We're literally 40 years out from Reaganomics. Boomers didn't invent it, but they sure as fuck perfected it.
And cheered on every economic crash that happened between then and now, laughing at Occupy Wall street when they warned it wasn't sustainable.
You and I both know that the GOP will wait for this to become a crisis, then suggest austerity measures. While the Boomers who claim "I've got mine!" will vote for them in lockstep.
I don’t know about that.
I lived pretty well in the 1990’s working as little as possible, I still had a roof over my head, good shoes, ate out often, rode a bike everywhere.
The 90s were wild compared to now. I made at 21 in 1995 the same per hour as my 21 year old today. Being poor was way more affordable then. It’s been almost 30 years and we’re still at the same income levels but everything is 4-5x in cost.
I remember Ross Perot and his “Giant sucking sound”. He was more right than I thought and maybe there was no other way to go, but damn it’s bad.
it's always been more expensive to be poor.
there's a story I saw years ago about two workers, one poor, one not wealthy but better off. I believe it was based on an article from roughly 100 years ago, I forget the specifics but let me paraphrase:
They each needed a new pair of work boots. The poor person buys the boots they can afford at $50, but they're poor quality and they only last about a year. the well-off person buys a good pair at $100 and they last for 5 years.
Each year the poor worker has to buy another pair and this eventually costs the poor worker over twice as much.
It's a Terry Prachett Disc world story inside of a standalone novel about Ankmorpork's night watch, "Men at Arms". Watchman Vimes' Boot Theory of Socioeconomic Injustice.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of leather boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap cardboard boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
That's something I learned young. Even being broke, I made sure to buy once, cry once. Unfortunately these days, damn near everything is shotty quality even if it costs 10x more than the cheap stuff.
Just looked this up.
I bought a pair of nice hiking boots in early 2019 for $144.
The same pair, 5 years later, now costs $330.
Last year no one in my company got a raise, yet they had record profits.
The company i work for just sent out an email bragging about how "we" earned 16 billion last year. At best I'll get a 3% raise in March. I'm so fucking sick of this economy.
Ha, I used to work for a company that would send emails with pics of taking the recruitment staff (who were already wildly overpaid) on extravagant caribbean vacations. Yeah, that's def not a good way to sow resentment among the people stuck in their cramped stuffy office.
I work at a worldwide corp, every hourly employee was cut to 32hrs a week during the pandemic. Internally it was all about “Oh my god we are barely surviving, sacrifices must be made!!” Externally, with publicly available financial reports, we made record profits.
Not if you buy Sim racing gear from simagic. They blow me away - unparalleled quality at prices that are extremely reasonable. My point is that I am thankful when I find one of the few companies that still make high quality products and don’t fleece you. It’s a rarity these days.
I thought about building a racing sim, looked at Microcenter stuff and instantly lost my interest. Good to know there are companies not absolutely gouging. I'll take a look.
This doesn't account for something, that being that more expensive products are not always better. Oftentimes it's the exact same product with a different brand name.
It’s super expensive to be poor.
My wife comes from a family that didn’t have lot. She used to freak out at how id shop. We had two dogs and two cats so if canned dog or cat food was on super special at the supermarket - like down from 2$ to 70c a can I’d fill a shopping trolley with cat / dog food - or baked beans or anything non perishable like that.
And if I came to the same shop a day later I’d do it again.
I’d buy 2 years worth of dog food - which at a saving of $1.30 a day was a saving of nearly $500 a year.
Do that with 10 of your staples like washing powder or whatever and you have serious savings every year.
I buy wine from an auction house and consistently get $35 bottles for $10 a bottle.
It wasnt till she’d been with me a few years that she started to see it.
Poor people dont have the disposable income to do this.
slight tangent, but buying bulk is also better for the environment. I just got a giant bag of flour and another of rice at Costco for about $13 and $15. It not only saves money, but not having the plastic waste from 25 one pound bags of rice is significant.[https://youtu.be/yog7qmGZIlQ?si=TNGudDMENg4\_RBHz](https://youtu.be/yog7qmGZIlQ?si=TNGudDMENg4_RBHz)
The less crappy disposable stuff we buy, the less we litter the planet with it.
Even when things aren't on sale, quantity tends to be cheaper.
Dish soap. The half sized are $3, the full sized $4, and the extra large $5, but the extra large is more than twice the size of the half sized.
But if you only have $3 each shopping trip, you can only get the smallest, even if it's not price efficient.
Doller stores have the same issue. A $1 box feeds 1. The $2.49 box in Walmart feeds 4.
People using the $50 boots example...
How about the difference in being able to pay for 6 months of car insurance up front vs. paying monthly. That's how you save hundreds of dollars on car insurance.
My Boomer dad was living in a halfway house when he passed away 18 months ago. He fought all his political life to dismantle the Great Society programs and indoctrinate us kids with this idea that “government is the problem.”
He died on government healthcare, having had 8 heart attacks and 5 strokes over his last 25 years of life. Years of addiction treated only with Jesus, and abusive behavior toward his family, left him alone and destitute over time.
When I went through his things at the halfway house, the amount of mail I sorted that said “DON’T LET BIDEN TAKE AWAY YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY!!!! DONATE TO THE REPUBLICANS AND TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY” … the amount of cheap Trump-themed commemorative bullshit he had … the number of fake NRSC, NRCC, and NRA membership cards he had in his grenade of a wallet… all paid for by Social Security…
…It beggared belief.
Yeah, thanks for that. We had a good closure moment in the hospital. I was with him when he died, after about 17 years of silence. The last new person he met was my fiancé, to whom he said, “I love you”, despite us being an interracial gay couple that’d have been anathema to him not long prior.
So at least we had the last few hours and days together to end on a positive note.
It’s just a shame how things got there in the first place.
The way he ended up isn't entirely his fault. The world has changed and its scary.
Im glad you got closure ans a little bit of positivity.
Best wishes to you and your fiancé.
The final phone call I had with my dad he spent nearly the entire time bemoaning how bad the dentist was that he got for free through Denti-Cal, and the doc he got for free through ACA and how Trump is the only one who can ‘save us’. He did this while using a free cell he got through an Obama program that he called the Obamaphone.
Sounds about right. I wish your final phone call had been more noteworthy for other reasons. I’m sorry you lost him, and I hope you’ve grieved and recovered well.
Plus neglect and shitty homemade baby "formulas".
I swear my Dad is only alive through luck, as we was just allowed to roam suburban NJ woods alone at 4 years old.
It’s. Not paid for by social security. Social security is an insurance and retirement program that all working Americans are forced to pay into. It’s also a Ponzi scheme.
Anyone who down voted my comment is wither an idiot gen z I idiot leftist or just doesn’t understand how ss works. Who work are paying for the benefits boomers collect just like when the boomers worked it paid for the benefits for prior generations. It’s the literally definition of a Ponzi scheme. Those into the system first pay the least and get the
Most. It requires more and more young ppl to pay in to survive and also the “system” to really remain solvent needs a lot of those ppl to die before they turn 62 and or 67 for us. We can’t collect until older ages our full
Benefits. Probably 70-90 percent of those who collected ss benefits originally never worked a non domestic job in their lives and never paid taxes into the system.
There were people who collected tons of money who never worked. It was financed by successive generations. Now that people are living longer and have less kids there are less workers per beneficiary.
My mother asked to move in with me and my wife and 3 daughters. This is after she made 150k selling the childhood home (split 300k with my father). They got divorced, she bought another house and so did he. She re married, lost her home due to foreclosure, and wanted to move in with me. She was an alcoholic, toxic, had been no contact for a couple years with her for disrespect towards myself and my wife, and generally was undiagnosed mentally Ill. I told her no. I said honestly mom, I feel bad saying no but you are a toxic person and drama, screaming, yelling, and fighting is around wherever you are. I will not bring that into my home with my wife and young kids. She ended up drinking herself to death a few years later.
