SELFISH BOOMERS

I belong to that vast demographic called Baby Boomers, now simply referred to as boomers in social media. I am not casting stones from my glass house. I am looking at my own reflection as well as my peer group's behavior.

As the response to COVID-19 is dissected with a bit of distance afforded by its seemingly interminable length, it seems glaringly obvious that the future of two or more younger generations has been put at serious risk by the government's lockdown response. Stock markets, the greatest cyber casinos of our age, are generally stable, but massive unemployment bodes badly for future tax revenues and social stability.

The disconnect between the wealthier 20%, shareholders in capitalist equity of various kinds, and the poorer 80% grows. Recent demonstrations, rioting and looting over a single media-promoted murder have more to do with economic inequity than race or equal justice in law. Laid-off and isolated young people erupted into a desperate expression of disenchantment which was harnessed by waiting political operatives. Lenin and Trotsky would nod in empathetic approval of the tactics of Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

The young have been sacrificed in the name of protecting the old. But this did not come from anti-ageist compassion. No. This came from politicians who recognized that people over 50 vote and contribute to political campaigns. The equity-shareholding 20% are the quid-pro-quo base of national and local politicians. And they are predominantly old wealthy people and their boomer children, who hope to inherit some of their equity. 

The alarmist rationalization used to justify lockdowns is dishonest. Protecting the young so they don't infect the old would make sense in a society of large extended families who live together in single households. That is not modern America.

I speculate that the desperate and ineffective attempt to save people 80 yo and older was about saving a largely Republican voting base at a time when Leftists in the Democrat Party threaten to bankrupt the USA for generations with Marxist ideology. But this may have backfired badly. The elder voting base was damaged. And the government ended up expending trillions in white-collar welfare. 

The national debt and/or the inflation it will inevitably cause will weigh heavily on those who are now young and employable. We all know the middle tier of earners fuel the Federal budget. 

The lack of outrage over the burdening of younger generations by boomers and their parents does not surprise me. Boomers have consistently mortgaged and remortgaged their equity to cross off items on their bourgeois bucket lists. Luxury cruises, time shares, winter ski trips, Disney pilgrimages, new cars, bigger houses. The lists are endless in many cases. Yet these same boomers will finagle not to pay a cent for the nursing home care of their parents, many of whom have remortgaged their own equity to support their boomer children in an inflated lifestyle. 

The Federal government is already struggling to pay the bills of longer-living nonagenerians, who have given their assets to their boomer children so that Medicaid will cover their expenses in care facilities or so they can qualify for Federally subsidized elder housing. There is no evidence to support a hope that the huge boomer population will not do the same. 

This will eventually lead to a greater divide in wealth. The 20% with equity may well keep it, but those who have not had the opportunity to enter that elevated class will be bearing the burden of paying for the late-life needs of those in that class. In other words, there will be an inevitable American economic aristocracy and an inevitable American economic serfdom of middle and low income workers. 

The recent lockdowns have smashed the potential for actual social cohesion of many young communities. Meeting places have been closed by mandate. The economic fortunes of young workers have been threatened by unemployment and possible elimination of many middle-income jobs. Those most employable under this regime will also be those most burdened by the eventual tax bills they will be told they must pay. 

As we boomers age, we are leaving behind a society which is less hopeful for those younger than us. As a gay man who did not have children or grandchildren, I am troubled by this. I do not see my boomer peers who did have children and grandchildren expressing much concern about this at all. Instead, here in my Blue State, I see them supporting the politics of more debt, more burden and more insecurity for their offspring. They seemed more concerned about wearing masks than sabotaging the futures of their own.