8 ms·

Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children's Futures? [video]

61 points by ycombinete 3y ago

andyjohnson0 3y ago
PSA: In British English, "pinched" can mean "stolen". E.g. "he pinched my laptop"
- kitten_mittens_ 3y ago
  > From mid-14c. as "to pain, torment." Of tight shoes, from 1570s. Meaning "to steal" in English is from 1650s. https://www.etymonline.com/word/pinch#etymonline_v_16335 https://www.etymonline.com/word/pinch#etymonline_v_16335
ycombinete 3y ago
This talk by Lord David Willetts, at the Royal Institution, is more substantial than the title might suggest. A miniature summary: the relative size of the Boomer cohort has created enough gravity to warp society around them as they have moved through it; changing society and policy to their advantage. This is the effect. No claims are made to intention. It is focused on the United Kingdom. It also contradicts that age old rule of the internet where the answer to the question in the title is always, "no".
- rwmj 3y ago
  The original book on which this is all based is also excellent reading.
roenxi 3y ago
It doesn't make sense to say "pinched". Much like the debt isn't being "left to their children" - the children will likely choose not to pay it, it isn't written in stone. What they can be accused of is refusing to build a better future for their children. They legislated and partially fossilised the state of society in the 1980s, redirected mush of the physical growth and development to China and set up a slowly declining society in a weird type of fast growing stasis. It is unarguable that the technical state of society in 2024 is better than in the 80s. But looking at Asia, the rate of growth outside of tech is not where it really should be for a healthy economy. Energy availability per capita is down however, and adjusted by the M2 a lot of the financial indicators haven't improved as much as people like to pretend. It is a politically stressed situation where a lot of people feel - justifiably in my view - like they are worse off. It'd be fascinating to have a counterfactual where the boomers didn't get spooked and execute the nuclear industry. If energy prices had dropped by an order of magnitude, we'd probably be seeing a different world right now.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  Leaving debt for your children but don't want the shame? I have a solution, leave so much debt that nobody could even imagine your children paying it all off, that way you can say condescending stuff like "will likely choose not to pay it, it isn't written in stone" while writing that they will service that debt forever in stone.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    If you don't pay, who doesn't get what they are due? Who specifically is reliant on that repayment in the future? How will their life be worse if they don't get repaid? Does anyone actually know? What most Americans want is a solid job, a house in a quiet area with a couple of kids and a dog, room to swing a cat, being able to get home for dinner at 6, the ability to get around and do a few things. Basically the Homer Simpson style life (without the wacky adventures) That used to be achievable for most people. It's not now.
    - peteradio 3y ago
      In the case of USA, the debt is Govt debt so it means Govt shutdowns cutbacks etc. Every other board in the house was burned for extra warmth. Now our economy is "service" based, I guess that is some sort of inter-generational joke where we are now expected to go "service" ourselves.
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        Huh? In general when people die with net debts, it's not to the government; it's mortgages and other consumer debt.
        peteradio 3y ago
        I'm not saying Govt is inheriting personal debts. I'm saying the bigger issue is the Govt debt as a percentage of a largely bullshit economy.
      - 3y ago
Havoc 3y ago
Not sure it was done intentionally but generations following are pretty thoroughly fucked. Eg average salary vs average house price charts https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_salaries_vs_house_prices_in_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_...
- pydry 3y ago
  It was intentional but it was a small, very wealthy group that did it and is looking for a scapegoat for their sins in the form of your parents. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/identity-politics-and-the-stoking-of-generational-warfare.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/identity-politics-an...
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    Your article and the video both seem to agree that the different economic outlooks of the generations were achieved through policy, and the video demonstrates a split in voting by age. In this case it certainly takes two to tango - the wealthy to buy these politicians/policies, but also a certain bloc of voters has to keep voting for them.
    - pydry 3y ago
      >it certainly takes two to tango It certainly doesn't. See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... >Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have *little or no independent influence*. >the wealthy to buy these politicians/policies, but also a certain bloc of voters has to keep voting for them. Why would you assume they only bought one party? The whole point of buying the political system is to constrain the options of the voting populace so it doesn't really matter that much who they choose. The trick after becoming very wealthy via corrupting the political system, as Lord David Willetts knows, is to act surprised when you succeed and blame everyone's mom.
