69.6 million US boomers – down from their 78.8 million peak – were born between 1946 and 1964 and are now aged 59 to 77. This generation has surpassed 72 million in size with millennials, ages 27 to 42 and often baby boomers, due to the boomer generation’s large size compared to the nation’s overall population. Said “we are now at the tail end” of it.Interracial tension In our conversation, Bump—a Gen Zer who lives in upstate New York—shared his insights into the aftermath of the boomers’ rise and what this means for him and the rest of the country. Below are highlights of the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity: Next Avenue: There are still about 70 million boomers, including me. Why did you call the book ‘Aftermath’? Phillip Bump: The premise for the book was always this generational shift from older to younger…there’s been this increasingly obvious tension between those two groups. What became very clear while working on the book was that much of this tension derives from the scale of the boom and its impact on the United States and the boomers. We’ve reached a point of transition that we’re seeing is really about losing the power that the baby boomers gained over the last 60 years. Therefore, the book became a look at the aftermath of this shock to the American system. The baby boom has so far faced no real competition for its power, both economically and politically. Gen X (those born from 1965 to 1980) also did not compete with the Boomers; There just weren’t that many of us. And the millennials? America has to figure out how it’s going to do more to take care of its increasingly large elderly population, but this increasingly large young population is saying, ‘Hey, we need a lot of resources for child care and schools, too.’ Also Read: I’m 66, we have over $2 million, all I want to do is golf – can I retire?A historic disruption is underway Why do you say we are going through a historic disruption of the American Empire? That language is certainly elegant, but the condition that the United States exists today is a function of accommodating the baby boom. America’s decision makers have long been responsive to the scale of the baby boom—marketers, politicians, everyone. Now, we are seeing the baby boom’s grip on the direction of the United States diminish. What is happening in terms of power structure and why? For political power, Congress is a good measure. The average age of Congress, which had been rising steadily as the baby boomers aged, has started to come back down. You will see the Democratic Party deciding to make its leadership younger as a symbolic expression of the shift in generational power. You see a very real transition of economic power in the sense of organizations promoting young Americans. The cultural power of the baby boom is still very strong; Bruce Springsteen is back on tour, for God’s sake. But at the same time, it’s largely based on nostalgia, as opposed to innovation. to read: Millennials are all grown up — it’s time to start worrying about retirementThe Boomers’ Greatest Hits If you were to identify the most significant positive impacts of the Boomer generation, what would they be? The baby boom helped fuel American economic growth. The baby boom was good at pushing back archaic institutions that led to negative outcomes such as the military industrial complex and the Vietnam War. When the baby boom emerged, the civil rights battle was largely over, but it needed tending and I think the boom was good at making sure that progress was maintained. What confuses me about the ‘OK Boomer’ phenomenon is that the Boomer generation, for the most part, has a very good relationship with its children and vice versa. There are real reasons why young Americans feel depressed. And it’s not because older Americans collectively take actions that hurt younger people. Older Americans are more likely to own homes and are trying to protect the value of their homes as they see them as an asset store they will need in retirement. So, when a city wants to build a large apartment building, [the older people] to say; ‘Do you know? I won’t do that because it will devalue my house.’ When you have so much going on, it makes it difficult for young people to own a home, even in an apartment building. And so, there is rivalry. It contributes to the sense that the older generation stands as a blockade against the younger generation when it is not intentional. It is just an effect of the way the system works. Now we’re at the point where we have to put a lot of resources into what’s happening to older Americans, because of all these births from 1946 to 1964. You can see why young Americans are frustrated as a result.Visualizing the aftermath When I was reading the book, I thought you were saying that there are some things we know about what the post-Boomers outcome means, some things we have a pretty good idea of, and some things that are impossible to predict. . Can you talk about everyone? There is very little we know for sure. We know that the population of older Americans will continue to grow as a percentage of the population over time, barring shocks like COVID. We know that the Census Bureau expects American demography to become more diverse, but there are many caveats to that. Younger Americans look differently and have different cultural values