Are we supposed to feel bad for the Americans with a crummy hand? To most of the rest of the world it sounds like if Prince Harry laments he's not in as high of a point of succession as his father was.
People are complaining that entities in their government are favoring older generations over theirs. The government should not be discriminating based on age when it manipulates the financial markets to benefit retirees over the rest of the population.
The current conditions favoring the elderly were the policy decisions that quintupled the value of those houses.
For me the mistake is that the elderly aren't being favored at all, but the wealthy. The elderly are held up as helpless examples of the wealthy that need to be protected. But instead of protecting the elderly by directly taking care of them, which is obviously communism, it's important to protect the elderly by protecting the wealthy in general.
Nobody cares about the broke baby boomers. They get to work at McDonald's until they are automated into homelessness.
It’s getting to the point where it isn’t the boomers but their heirs that will benefit. The least we could do is eliminate the step up basis at death rule …
In a way though this fucks boomers pretty hard, if they didn’t invest very responsibly and have their money out of stocks in time. The stock market is down 20% this year and unlikely to recover (if you believe the idea of the article) let alone return to long-run >10% growth like previously.
Similarly we may be heading for a housing price crash at some point and that kinda screws boomers who hoped to use it as a piggybank.
None of this in any way offsets the incredibly sweetheart deal that boomers received and then voted to deny to future generations, however. Almost free college, houses that pentupled in price, a stock market that averages 10-11%, generous social benefits, etc.
If someone born in 1955 who started working in 1980 and then started saving money and investing into a diversified stock portfolio the current downturn sucks but isn’t the end of the world. Plenty of time in the market.
Sure, it always sucks if you are entering retirement when there’s a downturn (which someone born in 1955 would do right about now) but I wouldn’t even see the point in completely pulling out of stocks now.
I would say that if the prediction that returns will be lower in the future is true then this sucks for everyone not entering retirement right about now. They still need and want time in the marke
That's not any better, really. If you know what it's like to be impoverished (and I certainly do), it's very easy to commiserate with people who experience a substantial loss of means.
