Hating Elon Musk; hating Boomers
Though shalt not covet is one of the Ten Commandments. When I was young I didn’t quite understand what “covet” meant, although later on it was explained to me that it had to do with envy. It didn’t occur to me yet that the prohibition had political repercussions, although as I’ve gotten older I realize that of course it does.
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” —Perth, Scotland, 28 May 1948, in Churchill, Europe Unite: Speeches 1947 & 1948 (London: Cassell, 1950), 347.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” —House of Commons, 22 October 1945.
Now that Elon Musk has become a trillionaire, the already-virulent hatred for him has increased, and people aren’t shy about showing it. For example, we have this from Hasan Piker:
Trying desperately to sound profound, the current darling of the Left [Hasan Piker] began: “Meritocracy is a lie. Lying is OP [gamer slang for “overpowered”]. And money is fake. This story that we are watching unfold in front of us is a great example of all three of those classic Hasan Minhaj tropes that I advance over and over again. Okay?
He continued:
Elon Musk is a f***ing failure and yet, in spite of his failures, because he lucked into a, uh, initial — because he happened to be at the right place at the right time, he has failed upwards with his endless wealth. He’s a horrible person, an unbelievably insecure person, and yet he’s the richest person on the planet. Right? We know he doesn’t f***ing work hard because he tweets all the goddamn time.
This is what passes for thought these days from an “influencer.” Piker himself benefited from nepotism, so it’s especially ironic that he’s down on Musk as just happening “to be at the right place at the right time,” as though it was pure chance and there was no thought or agency involved at all.
This type of thinking seems to appeal to a lot of people, though. Some of those people also hate Boomers for living so long and not giving them their stuff quickly enough; I wrote about that sentiment in this previous post, and to a lesser extent in this one.
It’s hard to overestimate the rage towards Boomers felt and expressed by a lot of commenters (or bots? or paid shills?) online. You can see some if it in the comments to this piece at City Journal, which refers a book by Yale law professor Samuel Moyn entitled Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth – and What to Do About It. Although City Journal’s readers are generally somewhat to the right (at least, that’s been my impression in the past), the article is sometimes favorable to Moyn’s book although it critiques it as well.
The comments there are mixed; some defend the Boomers and there are also examples of the Boomer-hate I’ve been talking about. See this, for example:
So you trust the boomers who bequeathed the world yawning income inequality and the housing crisis more than the generation tasked with fixing it?
You shall know them by their fruits and the boomer fruit has been poisonous.
They are the first generation in the history of the world whose children have shorter lifespans than they do.
They are destroyers of the world, both literally and figuratively.
They are the weak men who create hard times.
Is this a real person? Hard to say, but I see such sentiments often online. Here’s a typical response from a Boomer:
Boomer here.
You whiners just can’t wait to put another socialist government in power; one that, once all of us Boomers are dead, will rob you of the trillions in hard-earned wealth we’re leaving you.
We worked for our money. Try it, you might like it — and it will be a new experience for many of you.
In the meantime, quit whining about what we Boomers have. Get your own. You can begin by not being silly, wasteful people. Starbucks and designer foods have never been necessary. Neither is a 60″ TV screen.
I did a search on whether Boomers actually had more wealth than previous senior generations. Here’s Google AI’s reply, for what it’s worth:
The Numbers: The typical (median) household headed by a Baby Boomer boasts a net worth of $432,200 (in 2024 dollars). In contrast, households headed by older adults in 2001 (Silent Generation) had a median wealth of $335,900, and those in 1983 (Greatest Generation) had $185,300 in their 50s, 60s, and 70s.Historical Luck: Boomers entered the housing and equity markets just before two massive, 40-year asset appreciation cycles. They purchased homes at younger ages and significantly lower prices than younger generations, allowing them to ride decades of compounding real estate and stock market growth.
Historical Luck: Boomers entered the housing and equity markets just before two massive, 40-year asset appreciation cycles. They purchased homes at younger ages and significantly lower prices than younger generations, allowing them to ride decades of compounding real estate and stock market growth.
The Education Divide: While college-educated Boomers possess vastly higher wealth than previous generations, Boomers without a college degree have median net worths similar to, or even lower than, their predecessors of the same education level.
Unequal Distribution: The “wealthiest generation” title is heavily skewed by the top echelons. The top 10% of Boomer households control the lion’s share of the generation’s collective wealth.
One of the main articles cited for some of those statistics is this from Pew
I think it is completely fair to say that Boomers rode a flood tide, and young people today are riding an ebb tide. Doesn’t mean Boomers didn’t have to work for what they had, but it does mean that some of the things Boomers did no longer work, and this is behind some of the frustration.
