offer of funding. I think firing a university president because some employee unknowingly promoted a conference without doing this in depth investigation is even crazier than firing him for the McCoul situation.
Also re the University's DEI practices in general: At the time of this McCoul situation in the summer, Texas A&M University had zero DEI offices or officers--Welsh in fact presided over the complete dismantlement of DEI policies on campus. This is more than can be said about many tech companies and financial institutions like hedge funds (which provide most of the funding for DEI math and computer science enrichment programs like Girls Who Code).
> I think firing a university president because some employee unknowingly promoted a conference without doing this in depth investigation is even crazier than firing him for the McCoul situation.
Again, you are trying to pretend as if a single isolated incident caused it, without any context. That was clearly not the case - there was a history of university doing all kinds of DEI stuff the government did not like, and the government repeatedly clashing with university management about that. If I spent time on it, I surely could find more instances. Does it mean Walsh had to go, does the pattern amount to firing offense? Not for me to decide, but it clearly wasn't caused by one single incident. And it's clearly not about free speech but about the government wanting certain policy implemented and Walsh not implementing it to their satisfaction. Being a public institution, supported by public funds, means being to some measure beholden to the public policy. You may not like a particular public policy, and that's fine. But if certain public university president, in, say, California, would refuse to implement any DEI policies in the middle of DEI frenzy led by California government, and had been fired for that, you would not likely claim that he was fired because somebody said something about genders. There's no basis for such claim here either.
> Only 1 out of the 9 books on the reading list is about a trans/nonbinary child
Imagine a liberal signing to a children literature course and finding out one of the 9 books the course is going to teach and explain how to introduce to children is Mein Kampf. And it's not taught as an example of something historically terrible, but rather straight - the children are supposed to be introduced to Hitler's thinking and legacy, explained the importance of hating Jews and caring about the purity of the race, they are expected to study how to be a good fascist and become a proper heir to the Fuhrer, and eventually strive to restore the Third Reich in all its glory, all the package. But not to worry, it's only one book out of nine, 90% of the course would be totally not Nazi propaganda. Would that be satisfactory to a liberal student? To a liberal non-student learning about that? To a non-liberal non-student for that matter? Would they be fine with just mere tiny 10% of the course dedicated to enable future teachers to teach kids to do a proper Sieg Heil and to learn how to find a hidden Jew, or would they demand to scrap the whole course, fire everybody, burn down the building and salt the earth?
Also, I can't see ground for firing a professor if a course is misrepresented in the syllabus.
A course about what is considered suitable for children sounds interesting.
Also re: my original point about boomers and free speech. I realize that the other case I mentioned (the Austin Peay one) was rendered less strong because I added some insider knowledge, but I have since found confirmation in the press about these details:
That Marsha Blackburn did this:
https://clarksvillenow.com/local/apsu-faculty-senate-responds-to-actions-against-tenured-professor-in-charlie-kirk-case/
That all he did was share someone else's post of a newsweek headline:
https://clarksvillenow.com/local/apsu-fires-professor-over-resharing-social-media-post-about-shooting-of-charlie-kirk/
(According to this latter link I was wrong about his being fired within a day. It was actually 2 days.)
Would he be fired if he shared the same type of thing about George Floyd? Would he support firing a colleague who shared the same type of content with regard to George Floyd? If the answer to these is "yes", then he is only got what he believes is just. I would be happy to live in the world where nobody gets fired for posting on Twitter, but we have left that world many, many years ago - and people like Austin Peay contributed a lot to that happening. Now some of them reap what they have sown. When they are ready to go back to the good old times, let them say "we are sorry for what we did, please accept our deepest apologies, we made a terrible mistake and we are willing to atone for it" - and then we can talk about how to fix it. But that doesn't seem to be happening.
And of course Marsha Blackburn did not force anybody to fire him - she has no such power, unlike the power of Texas government over Texas public institutions. She may have called attention to his (public, notably - social media exists explicitly to share things you want to be seen publicly) actions, but she could not force anybody to fire him. She could exercise her right of free speech to influence this decision - but that is the right of every person to do so.
> Would he support firing a colleague who shared the same type of content with regard to George Floyd?
I was originally not planning to answer your question because I was starting to doubt whether you were asking this question in good faith, but then I remembered that here in the ACX comment sections, we are meant to assume good faith, so.
I don't know this professor personally, but if he's anything like the mutual friend I have with him (who is not an academic), or like all the tenured professors I know, then no, he would certainly not support firing a colleague for sharing a mainstream news headline to their personal social media.
Call it a purely selfish motive to keep the concept of tenure strong, if you will, but the vast majority of tenured professors do not support firing other tenured professors for their social media posts. (For better or worse, these tenured professors constitute most of the boomers I mentioned in my original comment who are genuinely supportive of free speech.)
When you read in the news about professors getting fired for saying offensive things about George Floyd, it's usually *students* who agitated to have them fired, and admin who wanted to avoid tarnishing the school's reputation. (Notice that at no point did I claim that Gen Z cares about free speech, or that they care more than boomers. This isn't about them. This is specifically about whether boomers care as much about free speech as they claim to.)
The one or two tenured professors who support the student-led efforts to get professors fired sometimes get their voices amplified (especially since they have the support of the students), but they are not usually the ones behind it.
> And of course Marsha Blackburn did not force anybody to fire him - she has no such power, unlike the power of Texas government over Texas public institutions.
Austin Peay, full name Austin Peay State University, is a public Tennessee university, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn is a senator representing Tennessee. Her influence is surely comparable to that of the students she decries in her Senate Campus Free Speech Caucus.
But also, how much power she actually wielded is not relevant to this discussion. We are discussing whether the boomers who overwhelmingly claim to care deeply about free speech genuinely do. The fact that Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the boomer who launched the Senate Campus Free Speech Caucus, tried to have a professor fired over their social media posts does not suggest that they do.
> then no, he would certainly not support firing a colleague for sharing a mainstream news headline to their personal social media.
There were some studies which suggested if people are warned to be honest before a test, they are less likely to cheat on the test. Ironically, I think those turned out to be fake or non-reproducible. Why did I remember it? Because you started with scolding me about good faith, and then described justifying political murder (and let's not be cute there, that's exactly what he did) as "sharing a mainstream news headline". We both know very well he didn't just share an arbitrary headline. So is pretending that's all that has happened engaging in good faith?
But if you want to put it in that framework, I am sure you can find headlines about Floyd being a criminal and about high crime among AA population and many other headlines, which in the context of Floyd's murder would be considered racist. If somebody shared such a headline (in the context where it would be absolutely clear he is justifying what happened and lays the blame on Floyd) and was cancelled for it, would he object?
> When you read in the news about professors getting fired for saying offensive things about George Floyd, it's usually *students* who agitated to have them fired
I did not do any research about who is most often initiating the cancelling, but I am ready to believe it's students - after all, there's a lot of them, they have very low inhibitions and experience, and they are trained for political activism. However, students complaining is not the end of the story, but the beginning. Students have complained about all kinds of stuff since there was such thing as students. The admin decides what to do with it, and the faculty has significant input into these decisions - if the faculty were adamant in not letting the cancellings happen, they wouldn't happen. We can see examples as academy is willing to risk billions in funding in defense of that they really care about - such as racist policies and DEI curriculums. They are able to take a stand when they want to. It's just somebody getting cancelled for saying something that the Party does not approve is not a stand-worthy cause. Now if somebody is getting cancelled for something the Party does approve - like murdering political opponents - that's entirely different business. Now is the time to speak up.
> We are discussing whether the boomers who overwhelmingly claim to care deeply about free speech genuinely do.
