I’ve taken for granted my whole life that every penny the government takes from my paycheck is pure theft that will never and can never possibly benefit me in any way. And I’m not wrong.
I know I’m getting nothing … Gen X … We might as well come to grasp with the reality of that situation sooner rather than later.
And respectfully, Boomer, I’m a bit pissy that while you were out spending my inheritance (not that I was entitled to it, but maybe you should’ve saved some for your old age) and intentionally NOT making enough children or supporting an open enough border to get enough wealth creators necessary to support you in your elder years … the well is dry.
Boomer, you are the greatest takers the world has ever seen. And before death you still intend to drain the reservoir dry. Do is this favor … quit on social security before the economy collapses.
So what are we to make of the hundreds of billions the US is giving out in foreign aid to countries that don’t matter to us? I understand your point, it’s reality, but how can they spend a penny on illegals or Ukraine or Israel when Americans are getting the shaft? That’s what will start the violence. Great article.
I definitely do think the boomers are setting themselves up for catastrophe for actively antagonizing the younger generations of social media. To be perfectly frank, I also think that Zoomers and Millennials going on TikTok and sobbing their eyes out, even for valid reasons, are doing themselves no favors in making their concerns look justified - I understand that, for many of them who lack stable or concrete or reliable personal support networks, screaming out into the void may seem logical, if not their only real option, to be heard, but to older generations who were raised on what effectively might as well have been another planet at this point, it all comes off as the caterwauling of a spoiled child. Which, to be totally clear, it's not - I believe that Zoomers and Millennials have every right to be complaining, given they've had their futures sold right out from under them and were lied to about it the whole time. You're right when you say that no good, sensible, hard-working and contributing member of society should be forced to live in some violent ghetto and suffer a long commute. As someone who used to drive an hour and a half to two hours to go twelve miles, I sincerely mean it when I say I think I'd rather jump off a bridge than ever spent an extra twenty hours of my week sitting in traffic. Sounds extreme, but anyone who's ever done the same can probably sympathize. I suspect this disconnect between what the middle class Zoomers and Millennials were raised and conditioned to expect for their adult lives and now facing the very real possibility that they may have to live in, if not adjacent to, serious violent crime and abject, grinding poverty is partially responsible for what appears to be a generation-wide mental health crisis. Just one factor, but definitely one of the biggest.
Where I was going with that, though, is that the boomers (and even just less socially adept or aware Gen Xers and Millennials) callous dismissal of the suffering of younger generations is ensuring an equally callous and most likely disproportionately violent response will inevitably arise. You can only a kick a dog so long before it bites, after all. To put it as simply as I can, the lion's share of Zoomers and Millennials have socialist sympathies, if not outright socialist beliefs, already. They're okay with the idea of taking from others for the (supposed) benefit of the community or society, right? This is only going to cement itself more in their heads as time goes on and conditions continue to deteriorate, and they begin to feel as if government intervention to take from those who have and redistribute among the have-nots will be their ONLY way to get any kind of come-up. True or not, doesn't matter - it's what they'll think. And, when there's serious political will to do so, there's a not insignificant chance it will happen, especially in the midst of an economic crisis. And if and when it does, how kindly do you think they're going to treat the people who were, only a scant few years ago, laughing and taunting them over airing their grievances? It's all fun and games to tell the crying girl on TikTok to tough up, buttercup, until Zoomer Commissars are at your front door and ready to take everything you own to give her some of it.
Obviously, that's a very extreme and probably unlikely scenario, but all in all I think that this harsh and dismissive treatment the boomers are showing the younger generations will be repaid doubly to them, whether it be economically, or just by their younger family members tossing them in some subpar nursing home and leaving them to rot without a second thought. Once younger generations acquire more political power, I believe the "untouchable" quality of Social Security will fade, since, obviously, most of them won't get to see their share of it, and they'll hate the people who are getting it. They will have no qualms with taking from it, cutting it, slashing it, doing away with it all to benefit themselves at the boomer's expense. If the boomers didn't help them when they needed it... why would they help them when they need it? And, no, I'm not saying it's right or ethical or anything like that, obviously. All I'm saying is that I see like being met with like, and if one party treats another with such disdain, it only stands to reason they'll be met with the same with the shoe in on the other foot.