For example, one reason health insurance is so expensive for young people is that they are paying high premiums and deductibles to fund the expenses incurred by Boomers now. When Boomers were young there was not this top-heavy old population to care for, and what was done for those oldsters was far less than is done now, and so while young they didn’t pay nearly as much and could more easily build capital.
Unlike life insurance, health insurance does not sit on money; what the Boomers “paid in” was spent long ago, and what is being paid out for Boomers is being paid for by younger people. Medicare is of course using current tax money to pay for Boomers’ care, but the payroll taxes have stayed at the same percentage for a long time at least; on the other hand Medicare does not pay its share of health care costs: providers and hospitals balance their budgets on the backs of people with employer coverage, and charge private insurance 2 – 4 times as much they charge Medicare.
This is not a blame thing, this is just the way it is. A few Boomers were involved in making this system what it is, along with lots of other people who are a very small part of the population, and almost everyone else has to deal with it, regardless of whether they are winners or losers by it.
Mao’ist propaganda from the Cultural Revolution; hate your elders, reeducate, confiscate, and kill them.
I’ve been told that Social Security will be bankrupt when I am retired for at least 30 years now. It looks like 2030 – 2032. I’m still working full time, my 67th was years ago.
Hasan Piker can bugger off.
This is such an idea and concept rich post.
Niketas’ comment is interesting. Insurance is always a system of socializing costs. Health insurance is one of the worst (in terms of spreading costs far and wide) and very expensive.
I’ve many thoughts, but I’ll start with this one: Real Estate.
Two days ago was out with one of my oldest new friends (post marriage) who is house shopping. She’s looking for her second real estate purchase in about 2 years, looking to re-locate, and these California prices are rather high.
So she is educating me a bit on the current state of these sorts of transactions, and she mentioned that putting 20% down is now the norm. Huh… Clearly, this is basic stuff, but it immediately made me think of 40+ years of home financing.
Long ago, 20% was typical. (40 or 50 years ago?) But people on the left would gnash their teeth and complain about all those people who don’t have the 20%. So then for a number of years 10% down was common. Not good enough? Well, maybe just a few percent down will do. So the rigor of the loan qualification was going down, down, down.
Many, many other things happened that affected the stability of the mortgage market, including the somewhat bizarre financial practice of creating “Collateralized Debt Obligation” securities. Which IIRC, was originally spurred by the S&L loan disaster starting in the late 80’s. And the result of all of these actions was the credit crisis of 2007 & 2008. I will note that the vast majority of the actions that help cause the crisis were created in an effort to supposedly lessen the effect of income inequality.
So now we’re back to 20% down. Who’da thunk it? Think, unintended consequences of what went before.
And I recall this point about real estate back in 2008 – 2010. Many GenXer’s were getting their butt’s handed to them with declining home prices, and possibly a handful of Millenials. Some survey of that time said that the vast majority of Millenials felt that they were never ever going to buy a house. We’ll just rent instead.
My thought: Oh, this will not end well for them! A blindingly obvious point or tactic is that you want to wait through most of the home price declines, and then BUY. My home shopping friend did exactly that, and she & her now ex-husband bought their first home at a rock bottom price, around 2008.
Second point. Investing in securities:
Warren Buffett is well known for saying this, but it dates back to about the 1890’s. “Start buying when there is blood in the streets. Even if some of the blood is yours.”
The credit crisis of 2008 was something of a once in a lifetime opportunity. Were you able to capitalize on it? Did you? A huge question and problem is, “What do I buy?”
From hero to the progressives (Tesla EV’s) to hated symbol of wealth.
I think the fact that he aligned too much with Trump and, of course, DOGE accounts for much of the about face for many.
Hasan Piker hasn’t done anything constructive so far as I am aware. Calling Elon Musk “a …failure” is complete nonsense. Do people think at all when they watch this bilge?
A huge part of the financial problem of the younger generations is the massive wealth transfer to colleges & universities that has taken place. Someone has to pay for the salaries of all those administrators, the mansions of the university presidents, the fancy buildings and dorms, the Indoctrination departments, the largely-useless ‘education’ departments, the sociology professors raging at America, etc eetc
Please recall that Congress and the President during the period running from 1945 to 1947 managed to re-arrange the federal budget and the tax picture such that we went from a deficit equal to about 13% of gross domestic product to a surplus of 2.5% of gross domestic product. The civilian unemployment rate in 1948 averaged shy of 4%.
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That generation was composed of responsible stewards to a degree subsequent cohorts cannot match. The last of the responsible stewards retired around about 1960. Each successive set of cohorts has been more and more profligate and less and less concerned with the public interest.
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Please recall that among the world’s affluent countries (by the metrics of the day) in 1928 were the Southern Cone republics in South America. Thence followed > four decades decades of comparative decline. There has been some relative improvement in the last fifty years, but they’ve never regained their position.
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The median vintage of our dreadful federal legislature is supposedly 58 years. This isn’t the ‘boomers’ screwing you at this moment.
