First of all, when I'm old please don't call me a "senior". Call me "old". There's no shame in it, and nothing wrong with the word.
From the OP: Why are we doing so much to try to help seniors when they’re already the wealthiest generation in history?
At least in the U.S., it's because they're politically active. They vote. They mobilize. They demand services, for the tax dollars they've paid when young and that they are paying now.
Invert the question: why don't young people demand much of their government? Why do we seem to be content with a system (and this goes beyond government, into the workplace) that costs so much and delivers so little? Why are we OK with high housing costs and stagnant wages? Why don't we demand the government to step in on airlines' sleazy dynamic pricing games, where a person using a different device to book the same flight at the same time pays a different fare? How come, when we're paying tax rates well over 30%, we don't have universal healthcare, and even if we're insured we still get crappy medical care and coverage? Why do we tolerate that? Why haven't we unionized or formed professional associations in software?
Here's the answer. The critical difference between young and old is that the old people know their financial situations aren't going to dramatically improve. An old person of average financial outcome has no delusions that he'll be a tech billionaire in 3 years if he can just save up for his move to the Valley. Young people haven't figured that out yet, and still believe that they can beat the astronomical odds against them, and therefore tend reflexively to identify with the rich.
The plight of the young can be ignored because the young haven't figured out yet how badly most of them are going to lose, and that political activism (again, perhaps in the form of workplace collective bargaining instead of electoral canvassing) is essential to keeping them afloat.
Spot on. Thanks to Lake Wobegon syndrome, American youth inevitably think they'll end up on the rich side. By the time they're seniors, the veil of ignorance that fades.
Reminds me of the quote from John Steinbeck that Americans are never poor, they're just temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. I guess that by the time you're 60 you realize that those millions are never coming.
From the OP: Why are we doing so much to try to help seniors when they’re already the wealthiest generation in history?
At least in the U.S., it's because they're politically active. They vote. They mobilize. They demand services, for the tax dollars they've paid when young and that they are paying now.
Invert the question: why don't young people demand much of their government? Why do we seem to be content with a system (and this goes beyond government, into the workplace) that costs so much and delivers so little? Why are we OK with high housing costs and stagnant wages? Why don't we demand the government to step in on airlines' sleazy dynamic pricing games, where a person using a different device to book the same flight at the same time pays a different fare? How come, when we're paying tax rates well over 30%, we don't have universal healthcare, and even if we're insured we still get crappy medical care and coverage? Why do we tolerate that? Why haven't we unionized or formed professional associations in software?
Here's the answer. The critical difference between young and old is that the old people know their financial situations aren't going to dramatically improve. An old person of average financial outcome has no delusions that he'll be a tech billionaire in 3 years if he can just save up for his move to the Valley. Young people haven't figured that out yet, and still believe that they can beat the astronomical odds against them, and therefore tend reflexively to identify with the rich.
The plight of the young can be ignored because the young haven't figured out yet how badly most of them are going to lose, and that political activism (again, perhaps in the form of workplace collective bargaining instead of electoral canvassing) is essential to keeping them afloat.