Boomers: Is there anything they don’t do wrong? Not to hear the Millennials and Zoomers tell it, there isn’t — with a big push recently in the mainstream media. Today’s Big Boomer Problem: They’re hoarding the wealth.
It was either my partner in thoughtcrime, Stephen Kruiser, or Yours Truly (honestly can’t remember which) who pointed out ages ago on Five O’Clock Somewhere that Lefties have this Scrooge McDuck image of wealthy people and particularly of business.
Every successful businessman has a vault full of gold coins and rubies somewhere, and they go swimming through their riches whenever the fancy strikes, lording it over all the little people. Meanwhile, well-meaning Lefties lament, “The rest of us wouldn’t have to work so hard at our six-figure make-work NGO positions if we could just force their vaults open.”
Leftism always comes down to force, but you knew that already.
The latest complaint is that Millennials and Gen Z can’t afford anything or get that big promotion at work because Boomers are hoarding all the houses and good jobs.
“Boomers,” I learned reading Fortune over the weekend, “are hoarding most of America’s wealth and power because they’re terrified of outliving their money.”
“The housing market is where this financial anxiety becomes concrete,” Nick Lichtenberg’s report continued. “Boomers and older GenXers own a disproportionate share of the nation’s three‑bedroom‑plus homes, including many in desirable urban and suburban neighborhoods.”
And, of course, those greedy old hoarders bought when prices — and interest rates — were much lower. Left unsaid: Millions of Boomers and older GenXers grew up in 800-1,000 square foot homes that the Greatest Generation thought were basically palaces when they bought them in the late ’40s and ’50s.
But in fact, more than half of Boomers “have $250,000 or less in retirement savings,” and that’s “before health shocks, market downturns, or long‑term care” concerns. Far from being a generation of Scrooge McDucks, most Boomers “will lean heavily on Social Security and work income to get by.”
Lichtenberg was following up on a story from two weeks ago, on Boomers who actually might be fairly described as hoarders:
In the labor market, four decades of boomer dominance suppressed wages and opportunity for younger workers, and their accelerating exit now threatens a worker shortage businesses are unprepared to absorb. In housing, empty-nest boomers sit on a disproportionate share of the family-size homes that millennial parents need but cannot find or afford. And in the corner offices, executive suites, and corridors of political power, boomer leaders have spent years building monuments to their own indispensability rather than successors capable of replacing them—leaving institutions to manage their decline rather than their transition.
We’ve had three Boomer presidents — Clinton, Bush, and Obama — none of whom was anything to write home about.
If kids need to blame the Boomers for anything, it’s for voting for policies and taxes that drive up the price of everything and squash the innovation that creates great new jobs. If they need to blame GenX for anything, it’s for being more conservative than the Boomers but being far less effective — or, broadly speaking, not even very interested — in politics.
In other words, it’s complicated.
“I’m a Boomer,” Dan Gainor dared to admit for Fox News Opinion a couple of weeks ago, “But say that online today, and it’s like admitting to a war crime.”
This older GenXer knows the feeling.
“For months, social media has witnessed a generation gap the size of the Grand Canyon,” Gainor wrote. “Many in Gen Z are venomously angry at the Boomer generation over financial issues. But nothing set them off more than ‘Shark Tank’ star Kevin O’Leary, who blamed young people for foolish spending.”
The thing is — and I’m trying so hard not to sound like I walked through the snow uphill both ways to school — the younger generations do spend an awful lot of money on things Boomers and GenX either dismiss as frivolous or that simply didn’t exist.
According to Grok (which did not exist when I was a kid and costs adult me $40 per month), the typical Gen Z young adult spends about $116 each month just on smartphone service and hardware. When I rented my first apartment at age 20, I couldn’t even afford a landline at first — and when I did get one several months later, I got the lowest-cost option that didn’t even include long-distance calls.
I ate a lot of Top Ramen, baked potatoes, and tuna fish. GrubHub wasn’t an option for a 20-year-old earning part-time, small-market radio wages, even if it had been an option.
But I have faith that the younger generations will figure this stuff out, but not until they have to. That probably requires less largess on the older folks’ part, not less “hoarding.” Still, Mrs. VodkaPundit and I do plan to downsize ASAP and free up our big house for a younger family.
At a conference about a dozen years ago, my old boss (and PJ Media co-founder) Roger L. Simon and I had a brief talk about aging. He’d just turned 70, was writing a new book, and still played tennis every day — both real passions of his. I asked if he had any plans to retire or make even more time for tennis.
“Retire from what?” he replied.
That’s my plan, too. Hope my kids don’t call me a Scrooge McDuck for it.
Recommended: What in the Actual Hell Is a Democrat These Days?
At PJ Media, we don’t blame Boomers — we blame Lefties of any generation.
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