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The most notable bad actors during the financial crisis were of that demographic set, to be sure.
A huge part of the financial problem of the younger generations is the massive wealth transfer to colleges & universities that has taken place.
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Congress and the state legislatures could repair this. They’ve done squat. That would require imagination, a commitment to the public interest, an indifference to the rice bowls of Very Important People, and indifference to social narratives.
Hasan Piker hasn’t done anything constructive so far as I am aware.
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You’ve always had arrogant fools in this world. This man takes it to a stupefying level. The trouble with our times is that a critical mass of the electorate does not recognize this nonsense for what it is. Exacerbating that is a that those who do not are drawn disproportionately from the population of foreigners among us (Mamdani’s electoral base, as it happens).
I posted this elsewhere a few days ago:
“Bernie’s fulminations against ‘the oligarchy’ are nothing more than squid ink, intended to deceive in the same way the ‘billionaire’s tax is in California.
“Bernie and his fellow travelers know that billionaires as well as the merely wealthy can afford high-priced attorneys and tax accountants to legally avoid just about any scheme the left might seek to impose (short of confiscation followed by execution). Sanders, Jayapal, Schumer, et al want to punish middle class and upper middle class people who are merely comfortable: small business owners, mom-and-pop landlords, MDs paying off their medical school loans, retirees whose homes are finally paid off, etc. etc. Those people are vigorously opposed to social engineering schemes and identity politics, and therefore must be taught a lesson, good and hard.
“Someone should ask Bernie if he has any thoughts he’d like to share on what the Bolsheviks did to the kulaks.”
Anyway, it’s not like Musk had a trillion dollars in cash deposited to his brokerage account. The shares could go up, they could go down, and IIRC there are rules about how long shares in a company have to be held following an IPO. Insiders are obligated to hold their shares for a certain period of time.
I did a search on whether Boomers actually had more wealth than previous senior generations. Here’s Google AI’s reply, for what it’s worth:
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From 1947 to the present, personal income per capita in real terms has quadrupled. I don’t know why you would not expect the real value of people’s assets to improve as well. That someone born in 1948 has more valuable assets than did someone born in 1932, that someone born in 1932 had more wealth than did someone born in 1913, and that someone born in 1913 did than someone born in 1890 is unremarkable.
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Asset values are more volatile than income flows, to be sure and you do have periods of declining incomes and declining asset values (the longest and most severe being from 1929 to 1933). You could very well have a reversal of fortune hitting future generations: a ghastly inter continental war, intramural disorders up to civil war, or a financial collapse brought on by unsustainable debt accumulation would generate that to one degree or another. A great many people will cast their ballots for the politicians most likely to take us down these roads, and they haven’t got a clue.
No doubt the thieving pigs would settle for transfer of spacex stock in lieu of money, after all, they can print money.
Boomer: “You can begin by not being silly, wasteful people. Starbucks and designer foods have never been necessary. Neither is a 60? TV screen.”
True!
I’m a boomer (1958 model) and growing up we had ONE TV in the living room.
You watched what your parents had on the TV or you didn’t watch. Our TV was in black and white while our grandparents set had a color screen that was placed in front of the TV to make it look more special. The colors sort of rotated around so that people’s faces would change from red to yellow to green or some other color. When we watched TV at our grandparents’ house we thought that was the coolest thing in the world!
Oh, and BTW, we had no channel “clickers” – YOU were dad’s remote control (“hey, how about one of you kids change the channel for me?”) You had to look though the TV guide to know what was on when and what channel. There was only the choice of the three major networks, PBS, and maybe a couple of local stations – no cable with a thousand and one choices.
Starbucks was NOT a thing. Coffee for anyone under 18 in our house was forbidden. No coffee until you were over 18, and even then it was made in grandma’s percolator. Mr Coffee didn’t come out until later.
Fast food? Ha! If we had hamburgers it was made by mom from ground beef bought at the supermarket (and maybe grilled by dad in the summer on a charcoal grill). I didn’t have fast food until I was in high school when a coach treated us to a hamburger at McDonald’s when we won our game.
Phones? There was ONE landline in the house – in the living room – and it was shared by all. You would be told to get off the phone if mom or dad was waiting for an important call. And the embarrassment of talking to someone of the opposite sex while everyone in your family listened because they were in the same room – argh!?
Designer food? Maybe the closest was TV dinners. Mom worked full time, as dad did, which meant that she didn’t always have time to cook. So we would occasionally be treated to a Swanson TV dinner. (I especially liked the ones which had a chocolate brownie in the one compartment for dessert) Other nights it was leftovers – everybody come to the kitchen and choose which leftover you wanted and mom would heat it up on the stove top (microwaves weren’t common until much later).