I am not a boomer (I'm older but not that old) but I do care about free speech a lot. But when somebody who was fine with cancelling for a decade, gets cancelled for endorsing a political murder, and other people who are fine with cancellings in all cases but this particular one because this particular one is one of them - I am not going to stand with them. I am going to point out they are all a bunch of huporcites which do not care about any free speech or any larger political point - they care about them winning the power, and being able to do to their opponents what their opponents are powerless to do to them. It's not about a noble cause, it's about using a pretense of caring about a noble cause as a cudgel to achieve their partisan goals - and then proceed to throw the noble cause aside as a used condom. I can see through it, and I am calling it out.
Re specifically "Ok, Boomer" near as I can tell/remember, that started as a response to all the "millenials bad" stuff that had been going around. Articles/memes/etc that blaimed/looked down on millenials for stuff eventually provoked a counter of "Okay Boomer."
I may be misremembering, but that is how I seem to remember that starting, at least.
I agree that if we’re just looking at the ability to buy a flat-screen TV or a flight to Europe, Millennials are technically "winning." But you can't vibecession your way out of the fact that a 20% down payment now requires over 100% of a typical annual salary, compared to just 58% in the 1960s. Even if the Boomers didn't consciously "steal" the future, they presided over a transition where the cost of entry into the middle class doubled. It’s hard to preach inter-generational respect when the younger generation is priced out of the stability the Boomers used to build their peace and prosperity.
Individual anecdotes about Pittsburgh don't negate national benchmarks. In 1980, the median house in the U.S. was 3x the median income. Today, that national relationship has doubled.
Even if you find a $60,000 fixer-upper in a specific zip code, the sacrifice required today is objectively higher. In the 80s, you didn't have to move to a different rust-belt city or spend your weekends doing $20k in renovations just to reach a baseline level of affordability. That was the standard experience for a middle-class earner in their own backyard.
It's not a functional market when the entry-level option requires a cross-country move and a year of manual labor. You're looking at a generation forced to jump through twice as many hoops to reach the same level of stability their parents achieved by simply showing up to work.
So your solution is for people to simply lower their standards or move to a different economic ecosystem? You're living up to your handle.
In the 1980s, you didn't have to seek out a "random place nearby" to find a 3x ratio; that was the national median. The "sacrifice" of moving to the suburbs in the 80s was a commute; the "sacrifice" you’re suggesting now is moving to a specific rust-belt borough with entirely different labor market realities.
As for the "year of manual labor," I’m referring to the opportunity cost. In 1980, the median starter home was "turn-key" for a single-income family. If the only "affordable" entry point today requires an FHA fixer-upper and a DIY renovation schedule, the barrier to entry has still fundamentally changed. We’ve moved from a system where stability was the default to one where it's a "prize" you have to move across state lines and spend your weekends tiling to achieve. That’s the definition of a broken escalator.
Aristocat, the "just move to a lower-cost metro" advice is rapidly hitting a wall of institutional capital. You mentioned Ohio, but look at Cleveland: nearly one-quarter of all single-family homes are now being snapped up by out-of-state investors and hedge funds. I know this from personal experience. In Pittsburgh, your turf, the "escape hatch" is also under siege. Investors bought nearly 18% of all residential properties in Allegheny County in recent years, with a heavy focus on the exact "affordable" starter homes you are suggesting.
Investors aren't buying because they want to settle down; they are buying to flip into rentals, creating a price floor that prices out the very "starter" buyers you're talking about. Even in the Rust Belt, the entry-level inventory is being converted from a path to stability into a permanent extraction of rent.
Regarding your point about the Boomers benefiting from a wrecked global economy, sure, they had the 'tailwinds of history'. But pointing to a one-time geopolitical advantage doesn't justify the current structural choice to prioritize housing as a high-yield investment vehicle over a social necessity. We haven't just lost our "hyper-normalcy"; we’ve built a system where even the supposedly "cheap" escape hatches are being professionalized and sold back to us at a premium.
A 3x ratio in 1980 at 15% had TWICE the payments it would have had at 6%. That’s why the ratio was lower. Our current interest rates are low enough to allow people to buy with lower salaries.
We dis not have nearly as high a percentage of people trying to all jam into the most expensive cities.
The sacrifice literally millions of people have been making is to move to really nice small and medium cities, exurbs, and towns, not necessarily in the rust belt but more often in the sun belt or mountainous west.
In 1980, no, most starter homes absolutely were not turn key. Most people expected to paint, do minor repairs, and fix or replace flooring. That was the norm.
Lisa, you’ve perfectly described the financialization trap. You’re arguing that lower interest rates "allow" people to buy with lower salaries. What that amounts to is a systemic tax, not a benefit.
When interest rates drop, the "savings" don't stay in the buyer's pocket; they are immediately absorbed into the sticker price. The result is that the current generation is forced to take on twice the debt to secure the exact same level of stability.
Here is the math you aren't accounting for: equity vs. debt. > * In 1980, because the principal was low (3x), a buyer could pay off their home or build massive equity in a decade. In 2025, because the principal is high (6x), the buyer is a "debt slave" to that principal for twice as long.
You can eventually refinance a 15% interest rate, which the Boomers did brilliantly in the 90s, pocketing the difference as wealth. But you can never "refinance" a 6x price-to-income multiple.
As for the "fixer-upper" argument: a 1980s fixer-upper cost 60% of an annual salary for a down payment. Today, a 20% down payment on a "starter" home requires over 100% of the median annual salary. We aren't complaining about "linoleum"; we're pointing out that the time-cost of the exit ramp from renting to owning has doubled. We’ve traded a middle class built on equity for one built on leverage, and you’re calling that an "improvement" because the monthly payment is the same?
This really isn’t correct. In the early 80s, interest rates were so high (up to 16%) that houses were simply not affordable. In the late 80s and 90s, as rates dropped, people very much picked cities based on affordability. People routinely chose not to move to expensive places like DC or NYC in the first place because of cost.
Buying a fixer upper was not at all unusual. It’s even a plot point in movies like Ghost.
Entry level options were much smaller (1600 sq feet) and less luxurious, with linoleum and carpet instead of hardwood and formica counter tops, limited closet space, etc. Most people buying a home expected to paint and do minor repairs themselves.
Lisa, you’re right that 15% interest rates in the 80s were a massive hurdle for monthly cash flow. But high interest rates actually kept the sticker price suppressed.
The fundamental difference is the barrier to entry. A 20% down payment in 1980 took about 60% of an annual salary. Today, that same 20% down payment requires over 100% of an annual salary.
You can eventually refinance a 15% mortgage when rates drop (as the Boomers did in the 90s), but you can't "refinance" the fact that it now takes twice as many years of labor just to save the entry fee. We aren't complaining about hardwood floors; we're pointing out that the time-cost of the exit ramp from renting to owning has doubled.
In 1980, minimum down payment generally really was 20%. Average was 28%.
In 2025, minimum down payment is 3% with PMI, and can be as low as 0 with some programs like USDA or VA.
On a 100,000 mortgage, payment at 15% for 30 years is 1,420. At 3%, 577. At 6%, 755.
The multiple is higher because you can afford more house at a lower interest rate.
Lisa, you’re exactly right that we’ve lowered the barrier to entry by moving from 20% down payments to 3% with PMI. But that’s a symptom of the problem, not a solution.
When you say "the multiple is higher because you can afford more house at a lower interest rate," you are describing the financialization of housing. Because rates dropped, the "savings" didn't stay in the buyer's pocket...it was immediately baked into the sticker price. The result is that the next generation has to take on massive amounts of debt just to secure the same four walls that a boomer bought with a much smaller loan and a higher rate.