‘Likewise, creating a world where men and women were forced to compete with each other economically turned out to be a decision with destabilizing consequences.’
Great point, but I would change it to
’Likewise, creating a world where men were forced to compete with women economically turned out to be a decision with destabilizing consequences.’ I remember that time though I were just a child; men didn’t want this-women did.
So what can we do to prep the children in a practical way? I can’t go whole hog with the professional prepper trend. It looks expensive.
Over the next two decades 90+% of the Boomers will shuffle off this mortal coil. That will relieve a lot of the current pressure on the Social Security/ Medicare side. Can the current regime muddle along using a variety of One Wierd Economic Tricks long enough for the current bubble of geezers to pop? I guess we'll see.
One thing that I believe will become apparent as the Boomers expire is how frivolous much of their generation will prove to have been. Given the place in time that they were born into and the financial opportunities they were presented, I'm afraid that far too many of their heirs will still be inheriting nothing but their debts. There's still going to be a massive wealth transfer coming from the last of the Silents and all of the Boomers between now and the early 2040s to Gen X and the Millenials, due to the massive number of geezers waiting to croak, but I'm afraid it's not going to be as much as it should have been.
As a GenXer, I think it is imperative for us and the Millenials to not repeat that mistake with our Zoomer and Alpha offspring. No matter the reasons, be they institutional or personal, it is going to be nearly impossible for our kids to buy their own homes without our help. They're probably going to need our help and support quite a bit just making ends meet for awhile, even after they get their first "real" job.
To quote one of the greatest philosophers of our time, drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield from HBO's The Wire, You (Boomers and others dumping on the youth) want it to be one way, but it's the OTHER way. Why is the financial situation screwed for our kids? Don't know. Doesn't matter. Don't care. It just IS. It's our responsibility to help them through it and make sure we leave them with more than the Silents and Boomers will be leaving us.
Rerunning the underlying data from one of Lyn's charts (https://www.lynalden.com/does-the-national-debt-matter/ ) produced something really eye-popping. If you had $100 at the signing of the US Constitution in 1789, your purchasing power would have fluctuated in value from about $62 to $130 over the next 130 years, but on the eve of WWI, your $100 from 1789 would be worth exactly $100 still. The gold standard had lots of faults, but that kind of currency stability is incredibly impressive.
One thing that muddles the debate over Social Security and Medicare is the sense people have that they are paying into these programs in order to get that money back later, when in reality that money is for current beneficiaries. The injustice that would be paying into that program and not getting benefits down the line is, therefore, not because some politician in the future would take them away, but because some politician in the past has already set up the system that way.
The money is already gone, we're just being left to hope that, when it's time to get ours, there's still a system in place that functions, or at least retains the appearance of functionality.
Regarding debt, I think the US still has some major advantages in that it can attract workers and investors when other countries fail. And it still does have its massive, world leading corporations (currently called the Magnificent 7, but it always changes). I think that Europe is far worse off and has reached the point where they are frantically trying to plug one hole after another and nothing really works. Furthermore young people have easy emigration options there. For a picture of a truly failing country with intractable problems, see this recent article:
Regarding young people, I don’t think it’s reasonable for a single woman in her twenties to expect to buy a house in any era. However, the Millenials and now Zoomers have got a really bad deal in terms of education and housing costs. This article, for example, predicts inflation outpacing income for young people:
I don’t 100% buy it. I think there are limitations on how badly a society can treat young people and expect them to show up and work. They have the simple option to opt out from the system, which is already happening to some extent. So I think that the elderly will necessarily start to lose out in the end, which is only natural. Furthermore, there are going to be some massive inheritances coming from housing and pension funds. So I think that the situation is currently bad for the young but, in the end, the ones with the energy and ability to work will have the leverage over the savers. It’s just not realistic to think that we will have a society where the young are essentially enslaved to serve the old.
This is democracy manifest. Generations of rubes who swallowed lies have mortgaged the future and the note is coming due as the howling winds of the crucible wait. As you have very aptly named your substack: We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here.
The Boomers are not owed the blood they are sucking from the young because of some sort of "invincible ignorance" and women are not owed a safe place to independently live as they engage in unproductive labor during their years of fertility because they were told to "go to college." As things degrade, I think that Hobbes will slowly be vindicated as a world more dominated by "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" returns.