Playdates? Never heard of them. If you wanted to get together you rode your bicycle over to a friend’s house and around town looking to see where most kids were “hanging out.” And maybe we would start a pick up game of softball or something. Growing up in the country we did a lot of “bike hikes.”
Lastly, yes, our parents allowed us freewill; but with responsibilities. Go ahead and stay up late at night; but you are still responsible for getting up, showering, and catching the bus in the morning. And God help you if your grades slipped! Extracurricular sports? Sure you could go out for a sport in high school; but you were then in charge of doing you own laundry for your sweaty sports clothes. (I was actually kind of shocked when I got to college and found other students in my dorm had never done laundry before)
Oh, I almost forgot – we ALL had chores to do. It was just expected. And in the summer time you could earn extra money doing yard work for the neighbors.
While I do feel the younger generations have some things much more difficult today (housing costs for example); I guess if I say to the younger generations today “suck it up buttercup” their response would be “okay boomer” while still sipping their Starbucks and looking at their Smart Phone.
Anybody doing such stats knows that extremes affect the mean, median, and mode and distort the picture of the rest of the sample. Many economists, wanting to be more granular than quarters and eighths use quintiles and deciles, And the top of the top are usually excluded from the top decile for obvious reasons. So if that did not happen in these stats, they’re off.
Was the cash equivalent of a pension included? Could be pretty fat.
After some moving around, my folks bought the home I grew up in about 1955. It’s hasn’t been improved since my dad did some work. Sale price is ten times what my folks paid–on a fifteen year note. It’s in the middle of a block in the middle of a subdivision in the middle of a township mostly looking like that and endless square miles surrounding any city and many towns from post-war subdivision building.
Figure to be comfortable making the payments need two folks making about $15/hr full time.
Probably 95% of my high school class of 62 grew up in such homes. Three bedrooms, one bath, but the basement was plumbed so that another toilet could be added. Half the basement finished into a bedroom with room for two beds, closets, built-in desks.
People may or may not sneer at such a place to lay one’s head–know a couple who have–but it was a HOME. Still is.
Can start there.
I caught part of what Elon said after ringing the opening bell on the stock market the other day. He said that he remembers when SpaceX was just a handful of science and engineering people starting to work in an old warehouse in El Segundo. And that he figured his odds of success were extremely low.
Now maybe he’s just amping up his triumph. It’s also true that he had a lot of millions in his back pocket then because of some previous success with PayPal. So he could afford a complete loss.
But still, it seems like amazing story. Only a big federal government can afford to operate in that arena. The rocketry and spacecraft arena. Who would have contested that 30 years ago? Starting companies is always highly risky anyway.
Democrats! What a bunch of losers and parasites.
Boomers rode a flood tide? I am not a Boomer, but I would have been in the same boat as the Boomers. The tide I rode ebbed as often as it rose. You dealt with it.
As Richard Aubrey aptly pointed out, expectations are so different. The circumstances in which pre-Boomers and Boomers grew up in are sneered at now.
Whose whining? Times are different but options are there for those who are prepared and willing. One example. My auto mechanic’s son received a $30k bonus from the USN right out of high school. He had prepared himself, and made a commiment. Now he will receive training that will further prepare him for future options; and will earn educational benefits through sweat equity. Of course he could have coasted into a very expensive college and coasted out with a meaningless degree and a huge debt.
Since when did saving so that you will not be a burden on your children, or their children, become hoarding? Not to mention that those savings are probably invested in the economy in some fashion. But there is a solution to the problem of an aging population. Canada and parts of Europe are flirting with it.
Finally, what the world needs is more Musks. I don’t know him, of course, but I get the sense that his interest in all of the money is that it gives him the resources for the next big thing. I recently read a quip that Musk doesn’t own a yacht; but critic Gavin Newsom does.
Not sure what he means by ‘hoarding wealth’. People own real estate which they live in or rent out. Fewer than 4% of the households own more than one residence. People own stakes in private businesses, stocks, bonds, and commercial and municipal paper. It’s for the interest and dividends, by and large. Some income is expended on personal consumption, some goes to satisfy the tax collectors, some is saved and re-invested. If people were not re-investing, the country as a whole would be entirely dependent on foreign capital. Dependency on foreign capital is excessive as we speak and has been for > 40 years.
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As for hoarding power, that’s a segment of the United States Congress. There are about 50 members of Congress who were there present prior to 2002, of whom about 35 are Democrats. There are about 60 members of Congress born prior to 1951, of whom north of 40 are Democrats. Those in both categories include Glitch McConnell, upChuck Schumer, maligNancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn, and Bernie Sanders.
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Art Deco:
My guess is that he defines it in his book in some empirical manner.
But what I really think he means is: “people who have more money than I do and are older than I am.” Moyn was born in 1972.