Lowering the down payment to 3% 'isn't affordability'; it’s just a workaround for a broken ratio. It means the younger generation starts their lives with significantly less equity and higher monthly debt obligations. You can refinance a 15% rate, but you can't "refinance" a 6x price-to-income multiple. We've replaced genuine affordability with extreme leverage, and as the data shows, that leverage is now being outbid by institutional investors who don't need a 3% FHA loan to win.
No... FHA loans with 3.5% down were available in 1980.
> In the 80s, you didn't have to move to a different rust-belt city
People actually DID move to different states more often decades ago. It's been theorized that welfare systems going through state governments has discouraged that now. I suppose the male employment rate was also higher then.
TGGP, you're missing the distinction between moving for opportunity and moving for survival.
In the 1980s, people moved more often because the economic friction of doing so was low. You could sell a house with a 3x price-to-income ratio and buy another one with a similar ratio in a booming city. Your "equity" traveled with you.
Today, mobility has cratered because of the leverage trap. When a first-time buyer enters the market with 3% down on a 6x income principal (as Lisa was advocating for), they have zero "portability." If they need to move for a better job, the closing costs alone would wipe out their meager equity, forcing them to bring cash to the table just to leave.
As for the "welfare system" theory, it pales in comparison to the housing-as-investment model. We have turned homes into the primary store of middle-class wealth, which has the side effect of "locking" people into their geography. If you have a 3% mortgage on a house you bought in 2019, you are effectively "location-bound" because moving to a new city would mean doubling your interest rate and paying a 2025 price premium.
The "mobility" of the past was a sign of a dynamic economy; the "immobility" of today is a sign of a stagnant, over-leveraged one where your house is no longer a home, but a debt-anchor.
In the 1980s, most cities had pretty decent opportunity. We did not see the narrowing of opportunity to fewer and fewer cities, so of course it was easier to move. More cities to move to. More good options.
Now we are increasingly trying to cram more and more people into fewer and fewer cities.
I did not suggest that a first time buyer enter the market on a 6x principal. That was you, not me. 240,000/80,000 is 3x. 280,000/80,000 is 3.5x. 3-3.5x is the Virginia average for the 80s, BTW.
Any first time buyer is going to be underwater if they sell in the first year or two. Paying out of your down payment equity for closing costs is still underwater.
Lisa, you can’t have it both ways. You claim you aren't suggesting buyers enter at a 6x ratio, but then you defend Louisa and Roanoke, where the median prices ($370k and $300k) against the median incomes ($80k and $53k) are exactly that: 4.6x to 5.6x ratios. You are nostalgic for the "good options" of the 80s while telling 2025 buyers to accept a significantly worse version of those options today.
In the 80s, a 3x ratio bought a turnkey home in a city with "decent opportunity."
In 2025, a 3x ratio (your $240k figure) buys a gut-rehab fixer-upper in a rural county 90 minutes from that same opportunity.
You are admitting the standard of living has dropped, that we are "cramming into fewer cities", yet you still insist the math is better now because of interest rates. If a buyer has to move further away, drive longer, and buy a lower-quality asset just to keep their "payment" similar to yours, they have lost. They are working harder for less.
The 1980s buyer was paying for a house. The 2025 buyer is paying for the scarcity created by 40 years of bad policy. No amount of amortization-table magic can turn a decline in quality of life into a "win" for the next generation.
Good night, and I really mean it this time.
Boomers weren’t buying houses in 1960. In 1960, Boomers were still being born and would be born for another 4 years. The oldest Boomers were 14.
Technically true, but I think the math holds up even if you look at the Boomers' prime buying window. In 1980, when the oldest Boomers were in their 30s, the median home price was roughly $63,000 against a median household income of $21,000, maintaining that 3x price-to-income ratio.
Whether you compare against 1960 or 1980, the result is the same: the generation currently holding the keys to the economy entered a market that was twice as accessible as the one today. You can argue about specific birth years but I don't think you can successfully argue with the fact that the cost of entry to the American Dream has effectively doubled.
The biggest differences were that in 1980, the economy was far less agglomerated, and in 1980, there were FAR fewer two income households.
A much lower percentage of people lived in major cities or MSAs, with the result that many many Boomers were buying houses in smaller cities or towns. If you wanted a comparison, price out houses today in places like Roanoke, Lynchburg, Greensboro, etc. rather than in places like DC or NYC.
1980 was right between the 1970s stagflation and the early 80s recession, which is another reason prices were low. In the 1970s stagflation, inflation peaked at 14.5% (not a typo) and unemployment at nearly 9%. Then a few years later, the 1980s recession saw unemployment hit 10.8%. Prices were low in part because people were broke.
It was not an idyllic time.
No, it was not an idyllic time. But your point about two-income households is exactly the problem. In 1980, a single median income could support a 3x price-to-income mortgage. Today, even with dual incomes, families are struggling to hit that same baseline of stability. We’ve moved from a "one-earner" middle class to a "two-earner" middle class just to stay in the same place. That’s a massive increase in the labor cost of a home.
As for geography, even "affordable" secondary markets like Greensboro or Roanoke have seen prices outpace local wages. It’s not just a DC or NYC problem; it’s a systemic decoupling of land value from labor value.
The 1980s had high interest rates and unemployment, but they had a low floor for entry. Today, we have better employment numbers but a high wall for entry. For a young person starting out, a temporary recession is often easier to navigate than a permanent, structural doubling of the price-to-income ratio. We aren't asking for an "idyllic" past. We’re just pointing out that the math of peace and prosperity doesn't work if you can't afford the dirt under your feet.
Don't forget that interest rates in 1980 were in the teens of percent.
Addressed with Lisa.
> there were FAR fewer two income households.
Ah, great: we can transitional seamlessly from intergenerational war to gender war and argue over whether women ought to be barred from having careers.
Shankar, this is a classic straw man fallacy: distorting a structural economic argument into a social grievance to avoid addressing the math. Identifying that it now takes two full-time careers to purchase the same standard of living that one used to buy isn't a "gender war." It’s an autopsy of the middle class.
We aren't debating who "should" work; we are highlighting that labor has been devalued to the point where the family unit must now provide twice the output to secure the same basic "dirt" the Boomer generation bought with half the effort.
OTOH, in 1980 the average 30-year mortgage was at 13.5% interest. Downpayment sizes really aren't that relevant. First-time buyers qualify for FHA loans which require almost nothing down, so it's really about mortgage payments.
The median house price in 2025 is $415k and median household income is $84k, or $7k/month (gross). With an FHA first-time home buyer loan with 3.5% down and 6% interest, that's $14.5k down (two months' gross income) and a $2776 payment (39% of monthly gross income).
In 1980, a $63k home and $21k median income ($1750/month) gives us a downpayment of $2205 (1.25 months' gross income) and at 13.5% interest a $1071 payment (61% of monthly gross income).
Of course, these numbers aren't quite right because first-time home buyers make less than the median income, but the income distribution by age favors recent generations, so if anything this is a conservative view.
It's probably also worth considering the fact that the median 2025 house is a lot bigger and a lot nicer than the median 1980 house. In 2025 the median new house is 2100 ft^2, while in 1980 it was 1600 ft^2, so 2025 buyers are getting 31% more house for their smaller (relative to income) payment. Modern house quality is higher, too.
The people who got a good deal were the late Gen-Xers and early Millennials who were buying their first homes in the 2010s when interest rates were insanely low and house prices hadn't yet experienced the COVID bump. I bought my current home (third home purchase overall) in 2014 for $425k for an interest rate in the 4s, then refinanced to 2.125% in late 2020. Now I have $900k in equity.