On a material front, everything will be getting worse. However, this chastening may be an opportunity, for those who embrace it, to return family, community and faith as the material comfort of the present age is pulled from their grasp. It is that or eating shit all the way down.
To answer some of your questions: Cuts won't save us. He is not heartless; in fact his heart is in the right place, he is just wrong and you are right. Yes, even MORE money will be printed. Her story is indicative of reality, which in part is a systemization of bad choices. However, Branca et al are undignified for their gloating. If he considers himself an American, as I consider myself, dunking on some agreeable midwit that is 1000 yards off the path and headed to perdition should be beneath him. However, the internet is great at enabling our worst selves.
When the social security trust fund runs out, incoming social security taxes from those still working will be enough to cover roughly 75% of the social security benefits people have been promised. Not good, but social security isn't going to vanish. Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI are the budget eaters and sooner or later are going to have to go. Those costs will rise with inflation, so you can't print your way out from under it. Sooner or later reality is going to have to assert itself that the government cannot be a charity.
Conceivably, they could default on their debts a couple times. Restructuring happens, bond holders take a haircut and interest rates rise. Generally speaking the default process usually forces a state to temporarily return to fiscal sanity. Sometimes for 10 years, sometimes for 10 months. We will see which way we get. Point is, this whole unfolding can take place over decades, the end may not come quickly. It can unfold over time, and people will tolerate nearly anything if it happens slow enough. When Adam Smith said "A great deal of ruin is bound up in a nation." He didn't just mean there was a lot of ruin to unwind. He also meant it could take awhile.
Kulak had a piece about the debt spiral the other day, and a key takeaway is that one population is going to get the gibs, and the other is going to be written off hard. Right now, there’s every reason to expect White kids will be forced to suffer austerity while so-called minorities will continue to get EBT, healthcare, etc. (Arguably, this is happening right now.)
But why suffer for these people? The System’s contempt for them has burned off whatever love many (most?) Heritage Americans had for it. America in its current configuration is unworthy of their loyalty. If the System can’t even offer gibs (to you, at least), what good is it?
I’ve taken for granted my whole life that every penny the government takes from my paycheck is pure theft that will never and can never possibly benefit me in any way. And I’m not wrong.
I know I’m getting nothing … Gen X … We might as well come to grasp with the reality of that situation sooner rather than later.
And respectfully, Boomer, I’m a bit pissy that while you were out spending my inheritance (not that I was entitled to it, but maybe you should’ve saved some for your old age) and intentionally NOT making enough children or supporting an open enough border to get enough wealth creators necessary to support you in your elder years … the well is dry.
Boomer, you are the greatest takers the world has ever seen. And before death you still intend to drain the reservoir dry. Do is this favor … quit on social security before the economy collapses.
So what are we to make of the hundreds of billions the US is giving out in foreign aid to countries that don’t matter to us? I understand your point, it’s reality, but how can they spend a penny on illegals or Ukraine or Israel when Americans are getting the shaft? That’s what will start the violence. Great article.
This is why THEY want depopulation. You useless eaters are too expensive to take care of!
I definitely do think the boomers are setting themselves up for catastrophe for actively antagonizing the younger generations of social media. To be perfectly frank, I also think that Zoomers and Millennials going on TikTok and sobbing their eyes out, even for valid reasons, are doing themselves no favors in making their concerns look justified - I understand that, for many of them who lack stable or concrete or reliable personal support networks, screaming out into the void may seem logical, if not their only real option, to be heard, but to older generations who were raised on what effectively might as well have been another planet at this point, it all comes off as the caterwauling of a spoiled child. Which, to be totally clear, it's not - I believe that Zoomers and Millennials have every right to be complaining, given they've had their futures sold right out from under them and were lied to about it the whole time. You're right when you say that no good, sensible, hard-working and contributing member of society should be forced to live in some violent ghetto and suffer a long commute. As someone who used to drive an hour and a half to two hours to go twelve miles, I sincerely mean it when I say I think I'd rather jump off a bridge than ever spent an extra twenty hours of my week sitting in traffic. Sounds extreme, but anyone who's ever done the same can probably sympathize. I suspect this disconnect between what the middle class Zoomers and Millennials were raised and conditioned to expect for their adult lives and now facing the very real possibility that they may have to live in, if not adjacent to, serious violent crime and abject, grinding poverty is partially responsible for what appears to be a generation-wide mental health crisis. Just one factor, but definitely one of the biggest.