Chiming in from an old guy born towards the end of WWII, kind of a pre-boomer and in my time guys were drafted or joined the military unless they had a college deferment or as in my case flunked out midway through and joined the Army for four years to be the draft, the Army Security Agency being a ditty bopper, morse code intercept seemed like a good choice for me. I was 21 and newly married and after four years, three years in Europe with my wife with me we came back and finished our college degrees using my GI Bill for college and we put off having a family until I graduated and she had one semester left. We lived poor and cheap and no college debt with our degrees.
A few years later we used my Veterans GI Bill to purchase our first house with a nice loan and we did purchase a second home years later where we had to go through the problem of selling that home when the entire oil business collapsed in Oklahoma where we were living, a bit hit and not easy but that’s life or something, I don’t know.
Many years later I am living in a nice Texas Town, 81 years old in a second marriage of 36 years and we slid into home plate, selling our house in Dallas for enough to purchase our current home when we moved 13 years ago. We live kind of cheap and simple, I do the cooking and I am getting read to cook some Picana steak tonight along with nice vegetables. I can cook much better than most of the people cooking restaurants we can afford when we want to eat our once or twice a month.
Our income stream is not great however when we put it all together we make enough to keep our home in good shape pay our taxes early and we give over ten percent back to church and charities with a decent amount to built my checking account so I can purchase fishing, hunting and ammunition which is great for this old 81 year old man, so there’s that.
We have had our ups and downs however I do think a good attitude, looking towards the future and just keeping moving forward makes a bit difference for a persons ability to enjoy the journey and I am proud to have kids and grandkids who have also gone thorough some though journeys and they are doing well. I am ever so pleased that they are better parents than their mom and I. Now I need to go cook some nice steaks that marinated a good deal of the afternoon. You might as well smile as you move along so it turns out the pay is the same depending upon your choices each day.
I am a faithful reader of City Journal and object to its negative characterization here.
And may God bless you, Old Texan.
If you’re 20 or 25 and want to start and build a significant new business, your options are far better today than they were for a Boomer of the same age.
I see daily references across blogs to the envy and hate directed at Elon Musk; today from one source, tomorrow from another, ad nauseam.
And every day, I see the principle behind Robert Heinlein’s quote in vicious action:
As others have pointed out: If the socialists had their way, Musk’s profit from Paypal would have been confiscated and redistributed for the greater good. There would be no Tesla as it is today, no Boring Company, and no Starlink. And not one of those businesses could have then even been imagined.
Yesterday, Ann Althouse quoted Bob Dylan:
This, I believe, is why both Musk and Trump, each in his respective field, will ultimately be seen as pivotal to the future.
Funnily enough, I can list a handful of positive societal contributions that bear the name of Elon Musk as their creator. And not only their creator, but the man who made them into profitable enterprises that provide a service, a product, and employment for thousands. There could be a billion people that know his name, as a consequence.
Hasan Piker: Not so much.
“A huge part of the financial problem of the younger generations is the massive wealth transfer to colleges & universities that has taken place.” Art Deco’s response is spot on.
Get this. When I attended the U of Florida, 1953-55, the tuition was $75/semester; and that included football tickets. The state managed to fund higher education, and I don’t recall my folks whining about taxes. Even when my daughter attended the U of Virginia about thirty years later the tuition was a thousand or so. States had at least minimal priorities as to where they spent the taxpayer’s money, and supporting higher education was on the list.
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Ironically, I think the basic education quality was likely higher at UF in the ’50’s than at many institutions today, as a core curriculum was required in the first two years. It included two semesters of a science, two of a math, two of English, American History, Logic, and Humanities. There was allowance for a couple of electives toward a chosen major, or in subjects of interest. The adults dictated the basic subject matter to which an educated person should be exposed.
Oldflyer,
Along with burgeoning tuition costs universities saw a growth in the number of bureaucratic positions. A case in point, it has been noted that this year, for the first time, Harvard has more administrators than it does students. Bureaucrats see themselves as necessary functionaires, but in reality the great percentage of them are like the overburden to a seam of coal; they’re just in the way.
And we wonder why a university education has become so expensive.
When I was a youngster of 25, I had catastrophic health insurance only, and it was cheap. Routine doctor’s visits, maybe once every two years, were payed out of pocket. Dentists likewise. I don’t know what things are like for young people these days, but I expect health care and insurance cost a lot more. Obamacare is a disaster that keeps on taking.
“There would be no Tesla as it is today, no Boring Company, and no Starlink. [T @8:06 pm above]
And SpaceX. How could I have forgotten to mention SpaceX!!
When you total the synergy of Musk’s companies you get a colony on Mars (first the Moon). This seems to becoming apparent.
I asked Grok to comment on that.
The cost of some essential big-ticket items — particularly higher ed, health care and houses — have increased beyond inflation rate.
Young people can’t make that up by budgeting on lattes and smartphones.