The classic "affluent math" where you use your own massive windfall as proof that the system works. You literally admit to ending up with $900k in equity thanks to a lucky refinance, then turn around and tell everyone else that down payments aren't relevant.
You perfectly illustrate the wealth gap rather than proving affordability. You’re focusing on the "monthly payment" to argue that things are easier now, but you’re ignoring the most important part of your own story: Equity.
In your 1980 example, that $1,071 payment (61% of income) was brutal, but it was going toward a tiny principal. When interest rates inevitably dropped in the 90s, those 1980 buyers refinanced and saw their "burdensome" payment turn into massive disposable income and home equity.
Contrast that with a 2025 buyer. They are starting with a 6x price-to-income ratio and a 3.5% down payment. They have zero margin for error. Because the principal is so high, they are paying mostly interest for the first decade. They can’t "refinance" their way into $900k of equity like you did, because they started at the top of the market with extreme leverage.
Also, your comparison of 1,600 sq ft vs. 2,100 sq ft is a red herring. People aren't "choosing" 2,100 sq ft luxuries; they are being forced into them because NIMBY zoning has made it illegal to build the 1,200 sq ft "spartan" starter homes that used to cost 3x income.
The "late Gen-X/Early Millennial" window you mentioned wasn't just a "good deal." It was the last time the ladder was actually touching the ground. Telling a 2025 buyer they are "getting 31% more house" while they spend 40% of their gross income on a massive debt-load, with no hope of the equity windfall you just described. Survivor bias, not an economic analysis.
Interest rates didn't really drop until the mid-90s, halfway through that 1980 boomer's loan, and they paid massive amounts of interest during those 15 years. My first home loan was in 1992, at 9%, though I was actually able to refinance into lower rates within only a few years.
And the late Gen-X/early Millennial window was an unusually good deal... it was not only the last time homes were that cheap, all elements considered, it was also the first time in a very long time they were that cheap.
And this is the crux of the matter. You're comparing the unusually-good situation from a decade ago to the slightly-worse-than-usual situation that exists now and saying that past generations had it so much better... but they really didn't. It only looks that way if you focus on price relative to income but ignore interest rates.
Shawn, you’re suggesting this is just a "slightly-worse-than-usual" dip, but the data says otherwise. We aren't just in a bad cycle; we are at the highest Price-to-Income ratio in American history.
You mentioned that the 1980s buyer paid "massive amounts of interest" for 15 years. That’s true. But you’re missing the tax on mobility. Because their principal was only 3x their income, they could still save, they could still move, and they could eventually refinance, which, as you admitted, led to a $900k equity windfall for you.
A 2025 buyer at 6x income with 3.5% down has no equity to harvest. If they stay for 15 years, the sheer size of the principal means they are still barely chipping away at the loan. They are "locked in" to their houses because any move would require them to port a massive debt-load into an even more inflated market.
You’re asking us to ignore price and only look at the monthly payment, but that’s like saying it doesn’t matter if a car costs $20k or $100k as long as the lease payment is $400. One of those people owns an asset; the other is just renting from the bank. The Boomers had high "rent" (interest) but low "cost" (principal). We have high "cost" and moderate "rent," which leaves us with no path to the $900k safety net you’re currently standing on. Calling that "slightly worse" isn't an economic reality. It’s just a refusal to acknowledge that the ladder you climbed has been replaced by a treadmill.
I would like to see these comparisons go back past the 1960s. I have a sneaking suspicion that the period of cheap housing near big cities was a one-time phenomenon caused by the adoption of the car, which shortened commutes and made it possible to build a million or so new detached houses on cheap land surrounding each major city. Once we ran out of this cheap land, house prices went back up.
What did it cost to acquire your first house in the 1930s? The 1910s? The 1890s?
Melvin, you’ve hit on the "Car-Sized Loophole" theory. You’re right, the mid-century was a geographical anomaly. Before the car, you paid a massive premium to live near a streetcar line or within walking distance of a factory.
In the 1890s and 1910s, housing in urban hubs was actually quite expensive relative to wages, often forcing multi-generational living or crowded tenements. The 1940s–1970s "reset" happened because cars suddenly turned worthless scrublands into prime real estate.
But here is the counter-point: even if the Boomers benefited from a one-time land rush, the current generation is facing a double squeeze. We aren't just out of land; we’ve now got a thick crust of zoning laws, environmental regs, and NIMBY-ism that makes it illegal to build the modern equivalent of those 1950s starter homes.
We can't repeat the car-driven expansion of the 1950s, but we could allow the density that 1910s cities used to manage their own growth. The fact that we don't do either is why that 3x vs. 6x ratio feels less like an inevitable return to the mean, and more like a ladder being pulled up.
Before 1920, most people lived in rural areas.
We are not out of land. Especially given the rise of remote work. Most of the growth is outside of big cities. See https://www.coopercenter.org/research/remote-work-persists-migration-continues-rural-america
Just one example - Louisa County in Virginia grew 7.5% between 2020 and 2025.
Remote work is indeed driving growth in places like Louisa County, but that’s exactly where the problem is most visible.
Re Louisa County, I've just checked: In 2020, the median home in Louisa was around $235k. Today, it’s closer to $400k - $500k. While a remote worker from DC might see that as a "deal," for the local population whose median income is $80k, the price-to-income ratio has effectively doubled in 48 months.
If we aren't out of land, we are out of affordable entry points. When affluent workers migrate to rural areas, they don't just "find" affordability; they bring the price-to-income ratios of the major cities with them. You’re not describing a solution to the housing crisis. You’re describing the gentrification of the entire countryside.
The fact that a "starter home" in a rural county now costs 6x the local median income is the ultimate proof that the Boomer-era math (where you could afford to live where you worked) has fundamentally collapsed.
I live in another exurban area in the same region that has had a huge influx of remote workers and long distance hybrid commuters. The price to income ratio has not doubled for local people.
There are multiple high end developments specifically catering to attracting new people. Existing home prices have not doubled. Prices for those are up some, but not anywhere close to the increase in the median, and increases varies widely with type of property. Waterfront and luxury are up a lot. The rest have seen less increase.
The biggest impact is, it’s harder to find vacant land or bigger parcels for horses or hobby farms. Oh, and, new housing is largely luxury homes.
For Louisa County, it’s within commuting distance of three small or medium cities and about 90 miles to DC. It has a large lake with many lakefront communities. A LOT of communities were built specifically to attract new people.
At realtor.com, today, prices in Louisa ranged from 150k for a 3br/1ba farmhouse fixer upper on 13.5 acres, to just under 3 million for a huge lakefront luxury home. Those are two different markets in one county. 150k is probably a higher entry point there than 10 years ago, but it’s not outrageous.
In 2025, if 13 acres and a house are selling for $150k, it’s almost certainly because the "house" is a shell that won't qualify for a standard mortgage, or it has environmental/zoning liabilities that cost another $150k to fix.
At any rate, you're also making my point for me by mentioning that "new housing is largely luxury homes." When the only new supply is luxury, the "spartan" legacy homes don't stay cheap, they become the only options for everyone else, which drives their prices up regardless of their quality.
Even if the ratio hasn't "doubled" in your specific backyard yet, the trend across the exurbs is clear: when remote workers bring DC or Bay Area salaries into local markets, they don't just occupy the "luxury" tier. They compress the entire market. The "local" buyer isn't just competing with other locals anymore; they are competing with global capital and geographic arbitrage. You might see two different "markets" in the listings, but they are both drawing from the same finite pool of land and labor, and the "ladder" is being pulled up into the luxury tier.