findthewords 3y ago
Children can live with their parents or parents can live with their children. No new wealth is created but the difference is stark for growth prospects.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
freen 3y ago
Yes. Taxes are an investment by the old into the futures of their children. Boomers grew up with a max personal income tax bracket of 90%, and an effective corporate income tax of 25-30% (it is 5% now). Anyone who has studied macroeconomics 101 knows this. The Chicago school bent over backwards trying to make the Laffer curve true, but it never was, nor will be. It doesn’t even pass the smell test: obviously any rational economic actor would maximize net profit regardless of the marginal tax. Grocery stores make a 2% margin, yet are a thriving industry. That alone invalidates the Laffer curve.
- gcanyon 3y ago
  The Laffer curve almost must be true by definition: 1. If the tax rate is 0%, you will get zero tax revenue, by definition. 2. If the tax rate is 100%, presumably no one will generate (reportable) income, and you will again get 0% tax revenue. 3. Somewhere between there (the current tax rates, for example) you get revenue. The above equals "the Laffer Curve". The thing people get wrong is assuming that they know where the shape of the Laffer Curve, or just where the maximum of it is. I am not an economist, but I'm going to guess that economists disagree about the above, so people arguing in bars (or online) are guaranteed to be wrong. All of which to say that the Laffer Curve is a thing, but it doesn't prove that 90% is too high, or 5% too low without drawing conclusions about its shape.
  - freen 3y ago
    Correct: I should have been more precise. The particular shape of the Laffer curve espoused by the Chicago school, so called classical economists, is incorrect. Thank you.
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
In my home city of Houston, Texas there are a lot of old "shotgun" houses from about 100 years ago which really are just a bedroom attached to a kitchen. The tiny box in the front would not really qualify as a living room in most places. I wonder why we dont see new houses built at this size. Its not a tiny house, and totally liveable. I feel like a new one should cost between 50-100k$. Why do we only see mega houses being built.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Those were built when land had little value. Today the land is worth far more than the house. Who would build a $50K house on $200K worth of land? We need a lot more 50-100K living spaces, but they only way we're going to get them is through density so that $500K worth of land can be split between 20+ families.
  - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
    Houston may be an anomoly but there are tons and tons of vacant lots everywhere. Many of them are only like 10-20k and 15-20 minutes from the city center. Usually in areas full of mexicans. But no houses on them!!
    - jen20 3y ago
      Houston is also an anomaly because there are no zoning laws to speak of, so if Houston wanted to do this (and it does in some areas!) it could.
      - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
        Theres still tons of bullshit regulations. Cant even build a damn fence without getting a sign posted saying you get a fine. Or your own plumbing. etc.
  - argiopetech 3y ago
    This may be true in high density cities, but it's not reflected in my recent house purchase (~4 acres, 1650sq.ft. manufactured house). I had always thought of the property as the valuable part, and I still value it more than the house (houses are replaceable), but, a) the value of the property is less than 10% of total purchase price, b) The mortgage broker did not consider the value of the land AT ALL when writing the mortgage, c) I don't own the property, I rent it from the county.
cjs_ac 3y ago
Lord Willetts is now a Conservative peer, but was a demographer for the Conservative Party. The policies that have impoverished the young are all Conservative policies: allowing the cost of housing to grow faster than wages, privatisation, and deregulation. In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke argued that a conservative party must remain pragmatic, and until Thatcher, the Tories had the discipline to do so. For the past four decades, they have chained themselves to one ideology, and the fortunes of one generation. As that generation fades, so will the party. In the coming general election, the question is not whether the Conservatives will hold power - that matter was settled long ago - but whether they will ever form government again.
- Neil44 3y ago
  I don't see any dips in those graphs from when Labour was in power?
  - distortionfield 3y ago
    Because you can’t change housing policy from the past several decades in one term, no matter which government or party you’re referring to.
thriftwy 3y ago