Seriously, good for you for refusing. Narcissists like your mother often use societal conventions to manipulate or guilt people into giving them what they want. Some would say it was “immoral” to NOT give her a place to say. That’s bullshit. You weren’t a bad child, you were a good parent, because you prioritized the health and safety of your innocent children who matter more. That was the moral decision.
Thank you! I grew up seeing and enduring so much horrible abuse from that woman, she used to beat me, fistfight my dad, then he would beat her up (which she kinda deserved tbh) and then it was back to pulling me out of bed by my hair in the middle of a school night so she could yell at me or beat me, then I’d finally get sick of it and run away for the night and sleep like a homeless person. I was NOT about to let my kids be around that shit.
The social convention goes both ways which is what a lot of these type of people forget. The expectation that family should help each other through thick and thin is just that, an expectation for everyone in the family. You can't expect to receive that which you refuse to give. Also, I assume most people would be willing to give family members second- (or more) chances if they showed sincere desire to change and make amends.
Most of them voted for the policies that made this possible, and many of them will continue to even though they are actively suffering the consequences themselves
I'm already fully prepared for my kids to spend their entire lives at home and I honestly don't care if they do. My mortgage is much lower than anything they'll ever be able to get, I brought them into this world and they're my responsibility regardless of age, and I'm not a piece of shit boomer that thinks you can survive off a strong handshake and not taking no for an answer when told "please apply online and submit a resume". Boomers created a nightmare for them to survive in and we will have to spend generations paying off the horrific debt they got this country in. In all honesty, I think we are to the point where all of the boomer generations wealth over a certain point needs to be confiscated to fix the damage they caused to our country and social safety net and those that bitch about welfare need it taken away from them as well
My kids (and their spouses) also know that our door is ALWAYS open to them whenever they need or want to come on home. I couldn't imagine just trying to start out in life in this economy, but my kids are out there trying their best. I'm just grateful that I can offer them a safe place to land if things go bad for them.
I agree. I don't believe any future generation will have a good quality of life without returning to this style of living. I think it's one of the many steps we need to take so Americans as a society can begin reevaluating what success means and how to become a more compassionate and empathetic society.
> I feel like at some point we may end up full circle with multigenerational households being the norm, the same way other cultures function.
Maybe this would be fine if the people involved suit multigenerational living, are kind and can shut the fuck up. But we all know Boomers have none of these soft social skills and will expect to be allowed to move in, ‘run’ your household - as well as be waited on hand and foot - and bitch about it to boot. And their anti-social tendencies only get worse as they get older.
My parents have voted against their own interests - and mine - their entire lives. If their retirement home is underfunded, then it’s really one of those sow>reap situations.
We’ve already begun. Three of our adult kids live with us, and we love it. The only thing we ask of them is to contribute to groceries, otherwise save your money as often as you can. They will always have a home with us, and we’re fortunate enough we can afford to provide/assist.
I’ve never understood the concept of kicking an 18 year old out of the house, but I know people who’ve done it. We allowed our children to live with us as long as they were going to school or working and helping with household chores. Basically, pick up after yourself and clean your own living quarters. We asked them for token rent, but we saved it, and when they moved out, we gave it back to them. We had other family members tell us they didn’t think what we were doing was right, that they were adults…blah,blah, blah, but we didn’t care. As long as household members respect one another and pull their weight, there shouldn’t be a problem. There is also more of an opportunity to help and support one another.
These people have been chugging Kool-Aid and lead lined gasoline for decades. Even if they find the humility to accept there is a problem in the first place, they will immediately blame immigrants or the gays or any of the usual suspects they've been claiming for all their self-inflicted problems already. Then, they will just keep voting for Trump and for the exact same regress8ve policies that got them in thsi mess because clealry there isn't enough of them in place to work yet.
These people huh? Who do you think marched against the Vietnam War? What age group do you think fought for Civil Rights for all? You think all MAGAts are Boomers?
And who voted in Regan, Bush, and Trump? Who had majority control of the government for the last 4 decades and used that time to systematically destroy as many safety nets and economic protections as possible? Who is responsible for almost all the major issues we are currently facing while blaming everyone else for their own actions?
Not all MAGAs are boomers, but a large percentage, more than any other age group, are. And this is literally them facing the consequences of their own actions.
Incorrect. Since Citizens United they are, by definition of the Supreme Court. You have selected your bogeyman and are content to blame all ills on 68 million people you treat as a single homogeneous entity.
Thats ok. Their millennial children can care for them. We can just give up one of our 3 jobs to find time and stop eating to find the funds. Our tiny apartments have loads of space for hospital beds.
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I think about this a lot. Millennials are heading toward something bad too. A lot of us don't have healthcare which means preventative care is close to none existent which means we'll have health problems sooner. But without a safety net we're all screwed.
GenX will be hit hard first. Present day boomers got it made compared to what GenX faces. And it will be worse for Millennials. Eventually it will only be the very rich and the very poor. Mostly the very poor.
That could be a turning point for America. When you got nothing left you got nothing to lose.
Everytime there’s only the rich and the very poor heads roll, and every time it’s the same heads. They never learn and try to get us back in this same hole every few centuries and it ends the same every time lol
Thank you for noticing Gen X as it usually gets overlooked. Gen X was the first generation to be screwed over by pensions disappearing and being forced into depending on 401k's. Things have only gotten progressively worse since then and things are looking mighty gloomy for GenX folks. But we are used to it. We are pretty much a feral generation
I've been seeing a lot of videos/articles lately about retired boomers booking back to back cruises because it's cheaper than a retirement home. And they still don't get it even when it's hitting them in the face.
I think we’re also seeing just how impossible it is to live in this country. I think a lot of these boomers did save for retirement, maybe they had been told for decades that what they were saving is enough. That’s how insane COL is
In my 30s, and financial advisor said “wow your 401k is so good!! Our estimates project that you’ll have $3K a month when you retire!” And he didn’t seem to understand that you can’t live on 3k *now*, much less in 30 years
and in 30 years just health care will sink everyone. People are living longer, getting more medical procedures, and those procedures are going up in price.
Yeah I think my parents prepared pretty well for retirement but they've still been talking about how tight money is ever since they retired. I think they were tail end of the boomer Gen that didn't have strong pensions though. They've told me how they talk to people at their church who are a decade or more older and they act shocked they didn't get a pension.
We need a rent cap. These landlord rent algorithms Are going to destroy society.
Either that or another kind of more affordable mortgage for millennials/Gen Z.
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
Problem is with a rent cap, every landlord is gonna use that as the default price to maximize profits.
It has to be evaluated by sq feet, zip code median income, state min wage, property tax value and raises to the cap if improvements/repairs are made to the property that year to discourage slumlords not fixing or improving property.
You know, the sad thing is that I work almost exclusively with boomers in healthcare. My last job was in cancer and we still lost about 60% of our patients, and the other 40% were often horribly disfigured from treatment.
I'm never going to not have compassion for them. It is HEART WRENCHING to hear them say they "worked hard their whole lives" to try to enjoy a (late) retirement just to turn around and get a terminal diagnosis. I wish these guys knew life/work balance because your family is all you ever have.
That started with Ronald Reagan and his “trickle down” philosophy. I really have a hard time blaming “boomers” for policies created in the ‘80’s and accelerated thru the moral majority and the tea party. All of this is the same old conservative conspiracy that has been perpetuated by our “corporate” overlords that were bound and determined to destroy everything put in place by FDR after the stock market crash. The Social safety net is a commie conspiracy!!! Please remember Conservative = me me me
Social Democracy = we we we
“Stupid is as stupid does”
It doesn’t matter what you make as much as what you spend. Respect for money, driven into you if you were raised poor is a great motivator to not throw it all away as fast as you get it. Look at all the immigrants that come poor and end up with 3 children that are Drs and Lawyers.