Nope. Wrong again. Danville is a former industrial city that has ALREADY undergone a major revival and is now being held up as a blueprint for other cities. https://cardinalnews.org/2023/03/09/danvilles-revitalization-plan-faced-skepticism-but-now-its-a-model-for-other-communities-heres-how-the-city-did-it/
“Danville’s downtown revitalization is one that other localities are trying to mirror.
Locals say that Craghead Street used to be like a ghost town, and now it’s home to restaurants, apartments, a brewery and a science center. The city’s downtown, called the River District, alone has seen about $300 million in public and private investment in the last decade.”
“The city has won countless awards in the last few years, including the Great American Main Street Award – a national recognition for a successful downtown revitalization.” https://www.wdbj7.com/2025/03/19/rebirth-river-district-how-danville-became-comeback-city/
Boomers bought in Danville, which declined and then bounced back. It has stopped losing population, and recent data shows it’s started to grow again.
See https://cardinalnews.org/2025/01/28/fairfax-county-and-virginia-beach-lose-population-but-danville-gains-for-first-time-in-decades/
“Here’s how big Danville’s net in-migration is: That 1,533 surplus of newcomers since 2000 is bigger than any other locality in Southwest or Southside. You have to go east to Isle of Wight County, northeast to Chesterfield County, or northwest to Bedford County to find a locality with more net in-migration since the last census. These trends represent an affirmation of the policies that Danville has been pursuing to remake itself.”
In other words, your calling Danville a dying industrial town is inaccurate. True in 2009, not true today.
I cited Louisa County as the fastest growing county in the state, at 7.5% since 2020. I did NOT bring it up as an example of affordability, although it is pretty affordable. YOU are the one who started talking about affordability re Louisa and then kept talking about it after I repeatedly told you this. Review the thread.
The percentage of two income married households in 1980 was 51.8%. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140602.htm#:~:text=Among%20married%2Dcouple%20families%2C%2053%20percent%20had%20earnings,in%202011%2C%20versus%2036%20percent%20in%201967.
In 2025, it is 49.6%. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/both-spouses-employed-in-about-half-of-all-married-couple-families.htm#:~:text=PRINT:-,Both%20spouses%20employed%20in%20about%20half%20of%20all%20married%2Dcouple,only%20one%20spouse%20was%20employed.
In other words, no, there has not been an increase in the percentage of two income married households, although wives now earn a higher percentage of family income than before.
Danville started losing jobs in the 70s. Boomers who bought then were typically factory workers at Dan River Mills. People who move to Danville now are often remote workers helping revitalize the area, or working in the newer manufacturing plants for things like EVs and lithium batteries, or in healthcare, or in education, or in distribution, or in entertainment and recreation.
See https://virginiabusiness.com/pay-dirt/#:~:text=%252C%E2%80%9D%2520Bobe%2520says.-,Danville%2520and%2520Pittsylvania,Brosville%2520Industrial%2520Park%2520in%2520Pittsylvania.
“For Danville and Pittsylvania County, 2024 was a monumental year.
In November 2024, battery-component manufacturer Microporous broke ground on a $1.3 billion plant at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill, where it expects to create 2,015 jobs. The following month in Danville, Caesars Virginia hosted the grand opening of its $750 million casino.
“All indicators point to continued growth and momentum,” says Corrie T. Bobe, Danville’s director of economic development and tourism.
It’s a long way from Danville’s past as a textile manufacturing town, an identity that collapsed by the early 2000s as Dan River Mills entered bankruptcy and closed.
Partnering with Caesars Entertainment to bring a casino to the city has proven to be a winning hand for Danville. It received more than $34 million in gaming tax revenue and supplemental payments from when Caesars opened a temporary casino in Danville in May 2023 through December 2024, according to City Manager Ken Larking.
The casino had 1,200 employees on opening day, according to Barron Fuller, regional president for Caesars Entertainment. It’s projected to attract more than 2 million visitors annually.”
20% downpayment is a barrier if you want it to be, but 3% is a viable alternative if you want to get into a home sooner. That is not financial illiteracy. Further, you can pay as big a down payment as you want - 3% is the minimum, not the only option to 20%. You can also pay down the principal as much as you want.
Claiming that remote work and good jobs in thriving small cities is somehow not being productive is just silly. Large cities do not have magic dirt that makes you more productive - you can be productive, and make really good salaries, many places, including many very affordable places.
I did not suggest lowering expectations anywhere in this discussion.
Remote workers and people in Danville do not have long commutes.
I am suggesting that there are affordable areas with high quality of life and good job options today. No compromise required.
If the American Dream is now reduced to 'winning' by moving to a town whose economic revival is based on a casino and remote-work arbitrage, you’ve effectively proven my point that the system is in terminal decline. Over, and out.
Danville’s revival was not built on remote work or the casino, which you would know if you bothered to read the articles before opining.
It has become a regional modern manufacturing hub, notably of EV components and batteries, advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, large scale 3d printing, etc. It’s now the home of one of the Navy's Additive Manufacturing Centers of Excellence.
It has significant employment in higher ed, healthcare, and distribution and logistics.
The casino has a decent number of employees, but it’s definitely not number one in the area. Biggest individual local employer is Goodyear manufacturing. Second is the regional medical center, then either local schools or the city government. Total employment for manufacturing is much higher but spread over multiple companies. Same pattern for higher ed and distribution - total numbers high, multiple employers.
The casino is just a plus.
Also, Danville is an independent city, not a town.
When you hold up a city with a $43k median income and a 29% poverty rate as the new frontier of home ownership, you’ve admitted the game is rigged.
Here are some up-to-date facts for you:
https://gemini.google.com/share/e38aa4c72555
Have a nice weekend, or what's left of it. We really do have to stop now...
Danville MSA has a median income of 49,223, not 43k. The surrounding county has a higher population and income than the city.
As I mentioned before, with independent cities in Virginia, you have to remember to include the surrounding counties in the MSA. They are not automatically included although generally the “city” extends far beyond the limits of the independent city. Virginia city limits have been frozen since the 1980s, by law.
Poverty rate for the MSA is around 17%. Not 29%.
Danville is coming out of a decades long economic slump. Higher skilled jobs like advanced manufacturing, higher ed, and healthcare are in place. Lower skilled manufacturing jobs, distribution, and yes, the casino, offer opportunities for lower skilled workers, and that part of the revitalization, now heating up, helps eliminate poverty.
Danville’s MSA has a bit of a bifurcation, with more seniors and more people without high school degrees than average. That’s in part because younger people with more education and skills moved away during the lean years when jobs were disappearing,
As it revitalizes as an advanced manufacturing hub and medical hub and education hub, and people move in for those jobs, it also has a very decent population of highly educated skilled workers.
Danville was recently given as an example of a top micropolitan area by site selection professionals.
“Site Selection Magazine has recognized Danville as one of the top micropolitan areas in the United States, a distinction that city leaders say affirms the community's significant progress.
A micropolitan area is defined as a city with a population of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000 residents. In the 2024 issue, Danville was ranked 8th, a substantial leap from its 44th position in 2023. This honor is attributed to Danville and Pittsylvania County's eight economic development announcements last year, including the RBW EV Cars expansion, EPL America's expansion, and Microporous' $1.3 billion investment, which is expected to create more than 2,000 jobs.”
https://wset.com/news/local/danville-named-a-top-micropolitan-area-jumps-to-8th-in-national-ranking-growth-site-selection-magazine-us-pittsylvania-county-economic-march-2025
> even when their benefits per capita per year are stable or declining
It looks very different if you look at it by the household level instead of individual
A meaningful share of the increase in total costs comes from composition.
