

Older Americans are 47 times richer than young - orky56
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/07/news/economy/wealth_gap_age/

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potatolicious
You can't help but be bitter about this.

We (the young) didn't do anything, or ask for anything. But thanks to the
speculative greed of previous generations, we're saddled with (even post-
crash) unaffordable housing prices that favor the already-wealthy. Buying a
home on a middle class working income is nigh impossible, unlike in their
generation. So far from joining the speculators, we can't even buy a roof over
our own heads in most places, especially places with jobs.

Our governmental services are collapsing in a large part due to the money
we're pouring into pensions - pensions that previous generations voted to give
themselves. Ones _far_ more generous than anything history has ever _seen_.
Everything can go, including our education system, but the pension is
sacrosanct. Touch it and a legion of Baby Boomers will have you for lunch.

We're the generation of suckers. We (and probably our children, too) are the
ones who will be paying for the ludicrous excesses of the Boomers, while
getting nothing ourselves. Defined benefit pensions? Hah! Traditionally people
pay into their future. We are stuck paying our past.

Bitter? Me? How could you tell?

~~~
tptacek
They were also conscripted into wars with dizzying American casualties, had
parents and siblings who died of polio, lived under continuous threat of
nuclear annihilation, and had to call someone up on the phone to place a stock
market order. Oh, and that whole internet thing.

Suggest looking forward, not back. What do we do next?

~~~
potatolicious
This is about looking forward. We're in dire economic straits, our funding for
something as basic and fundamental s our children's educations are being
threatened. Public libraries are closing across the country. Research funding
is reaching dreadfully low levels - especially in comparison to countries that
we now find ourselves competing with.

And on top of that, people are getting poorer. Even folks "protected" by
traditionally pro-labour unions are being thrown under the bus to protect the
pensions of its older members. The treatment of young union members by the
organization that supposedly protects their rights is laughable if it weren't
so damned unjust.

So yes, let's look forward. We face a desperate economic situation, in which
we must all make deep cuts and great sacrifices if this country is to have a
competitive future. Our education system has certainly paid the price. Our
arts and culture, too. Taxes are rising, but yet the greatest liability we
have is still pension funding.

The one quarter where no sacrifices, no compromises must be made. Toss the
band program. Screw math textbooks. Fuck scientific research. The pension is
holy! It must not be touched! So yes, we _are_ looking at the future, and
these people will doom it.

Even if we're not playing the blame game - there is not much we can do
productively to save ourselves unless pension compromise can be brought to the
table. Unfunded pension liabilities are _the_ threat to our economic existence
- the over-promised benefits are _really_ going to gut us. Even if we
continued along this path of "everything must go in the name of funding
pension liabilities", it's _still_ not enough. Without cuts to pensions we're
screwed no matter what.

~~~
tptacek
I like your comments so much that I specifically follow them, but this comment
would be equally as informative if you kept only the last graf.

------
lotharbot
Our own cperciva wrote an interesting take on wealth inequality:

[http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-
equ...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-
equalland.html)

The elderly should have significantly more accumulated wealth than the young,
because they've had longer to save. How much more, I couldn't say. But I'm
always skeptical of attempts to tug at my heartstrings by pointing out that
"those people" have more wealth than "these people" without some sort of
systemic model to back up the complaint and explain what the proper level of
inequality should be.

~~~
fr0sty
This article (or one like it) needs to see wide circulation as a counterpoint
to the posted article.

All things being equal and assuming some sort of positive savings rate and
return on investment older people will _always_ be richer than younger people.

What's more when your denominator is so small (old / young) the increasing X%
just becomes silly. If their average wealth decreases $600 (which is the
projected impact of rising gas prices next year, I believe) the elderly will
then be 56X as wealthy.

Personally, the fact that the average not-old person is swimming in consumer
debt, has a 0% savings rate, and that by their own choosing is the real story
and one that no one seems willing to touch.

------
sudonim
In my parents generation, you made an investment and chances are it would go
well. Since I left college, you made an investment and chances are it wouldn't
go well.

By the time my parents were my age, they were married and had bought their
first house in connecticut thanks to a loan from my dad's employer.

My parents bought property in connecticut, singapore, london, indonesia and
did pretty well with that over the years. They rented out places and built a
pretty decent nest egg. Property prices didn't go down between the times they
bought and sold property.

It's a different world now. The best way to build wealth is to play both sides
of the fence so you make money in both creation and destruction. For me, I'm
betting that I can create software of value to enough people that I can build
wealth. I've hedged my bets by getting some % of the current company I work
for, but if I stay at this salary for the long haul, I will never have
financial security.

It's a little bleak. I pity the people who swallowed the blue pill and work
for some large corp. Some will get into the top tier and be phenomenally
wealthy. The rest, I'm not so sure.

------
_delirium
There might be something to do with pension plans as well; the current cohort
of retirees got quite generous (by both historical and current standards)
defined-benefit pensions.

~~~
antidaily
Luckily corporations have shifted those funds to fat bonuses and golden
parachutes.

------
brianweiner
Remember this when they elderly fight tooth & nail against any cuts to their
precious welfare programs...

The average medicare recipient has only paid ~$75K in taxes but will extract
>$500K in services.

The 'Greatest Generation' is bankrupting this country.

~~~
Shivetya
I get a different read from the story. The Greatest Generation has not spent
themselves into debt with hundred dollar a month smart phone bills, five
hundred a month auto leases, another fifty for high speed internet, a thousand
dollars to coffee shop across a year, and so on and so on.

My parents are from this generation, they saved. I am trying to be the same
way but it is very difficult. There are so many many temptations out there and
we are heavily marketed too on every front.

Look, we have people lining up at night to buy iPhones, the latest video game,
or to see a movie. That generation remembered people lining up for food, the
draft, and other such true necessities of life then.

The "ME" generation is bankrupting America by wanting the rewards of a
successful life without actually having to work for it. Instant gratification
doesn't work, but it sure doesn't stop people running for office who promise
it.

~~~
potatolicious
I think there's a bit of rose-tinted glasses going on here, and you're really
painting a straw man.

Not all of us buy expensive smartphones, have $500 car loans, thousand-dollar
coffee shop bills, etc etc.

Similarly, not all of your beloved, vaunted Boomers were penny-pinching misers
who saved all they got and avoided the drive-in, movies, and bars.

My impression (never having lived it 60s and 70s, of course) is that people
then we just as excessive as we are now, or at least the marginal difference
can't explain away the giant gap in wealth.

------
rajpaul
I'm seeing more of these intergenerational conflict articles coming to the
surface now. I'm not surprised it took so log for it to happen. I'm surprised
that baby boomers are allowing it to happen at all.

I can't imagine baby boomers wanting to watch network news or read mainstream
websites that bring light to these inequalities. It's eyeballs and wallets
that dictate content, and it's the boomers who have both.