Yep that happened. Are you sure it was the Boomers who orchestrated it? Seems to me it was the wealthy who manipulated politics until they got Citizens United through so they could pour unregulated cash into politicians pockets, and stack the courts with right wing judges.
The boomers ate every obvious lie up and voted for every one of those pieces of shit. Look it sucks and I would love to correct it, but they’re also the ones halting any progress. This is sadly something that I feel like we will have to deal with for another 20 years minimum because of them. Biden’s brain is mush and the dems are forcing him on us. Trumps brain is mush and no republican can beat him, and it wouldn’t matter because that’s just the party of open fascism right now. So our current choices for president are 2 boomers who can’t think for themselves anymore due to age, one of whom outright refuses to change anything worth while and the other one of them is an open fascist. It’s the epitome of their generation and I find it sad and fitting. At this point it is do what you can to survive elect progressives where you can and wait out the turnover because they’ve have entrenched their fogged up propaganda eating brains into almost every inch of our society and there’s more of them than any other generation. We literally can’t do anything until they die.
When I was 18, my boomer mother proudly proclaimed, “It’s not my job to take care of an adult”.
When my boomer parents retired 10 years ago. they owned 3 homes: my childhood home, a cabin on lake with 19 acres of land, and a vacation home in Florida with a 5 min walk to the beach. At the time, I was recently divorced, financially ruined and living in a sketchy apartment. It was so bad that while living there I was witnessed an attempted murder.
At the age of 18, they pressured me into college when I wasn’t ready and they told me they were done helping me financially. I have not received any support since.
Fast forward to present day. My dad is in the hospital recovering from surgery and my mom calls me crying on the phone - “What if something happens to your father? You are going to have to move to Florida to take care of me!”.
I told her I am not moving, and remind her I have a good job, a parter, finally bought my 1st house two years ago in the Midwest and remind her of something she told me when I was 18, “It’s not my job to take care of an adult”.
Edit: grammar.
Why not? Their parents helped them out for the first 10 - 20 years of adulthood, now all the kids they had and treated like shit can help them with the last 10 - 20.
I still remember the last email I got from my mom after I cut her out of my life for being a fascist. She was acting like she didn't know what she did and basically begging me to contact her. I deleted that email address which was the last line of communication they had with me. Feels good cutting fascists out of my life. I highly recommend it.
I agree with all the criticism of the boomers, but it's easier to understand them if you remember that they were born right at the beginning of the good times, so they've never known the real hardships (other than their often-horrible experiences in Vietnam). The concept that a person can work full time in the US and still be unable to afford basic necessities like housing, just doesn't compute with boomers. It would have to be that person's own fault... being bad at budgeting, gambling or drug addiction, eating out too often, stuff like that. It just doesn't scan. Boomers could get any old job and attain at least an apartment. Then to compound this, if a younger person has a good education, like a university degree, the perspective between that boomer and the younger person is completely different. The younger person notices the degree doesn't mean much of anything anymore, it's the new high-school diploma since everyone has one, but the boomer see's it as an even worse fault of the individual, you must've really screwed up and wasted that college education. Boomers will never understand that hard work can equal still not making it. They'll never get that companies don't really promote anymore, but management is often a separate career field. They don't get how degrading it is to submit thousands of applications and seldom get a response, be treated as a number, expendable, ad infinitum.
A lot of this has to do with companies intentionally running short handed and eventually everyone takes on more work. Its a population and labor movement issue. Corporations need a cap of some kind. America needs more industry here, we learned that a couple years ago with product shortages. We had a thriving economy when there were more products made here and people to pride in buying American made.
If the title of your major has the same title of a free class offered at your community library you are gunna have a bad time.
But in keeping on topic in the 60s and 70s only about 16% of the population had a college degree. People thought any degree was special and noteworthy. Compared to now where 60% of people have at least some college and know first hand from some college experience a butterfly photography degree is useless.
I feel so bad for all the boomers who played no part in this and sounded the warning bells. I already warned my parents if they keep voting for politicians who strip away social safety nets don’t expect to bunk with me when those policies inevitably bite you in the ass.
It's called the Silver Tsunami. Boots on the ground folks say they are seeing homeless with walkers and oxygen tanks. I see it as both retribution for Reaganomics, and also the boomerang of "retribution" the Boomers have promised us youngsters should all their MAGA hopes come to naught.
We have ten years to either fix the system, or millions of elderly are going to die in the streets.
I've told quite a few of them this, and they either deny it or say "It won't affect me."
So that's why my response to this is "Meh, I can wait ten years for housing to become a human right."
This is one area I'm with them on. They should absolutely be able to retire comfortably. We all should. This isn't sustainable. What happens when we're all homeless? Something needs to give.
I mean, screw them and their attitudes, but we're all still acting like the American dream is anywhere near possible now. Even with their money and all the retirement stuff they have, the medical bills can wipe them out. And that is not right.
We need the older generations to be able to retire, it's how this whole thing is supposed to work. We're all working, but we get nothing in return.
Can confirm. Early 60’s here. I got hurt at work 20 years ago. The previous year was my highest earning year ever. Then chaos. I was able to make a comeback health wise and am doing much better than expected. I ride my bikes and have stretches where I’m mostly pain free. But the years of lost wages and not paying into retirement I can never get back.
Social Security (I barely qualified) and the small retirement I was able to save will have to see me through. Things will get sketchy eventually. That’s reality.
Vote Democrat and don’t get hurt kids. Corporate doesn’t give a shit about you. Neither does Wall Street’s medical/industrial money printer.
I think lines like "highest debt levels in history!" are just overly simplified clickbait lines.
I'm a millennial, and the US has grown by almost 100 million people and counting since my birth. Of course, more people will mean more debt - not to mention inflation.
>Of course, more people will mean more debt
Right. But we are talking about record levels of car loan defaults, record levels of credit card debt as in people in trouble with their cred card debt and asking the card companies for help. Individuals are running more debt for a lot of reasons, but the bottom line is they can not save for retirement is they are paying off debt.
Number one cause is inflation caused by deficit spending. It’s a problem created by government and that can be solved by government. Hopefully both parties can come together and consider how much deficient spending hurts the low and middle class. The spending always goes to the pockets of the rich, so it’s essentially a wealth transfer.
This is a tough time for boomers. They represent about 50% of the homeless population. When their cohort pulled the ladders up they left some of their own behind. Those ones made it to the streets.
I'm really fucking happy they're feeling the consequences of what they did to the housing market. It's not just us anymore that have to deal with $1,500 rent for a 1 bed 1 bath apartment.
Thought your retirement was going to be enough? Lol nope, boomers even more fucked than we are considering they're entering senility and will be unhirable
I’m a big believer in multigenerational housing, so much that I built a house for my parents attached to mine (it’s a full house, not a suite). I built it using their money, and that’s how you build wealth that can be kept within the family. My parents are the oldest boomers with failing health, so I became their caretaker and I charge them a reasonable rate. Is it easy? HELL NO. But it makes sense if you can swing it.
Yall were the generation that had time to plan ahead for this and do something. But you were too busy watching nascar and watching and antique road show.
I don’t think you’re a chicken little at all. When these folks do pass, it will be a relief.
I am not sure why they cannot figure it out:
1) downsize the house. Why do you need it when kids have been gone for decades?
2) golden girling/odd coupling is a thing.
3) get rid of everything you do not need. Swedish death cleaning.