As women shifted from spouse only benefits to worker or dual entitlement, more households now receive two lifetime worker benefits rather than one worker plus a spousal benefit. Average household payouts rise as a result.
This creates bifurcated outcomes. Households with two lifetime earners receive higher total payments, while single earner and spousal benefit households account for a smaller share of distributions(and directly effected by cuts). Individual averages are skewed by survivorship and changing household structure.
The result is a shift in where Social Security dollars go. A larger share of total payouts now flows to higher lifetime earnings households, which also tend to have lower fertility on average, affecting the system wide distribution of a fixed payroll tax base.
Basically the ratio of working to pay not for your own parents but someone else's parents who are quite possibly richer than your own has gone up quite a bit.
There is one aspect of the Boomer generation vis-à-vis institutional power that I don't see touched upon is this essay that I see as another force driving anit-Boomer sentiment. It's that Boomer's as a cohort have remained in leadership roles for an exceptionally long time in congress, as executives, etc whereas other generations were faster to transition leadership to others.
This Boomers vs Millennials framing is explained very well in this email exchange between Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg, I recommend the whole email exchange but I'll heavily quote this reply from Thiel.
https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-millennials
>What I would add to Mark's summary is that, in a healthier society, the handover from the Boomers to the younger generations should have started some time ago (maybe as early as the 1990s for Gen X), and that for a whole variety of reasons, this generational transition has been delayed as the Boomers have maintained an iron grip on many US institutions. When the handover finally happens in the 2020s, it will therefore happen more suddenly and perhaps more dramatically than people expect or than such generational transitions have happened in the past. And that's why it's especially important for us to think about these issues and try and get ahead of them.
>One example of such an "iron grip" from my colleague Eric Weinstein: Of the 67 top research universities in the US, 62 have Baby Boomer presidents (three are Silent Generation and only two are Generation X). Today, the median age of these 67 university presidents is 65 years-old... And this is very different from the recent past. Only thirty years ago, in 1990, the median age of these same university presidents was a much lower 52-years old; the older generation did not completely refuse to give up power; and therefore much greater generational diversity was to be found in university leadership.
Given historical trends you would expect to see much more Gen X leaders in Congress, as presidents, or even as business owners than you do today.
On the other hand I feel like the average age of CEOs and big company executives has gone down.
Then again I started looking for evidence of this by looking up some prominent CEO ages and was surprised to find that Jensen Huang is 62 and Tim Cook is 65; I'd have guessed significantly younger. So maybe the real change is the Paul Rudd phenomenon that rich old people are much better-preserved than they used to be.
Everyone is much better preserved, though rich people do better. It isn't a small effect, healthy 60 years old today could pass for 40 50 years ago.
> each millennial got a larger percentage of parental resources growing up
Yah that was the story, starting to see what the marginal ROI on that looks like
Or at least how much was invested vs just turned to consumption. (Fit the more cynical)
Demographic dividend lit has had a lot of updates since, none very happy, most not yet reconciled generally
>Everyone knows that some groups are richer than others, that the rich groups are more likely to oppose redistribution, and that the poor groups more often support it. You can reframe this as a story of whites vs. blacks, or Boomers vs. Millennials, or the educated elite vs. the working class, or the abled vs. the disabled, or Jews vs. Gentiles, or any of a thousand other dichotomies that all correlate with wealth and with one another. Is this valuable? Does it dry a single human tear? I haven’t noticed.
Yes, exactly, I agree! Everyone wants to devolve the conflict between the wealthy and the poor into identity politics and culture wars, but it's really a class war! The enemy is the capitalists, they're the ones with genuinely conflicting class interests against the rest of us, they're the ones we have to carefully focus our attention on and...
>But it gets worse. Consider the way that “capitalism” gets used in socialist spaces. Although there are still a few classical Marxists with a clear conception of what capitalism is and why they hate it, most lefties just use “capitalism” to mean *gestures around expansively at everything*, with no concern about whether it involves market processes at all. Israel bombing Palestine? That’s capitalism. Trump arresting immigrants? Somehow that’s capitalism too. It’s true that our society is very capitalist, and that capitalism touches in some way upon almost everything. But that gets laundered into an excuse to believe you’re being a good communist by hating everything about everything.
... oh.
So, do you agree that lots of poor people and working class people have some type of legitimate interest in government policy and market/cultural norms that affect their material well-being, or not? Do you agree that there's a genuine conflict, not just a mistake, between the interests of the rich and powerful vs. the poor and working class, or not?
Because if the poor and working class are not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against any particularly rich identity group with interests and actions on net opposed to them, and they're also not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against the economic class of capitalists who are in direct economic conflict with them or the system of capitalism that creates and maintains that conflict and advantages their opponents, then... what exactly are they allowed to do?
How are they allowed to identify and talk about the problem, how are they allowed to identify and talk about their opponents, how are they allowed to identify and talk about solutions?
And let me caveat the obvious response - yes, I believe *you* are smart and nuanced enough to describe how they *should* visualize and discuss and address the problem, if you're given a short blog post in which to define terms and sort nuance. I believe your audience is smart enough to understand and appreciate that approach and nuance. And I believe that's a very, very important thing for intellectuals and academics to be doing in any society.
But 'illegal immigrants are eating dogs and cats' won the last Presidential election.
Nuance and careful definitions are important for actually solving problems. But clear enemies and pithy, one-sentence slogans pitched at a fourth-grade reading level actually *are* important for winning elections. And elections determine which problems get solved and which interests are served.
I have a lot of sympathy for the people who care about an issue enough to actually try to solve it, instead of being the most correct in public discussions about it. They have an extremely hard job against extremely tough opponents.
I would love it i someone could offer them a strategy other than 'pick an enemy and villainize them using slogans that are short, quippy, and wrong'.
I haven't seen anyone win with any alternate strategy, so far.
Maybe I'm wrong in that perception. I'd love to be wrong about it.
But until someone shows me I am, I still have sympathy for the people using the strategies that work to achieve the ends I care about. I may get annoyed, but I'll be slow to chastise them.
> Because if the poor and working class are not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against any particularly rich identity group with interests and actions on net opposed to them, and they're also not allowed to notice or mention or call out or work against the economic class of capitalists who are in direct economic conflict with them or the system of capitalism that creates and maintains that conflict and advantages their opponents, then... what exactly are they allowed to do?
Sure, but if the poor and working class can do that, then the rich and middle class can do it too. We can call out the poor and working class as being contrary to our own class interests, and start fighting them too.
I would rather have peace. But if we must have class war, then I'm going to be a fearless warrior on behalf of the Upper Middle.
2 responses.
The first is the typical 'I wrote an article telling one side to put down their gun, while not telling the other side to change anything' problem. If the people you're castigating put down their gun while their opponents don't, they just lose. Articles talking about how both sides can mutually disarm or even collaborate are good, articles castigating only one side an expecting them to take that on board and change their tactics are kinda naive for this reason.
The second is that the wealthy and powerful don't need slogans and elections to advance their interests, they already hold the reins of power. Definitionally!
If both sides stop trying to vie for power with politics and rhetoric, then the people already in power win by default. This is part of the reason a lot of people react to calls for moderation and civility as inherently conservative and oppressive - if you're opposing extreme actions that could change things, then you're sort of inherently favoring those who rule under the current status quo, and opposing those who are punished by it.
Did the wealthy by definition hold the reins of power under the Khmer Rouge?