I'm not sure why a back redistribution of wealth between Boomers and their children does not happen. In Russia you would be set for an absolute boomer domination, since they could privatize the apartments they rented from state after 1991 (virtually for free), and keep them, but their children would get nothing and will have to rent. But in fact that does not happen because as boomers die off, their grandchildren get apartments inherited by their parents. Not by any law but by intra-family wealth redistribution. Maybe US & UK Boomers were the exception in that they lived in economic environment where they could earn such wealth from scratch, so they are just not ready to share?
- supertimor 3y ago
  Unfortunately a lot Millennial and Gen Z Americans are going to watch their inheritance redistributed to the healthcare industry, instead of themselves, as their parents continue to age.
camgunz 3y ago
It's wild to watch all of these takes as though the jury is still out, or it's gonna happen sometime in the future when the last boomer dies. It started happening before 2008, was accelerated by the financial collapse, and is affecting Gen Z as well as Millennials. Neoliberalism's failure caused the center to fall out of western politics. If you look at polling, only older, wealthier, or college educated people are really holding the middle together. They're a shrinking group. Our political future is populist, whether that's on the right in the form of fascism or on the left in the form of communism is up to those movements, but it's happening.
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  The effects were only seen in 2008 because that's when the modern 'everything ponzi' first started to waver. But that die was already cast before 2008 and many people were already fucked but just didn't know it yet. I think one of the biggest differences between Millenials is that initial period of ignorance allowed Millennials to be optimistic and that optimism was good for their mental health. The poor mental health of Gen Z has made their bad situation worse. In general Millennials didn't expect social security to last until retirement, the Gen Z people I've met do not expect society to last. Like Gen Z, I do think there will be an economic implosion, possibly precipitated due to a lost war. The Suez Crisis of 1956 marked the end of the UK empire, history might repeat and the failure to rope in the Houthis might mark the start of the end of the US empire. I think Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, etc may end up finding out that their retirement investments are no longer valuable and which will really suck for everyone except Gen Z which didn't have any to begin with. But maybe the slow process of economic death drags on for many more decades and the Boomers get to die out in peace.
binary132 3y ago
Sometimes I forget that so much of this stuff is so inaccessible. Capitalist apologetics are really drilled into us (at least in the US) since day 1. I guess I'll just leave this here and move on: http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docume...
snapplebobapple 3y ago
He's missing the massive other piece of this puzzle where integrating the third world into the world labor market effectively wiped out a lot of entry level/mid level manufacturing and remote services jobs, which cut labor competition and effectively capped a whole bunch of salaries across multiple sectors, stopping the wage growth from productivity growth that usually happens. Integrating the third world is still an exceptionally good idea, as the massive wage growth happening there has lifted literally over a billion people out of abject poverty and suffering, it's just going to suck for another 5-10 decades as labor prices equalize and excess labor in the third world is used up by far more productive pursuits than subsistence farming. As far as his solutions, they aren't very good. What we should be doing instead is crushing all the planning permission BS, rezoning to allow a lot higher density and fast tracking projects to build housing supply and push housing prices down via that method. If one could go from buying land to having a finished multi story residential with main floor shops/highrise/whatever built in a dramatically shorter time on a vastly larger swath of potential land more would get built and prices would fall. On the subsidy side of things the floor and cap idea is ok, it should really just be applied specifically to health care and have tiers based on some combination of income and wealth that determines what your copay is and where your copay for health tops out. That would directly tax what is costing the system the most and directly target high wealth/income boomers who are disproportionately using healthcare mostly without raising taxes on the young who are struggling. If this was combined with the housing reform above it would also probably increase supply of land to build more density as boomers are forced to sell their secondary properties to cover healthcare copays (if they are house rich and cash poor as many are).
mihaic 3y ago
Every single time I see these statistics, I think that this modern form of capitalism can only exist with modern life expectancies. Should human lives be shorter, we'd have real transfer of capital between generations. Should our lives be longer, we'd realize that 5% over 100 years (a multiplier of 130 times) is absurd to allow as passive income, and we'd most lively remove most options of passive investment.
RickJWagner 3y ago
I'm so very tired of this kind of nonsense. Every generation has unique challenges and opportunities. Each will have economic winners and losers.