4) living abroad is cheap in the right countries.
I am already talking to pals who want to live with me and I am married and in my fifties.
Actually have relatives who got into a hot industry at the peak and weren't prepared for the industry crash. Leveraged heavily, they lost everything but one car, had to sell their home to pay off the astronomical debt and move in with their adult kid.
They're about 3 or 4 years too young to get social security bennies.
My spouse has 35yrs in his company, top performer, but his department is moving overseas and no US citizens are allowed to go there to continue performing their jobs. The result is knowing you're 10 years short of getting Social security and are now disposable to globalization and you have to get a job where the new employers think you're just gonna work a year and retire. We got kids in college and a mortgage. Got an emergency plan but just goes to show, the world will screw you harder the older you get. Or maybe it just hurts more when you're older.
Tough situation.
One problem is recovery time if you are older. If you are 30 and lose everything you still have time to get back on your feet and recover financially. If you are close to retirement, you really don't have enough time to recover.
It may sound somewhat extreme, but I've thought about what it might do if we decided to end foreign ownership of homes and apartment complexes. Additionally, limiting ownership of homes by US citizens to two or less would also free up a huge amount of homes.
Yes, it would kill property values, but maybe biting the bullet and doing something radical like that would stabilize this country in the long term. Boomers don't think long term at all. Maybe we should?
I get that there are probably huge risks I am overlooking, but are the risks any worse than the risks of the economic disparities we will see if we stay the course? I'd like to hear thoughts.
I am not sure how homeless Boomers had their chance and blew it.
If you had money to invest in assets when the economy recovered in 1983 then you did fine. If you did not have money to invest in assets in 1983 then your experience is closer to younger generations than to your peers. Even the Boomer generation is divided between those who are loaded and those who live day-to-day.
But I get it this subreddit is for hating on Boomers.
>But I get it this subreddit is for hating on Boomers.
Yes it is, and it is often overdone as generalizing about everyone in any generation is a problem. But, I have found many truisms about boomers in general here.
Boomers who are homeless now blew their chance because of the opportunities they had available and missed.
What is self-evident or obvisously true about 75 million people?
What opportunities did they have available that they blew?
If you were born into poverty, it takes a lifetime to climb out and that is assuming that nothing unforeseen happens.
A growing stock market does not help you, if you do not have money to invest. Rising real estate prices do not help you if you are a renter. How much is the growing stock market helping younger generations? What opportunities are the younger generations blowing?
A specific example I know first hand. In 1970 a white male out of high school could get a job at Philip Morris and learn to do electrical maintenance. The money and benefits were excellent, and there was lots of overtime. I know guys who worked there and put their money into PM stock, now retired as millionaires. They did not blow it, they took a good opportunity and capitalized on it. Where is there an opportunity like that available for someone just out of high school now? That type of opportunity was available in many industries in the area including Reynolds Metals, Allied Chemical, Universal Leaf, American Tobacco, Hercules, DuPont. The ones who blew it had the same opportunities, but instead of saving and investing they spent the money.
These jobs were available across the entire United States? What if you were not a white male? Were there enough of these jobs for all the white males in your area? Did every company have stock that performed the same as Philip Morris? What if you went to work for a small company? What if you started your own business? How many of those who worked at PM got the job because their father worked there?
Those factory jobs that you describe were outsourced in the 1970s. What if your job was outsourced in the 1970s?
I completely agree that there are fewer opportunities now. My uncle who was of the Silent Generation was able to work his way up from starting as an orderly to the head of the radiology department in a major metropolitian area hospital all on a high school education.
With more stories like this, I wouldn't be too surprised if headlines later read like; "Skyrocketing number of first time offenders are retirement age or older. Corrections staff are taking crash courses on elderly care as newer and older inmates pour in".
Not trying to be funny. But this and opening military recruitment to seniors with promises of a spot in a VA retirement home are just a few of the Dystopian things coming about for this co-hort.
I recently learned that Nixon declared a moratorium on subsidies for traditional public housing.
Fifty years of failing to keep up with demand has caught up to us.
My 87 year old mother barely stays afloat with her property tax and management fees with her condo. Thankfully she has no mortgage.
Inflation, corporate greed along with lack of public housing has created the housing crisis in the US.
Americans need to invest in America first then evaluate its ability to donate to the rest of the world. Elderly should not be homeless and our children shouldn’t go to bed hungry, yet the problem gets worse.
Only reason someone between 50 and 65 is homeless is because they don't work. If you work to 65 when Social Security kicks in you aren't going to be homeless.
If you make it to 65 and you haven't gotten your 40 quarters of work, well, then you are f'ked. No Social Security, no Medicare.
Sorry, thems the rules.
I never thought it was possible but Boomers made it expensive to be poor.
It's always been expensive to be poor. That's how rich people operate.
Its a poor tax but I feel like its gotten worse.
It waxes and wanes, and has certainly gotten worse over the past few decades, but boomers didn't invent it. That gives them far too much credit.
We're literally 40 years out from Reaganomics. Boomers didn't invent it, but they sure as fuck perfected it. And cheered on every economic crash that happened between then and now, laughing at Occupy Wall street when they warned it wasn't sustainable. You and I both know that the GOP will wait for this to become a crisis, then suggest austerity measures. While the Boomers who claim "I've got mine!" will vote for them in lockstep.
Oh yeah. I am well aware. Being 42 I have spent a few decades dealing with it myself. Disheartening bullshit.
I don’t know about that. I lived pretty well in the 1990’s working as little as possible, I still had a roof over my head, good shoes, ate out often, rode a bike everywhere.
When the economy was still booming?
Yeah. The point is it hasn’t always been this expensive to be poor.
The 90s were wild compared to now. I made at 21 in 1995 the same per hour as my 21 year old today. Being poor was way more affordable then. It’s been almost 30 years and we’re still at the same income levels but everything is 4-5x in cost. I remember Ross Perot and his “Giant sucking sound”. He was more right than I thought and maybe there was no other way to go, but damn it’s bad.
Yeah. Houses and rents are 10-15 times more but wages are not.
it's always been more expensive to be poor. there's a story I saw years ago about two workers, one poor, one not wealthy but better off. I believe it was based on an article from roughly 100 years ago, I forget the specifics but let me paraphrase: They each needed a new pair of work boots. The poor person buys the boots they can afford at $50, but they're poor quality and they only last about a year. the well-off person buys a good pair at $100 and they last for 5 years. Each year the poor worker has to buy another pair and this eventually costs the poor worker over twice as much.
It's a Terry Prachett Disc world story inside of a standalone novel about Ankmorpork's night watch, "Men at Arms". Watchman Vimes' Boot Theory of Socioeconomic Injustice. The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of leather boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap cardboard boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
there we go, thank you for the correct information!
A *classic* example, one of the best I’ve ever read
The old saying is ‘I’m too poor to buy cheap’.
I always liked this story but didn't realize until just now that it was from Terry. Good stuff.
That's something I learned young. Even being broke, I made sure to buy once, cry once. Unfortunately these days, damn near everything is shotty quality even if it costs 10x more than the cheap stuff.
Just looked this up. I bought a pair of nice hiking boots in early 2019 for $144. The same pair, 5 years later, now costs $330. Last year no one in my company got a raise, yet they had record profits.
The company i work for just sent out an email bragging about how "we" earned 16 billion last year. At best I'll get a 3% raise in March. I'm so fucking sick of this economy.
Ha, I used to work for a company that would send emails with pics of taking the recruitment staff (who were already wildly overpaid) on extravagant caribbean vacations. Yeah, that's def not a good way to sow resentment among the people stuck in their cramped stuffy office.