I find it obscene the way the government, universities and banks have cooperated and preyed upon young people. It’s very easy to get behind the eight-ball.
You can’t declare bankruptcy on a school loan.
Hats off to conservative groups trying to change school loan policies.
I paid my own way through college, 6 years of it. No help from my parents. No loans or any other form of government assistance. And I did it all by working as a bartender, while going to school full time. Tuition was about $600 a year, or $300 per semester. Heck, I could make $300 in two weeks on tips alone. Didn’t have to declare income from tips either. Well, maybe I should have, but I didn’t. When I transferred to an out-of-state school, I took a year off in order to become an official resident of the state (Colorado) and thus qualify for in-state tuition. I thought seriously about enlisting, but Colorado was such a sweet deal back then that I decided against that course. I worked hard, I was always exhausted, and I had a whole hell of a lot of fun. Heck, I could even afford to go skiing, lift tickets at Copper and Winter Park, e.g., cost $10 for the entire day. Good times, very good times indeed.
Fuck you, boomer haters. Don’t tell me I had it easy. I worked long and hard for what I got.
Elon Musk’s success is an intolerable threat to the left’s “democratic socialist” narrative. Under his direction, Musk’s company’s achievements have been extraordinary and could ONLY have been realized in a capitalist system.
Capitalism is a real world, results oriented economic system.
Socialism, like all collectivist ideologies is unsustainable and can only be maintained through ever greater coercion.
This is so because collectivist ideologies reject certain basics aspects of human nature itself, such as why should you work your butt off all day… so that I can sit on my butt all day?
Collectivist ideologies also reject basic economic principles that govern economies. Such as “Supply & Demand”.
Collectivist ideologies operate literally in opposition to reality itself. And opposition to reality is arguably a precondition to cognitive dysfunction.
The cost of some essential big-ticket items — particularly higher ed, health care and houses — have increased beyond inflation rate. — huxley
There is an economic principle, which is largely correct, that states that goods and services that can be mass produced and greatly streamlined can and will get cheaper (in inflation adjusted terms), whereas services that are inherently labor intensive won’t. Relatively speaking, those labor intensive service costs look like they are far outstripping the inflation rate.
Higher ed. and healthcare are decidedly labor intensive. Though there have been a number of tech gurus who have looked hard at streamlining healthcare. Personally, I have the feeling and hope that AI may end up being something of a healthcare breakthrough in time.
The socialization effect of healthcare insurance also means that few people are paying for anything out of pocket. Necessarily, people are much less cost conscious when the money being spent is not theirs.
House building is not something I know much about, but certainly there have been some considerable efficiencies there. But then there are all the other factors that affect home prices. Land and location, zoning and regs., and scarcities are independent of technical efficiencies.
The average desirable home today is far bigger and more lavish than 50 years ago also.
I’d guess that budgeting on small economies: lattes, subscriptions, travel, dining and drinking out, smartphones and their contracts really can help fund that crucial downpayment on a house.
There were economic studies of young Millenials a decade ago. The new consumer group. A great many said that they were much more interested in spending on “experiences” rather than on things. OK, but are they saving for some of those “things” that they will likely want in the future?
Then there is the demand that the most menial of jobs should pay a “living wage.” That then sets a floor for wages, and all other wages must be equal or higher.
“Experiences rather than things”….for many experiences, though, it really helps to have the thing. If you love the experience of boating, you’ll be able to do a lot more of it if you have a boat. If you want the experience of watching your kids play in the yard, it helps to have a yard.
I’d have to agree with those who say we boomers are a greedy and selfish lot. I noticed this in the 70s, when “5-finger discount” became a thing. And college honor systems took it hard, being redefined into meaninglessness. And of course draft-dodging was a popular. No one bragged about that in 1943.
I don’t know that younger generations are significantly better, though.
Two Millennial daughters, ages 32 and 30. The younger went through an “Okay Boomer” phase a few years ago, but now seems to understand. The older daughter has always been more conservative and a planner. I’ve always had an academic job and the low salary (4 year college) that goes with it. Wife was a civilian employee of DoD; now DoW. TIAA back when I started looks nothing like TIAA today. However, my first year, at a $16k salary, I calculated what I would need to retire to maintain our life….it came out to slightly over $1M. I then told the school how much to put away to TIAA each month. I told this story to our daughters many times and they seem to have absorbed it. Also helps that they both got finance degrees.
Through much saving, we are now on our 3rd house and final house. Our net worth with the house, and my now substantial TIAA is fairly high, and all will go to the girls upon death…..they will be set for life. Older daughter married her college boyfriend and they have been building a life; including we just found out a granddaughter coming to us in December. The younger sibling was basically chasing the life her sister has and bounced through too many boyfriends. She seems to now understand that she has to find the one and not chase everyone that comes along. She has now bought, on her own after we encouraged her to get off the renting merry go round, a townhouse so has started her investment in real estate and seems to have more patience with life. She works for Lockheed and is advancing along in her job.