>the wealthy and powerful
> So, do you agree that lots of poor people and working class people have some type of legitimate interest in government policy and market/cultural norms that affect their material well-being, or not? Do you agree that there's a genuine conflict, not just a mistake, between the interests of the rich and powerful vs. the poor and working class, or not?
The kind of person who complains about capitalism is typically not a poor/working-class person. Even if they are unemployed or broke, they have an education and cultural upbringing that matches higher classes.
Moreover, there is no contradiction in what you quoted and letting them talk about their problems. If people organize and say "these tax cuts help the wealthy, not the poor", that's very different than saying "man, these capitalists are destroying us poors, we need socialism."
> But 'illegal immigrants are eating dogs and cats' won the last Presidential election.
It did not win the last election. What won the last election was a promise to reassert control over the Southern border and immigration in general, a promise to lower the cost of living, and to a lesser degree, a promise to end "wokeness".
>The kind of person who complains about capitalism is typically not a poor/working-class person. Even if they are unemployed or broke, they have an education and cultural upbringing that matches higher classes.
If you work for a salary you are a worker. If you make your money from owning and investing capital, you are a capitalist.
(and, of course, many people own investments and property that represent a larger or smaller portion of their wealth, and where you land along that scale will moderate your interests and positions, which is one of the biggest differences between the old who have accumulated capital for decades and the young who live almost entirely off their labor)
Yes, rich/poor is a relevant social and political factor that we need to keep an eye on, as is educated/uneducated. And yes, they correlate somewhat with labor vs. capital, but nowhere near perfectly.
But they're different factors than labor vs. capital. And the vast majority of those who complain about capitalism are primarily workers.
>If people organize and say "these tax cuts help the wealthy, not the poor", that's very different than saying "man, these capitalists are destroying us poors, we need socialism."
Sure, we tried targeting 'The 1%' explicitly. That was also called 'identity politics' and criticized along exactly the same lines.
To be fair, maybe Scott would say 'attacking the 1% is totally fine, in a way that attacking Boomers and Capitalism is not'. But my impression is strongly that the vast majority of people who defend capitalism, would also defend the 1%.
> What won the last election was a promise to reassert control over the Southern border and immigration in general, a promise to lower the cost of living, and to a lesser degree, a promise to end "wokeness".
Was any of that discussed without short misleading slogans and oversimplified arguments and attacks on villainized outgroups?
Like, yeah, I agree they did the same thing I'm talking about to a lot of issues at once; that doesn't dispute my point that this is how politics is done.
> If you work for a salary you are a worker. If you make your money from owning and investing capital, you are a capitalist.
This is not the way that the public defines those things. The public is wrong in this case and you are correct, but this only highlights the difference - the fact that you consider any "owner of capital" a capitalist is a sign of higher-class education.
> And the vast majority of those who complain about capitalism are primarily workers.
In the literal sense, yes. But they are not complaining in the way that a socialist means they are. Their issue is not that capital is privately owned. In fact, I suspect most would not care if they just happened to be the owners of capital themselves. They want to be rich, not tearing down the system.
> Sure, we tried targeting 'The 1%' explicitly. That was also called 'identity politics' and criticized along exactly the same lines.
By right-wingers, maybe. The colloquial definition of "identity politics" is about the reduction of politics along race/sex/gender/similar lines.
> But my impression is strongly that the vast majority of people who defend capitalism, would also defend the 1%.
As in, their existence? Yes, most people who defend capitalism are okay with the some amount of income or wealth inequality.
> Was any of that discussed without short misleading slogans and oversimplified arguments and attacks on villainized outgroups?
The discussion is not relevant. What's relevant is people's reason for voting how they did. The polls we got after the election were clear that people's choices were as I described. They may not like Tony Hinchcliff calling Puerto Rico garbage, but they'll hold their noses and vote R because they don't trust Dems to handle the border or inflation.
The working class has a "revealed preference" via voting-with-their-feet in favor of living with the capitalist class, and not under socialist governments.
I think if your actual complaint is about capitalism, you are certainly *allowed* to make the complaint and call out capitalists (in a way where I would consider it illegitimate to sublimate the complaint onto Jews or whoever). I just don't think most of those anti-capitalist complaints are valid.
On this blog, I'm mostly trying to say true things, not come up with politically-useful slogans. My guess is that sloganspace doesn't actually contain anything good enough to get what you want, and you will have to work things out some other way.
I'm very happy that this blog is a place where the focus is on actual understanding and solutions, rather than sloganeering - that's why I'm here.
I guess my concern is just the difference between 'this is not a place for sloganeering' and 'sloganeering is a bad practice that no one should do'.
Or I guess more specifically, 'sloganeering is a bad practice, and everyone on this one side should stop doing it (probably it's bad on the other side too, but I don't talk about that as much because I don't run into it to be annoyed by it as often)'
Like, my take is that war is bad, and if you can get both sides to stop shooting you should. But if you try to get one side to stop shooting while ignoring the other than you're just trying to make that side lose.
And I think this analogy applies to sloganeering. It's bad, yes, but if one side stops and the other doesn't I think they categorically lose immediately.
That's why I care when it feels like the implication is more 'this side is annoying because they sloganeer' instead of 'everyone who sloganeers is annoying'.
And I guess it's why I'm also a little bristly when someone demeans everyone who sloganeers as dumb and venal, as if that's the only reason anyone would ever use those tactics. Like a soldier or police officer, I have some respect for the people who do terrible but necessary things to support a cause they believe in.
Curious whether you disagree, though - do you think a side could actually win national elections with only nuanced, measured discussions at *every* level, and no sloganeering at all?
(Also, re: validity of critiques of capitalism, I expect I think they're more valid than you do, but I also expect it to come down to semi-boring semantic and rhetorical differences rather than an interesting crux. For To take the Trump example from your post: Obviously Trump got famous and respected for being a Capitalist and playing a Capitalist on TV, if our society didn't love and revere Capitalists as part of our central mythology he wouldn't be in office, and even if the Republicans had elected someone else who promised to be strict on immigration they probably wouldn't be dragging people off the street the way ICE has been. I am *guessing* our crux will be something like 'non-capitalist societies drag people off the street all the time, that's not a unique problem with capitalism,' to which I would say I think it's rhetorically valid to critique the problems of a system so that people can notice and try to patch the system to fix them, even if other systems have the same problem and wouldn't be better. IE, I think you can criticize capitalism (or anything) without implicitly calling for it to be replaced with something different.)
We need a prediction market on how long until someone shares this with only the commentary: "okay boomer".
Too late, it probably already happened.
I agree, but the valid criticism that remains is more personal.
Boomers divorced more than other generations. The children of divorced Boomers are mad about that, understandably. It feels like their parents abandoned them.
Boomers also provide less childcare to their grandchildren than other generations. The children of deadbeat grandparents are mad about that too, although to be fair some of it is due to Millennials moving away or having kids later in life. This is part of what's fueling sad/costly childcare decisions and the fertility decline. It feels like Boomers abandoned their children and grandchildren yet again.
Sam Kriss and Louise Perry write: "'When they were young, the Baby Boomers broke apart the multi-generational community: untempered youth, wild youth leading itself towards its own ends. Now, they’re doing it again. They have absconded from their duty as old people, which is to be the link between the future and the past—because the world doesn’t have a past anymore, and precious little future either.'"
"These Baby Boomers escaped the extended family when it suited them to do so, and some of them are still rich enough to find pleasure in what liberal individualism insists is the 'true purpose of human life': that is, their leisure time, free from unwanted social obligations. For these lucky few, there are still just enough migrant workers to provide cheap care, and the state pension is still arriving reliably in their bank accounts every month, courtesy of working age tax payers. In a material sense, they don’t need the traditional family. Of course this will not be true for future generations, given that the pyramid scheme that is the welfare state is starting to collapse."
https://www.louiseperry.co.uk/p/we-will-all-become-boring
> Boomers divorced more than other generations. The children of divorced Boomers are mad about that, understandably. It feels like their parents abandoned them.