61 points by ycombinete 3y ago

andyjohnson0 3y ago

PSA: In British English, "pinched" can mean "stolen". E.g. "he pinched my laptop"

kitten_mittens_ 3y ago
> From mid-14c. as "to pain, torment." Of tight shoes, from 1570s. Meaning "to steal" in English is from 1650s. https://www.etymonline.com/word/pinch#etymonline_v_16335 https://www.etymonline.com/word/pinch#etymonline_v_16335

ycombinete 3y ago

This talk by Lord David Willetts, at the Royal Institution, is more substantial than the title might suggest. A miniature summary: the relative size of the Boomer cohort has created enough gravity to warp society around them as they have moved through it; changing society and policy to their advantage. This is the effect. No claims are made to intention. It is focused on the United Kingdom. It also contradicts that age old rule of the internet where the answer to the question in the title is always, "no".

rwmj 3y ago
The original book on which this is all based is also excellent reading.

roenxi 3y ago

It doesn't make sense to say "pinched". Much like the debt isn't being "left to their children" - the children will likely choose not to pay it, it isn't written in stone. What they can be accused of is refusing to build a better future for their children. They legislated and partially fossilised the state of society in the 1980s, redirected mush of the physical growth and development to China and set up a slowly declining society in a weird type of fast growing stasis. It is unarguable that the technical state of society in 2024 is better than in the 80s. But looking at Asia, the rate of growth outside of tech is not where it really should be for a healthy economy. Energy availability per capita is down however, and adjusted by the M2 a lot of the financial indicators haven't improved as much as people like to pretend. It is a politically stressed situation where a lot of people feel - justifiably in my view - like they are worse off. It'd be fascinating to have a counterfactual where the boomers didn't get spooked and execute the nuclear industry. If energy prices had dropped by an order of magnitude, we'd probably be seeing a different world right now.

willcipriano 3y ago
Leaving debt for your children but don't want the shame? I have a solution, leave so much debt that nobody could even imagine your children paying it all off, that way you can say condescending stuff like "will likely choose not to pay it, it isn't written in stone" while writing that they will service that debt forever in stone.
- ta1243 3y ago
  If you don't pay, who doesn't get what they are due? Who specifically is reliant on that repayment in the future? How will their life be worse if they don't get repaid? Does anyone actually know? What most Americans want is a solid job, a house in a quiet area with a couple of kids and a dog, room to swing a cat, being able to get home for dinner at 6, the ability to get around and do a few things. Basically the Homer Simpson style life (without the wacky adventures) That used to be achievable for most people. It's not now.
  - peteradio 3y ago
    In the case of USA, the debt is Govt debt so it means Govt shutdowns cutbacks etc. Every other board in the house was burned for extra warmth. Now our economy is "service" based, I guess that is some sort of inter-generational joke where we are now expected to go "service" ourselves.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      Huh? In general when people die with net debts, it's not to the government; it's mortgages and other consumer debt.
      - peteradio 3y ago
        I'm not saying Govt is inheriting personal debts. I'm saying the bigger issue is the Govt debt as a percentage of a largely bullshit economy.
    - 3y ago

Havoc 3y ago

Not sure it was done intentionally but generations following are pretty thoroughly fucked. Eg average salary vs average house price charts https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_salaries_vs_house_prices_in_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_...

pydry 3y ago
It was intentional but it was a small, very wealthy group that did it and is looking for a scapegoat for their sins in the form of your parents. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/identity-politics-and-the-stoking-of-generational-warfare.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/identity-politics-an...
- dfxm12 3y ago
  Your article and the video both seem to agree that the different economic outlooks of the generations were achieved through policy, and the video demonstrates a split in voting by age. In this case it certainly takes two to tango - the wealthy to buy these politicians/policies, but also a certain bloc of voters has to keep voting for them.
  - pydry 3y ago
    >it certainly takes two to tango It certainly doesn't. See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... >Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have *little or no independent influence*. >the wealthy to buy these politicians/policies, but also a certain bloc of voters has to keep voting for them. Why would you assume they only bought one party? The whole point of buying the political system is to constrain the options of the voting populace so it doesn't really matter that much who they choose. The trick after becoming very wealthy via corrupting the political system, as Lord David Willetts knows, is to act surprised when you succeed and blame everyone's mom.

findthewords 3y ago

Children can live with their parents or parents can live with their children. No new wealth is created but the difference is stark for growth prospects.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

freen 3y ago

Yes. Taxes are an investment by the old into the futures of their children. Boomers grew up with a max personal income tax bracket of 90%, and an effective corporate income tax of 25-30% (it is 5% now). Anyone who has studied macroeconomics 101 knows this. The Chicago school bent over backwards trying to make the Laffer curve true, but it never was, nor will be. It doesn’t even pass the smell test: obviously any rational economic actor would maximize net profit regardless of the marginal tax. Grocery stores make a 2% margin, yet are a thriving industry. That alone invalidates the Laffer curve.