We help out each of them as needed as we have the resources to do so. Though both never really ask for anything; we just do it for them and tell them to accept.
I think the generational envy is fairly minimal in our family.
I think Richard John Neuhaus once said he figured the quantum of moral slobbery doesn’t vary much from age to age. If he’s right, what you’d see is some vices burgeoning and some receding. People born during the years running from 1938 to 1957 had (in comparison with those older) higher propensity to make use of divorce courts, commit crimes, and make use of street drugs. These disagreeable features began to slowly recede beginning with different age cohorts even as certain others (abortion, bastardy) continued to advance. BTW, it’s important to recall every component of those cohorts, not merely the 25% or so enrolled in bacclaureate-granting institutions and the subset thereof who fancied protest politics.
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In our public life, it’s been for the most part downhill since the Lost Generation left the scene, with spots and periods of improvement now and again. No clue where the bottom is, or what sort of disasters would have to ensue before a social renorming could occur.
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I’ve been puzzled by the young for nearly twenty years now and find the current crop of them strange and unappealing.
Stuff boomers did that doesn’t work now: paying for tuition with your tips from tending bar. Doesn’t matter how hard the boomer worked back then, that much work would not do it now. After adjusting for inflation tuition alone has gone up by a factor of 4 since 1970. Doesn’t matter if it’s in-state, out-of-state, public, private, it’s gone up by a factor of 4. Tuition alone, not books, not fees, not housing, not living expenses.
When I started college thirty years ago it was still possible to work full time and pay for school with the help of loans and grants, which is exactly what I did. Not so much now, and it would be pointless and ill-received to tell a young person wanting to go to college “oh just work full time like I did”.
$600 a year tuition in 1970 is $5,400 in today’s money, and that’s about one semester of in-state tuition at a less-expensive public university.
Assuming they let a white male in, of course.
For those who don’t click links, here’s the top 10 ranked public universities and their annual in-state tuition and out-of-state tuition:
UC Berkeley: $17,721 / $55,323
UCLA: $14,824 / $48,674
University of Michigan: $19,497 / $66,203
UNC Chapel Hill: $9,096 / $45,228
University of Virginia: $23,897 / $62,923
UCSD: $17,256 / $54,858
University of Florida: $6,381 / $30,866
UT Austin: $11,687 / $44,908
Georgia Institute of Technology: $12,008 / $35,092
UC Davis: $32,273 / $50,324
These one-year out-of-state tuition figures are roughly equal to the entire amount for four years, including books, fees, and living expenses, when I started college thirty years ago. (I know because somewhere around here I have a T-shirt with the name of my university on it which says “The four-year, $40,000 party”, $92,000 in 2026 dollars.)
Boomers are not at fault for this, this is just how it is.
When I went to Michigan State, R&B in dorms was $810. If you got a 40-hour min wage jub the day after you got home from spring finals and worked it until the day you packed to go back for fall term, you could make R&B for the year. Just shy of twenty hours a week at min wage during school would do it, as well. Combining the two, half in summer, half at school, pretty easy.
No one bragged about that in 1943.
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The difference between 1943 and 1968 does reflect a deterioration in the ethical sense of the young. However, one should remark the two situations were quite different. The 2d World War was a massive social mobilization to address an existential threat. The 1st World War was also a massive mobilization for which failure had less severe implications; please note the limited time scale; mobilization began in April of 1917 and demobilization began in March of 1919 and was completed within a year. Other overseas deployments – of which the Philippine insurrection was most notable – involved circumscribed numbers of an all-volunteer force. It was only during the period running from 1950 to 1973 that you had for reasons of state overseas deployments in six digits relying to a degree on conscripts.
Here’s something that any one of us can try at home.
Rule of thumb is that a person shouldn’t buy a house that’s more than three times their income.
Go to Zillow or someplace, look at the estimate of your home’s value, and divide by three. (Use your last tax assessment if you want, but I find Zillow is closer to actual market in most cases.) That’s how much you would need to make today in order to afford your own home if you were a young person just buying it.
I did this exercise just now. When I bought my home in 2014 it was for about 3.5 times my income then. When I check the estimated value on Zillow, it’s over 5 times my income NOW, which is a quite a bit more than my income then. And that’s for a house that only got 12 years older.
If you adjust the price I paid 12 years ago for today’s dollar, my house is 80% more expensive than it was then, despite being older and not having had any significant work done on it.
A lot of us will find, when we run through this exercise, that at no point in our lives did we have a salary that would allow us to buy our own home today.
Cutting out lattes and Door Dash is wise for anyone, but it can’t double your gross salary, which is what I’d need to do in order to afford my own home if I were a young person buying it today.