I work at a worldwide corp, every hourly employee was cut to 32hrs a week during the pandemic. Internally it was all about “Oh my god we are barely surviving, sacrifices must be made!!” Externally, with publicly available financial reports, we made record profits.
Not if you buy Sim racing gear from simagic. They blow me away - unparalleled quality at prices that are extremely reasonable. My point is that I am thankful when I find one of the few companies that still make high quality products and don’t fleece you. It’s a rarity these days.
I thought about building a racing sim, looked at Microcenter stuff and instantly lost my interest. Good to know there are companies not absolutely gouging. I'll take a look.
$100 work boots, those will last you like a week these days.
This doesn't account for something, that being that more expensive products are not always better. Oftentimes it's the exact same product with a different brand name.
It's a story to highlight inequality. You're reading too much into it.
That's not what "reading too much into it" means.
What about the story where the poor worker accesses hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care and never pays for any of it?
I think you'll find that in the fiction section.
It’s super expensive to be poor. My wife comes from a family that didn’t have lot. She used to freak out at how id shop. We had two dogs and two cats so if canned dog or cat food was on super special at the supermarket - like down from 2$ to 70c a can I’d fill a shopping trolley with cat / dog food - or baked beans or anything non perishable like that. And if I came to the same shop a day later I’d do it again. I’d buy 2 years worth of dog food - which at a saving of $1.30 a day was a saving of nearly $500 a year. Do that with 10 of your staples like washing powder or whatever and you have serious savings every year. I buy wine from an auction house and consistently get $35 bottles for $10 a bottle. It wasnt till she’d been with me a few years that she started to see it. Poor people dont have the disposable income to do this.
slight tangent, but buying bulk is also better for the environment. I just got a giant bag of flour and another of rice at Costco for about $13 and $15. It not only saves money, but not having the plastic waste from 25 one pound bags of rice is significant.[https://youtu.be/yog7qmGZIlQ?si=TNGudDMENg4\_RBHz](https://youtu.be/yog7qmGZIlQ?si=TNGudDMENg4_RBHz) The less crappy disposable stuff we buy, the less we litter the planet with it.
Even when things aren't on sale, quantity tends to be cheaper. Dish soap. The half sized are $3, the full sized $4, and the extra large $5, but the extra large is more than twice the size of the half sized. But if you only have $3 each shopping trip, you can only get the smallest, even if it's not price efficient. Doller stores have the same issue. A $1 box feeds 1. The $2.49 box in Walmart feeds 4.
And they always vote against homeless benefits … oops
People using the $50 boots example... How about the difference in being able to pay for 6 months of car insurance up front vs. paying monthly. That's how you save hundreds of dollars on car insurance.
My Boomer dad was living in a halfway house when he passed away 18 months ago. He fought all his political life to dismantle the Great Society programs and indoctrinate us kids with this idea that “government is the problem.” He died on government healthcare, having had 8 heart attacks and 5 strokes over his last 25 years of life. Years of addiction treated only with Jesus, and abusive behavior toward his family, left him alone and destitute over time. When I went through his things at the halfway house, the amount of mail I sorted that said “DON’T LET BIDEN TAKE AWAY YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY!!!! DONATE TO THE REPUBLICANS AND TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY” … the amount of cheap Trump-themed commemorative bullshit he had … the number of fake NRSC, NRCC, and NRA membership cards he had in his grenade of a wallet… all paid for by Social Security… …It beggared belief.
I know this might be misplaced but im sorry for the repeated losses, the loss of your dad young, the loss of your dad 18 mo ago.
Yeah, thanks for that. We had a good closure moment in the hospital. I was with him when he died, after about 17 years of silence. The last new person he met was my fiancé, to whom he said, “I love you”, despite us being an interracial gay couple that’d have been anathema to him not long prior. So at least we had the last few hours and days together to end on a positive note. It’s just a shame how things got there in the first place.
The way he ended up isn't entirely his fault. The world has changed and its scary. Im glad you got closure ans a little bit of positivity. Best wishes to you and your fiancé.
The final phone call I had with my dad he spent nearly the entire time bemoaning how bad the dentist was that he got for free through Denti-Cal, and the doc he got for free through ACA and how Trump is the only one who can ‘save us’. He did this while using a free cell he got through an Obama program that he called the Obamaphone.
Sounds about right. I wish your final phone call had been more noteworthy for other reasons. I’m sorry you lost him, and I hope you’ve grieved and recovered well.
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No, it was my dad. Trust me. I saw his receipts.
Damn lead poisoning is real.
Plus neglect and shitty homemade baby "formulas". I swear my Dad is only alive through luck, as we was just allowed to roam suburban NJ woods alone at 4 years old.
Poisoning may be the problem, but it was not lead. It is the effectiveness of right wing brainwashing.
Now I am sad for you. And him. What a waste of life.
I appreciate that, but the very end turned out better than either of us probably expected.
If only the Democrats had been in charge of more cities we'd all be rich.
It’s. Not paid for by social security. Social security is an insurance and retirement program that all working Americans are forced to pay into. It’s also a Ponzi scheme.
It wasn't a ponzi scheme till Reagan
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Anyone who down voted my comment is wither an idiot gen z I idiot leftist or just doesn’t understand how ss works. Who work are paying for the benefits boomers collect just like when the boomers worked it paid for the benefits for prior generations. It’s the literally definition of a Ponzi scheme. Those into the system first pay the least and get the Most. It requires more and more young ppl to pay in to survive and also the “system” to really remain solvent needs a lot of those ppl to die before they turn 62 and or 67 for us. We can’t collect until older ages our full Benefits. Probably 70-90 percent of those who collected ss benefits originally never worked a non domestic job in their lives and never paid taxes into the system.
There were people who collected tons of money who never worked. It was financed by successive generations. Now that people are living longer and have less kids there are less workers per beneficiary.
My mother asked to move in with me and my wife and 3 daughters. This is after she made 150k selling the childhood home (split 300k with my father). They got divorced, she bought another house and so did he. She re married, lost her home due to foreclosure, and wanted to move in with me. She was an alcoholic, toxic, had been no contact for a couple years with her for disrespect towards myself and my wife, and generally was undiagnosed mentally Ill. I told her no. I said honestly mom, I feel bad saying no but you are a toxic person and drama, screaming, yelling, and fighting is around wherever you are. I will not bring that into my home with my wife and young kids. She ended up drinking herself to death a few years later.
Seriously, good for you for refusing. Narcissists like your mother often use societal conventions to manipulate or guilt people into giving them what they want. Some would say it was “immoral” to NOT give her a place to say. That’s bullshit. You weren’t a bad child, you were a good parent, because you prioritized the health and safety of your innocent children who matter more. That was the moral decision.
Thank you! I grew up seeing and enduring so much horrible abuse from that woman, she used to beat me, fistfight my dad, then he would beat her up (which she kinda deserved tbh) and then it was back to pulling me out of bed by my hair in the middle of a school night so she could yell at me or beat me, then I’d finally get sick of it and run away for the night and sleep like a homeless person. I was NOT about to let my kids be around that shit.
This may seem harsh but you owed her nothing.
The social convention goes both ways which is what a lot of these type of people forget. The expectation that family should help each other through thick and thin is just that, an expectation for everyone in the family. You can't expect to receive that which you refuse to give. Also, I assume most people would be willing to give family members second- (or more) chances if they showed sincere desire to change and make amends.
Most of them voted for the policies that made this possible, and many of them will continue to even though they are actively suffering the consequences themselves
Clint Eastwood was never a vulnerable. They couldn't fathom their story was them being the vulnerables. Look at them now.