Where I was going with that, though, is that the boomers (and even just less socially adept or aware Gen Xers and Millennials) callous dismissal of the suffering of younger generations is ensuring an equally callous and most likely disproportionately violent response will inevitably arise. You can only a kick a dog so long before it bites, after all. To put it as simply as I can, the lion's share of Zoomers and Millennials have socialist sympathies, if not outright socialist beliefs, already. They're okay with the idea of taking from others for the (supposed) benefit of the community or society, right? This is only going to cement itself more in their heads as time goes on and conditions continue to deteriorate, and they begin to feel as if government intervention to take from those who have and redistribute among the have-nots will be their ONLY way to get any kind of come-up. True or not, doesn't matter - it's what they'll think. And, when there's serious political will to do so, there's a not insignificant chance it will happen, especially in the midst of an economic crisis. And if and when it does, how kindly do you think they're going to treat the people who were, only a scant few years ago, laughing and taunting them over airing their grievances? It's all fun and games to tell the crying girl on TikTok to tough up, buttercup, until Zoomer Commissars are at your front door and ready to take everything you own to give her some of it.
Obviously, that's a very extreme and probably unlikely scenario, but all in all I think that this harsh and dismissive treatment the boomers are showing the younger generations will be repaid doubly to them, whether it be economically, or just by their younger family members tossing them in some subpar nursing home and leaving them to rot without a second thought. Once younger generations acquire more political power, I believe the "untouchable" quality of Social Security will fade, since, obviously, most of them won't get to see their share of it, and they'll hate the people who are getting it. They will have no qualms with taking from it, cutting it, slashing it, doing away with it all to benefit themselves at the boomer's expense. If the boomers didn't help them when they needed it... why would they help them when they need it? And, no, I'm not saying it's right or ethical or anything like that, obviously. All I'm saying is that I see like being met with like, and if one party treats another with such disdain, it only stands to reason they'll be met with the same with the shoe in on the other foot.
‘Likewise, creating a world where men and women were forced to compete with each other economically turned out to be a decision with destabilizing consequences.’
Great point, but I would change it to
’Likewise, creating a world where men were forced to compete with women economically turned out to be a decision with destabilizing consequences.’ I remember that time though I were just a child; men didn’t want this-women did.
So what can we do to prep the children in a practical way? I can’t go whole hog with the professional prepper trend. It looks expensive.
Over the next two decades 90+% of the Boomers will shuffle off this mortal coil. That will relieve a lot of the current pressure on the Social Security/ Medicare side. Can the current regime muddle along using a variety of One Wierd Economic Tricks long enough for the current bubble of geezers to pop? I guess we'll see.
One thing that I believe will become apparent as the Boomers expire is how frivolous much of their generation will prove to have been. Given the place in time that they were born into and the financial opportunities they were presented, I'm afraid that far too many of their heirs will still be inheriting nothing but their debts. There's still going to be a massive wealth transfer coming from the last of the Silents and all of the Boomers between now and the early 2040s to Gen X and the Millenials, due to the massive number of geezers waiting to croak, but I'm afraid it's not going to be as much as it should have been.
As a GenXer, I think it is imperative for us and the Millenials to not repeat that mistake with our Zoomer and Alpha offspring. No matter the reasons, be they institutional or personal, it is going to be nearly impossible for our kids to buy their own homes without our help. They're probably going to need our help and support quite a bit just making ends meet for awhile, even after they get their first "real" job.
To quote one of the greatest philosophers of our time, drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield from HBO's The Wire, You (Boomers and others dumping on the youth) want it to be one way, but it's the OTHER way. Why is the financial situation screwed for our kids? Don't know. Doesn't matter. Don't care. It just IS. It's our responsibility to help them through it and make sure we leave them with more than the Silents and Boomers will be leaving us.
Rerunning the underlying data from one of Lyn's charts (https://www.lynalden.com/does-the-national-debt-matter/ ) produced something really eye-popping. If you had $100 at the signing of the US Constitution in 1789, your purchasing power would have fluctuated in value from about $62 to $130 over the next 130 years, but on the eve of WWI, your $100 from 1789 would be worth exactly $100 still. The gold standard had lots of faults, but that kind of currency stability is incredibly impressive.