I agree that some of this discourse is just people taking their legitimate criticisms of their own parents, who were lousy, and broadening it to include my parents, who were great.
I agree having kids later and more moving away are important parts of the story. Gen X and Millenials are really experiencing that sandwich exhaustion between taking care of elders and taking care of children. When we were raising little kids, one set of grandparents had already died and the other was too aged to be able to provide any help. If I'd chosen to have kids in my 20s, and not moved away, I would have had more support.
Boomers were likely the first generation to take advantage of liberalized divorce laws in the 70s and 80s, at least at scale. Their kids may feel "abandoned" but i'm not sure they would have wanted to live in a house with all the problems associated with a failing marriage.
Looking at some 'wealth by generation over time' graphs, I have an intuition that there's a stable and repeating pattern in the US of the elderly accumulating all the wealth and power while the young are struggling and disenfranchised. And that this creates a legitimate and perpetual intergenerational conflict where the old people really are hurting the young by keeping wealth away from them and passing policies that benefit themselves and their preferences. Plus probably the gerontocracy genuinely slows down progress and improvement by resisting new ideas and paradigm shifts for as long as physically possible.
(and yes, I'm saying this *despite* material conditions improving over time in general - this is a separate point about relative positions and interests at a given timepoint)
Assume that pattern is true, you *could* look at each generation noticing this dynamic with their parents/grandparents generation, blaming that older generation as particularly bad, and failing to notice and address the repeating pattern and the structural factors that cause it, and say they are being foolish and unfair and mistaken.
And you wouldn't exactly be *wrong*, but, I still have two basic objections to this take.
The first is that it seems to hold people to a very high standard. At a societal level, I'm glad they even noticed the conflict and tried to take coordinated action to address it at all, a lot of problems never make it that far. And expecting people with no background in history to notice historical trends extending into times they weren't alive for, especially ones going back before modern digital record-keeping that they can easily Google, is a lot to ask.
The second is that... well, imagine there's a slave on a southern plantation being whipped. Yes, in a certain sense, the master holding the whip is not unusual from any other master holding any other whip on any other plantation, and the system of slavery implemented across all of those plantations is not unusual from many other systems of slavery that have existed across human history.
In a sense, yes, the slave's *real* problem is with the institution of slavery itself, or the facets of human nature and economics that make it a recurring pattern across human societies. That's the *real* villain, here.
But I don't think he's *wrong* to also hate, or to blame, the individual person holding the whip.
Even if the societal pattern is the overarching problem here, even if the master in questions wouldn't even be holding a whip if they were born into a different system with different institutions and different incentives... I still think it's right to hate and attack that person.
Some of the Boomer hate takes the form of people complaining about Boomers selfishly spending their offspring’s inheritance on cruises (unlike what their parents supposedly did not do).
[this isn't to argue with you -- I know you're just offering up a mindset out there, and not necessarily supporting it]
I have some trouble with the idea that children are entitled to their parents' assets and that parents' shouldn't enjoy their retirement savings after 40-50 years of labor. But of course this resentment from children will vary a lot based on circumstances.
As a Gen X person, I certainly never felt entitled to my mom's hard-earned savings nor did I ever resent her for enjoying her retirement nor for her splurges before retirement. It wasn't my money and my task was to go out and find my own way.
The whole idea of "my inheritance" as it relates to parents who are still living strikes me as repulsive. Many oldens wind up having to spend down their assets (at least in the US) on things like healthcare or nursing home care. None of us knows what's waiting for us. As it happened, my mom died three years after retiring and I inherited money that should have gone to supporting her old age. I would have definitely chosen the other option -- no inheritance and my mom alive to have known my children.
“I have some trouble with the idea that children are entitled to their parents' assets and that parents' shouldn't enjoy their retirement savings after 40-50 years of labor. But of course this resentment from children will vary a lot based on circumstances.”
Calling it “entitlement” is editorializing (expressing an opinion).
Parents choosing to pass on wealth instead of spending it “selfishly” (just) have different values. They might not be for everyone but they might not be wrong either.
(I’m a DINK posting this from Curaçao.)
My "entitled" was intended to simply echo your framing of "their offspring's inheritance" -- grown adult children who see the assets or income of their still-living parents as "theirs" are *by definition* considering themselves to be entitled to those assets. That's what entitlement means -- "that thing over there is rightfully mine." The rest of what I wrote is my opinion entirely, yes.
I also get that my opinion is pretty culturally bound and that these bonds of mutual obligation between parents and children vary so widely all over the planet. Even here in the US, among a fairly homogeneous group that I work with in my therapy practice, I see a wide range of opinions and conflict based on differing assumptions and expectations. I know from working with people from other parts of the world that cross-generational expectations are often much more rigid in other countries, and they usually don't run in the direction of kids expecting to get more money out of the parents, but quite the reverse.
“grown adult children who see the assets or income of their still-living parents as "theirs" are *by definition* considering themselves to be entitled to those assets.”
There is a whole lot of assuming going on here.
Not all adult children are seeing the assets as “theirs”. Some parents see this as an important goal regardless of whether their children expect it.
(Certainly, some children might expect it. But it isn’t all of them.)
(Personally, I’m not a fan of any “expectation/entitlement”.)
Very confused about this interaction, we seem to be misunderstanding each other in some basic way.
Nowhere did I say that all adult children are seeing the assets as theirs. My whole second paragraph would seem to make that clear. Yes I agree with you that parents vary as to their morals and expectations around passing assets on, as do children.
You said my use of the word "entitlement" was editorializing and I responded that those children who do view their living parents' assets as "theirs" are *by definition* (without any need for editorializing) describing the thing that entitlement means. To feel entitled to something is to believe it is rightfully yours.
I don't think we have any disagreement at all. You would need to clarify for me what assumptions you think I'm making. I'm definitely not assuming that all children bring these expectations/entitlements. And yes quite obviously, some parents expect this of themselves while others do not.
“Nowhere did I say that all adult children are seeing the assets as theirs.”
You only mentioned this group.
You could have said (something like) “While it’s not all of them, …” and your point would have been more clear. This would have indicated that you knew the other group existed but you weren’t commenting about them. As it was, no one has any idea you realize this other group exists.
“To feel entitled to something is to believe it is rightfully yours.”
??? Was there any indication that I didn’t know what “entitled” meant?
The people who are arguing that boomers should pass wealth to their children aren’t advocating “entitlement”. So, you aren’t understanding something fundamental here.
“And yes quite obviously, some parents expect this of themselves while others do not.”
It’s obvious if you mention it.
The reason the vitriol falls on boomers is not because they’re any worse than younger generations, but that they’re far worse than the generation that preceded them.
I think people rise to the circumstances they've been handed. The Greatest Generation was given the Depression and WWII to cut their teeth and their moral commitments on. They provided a safer and more stable world for their children. We all want safety and stability for our children and yet it's suffering that creates wisdom. From my perspective, there's no value to blame and no whole group of people is worse. We are a product of our experiences.
I do not think the Boomers as a group did leave a better world for the next generation. Nor do I think that Gen X or the Millennials will or even are capable of doing so either. The difference is that the inheritance of the Boomers was significantly better than that of previous generations, but they failed to pass it forward.
If they're getting credit for that, they also get the blame for setting up the Social Security system the way it is, which wipes out most of the good.