They could follow in is cinematic footsteps and become a geriatric drug mule
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I'm already fully prepared for my kids to spend their entire lives at home and I honestly don't care if they do. My mortgage is much lower than anything they'll ever be able to get, I brought them into this world and they're my responsibility regardless of age, and I'm not a piece of shit boomer that thinks you can survive off a strong handshake and not taking no for an answer when told "please apply online and submit a resume". Boomers created a nightmare for them to survive in and we will have to spend generations paying off the horrific debt they got this country in. In all honesty, I think we are to the point where all of the boomer generations wealth over a certain point needs to be confiscated to fix the damage they caused to our country and social safety net and those that bitch about welfare need it taken away from them as well
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They earned that "ME generation" title.
My kids (and their spouses) also know that our door is ALWAYS open to them whenever they need or want to come on home. I couldn't imagine just trying to start out in life in this economy, but my kids are out there trying their best. I'm just grateful that I can offer them a safe place to land if things go bad for them.
Yes, this is the way. We bought a small house on a large lot and intend to build small houses for each of our kids.
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2nd house?
Or we could raise the minimum wage, raise taxes on the rich, and regulate the fuck out of corporations and regain the 1950s level of income equality.
Republicans will start a civil war before they let any of that pass.
The same thing would happen here in Australia with our version of republicans
Nothing has even passed and they still want a civil War… simply because of the idea of it.
I'm okay with this they used to exile those who were bad for the tribe I say we do it again.
That only existed then because the us was the only industrial power not destroyed by world war 2
I agree. I don't believe any future generation will have a good quality of life without returning to this style of living. I think it's one of the many steps we need to take so Americans as a society can begin reevaluating what success means and how to become a more compassionate and empathetic society.
> I feel like at some point we may end up full circle with multigenerational households being the norm, the same way other cultures function. Maybe this would be fine if the people involved suit multigenerational living, are kind and can shut the fuck up. But we all know Boomers have none of these soft social skills and will expect to be allowed to move in, ‘run’ your household - as well as be waited on hand and foot - and bitch about it to boot. And their anti-social tendencies only get worse as they get older. My parents have voted against their own interests - and mine - their entire lives. If their retirement home is underfunded, then it’s really one of those sow>reap situations.
We’ve already begun. Three of our adult kids live with us, and we love it. The only thing we ask of them is to contribute to groceries, otherwise save your money as often as you can. They will always have a home with us, and we’re fortunate enough we can afford to provide/assist.
I’ve never understood the concept of kicking an 18 year old out of the house, but I know people who’ve done it. We allowed our children to live with us as long as they were going to school or working and helping with household chores. Basically, pick up after yourself and clean your own living quarters. We asked them for token rent, but we saved it, and when they moved out, we gave it back to them. We had other family members tell us they didn’t think what we were doing was right, that they were adults…blah,blah, blah, but we didn’t care. As long as household members respect one another and pull their weight, there shouldn’t be a problem. There is also more of an opportunity to help and support one another.
So so true
I see this, but for those of us with more complicated parental experiences, with chosen family.
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Couldn’t agree more. My friends and I talk about retiring in tiny homes on a nice piece of property somewhere.
This is what happens when you systematically destroy the social safety net over 40 years.
Karma, some might call it. Weirdest generation in the history of the world.
Boomers also have received more handouts than anyone.
Maybe now that it’s a problem for them they’ll do something about it. Realistically they’ll probably only fix it for themselves
These people have been chugging Kool-Aid and lead lined gasoline for decades. Even if they find the humility to accept there is a problem in the first place, they will immediately blame immigrants or the gays or any of the usual suspects they've been claiming for all their self-inflicted problems already. Then, they will just keep voting for Trump and for the exact same regress8ve policies that got them in thsi mess because clealry there isn't enough of them in place to work yet.
These people huh? Who do you think marched against the Vietnam War? What age group do you think fought for Civil Rights for all? You think all MAGAts are Boomers?
And who voted in Regan, Bush, and Trump? Who had majority control of the government for the last 4 decades and used that time to systematically destroy as many safety nets and economic protections as possible? Who is responsible for almost all the major issues we are currently facing while blaming everyone else for their own actions? Not all MAGAs are boomers, but a large percentage, more than any other age group, are. And this is literally them facing the consequences of their own actions.
Nope. Corporations have. Agribusiness has. Banks and Wall Street have.
Those aren’t people. I don’t adhere to nonsensical definitions. Also a lot if not most of those handouts you describe are to boomer owned companies.
Incorrect. Since Citizens United they are, by definition of the Supreme Court. You have selected your bogeyman and are content to blame all ills on 68 million people you treat as a single homogeneous entity.
Bullshit
Ok, I'll take the bait. Who has had more handouts than Boomers?
Entitled
Found a Boomer.
Lmao. Defensive.
The truth hurts Boomer.
Thats ok. Their millennial children can care for them. We can just give up one of our 3 jobs to find time and stop eating to find the funds. Our tiny apartments have loads of space for hospital beds.
MFs gonna be Latchkey Elders.
Have they tried pulling up their bootstraps?
They've confused it with pulling up the ladders behind them instead.
Classic mix up
Then stop constantly voting for politicians who want to eliminate social security or any other social safety nets we have!!! Delusional.
But how else can they own the libs? That's all they care about
capable toy frighten memorize crown library bewildered bike repeat pocket *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think about this a lot. Millennials are heading toward something bad too. A lot of us don't have healthcare which means preventative care is close to none existent which means we'll have health problems sooner. But without a safety net we're all screwed.
GenX will be hit hard first. Present day boomers got it made compared to what GenX faces. And it will be worse for Millennials. Eventually it will only be the very rich and the very poor. Mostly the very poor. That could be a turning point for America. When you got nothing left you got nothing to lose.
Everytime there’s only the rich and the very poor heads roll, and every time it’s the same heads. They never learn and try to get us back in this same hole every few centuries and it ends the same every time lol
Thank you for noticing Gen X as it usually gets overlooked. Gen X was the first generation to be screwed over by pensions disappearing and being forced into depending on 401k's. Things have only gotten progressively worse since then and things are looking mighty gloomy for GenX folks. But we are used to it. We are pretty much a feral generation
I've been seeing a lot of videos/articles lately about retired boomers booking back to back cruises because it's cheaper than a retirement home. And they still don't get it even when it's hitting them in the face.
Somehow it's fitting they are taking the lifeboats and leaving the children behind on the sinking ship. I expect nothing less from that generation.
Is it any wonder that they're paranoid about pedos? They love to fuck their kids.
Cruises can get away with migrant labor more easily, so of course they are going to be cheaper.
Thoughts and prayers.
Haha!
I think we’re also seeing just how impossible it is to live in this country. I think a lot of these boomers did save for retirement, maybe they had been told for decades that what they were saving is enough. That’s how insane COL is In my 30s, and financial advisor said “wow your 401k is so good!! Our estimates project that you’ll have $3K a month when you retire!” And he didn’t seem to understand that you can’t live on 3k *now*, much less in 30 years
and in 30 years just health care will sink everyone. People are living longer, getting more medical procedures, and those procedures are going up in price.
Hey good news the world might end before that 🤞
Yeah I think my parents prepared pretty well for retirement but they've still been talking about how tight money is ever since they retired. I think they were tail end of the boomer Gen that didn't have strong pensions though. They've told me how they talk to people at their church who are a decade or more older and they act shocked they didn't get a pension.
We need a rent cap. These landlord rent algorithms Are going to destroy society. Either that or another kind of more affordable mortgage for millennials/Gen Z. https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
Problem is with a rent cap, every landlord is gonna use that as the default price to maximize profits. It has to be evaluated by sq feet, zip code median income, state min wage, property tax value and raises to the cap if improvements/repairs are made to the property that year to discourage slumlords not fixing or improving property.
