I think this kind of data is exactly what you’d expect to see in a somewhat equal society: you work your whole life, saving, of course you’ve got more savings then people who haven’t been working their whole lives.
Really I suspect averaging here is skewing your perception, that 70% can hide a few super wealthy and many more poor (which is what you’d expect given 1% of the population own more than the combined bottom 95% ).
And silent. But notice how little the percent goes up when you add both silent and much of gen x to it. Most of it is still baby boomers.
I think this kind of data is exactly what you’d expect to see in a somewhat equal society: you work your whole life, saving, of course you’ve got more savings then people who haven’t been working their whole lives.
Yes. So why are people whining that their paychecks aren’t rising, that they can’t afford property, etc? All that goes to old people who, via retirement funds mostly, own the companies that young people work for. The housing is owned by old people and companies belonging to old people. If the US suddenly had a 50 dollar an hour minimum wage, old people would be fucked and have to go back to work because their holdings would no longer be worth shit.
Really I suspect averaging here is skewing your perception, that 70% can hide a few super wealthy and many more poor (which is what you’d expect given 1% of the population own more than the combined bottom 95% ).
Median baby boomer is worth like 400k, average is near 2 mill, so of course it’s still skewed, 10% of baby boomers own 70% of their wealth. But what I’m trying to argue is that you can’t have both a great working life and a great retirement life at the same time unless the amount of retired people is small. Baby boomers enjoyed a great working life and now they’re enjoying a great retirement life, but they can only enjoy the latter because everyone else’s wages stagnated. No other generation has ever been as rich as the baby boomers, no other generation’s wealth outclassed the preceding generation as early as theirs. They’re enjoying more time at the top than anyone before them. Gen X and millennials on the other hand are getting there much later in life and I don’t know if Gen Z will ever be the wealthiest generation before most millennials are dead.
People just aren’t having enough children for this whole retirement thing to work much longer. Millennials might never retire, Gen Z will definitely not retire (and this isn’t specific to the capitalist system). But we get to pay baby boomers to retire.
Eventually we need to start talking about getting rid of retirement altogether. We can’t have 5 retirees living off the back of one working person, that’s absurd.
Ironically the AI everyone’s fighting against, combined with a better economic system of course, is the only thing that can change things. When there are truly very few jobs that need a human, we can finally consider having so many non-working people for so few working people, without outright straddling all the working people with debt. Maybe not AI as it is now, but AI that can truly replace knowledge workers to the point that it can design automation for physical jobs on its own. As it is now, even supposedly “communist” countries need people working well into the 50s and 60s, and it’ll get worse when their demographics crises hit.
Over 55 isn’t babyboomers anymore that’s gen x.
I think this kind of data is exactly what you’d expect to see in a somewhat equal society: you work your whole life, saving, of course you’ve got more savings then people who haven’t been working their whole lives.
Really I suspect averaging here is skewing your perception, that 70% can hide a few super wealthy and many more poor (which is what you’d expect given 1% of the population own more than the combined bottom 95% ).
And silent. But notice how little the percent goes up when you add both silent and much of gen x to it. Most of it is still baby boomers.
Yes. So why are people whining that their paychecks aren’t rising, that they can’t afford property, etc? All that goes to old people who, via retirement funds mostly, own the companies that young people work for. The housing is owned by old people and companies belonging to old people. If the US suddenly had a 50 dollar an hour minimum wage, old people would be fucked and have to go back to work because their holdings would no longer be worth shit.
Median baby boomer is worth like 400k, average is near 2 mill, so of course it’s still skewed, 10% of baby boomers own 70% of their wealth. But what I’m trying to argue is that you can’t have both a great working life and a great retirement life at the same time unless the amount of retired people is small. Baby boomers enjoyed a great working life and now they’re enjoying a great retirement life, but they can only enjoy the latter because everyone else’s wages stagnated. No other generation has ever been as rich as the baby boomers, no other generation’s wealth outclassed the preceding generation as early as theirs. They’re enjoying more time at the top than anyone before them. Gen X and millennials on the other hand are getting there much later in life and I don’t know if Gen Z will ever be the wealthiest generation before most millennials are dead.
People just aren’t having enough children for this whole retirement thing to work much longer. Millennials might never retire, Gen Z will definitely not retire (and this isn’t specific to the capitalist system). But we get to pay baby boomers to retire.
Eventually we need to start talking about getting rid of retirement altogether. We can’t have 5 retirees living off the back of one working person, that’s absurd.
Ironically the AI everyone’s fighting against, combined with a better economic system of course, is the only thing that can change things. When there are truly very few jobs that need a human, we can finally consider having so many non-working people for so few working people, without outright straddling all the working people with debt. Maybe not AI as it is now, but AI that can truly replace knowledge workers to the point that it can design automation for physical jobs on its own. As it is now, even supposedly “communist” countries need people working well into the 50s and 60s, and it’ll get worse when their demographics crises hit.