and backgrounds than older Americans; Which contributes to many cultural and political tensions. We don’t know what the full impact of climate change will be. We know that this will impact where people want to and can buy property. But we don’t know what that scale looks like. to read: 71% of Baby Boomers say they are lagging behind in saving for retirementThe cost of living longer We don’t know how long people will live. And that’s important from an economic standpoint, because if you live to be 105, you’re going to spend the last 15 years of your life probably needing more care than you did when you were 30. It costs a lot of money. So, if you have a lot of money now, but then you live that long, you will have less money to leave your children. One of the things that struck me in your book was the importance of boomer women in leading the resistance in America. Can you talk about that? This is one way in which baby boomers are often unfairly maligned by younger Americans; He is seen as arch conservative in many ways. Baby boomers make up a larger percentage of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, which I think reinforces this assumption. But when you look at the response to Donald Trump, the immediate response to his presidency since November 2016, that was really driven primarily by the mobilization of older women with college degrees speaking out against Donald Trump and reacting strongly to his politics and particularly his Gender politics.Boomers are not all the same It’s a reminder that the boomer generation is not homogenous. One of the questions you raise in the book is whether the boomers are disproportionately wealthy and powerful. Are they? All in all, they collectively have abundant wealth, but there are far too many of them. When you divide, they land where you would expect. I think the subject evokes some of that generation’s tension, because young people are like, ‘Look at these rich boomers who own their homes, yad, yad, yad.’ And individual boomers respond, ‘What are you talking about? I’m not rich. I’m scraping by, trying to afford my mortgage.’ Of course, when you put wealth inequality on top, you have a number of boomers who are extraordinarily wealthy, and they add to this accumulated wealth for the boomers. But then you have a lot of baby boomers who are not wealthy at all. plus: Baby boomers face financial hardship and age discriminationReshaping Retirement How are boomers redefining retirement? Boomers who are reaching retirement age are joining the workforce in a way that wasn’t necessary before. There are also many over-50s who say age discrimination prevents them from getting a job. There is no question. Social Security and Medicare are facing solvency problems in the coming years. What do boomers have to do with that? Social Security had a huge influx of money over the past few decades, which is now being drawn down as the boomers retire. The question is: Will Social Security provide the level of support people expect and need for their retirement?Changes in social programs The party that has long been concerned about cutting spending on Social Security and Medicare is the Republican Party. But the Republican Party is now a quarter of those of retirement age, far more than the Democratic Party. So, if you use Fox News as an indicator, Fox News has been talking a lot less about those things in recent years, because baby boomers are a large part of the Fox News audience and are going to use these systems in short order. . I think the very nature of the Republican Party will help push him to potentially take a different approach. See also: Was ‘OK, Boomer’ enough? Not if you want to make money from these stocksBoomer number 1 You met Kathleen Casey Kirschling, who was described as the first baby boomer because she was born on January 1, 1946. I thought she was apologizing for the baby boom generation and also expressing concern about the prospects for millennials. am i right you are. She is fairly liberal, not a hard left; He is a devout Catholic. I think she’s looking at ways in which America has changed for the worse and for which baby boomers and older Americans can potentially be blamed. So, I think she feels some real guilt for him. But she is very self-aware and probably aware that she is representative of the baby boom generation and that many young Americans feel frustrated with her. She has a home in New Jersey and a home in Florida where she winters. She has this kind of ideal life and I think it’s not accessible to her children and their grandchildren. As a Gen Xer, how do you feel about the baby boom generation? I mean, it’s my parents. Both my parents were born in ’48. Being a Gen X is useful here because it allows me to have a somewhat clearer view of both boomers and younger people. Every generation has a widespread reputation that is in some ways deserved, in some ways not. Richard Eisenberg is the former senior web editor for Next Avenue’s Money & Security and Work & Purpose channels and the site’s former managing editor. He is the author of “How to Avoid a Mid-Life Financial Crisis” and personal finance editor at Money, Yahoo!, Good Housekeeping and CBS MoneyWatch. This article is from NextAvenue.org, ©2023 Twin Cities Public Television, Inc. Reprinted by permission of All rights reserved. More than Next Avenue