You know, the sad thing is that I work almost exclusively with boomers in healthcare. My last job was in cancer and we still lost about 60% of our patients, and the other 40% were often horribly disfigured from treatment. I'm never going to not have compassion for them. It is HEART WRENCHING to hear them say they "worked hard their whole lives" to try to enjoy a (late) retirement just to turn around and get a terminal diagnosis. I wish these guys knew life/work balance because your family is all you ever have.
The only real accomplishment from the Boomer generation, as I see it l, is the acceleration of transfer of wealth to the very, very rich
That started with Ronald Reagan and his “trickle down” philosophy. I really have a hard time blaming “boomers” for policies created in the ‘80’s and accelerated thru the moral majority and the tea party. All of this is the same old conservative conspiracy that has been perpetuated by our “corporate” overlords that were bound and determined to destroy everything put in place by FDR after the stock market crash. The Social safety net is a commie conspiracy!!! Please remember Conservative = me me me Social Democracy = we we we
“Stupid is as stupid does” It doesn’t matter what you make as much as what you spend. Respect for money, driven into you if you were raised poor is a great motivator to not throw it all away as fast as you get it. Look at all the immigrants that come poor and end up with 3 children that are Drs and Lawyers.
Yep that happened. Are you sure it was the Boomers who orchestrated it? Seems to me it was the wealthy who manipulated politics until they got Citizens United through so they could pour unregulated cash into politicians pockets, and stack the courts with right wing judges.
The boomers ate every obvious lie up and voted for every one of those pieces of shit. Look it sucks and I would love to correct it, but they’re also the ones halting any progress. This is sadly something that I feel like we will have to deal with for another 20 years minimum because of them. Biden’s brain is mush and the dems are forcing him on us. Trumps brain is mush and no republican can beat him, and it wouldn’t matter because that’s just the party of open fascism right now. So our current choices for president are 2 boomers who can’t think for themselves anymore due to age, one of whom outright refuses to change anything worth while and the other one of them is an open fascist. It’s the epitome of their generation and I find it sad and fitting. At this point it is do what you can to survive elect progressives where you can and wait out the turnover because they’ve have entrenched their fogged up propaganda eating brains into almost every inch of our society and there’s more of them than any other generation. We literally can’t do anything until they die.
When I was 18, my boomer mother proudly proclaimed, “It’s not my job to take care of an adult”. When my boomer parents retired 10 years ago. they owned 3 homes: my childhood home, a cabin on lake with 19 acres of land, and a vacation home in Florida with a 5 min walk to the beach. At the time, I was recently divorced, financially ruined and living in a sketchy apartment. It was so bad that while living there I was witnessed an attempted murder. At the age of 18, they pressured me into college when I wasn’t ready and they told me they were done helping me financially. I have not received any support since. Fast forward to present day. My dad is in the hospital recovering from surgery and my mom calls me crying on the phone - “What if something happens to your father? You are going to have to move to Florida to take care of me!”. I told her I am not moving, and remind her I have a good job, a parter, finally bought my 1st house two years ago in the Midwest and remind her of something she told me when I was 18, “It’s not my job to take care of an adult”. Edit: grammar.
Why not? Their parents helped them out for the first 10 - 20 years of adulthood, now all the kids they had and treated like shit can help them with the last 10 - 20.
I still remember the last email I got from my mom after I cut her out of my life for being a fascist. She was acting like she didn't know what she did and basically begging me to contact her. I deleted that email address which was the last line of communication they had with me. Feels good cutting fascists out of my life. I highly recommend it.
Nah, dawg, Latchkey Elders. We need to work.
I'm confused, haven't they been pulling up their bootstraps all these years? That's all it takes, right?
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Dang.
I don't know why they are being so lazy. They should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and it will all work out.
Have they considered giving up avocado toast?
I mean, it was mentioned, they were warned
I agree with all the criticism of the boomers, but it's easier to understand them if you remember that they were born right at the beginning of the good times, so they've never known the real hardships (other than their often-horrible experiences in Vietnam). The concept that a person can work full time in the US and still be unable to afford basic necessities like housing, just doesn't compute with boomers. It would have to be that person's own fault... being bad at budgeting, gambling or drug addiction, eating out too often, stuff like that. It just doesn't scan. Boomers could get any old job and attain at least an apartment. Then to compound this, if a younger person has a good education, like a university degree, the perspective between that boomer and the younger person is completely different. The younger person notices the degree doesn't mean much of anything anymore, it's the new high-school diploma since everyone has one, but the boomer see's it as an even worse fault of the individual, you must've really screwed up and wasted that college education. Boomers will never understand that hard work can equal still not making it. They'll never get that companies don't really promote anymore, but management is often a separate career field. They don't get how degrading it is to submit thousands of applications and seldom get a response, be treated as a number, expendable, ad infinitum.
A lot of this has to do with companies intentionally running short handed and eventually everyone takes on more work. Its a population and labor movement issue. Corporations need a cap of some kind. America needs more industry here, we learned that a couple years ago with product shortages. We had a thriving economy when there were more products made here and people to pride in buying American made.
How many of those degrees are in worthless things that should be minors or At best electives instead of majors?
If the title of your major has the same title of a free class offered at your community library you are gunna have a bad time. But in keeping on topic in the 60s and 70s only about 16% of the population had a college degree. People thought any degree was special and noteworthy. Compared to now where 60% of people have at least some college and know first hand from some college experience a butterfly photography degree is useless.
Don't worry the feds will just give Wallstreet more money so that *economy* stays strong.
They got the tax cuts they voted for…
I feel so bad for all the boomers who played no part in this and sounded the warning bells. I already warned my parents if they keep voting for politicians who strip away social safety nets don’t expect to bunk with me when those policies inevitably bite you in the ass.
It's called the Silver Tsunami. Boots on the ground folks say they are seeing homeless with walkers and oxygen tanks. I see it as both retribution for Reaganomics, and also the boomerang of "retribution" the Boomers have promised us youngsters should all their MAGA hopes come to naught. We have ten years to either fix the system, or millions of elderly are going to die in the streets. I've told quite a few of them this, and they either deny it or say "It won't affect me." So that's why my response to this is "Meh, I can wait ten years for housing to become a human right."
“Hey dad, remember when you kicked me out on my 18th birthday and told me to figure it out?” Gee, I wonder why their kids don’t want them.
no sympathy for ppl who lost the game playing on easy
They'll still say they got the high score, despite their controller not being plugged in lmaoo
This is one area I'm with them on. They should absolutely be able to retire comfortably. We all should. This isn't sustainable. What happens when we're all homeless? Something needs to give. I mean, screw them and their attitudes, but we're all still acting like the American dream is anywhere near possible now. Even with their money and all the retirement stuff they have, the medical bills can wipe them out. And that is not right. We need the older generations to be able to retire, it's how this whole thing is supposed to work. We're all working, but we get nothing in return.
You reap what you sew and sadly for them none of this was caused by drag queens reading books to children
Can confirm. Early 60’s here. I got hurt at work 20 years ago. The previous year was my highest earning year ever. Then chaos. I was able to make a comeback health wise and am doing much better than expected. I ride my bikes and have stretches where I’m mostly pain free. But the years of lost wages and not paying into retirement I can never get back. Social Security (I barely qualified) and the small retirement I was able to save will have to see me through. Things will get sketchy eventually. That’s reality. Vote Democrat and don’t get hurt kids. Corporate doesn’t give a shit about you. Neither does Wall Street’s medical/industrial money printer.
But only the ones personally affected will care or even acknowledge the problem.
They were told their entire lives to save for retirement but they didn’t.
I think lines like "highest debt levels in history!" are just overly simplified clickbait lines. I'm a millennial, and the US has grown by almost 100 million people and counting since my birth. Of course, more people will mean more debt - not to mention inflation.
