Dying Boomers rule

Jo Miran@lemmy.ml to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 232 points –

Article assumes Boomers won't spend it all before they die.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/28/millennials-richest-generation-wealth-property

48

Weird it doesn't feel like it.

It's the cruelest clickbait I've seen in a long time.

Just as a feature of inflation the numbers that represent the wealth held by millenials will almost certainly eclipse that held by previous generations. But also thanks to inflation the actual value change represented by that larger number is sweet FA. Everything is just more expensive.

Isn't this is all technically attributed to people like Mark Zuckerberg, who on his own accounts for 2% of all millennial wealth?

The ultra wealthy keep skewing the fucking "average" numbers ever higher until the "average" is way higher than what over half of citizens actually have.

"Currently alive people have higher number in bank account than previously alive people, which is known as inflation"

You can break it down into real assets. There's more developed physical property than in prior generations. More infrastructure. More advanced business capital. Its not strictly inflation.

However, a lot of the accumulated wealth is purely speculative. The "Magnificent Seven" stocks:

Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA), Amazon.com (AMZN), Alphabet, Tesla (TSLA) and Meta

saw their valuations surge 140% from the 2022 slump. Does anyone seriously believe these firms grew their physical capital stock or cultivated a larger and more efficient workforce at that scale within a meager two years?

On the flip side, you've got a great number of countries and economies actively under sanction at an international level. China's Huawei is easily on par with the American Apple, but US restrictions on their sale make their stock a dead letter on Wall Street. Russian mineral exports have boomed as the sanctions have curtailed their ability to participate in international financial markets. The Cuban bio-medical industry is riding the bleeding edge - producing new treatments for everything from lung cancer to kidney failure to COVID at a breakneck pace - but can't export any of this technology due to the US embargo and blockade. Venezuela's economy grew 40% in the last year, largely thanks to renewed trade with Brazil, but you won't see that on any kind of stock ticker. South Africa's economy is booming with all the new trade forced around the Horn of Africa due to the Houthi attacks in the Gulf of Adan.

The wealth this article is describing is heavily divorced from the real utility being rolled out and delivered internationally. Americans are building an empire of paper promises, while the BRICS and their affiliates engage in an unprecedented economic development program.

The writer should maybe go and visit some nursing homes. They’ll find a fuckload of poor old people that are most definitely not wealthy.

And which old rich boomer is going to give me money, exactly?

My family are poor, my parents were poor, my grandparents were poor, etc etc.

It's all about what bloodlines you're in. Which class you're in. Obviously the rich ruling class are going to inherit their family money.

Yes we are making more but compare that shit to cost of living and what we earn. It's still fuckin trash. It's like saying the Germans were billionaires during hyperinflation.

All that money in ticky-tack mcmansions that they'll never sell.

Wealth isn't wealth if it's paper only.

Money isn't worth anything until you spend it

Also the generation with the shittiest wealth distribution. Inheritance is not fair and should be taxed exponentially to the amount. Nothing wrong with inheriting one small family house, but that should be all you can inherit.

The switch will see $90tn (£71tn) of assets move between generations in the US alone, “making affluent millennials the richest generation in history”, Knight Frank said in its 18th annual wealth report.

Meanwhile, every discussion about inheritance tax is poisoned by people claiming they would need to still their parents house.

Yeah Gen-Xer here, and while I have a cut of some property coming to me eventually, I'm afraid casinos and cruise ships got just about everything else. I don't hold it against my dad but it's definitely not enough to make me rich. Not even close.

The things boomers spent on astound me. You could legitimately just get your own flipping boat for the cost of a cruise, and use it forever. They could have at least willed you a boat for Pete's sake

A cruise just seems like the worst parts of boats. They don’t even let you drive

Lol please, these people fear death more than anything, they exist wholely within the material. They will spend every last time breathing one more wretched breath. I make a dime, while my boomer and X bosses make millions. Its not even a dollar anymore, I am straight up shafted eith no recourse but to quit and become even more poor.

thanks to the property assets accumulated by the generations before them.

These people have clearly never heard of reverse mortgage. So take what they have to say with large heapings of salt.

While they wait for their inheritances

LOL. Yeah these people are taking the piss here. Many of the folks I know with boomer parents that have already passed have seen roughly 90% to 96% of the accumulated wealth either taken in medical expenses, obligated debt, or just straight up poor ass planning that left the parents near penniless in their final days.

This whole story is predicated on ignoring massive costs that come at end of life that many boomers have not planned on. And one can easily objectively see then ignoring this by failing to account the massive upswing in reverse mortgages and filial responsibility cases.

The boomers are not giving us anything when they die except headache.

The rich TOTALLY promise to pass it on, just like all the other things they have done for the world for future generations. -WINK-, that will shut them up right Media-dog? BARK! Good... good article...

Can gen x get it before the millennials blow it on avocado toast and Netflix please?

No fuck off gen x already blew theirs on cocaine and dotcom stocks

I never had money for cocaine or stocks.

I'm Gen X and I've always been poor.

My parents weren't doing much better, either.

I don't think I can ever retire. I'll be one of those people that gets evicted from a nursing home

Every generation got fucked. Boomers may be stupid in a lot of cases but they are mostly suffering under the same issues we are.

No war but class war.

when i was 20, i took care of my grandmother. she got evicted from a so-called 'Christian' assisted living facility, that evicted her on Christmas.

people... what a bunch of bastards.

Sorry, remember that Nintendo you wanted so badly as a child you would do anything to get? Honestly I pretty happy I'm not millennial or gen z, they got it pretty bad. I at least got to live in a cheap Los Angeles and take a decade of my life figuring out a career. These days you better be laser focused and do everything perfectly if you want to thrive.

Gen X here. Mother died of cancer when 13. Father left us two weeks after that. Several years later, father penniless and died of an OD in a ditch in East Tennessee.

Literally was trying to be left with the debt by the State of Tennessee, actually had to obtain a lawyer to show my legal declaration of becoming an orphan when I was a kid to get them to stop.

So the only thing they left me with was a lawyer bill and about two years worth of court proceedings. So no, at least for me, we’re not getting anything from them.

Based on my upcoming generational wealth, it's not looking good for me.

Sitting on a pile of corpses with the largest bitcoin wallet in history, "We did it. We won."

Huh I guess it works in the US where life expectancy is several years lower than in Europe?

My parents still have the 20 to 30 years in front of them. I'll be retired by then...