Monday, August 5, 2019

The Baby Boomers are Toast: Massive Suffering is Right Around the Corner

I never liked the term "Baby Boomer"--an infantilizing appellation if ever there was one.

I am a Baby Boomer myself, having been born in 1948, almost exactly three years after my father was liberated from a Japanese prison camp in Korea. My birthday, August 9, marked the third anniversary of the day Nagasaki was obliterated by an atomic bomb. And my birthday also fell on the sixth anniversary of the day the Nazis killed St. Edith Stein at Auschwitz.

I was raised to believe that life for my generation would be better than it was for my parents' generation. And for a long time, that expectation looked like it would be fulfilled. My father owned one suit. When I practiced law, I owned seven. My parents' house had one bathroom. For years, I have lived in houses that have two or even three bathrooms.

But when I reached my 50s, I could see that my generation's rise to greater prosperity had stalled. My father and my wife's father retired when they were in their mid-50s. I will retire at the age of 71; and my closest friends, all in their early 70s, are still working.

And many of my contemporaries are frightened. One-third of senior Americans live entirely on Social Security, and the average payout is only $1,220 a month. That's 19 million retirees living near or below the poverty line.

The experts say people need to have $1 million in savings to retire, but most don't have near that amount. And even if they did, how would they invest that money? This morning, the interest rate on the 10-year note dropped to 1.75 percent--1.75 percent! So if you invested your million dollars in Treasury notes, you would have an income of $17,500 a year.

So my generation is still in the stock market--a rigged casino where the croupier (Goldman Sachs and their cronies) can push the hidden button under the roulette table any time they want to make the stock market go up or down. We all know this is going to end badly.

Incredibly, many people my age still have student loans hanging over their heads--loans they will never repay. The federal government is pushing millions of distressed debtors into 25-year income-driven repayment plans that are designed never to be paid off.

More and more television advertising is targeted toward seniors--new medications, financial services, reverse mortgages, etc. All these commercials show prosperous, silvered-haired couples in radiant health, and the wife always looks about 15 years younger than the husband. These couples are shown surfing, skiing, hiking, and fishing with their adorable grandchildren off the docks of their lakeside retirement homes.

But we all know those advertisements are a lie. The reality is this: millions of baby boomers are going to live out their last years in starkly reduced circumstances. In short, the baby boomers are toast.
Put your retirement savings in the stock market. What have you got to lose?







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