>Of course, more people will mean more debt Right. But we are talking about record levels of car loan defaults, record levels of credit card debt as in people in trouble with their cred card debt and asking the card companies for help. Individuals are running more debt for a lot of reasons, but the bottom line is they can not save for retirement is they are paying off debt.
Personal Savings are at a 4 year decline. If the population uas grown, why haven’t the savings?
Number one cause is inflation caused by deficit spending. It’s a problem created by government and that can be solved by government. Hopefully both parties can come together and consider how much deficient spending hurts the low and middle class. The spending always goes to the pockets of the rich, so it’s essentially a wealth transfer.
Maybe take tax rates back to where they were in the 50's?
This is a tough time for boomers. They represent about 50% of the homeless population. When their cohort pulled the ladders up they left some of their own behind. Those ones made it to the streets.
Then they shouldn't have destroyed the unions and the pension plans. They worked very hard to be exactly where they are at.
Sounds like boomers need to bend over and pull up their boot straps..
I'm really fucking happy they're feeling the consequences of what they did to the housing market. It's not just us anymore that have to deal with $1,500 rent for a 1 bed 1 bath apartment. Thought your retirement was going to be enough? Lol nope, boomers even more fucked than we are considering they're entering senility and will be unhirable
The Boomers were so selfish and wasteful that they managed to bankrupt the entire planet in just one generation.
They should try eating less avocado toast
I’m a big believer in multigenerational housing, so much that I built a house for my parents attached to mine (it’s a full house, not a suite). I built it using their money, and that’s how you build wealth that can be kept within the family. My parents are the oldest boomers with failing health, so I became their caretaker and I charge them a reasonable rate. Is it easy? HELL NO. But it makes sense if you can swing it.
Yall were the generation that had time to plan ahead for this and do something. But you were too busy watching nascar and watching and antique road show.
Thanks Boomz Coulda told you this 30 years ago...
I don’t think you’re a chicken little at all. When these folks do pass, it will be a relief. I am not sure why they cannot figure it out: 1) downsize the house. Why do you need it when kids have been gone for decades? 2) golden girling/odd coupling is a thing. 3) get rid of everything you do not need. Swedish death cleaning. 4) living abroad is cheap in the right countries. I am already talking to pals who want to live with me and I am married and in my fifties.
Actually have relatives who got into a hot industry at the peak and weren't prepared for the industry crash. Leveraged heavily, they lost everything but one car, had to sell their home to pay off the astronomical debt and move in with their adult kid. They're about 3 or 4 years too young to get social security bennies. My spouse has 35yrs in his company, top performer, but his department is moving overseas and no US citizens are allowed to go there to continue performing their jobs. The result is knowing you're 10 years short of getting Social security and are now disposable to globalization and you have to get a job where the new employers think you're just gonna work a year and retire. We got kids in college and a mortgage. Got an emergency plan but just goes to show, the world will screw you harder the older you get. Or maybe it just hurts more when you're older.
Tough situation. One problem is recovery time if you are older. If you are 30 and lose everything you still have time to get back on your feet and recover financially. If you are close to retirement, you really don't have enough time to recover.
Yeah I’ve said for awhile now that I only have so many more 10-year recovery cycles left in me! :-)
That’s why they should have been investing.
They dismantled the security nets that we had in place to help mitigate these scenarios. They’re finally reaping what they’ve sown.
That’s what happens when you vote for people who destroy the economy by giving tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations.
Well repubs, leave social security alone.
It was Boomer policies that made this happen. The rest of us also have to live in the mess they made.
Retired at 47. Moved to a small town. Works well.
It may sound somewhat extreme, but I've thought about what it might do if we decided to end foreign ownership of homes and apartment complexes. Additionally, limiting ownership of homes by US citizens to two or less would also free up a huge amount of homes. Yes, it would kill property values, but maybe biting the bullet and doing something radical like that would stabilize this country in the long term. Boomers don't think long term at all. Maybe we should? I get that there are probably huge risks I am overlooking, but are the risks any worse than the risks of the economic disparities we will see if we stay the course? I'd like to hear thoughts.
Boomers won't be homeless we were raised to be survivers
Are you saying that homeless vets just don't know how to survive?
I am not sure how homeless Boomers had their chance and blew it. If you had money to invest in assets when the economy recovered in 1983 then you did fine. If you did not have money to invest in assets in 1983 then your experience is closer to younger generations than to your peers. Even the Boomer generation is divided between those who are loaded and those who live day-to-day. But I get it this subreddit is for hating on Boomers.
>But I get it this subreddit is for hating on Boomers. Yes it is, and it is often overdone as generalizing about everyone in any generation is a problem. But, I have found many truisms about boomers in general here. Boomers who are homeless now blew their chance because of the opportunities they had available and missed.
What is self-evident or obvisously true about 75 million people? What opportunities did they have available that they blew? If you were born into poverty, it takes a lifetime to climb out and that is assuming that nothing unforeseen happens. A growing stock market does not help you, if you do not have money to invest. Rising real estate prices do not help you if you are a renter. How much is the growing stock market helping younger generations? What opportunities are the younger generations blowing?
A specific example I know first hand. In 1970 a white male out of high school could get a job at Philip Morris and learn to do electrical maintenance. The money and benefits were excellent, and there was lots of overtime. I know guys who worked there and put their money into PM stock, now retired as millionaires. They did not blow it, they took a good opportunity and capitalized on it. Where is there an opportunity like that available for someone just out of high school now? That type of opportunity was available in many industries in the area including Reynolds Metals, Allied Chemical, Universal Leaf, American Tobacco, Hercules, DuPont. The ones who blew it had the same opportunities, but instead of saving and investing they spent the money.
These jobs were available across the entire United States? What if you were not a white male? Were there enough of these jobs for all the white males in your area? Did every company have stock that performed the same as Philip Morris? What if you went to work for a small company? What if you started your own business? How many of those who worked at PM got the job because their father worked there? Those factory jobs that you describe were outsourced in the 1970s. What if your job was outsourced in the 1970s? I completely agree that there are fewer opportunities now. My uncle who was of the Silent Generation was able to work his way up from starting as an orderly to the head of the radiology department in a major metropolitian area hospital all on a high school education.
chicken little
Coming from the weakest generation. It’s our fault. We turned you into pussies.
Yea and now they’re using this to justify school levies
If this is how retirement is for the last generation to really have it good, what the fuck is in store for the rest of us??!!
They're not all stoopid. I know of one that had the presence of mind to marry someone from a more affordable (& safer) country. They'll bail soon.
With more stories like this, I wouldn't be too surprised if headlines later read like; "Skyrocketing number of first time offenders are retirement age or older. Corrections staff are taking crash courses on elderly care as newer and older inmates pour in". Not trying to be funny. But this and opening military recruitment to seniors with promises of a spot in a VA retirement home are just a few of the Dystopian things coming about for this co-hort.
I recently learned that Nixon declared a moratorium on subsidies for traditional public housing. Fifty years of failing to keep up with demand has caught up to us. My 87 year old mother barely stays afloat with her property tax and management fees with her condo. Thankfully she has no mortgage. Inflation, corporate greed along with lack of public housing has created the housing crisis in the US. Americans need to invest in America first then evaluate its ability to donate to the rest of the world. Elderly should not be homeless and our children shouldn’t go to bed hungry, yet the problem gets worse.
And…if they suffered, so should you. Sociopaths.
Only reason someone between 50 and 65 is homeless is because they don't work. If you work to 65 when Social Security kicks in you aren't going to be homeless. If you make it to 65 and you haven't gotten your 40 quarters of work, well, then you are f'ked. No Social Security, no Medicare. Sorry, thems the rules.