The ‘great wealth transfer’ isn't $73 trillion but $129 trillion, Bank of America says—and the government gave most of it to baby boomers

CantaloupeLifestyle@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 640 points –
The ‘great wealth transfer’ isn't $73 trillion but $129 trillion, Bank of America says—and the government gave most of it to baby boomers
fortune.com
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You’ve probably heard about the “great wealth transfer.” It’s the $72 trillion stack of assets that baby boomers are sitting on and going to pass onto millennials someday, thereby solving many of the economically beleaguered younger generation’s problems.

take your carrot and stick and shove both up your ass, no one in the lower class is gonna see a cent of that hoarded wealth.

They could fix that sentence by specifying that it's elite baby boomers that will pass it on to elite Gen Y.

That's right. All the Baby Boomers had kids at the exact same time. They totally didn't give birth to Gen Xers or Millennials.

All their money will go to one generation.

It's a well-established pattern that, as soon as generations come up for discussion, shit gets dumbed down fast.

In general, I value Adam's take on the notion that generations don't really exist and view it mostly as a tool of marketing and the elite.

The corporate media narrative of the Boomer-Gen Y division is a classic case in point. Looking back, there was the Boomer vs. "Greatest" Generation narrative. Watching the current narratives of Boomer vs. Gen Y and more recently Gen Y vs. Gen Z is like watching re-runs.

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Far and away the greatest wealth transfer was between the poorest half of the world to the wealthiest 1%. This is just noise caused by that statistic. That's the culprit of that, not some boomer with a vacation home that they're struggling to manage the payments on.

No war but class war.

What? Boomers with vacation homes likely doubled their net worth in like 2 years. All the houses doubled in value, and they have more than 1. Talk to any real estate agent. The only people buying houses are boomers rn. On the occasion it's a younger person, they usually have help from their boomer parents or an inheritance from boomers. The scales were already tilted in their favor, and the pandemic response was to lower interest rates and let them buy more of the already scarce housing at unbelievably low rates or refinance their existing mortgage for a lower payment while first time homebuyers got outbid by people with more equity, and larger down payments. (See: boomers). They absolutely gained the most from the pandemic response, and if the high rates ever cause the correction it was designed to do, I won't feel the least bit bad if they lose their ass and didn't plan for it / have to go back to work (again).

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GOOD NEWS: YOUR PARENTS ARE GONNA DIE! MAYBE EVEN BEFORE 2030!

Also, that $72 trillion will go to ~72 million millennials completely evenly--about $1M per millennial across the board. We won't have issues where having rich parents meant you did well yourself, and the proportionately more money you inherit will be extra rather than catchup. Nope, boomer hoarding will all work itself out in the end. We don't need any government policies to change.

Maybe before the whole planet is obliterated?

and too many Boomers turned into assholes who voted for Trump and obstructionist Republicans

Baby Boomers transferring wealth to Millenials? Over Gen X's dead body!

This is the best summary I could come up with:


You’ve probably heard about the “great wealth transfer.” It’s the $72 trillion stack of assets that baby boomers are sitting on and going to pass onto millennials someday, thereby solving many of the economically beleaguered younger generation’s problems.

No less a figure than Ray Dalio, the billionaire and former leader of what was for many years the world’s biggest hedge fund, wrote on his LinkedIn page in August about a “coordinated government maneuver” that left household balance sheets rich and the state effectively broke.

Fortune has reported extensively on how millennials have not enjoyed a boomer level of success as they struggled to afford to buy a home for years before facing off with an overpriced, ultra-competitive pandemic housing market.

In addition to low interest rates and inflated housing prices boosting asset value, a 2020 Deutsche Bank report found that boomers shelled out less for education than millennials did and won’t have to pay for the environmental damage caused by the carbon emission-releasing companies they invested in.

While boomers have still had their fair share of economic challenges, like the Great Inflation of the 1970s, BofA found they ultimately benefited in the long run from an economy that’s set them up pretty nicely for wealth accumulation.

Dealing with a hefty price tag for a college education and ensuing student debt, many young adults graduated into a post-recession thorny job market, bouncing around to find a well-paying role.


The original article contains 1,014 words, the summary contains 237 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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Boomers will eventually go to a nursing home, hospital, or hospice. The money will dry up from these and if they still have money left over, there is the estate tax. The children looking longingly at the large bags of money the parents have won't get as much, and some of this captured money will begin to circulate again.

The estate tax in the US only affects estates worth more than ~$12,000,000

Yeah, cuz all the Baby Boomers are/were rich.

Garbage.

If we race and you start 10 steps ahead of me, and I beat you, you still had an advantage over me.