I heartily agree with Niketas. Reprising something I believe I said in on a previous post on the topic, there is no way a generation the size of the Boom could have *not* had an outsized impact on American society. It really doesn’t matter if you feel the negative evaluations are ‘fair’, society before and after the Boom passed through various stages of life was going to be different, and some people aren’t going to like the changes.
I also, however, disagree with any claims like Piker’s that somehow “The System” was designed for the outcome we’re seeing.
there is no way a generation the size of the Boom could have *not* had an outsized impact on American society.
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The size of 20 cohort groups does not vary all that much one to the other.
A friend of mine was interested in buying a boat and consulted a friend of his who’d owned one. The friend tells him, “David, the best day of your life with be the day you sell it”.
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If you want the experience of watching your kids play in the yard, it helps to have a yard.
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Take them to the municipal parks.
If you want the experience of watching your kids play in the yard, it helps to have a yard.
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Take them to the municipal parks. — Art Deco
Boats and yards… I was thinking along Art’s line. I think things are somewhat different now compared to 25 or 50 years ago.
For example: We older people think a car is essential (especially in CA), but if you live in a town or very near a commercial area, one could just take an Uber or Lyft on occasion.
I like to kayak some. So I drive about 30 miles to a perfect spot and rent one. My neighbor had a lovely kayak and I didn’t realize they were giving it away until too late. Had I taken it, I’d have to buy a car rack, store it somewhere, and lug the thing some distance to get it into the water.
Counterpoint: I visited Maui some months ago & my friend & I went on a sailboat cruise. Ages ago, I used to crew on a lovely 30ft. keel boat for Wednesday evening races and I kinda wanted that sailing experience again.
There were many cruises to choose from with a sailboat in the picture. But are they actually going to sail?? I picked one that mentioned sailing a few times in the verbiage. Sadly, it was whale watching season so the cruise focused on that. All under motor power.
Power boats till the kids left sailboats afterward . Loved them all no regrets . I cried when I sold my last sailboat.
I built my first boat , it doesn’t have to be expensive , 12 foot John boat with a 15 outboard used can be had for $2k or less.
But everyone has to start at the top , these days . Looking at a pontoon right now for my grands to play on.
I know the discussion is t about boating , but get a boat if you want one.
My graphic artist turned bartender son is probably going to make over $100k in tips this year.
“Taken them to municipal parks”. Nope, nope, nope. Won’t find any needles in my yard nor be accosted by some low life.
@Chases Eagles:My graphic artist turned bartender son is probably going to make over $100k in tips this year.
I’d question the ROI on him putting that money into tuition… and LLMs aren’t going to be mixing drinks any time soon I imagine. But he could definitely save for a down payment on a very modest house from that one year of tips.
“Taken them to municipal parks”. Nope, nope, nope. Won’t find any needles in my yard nor be accosted by some low life.
I was thinking the same. The way things are now, there is no community that can’t get its parks taken over by bums. Just a few have to show up really, and before long it’s taken over.
Had that experience unexpectedly in a small town in British Columbia. Oh, look, here’s a nice park, beautiful day, parking lot is empty…. get down the hill and see the tent city. Mystery solved.
it’s almost statlstically impossible to gauge dog torturer’s Pikers ignorance, but I could try, Elon took all of his pay pal stake unlike say Pierre Omidyar* and bet on Tesla, (certainly some subsidies went into the pot, but not the bulk, then he diversified into Starlink and Space X
Elon is generation X, so what does that have to do wth Boomers,
*he seems to have gone straight into the propaganda ngo racket, where like Soros every kisses his pinky, he helped deep six the Weekly Standard among other influences
piker like certain landowners sons in caribbean countries has produced little,
also in the Southern cone, say with the architects daughter who was slumming as a bar tender,
The older I get, the more I think it’s this brutally simple: your income is what it is. If you live within it, you’ll have savings. If you don’t, you won’t.
This may be relatively hard or easy at different times in your life, it may be easier or harder for you than for your peers, it may be easier or harder for you over an extended period than it was for other generations. None of that changes the essential fact: if you don’t live within whatever your means are, you won’t have savings. For nearly everyone, that means choosing not to consume some things you’d very much like to consume, and that seem tantalizingly available, particularly if you’re willing to go into debt.
Again, it’s not a question of whether this is fair, or welcome, or easy. It’s just a consequence that you can’t avoid.
Re: My boomer savings
I found my twenties experience as a broke hippie poet sustained my ability to save when I started making money as a programmer.
I still do most of my cooking and don’t spend much. It’s not hard to live within my SS.
The way things are now, there is no community that can’t get its parks taken over by bums. Just a few have to show up really, and before long it’s taken over.
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The ‘takeover’ occur because local police allow it. Decline is a choice.