One thing that muddles the debate over Social Security and Medicare is the sense people have that they are paying into these programs in order to get that money back later, when in reality that money is for current beneficiaries. The injustice that would be paying into that program and not getting benefits down the line is, therefore, not because some politician in the future would take them away, but because some politician in the past has already set up the system that way.
The money is already gone, we're just being left to hope that, when it's time to get ours, there's still a system in place that functions, or at least retains the appearance of functionality.
And heck if I know what to do about it.
Lots of things to think about.
Regarding debt, I think the US still has some major advantages in that it can attract workers and investors when other countries fail. And it still does have its massive, world leading corporations (currently called the Magnificent 7, but it always changes). I think that Europe is far worse off and has reached the point where they are frantically trying to plug one hole after another and nothing really works. Furthermore young people have easy emigration options there. For a picture of a truly failing country with intractable problems, see this recent article:
https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/02/23/who-is-portugal-for/
Regarding young people, I don’t think it’s reasonable for a single woman in her twenties to expect to buy a house in any era. However, the Millenials and now Zoomers have got a really bad deal in terms of education and housing costs. This article, for example, predicts inflation outpacing income for young people:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/12/generation-against-generation
I don’t 100% buy it. I think there are limitations on how badly a society can treat young people and expect them to show up and work. They have the simple option to opt out from the system, which is already happening to some extent. So I think that the elderly will necessarily start to lose out in the end, which is only natural. Furthermore, there are going to be some massive inheritances coming from housing and pension funds. So I think that the situation is currently bad for the young but, in the end, the ones with the energy and ability to work will have the leverage over the savers. It’s just not realistic to think that we will have a society where the young are essentially enslaved to serve the old.
This is democracy manifest. Generations of rubes who swallowed lies have mortgaged the future and the note is coming due as the howling winds of the crucible wait. As you have very aptly named your substack: We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here.
The Boomers are not owed the blood they are sucking from the young because of some sort of "invincible ignorance" and women are not owed a safe place to independently live as they engage in unproductive labor during their years of fertility because they were told to "go to college." As things degrade, I think that Hobbes will slowly be vindicated as a world more dominated by "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" returns.
On a material front, everything will be getting worse. However, this chastening may be an opportunity, for those who embrace it, to return family, community and faith as the material comfort of the present age is pulled from their grasp. It is that or eating shit all the way down.
To answer some of your questions: Cuts won't save us. He is not heartless; in fact his heart is in the right place, he is just wrong and you are right. Yes, even MORE money will be printed. Her story is indicative of reality, which in part is a systemization of bad choices. However, Branca et al are undignified for their gloating. If he considers himself an American, as I consider myself, dunking on some agreeable midwit that is 1000 yards off the path and headed to perdition should be beneath him. However, the internet is great at enabling our worst selves.
Finally, I really enjoyed this piece, great work.
When the social security trust fund runs out, incoming social security taxes from those still working will be enough to cover roughly 75% of the social security benefits people have been promised. Not good, but social security isn't going to vanish. Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI are the budget eaters and sooner or later are going to have to go. Those costs will rise with inflation, so you can't print your way out from under it. Sooner or later reality is going to have to assert itself that the government cannot be a charity.
Conceivably, they could default on their debts a couple times. Restructuring happens, bond holders take a haircut and interest rates rise. Generally speaking the default process usually forces a state to temporarily return to fiscal sanity. Sometimes for 10 years, sometimes for 10 months. We will see which way we get. Point is, this whole unfolding can take place over decades, the end may not come quickly. It can unfold over time, and people will tolerate nearly anything if it happens slow enough. When Adam Smith said "A great deal of ruin is bound up in a nation." He didn't just mean there was a lot of ruin to unwind. He also meant it could take awhile.
Kulak had a piece about the debt spiral the other day, and a key takeaway is that one population is going to get the gibs, and the other is going to be written off hard. Right now, there’s every reason to expect White kids will be forced to suffer austerity while so-called minorities will continue to get EBT, healthcare, etc. (Arguably, this is happening right now.)
But why suffer for these people? The System’s contempt for them has burned off whatever love many (most?) Heritage Americans had for it. America in its current configuration is unworthy of their loyalty. If the System can’t even offer gibs (to you, at least), what good is it?