gcanyon 3y ago
The Laffer curve almost must be true by definition: 1. If the tax rate is 0%, you will get zero tax revenue, by definition. 2. If the tax rate is 100%, presumably no one will generate (reportable) income, and you will again get 0% tax revenue. 3. Somewhere between there (the current tax rates, for example) you get revenue. The above equals "the Laffer Curve". The thing people get wrong is assuming that they know where the shape of the Laffer Curve, or just where the maximum of it is. I am not an economist, but I'm going to guess that economists disagree about the above, so people arguing in bars (or online) are guaranteed to be wrong. All of which to say that the Laffer Curve is a thing, but it doesn't prove that 90% is too high, or 5% too low without drawing conclusions about its shape.
- freen 3y ago
  Correct: I should have been more precise. The particular shape of the Laffer curve espoused by the Chicago school, so called classical economists, is incorrect. Thank you.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

In my home city of Houston, Texas there are a lot of old "shotgun" houses from about 100 years ago which really are just a bedroom attached to a kitchen. The tiny box in the front would not really qualify as a living room in most places. I wonder why we dont see new houses built at this size. Its not a tiny house, and totally liveable. I feel like a new one should cost between 50-100k$. Why do we only see mega houses being built.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Those were built when land had little value. Today the land is worth far more than the house. Who would build a $50K house on $200K worth of land? We need a lot more 50-100K living spaces, but they only way we're going to get them is through density so that $500K worth of land can be split between 20+ families.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  Houston may be an anomoly but there are tons and tons of vacant lots everywhere. Many of them are only like 10-20k and 15-20 minutes from the city center. Usually in areas full of mexicans. But no houses on them!!
  - jen20 3y ago
    Houston is also an anomaly because there are no zoning laws to speak of, so if Houston wanted to do this (and it does in some areas!) it could.
    - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
      Theres still tons of bullshit regulations. Cant even build a damn fence without getting a sign posted saying you get a fine. Or your own plumbing. etc.
- argiopetech 3y ago
  This may be true in high density cities, but it's not reflected in my recent house purchase (~4 acres, 1650sq.ft. manufactured house). I had always thought of the property as the valuable part, and I still value it more than the house (houses are replaceable), but, a) the value of the property is less than 10% of total purchase price, b) The mortgage broker did not consider the value of the land AT ALL when writing the mortgage, c) I don't own the property, I rent it from the county.

cjs_ac 3y ago

Lord Willetts is now a Conservative peer, but was a demographer for the Conservative Party. The policies that have impoverished the young are all Conservative policies: allowing the cost of housing to grow faster than wages, privatisation, and deregulation. In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke argued that a conservative party must remain pragmatic, and until Thatcher, the Tories had the discipline to do so. For the past four decades, they have chained themselves to one ideology, and the fortunes of one generation. As that generation fades, so will the party. In the coming general election, the question is not whether the Conservatives will hold power - that matter was settled long ago - but whether they will ever form government again.

Neil44 3y ago
I don't see any dips in those graphs from when Labour was in power?
- distortionfield 3y ago
  Because you can’t change housing policy from the past several decades in one term, no matter which government or party you’re referring to.

thriftwy 3y ago

I'm not sure why a back redistribution of wealth between Boomers and their children does not happen. In Russia you would be set for an absolute boomer domination, since they could privatize the apartments they rented from state after 1991 (virtually for free), and keep them, but their children would get nothing and will have to rent. But in fact that does not happen because as boomers die off, their grandchildren get apartments inherited by their parents. Not by any law but by intra-family wealth redistribution. Maybe US & UK Boomers were the exception in that they lived in economic environment where they could earn such wealth from scratch, so they are just not ready to share?

supertimor 3y ago
Unfortunately a lot Millennial and Gen Z Americans are going to watch their inheritance redistributed to the healthcare industry, instead of themselves, as their parents continue to age.

camgunz 3y ago

It's wild to watch all of these takes as though the jury is still out, or it's gonna happen sometime in the future when the last boomer dies. It started happening before 2008, was accelerated by the financial collapse, and is affecting Gen Z as well as Millennials. Neoliberalism's failure caused the center to fall out of western politics. If you look at polling, only older, wealthier, or college educated people are really holding the middle together. They're a shrinking group. Our political future is populist, whether that's on the right in the form of fascism or on the left in the form of communism is up to those movements, but it's happening.

cjbgkagh 3y ago
The effects were only seen in 2008 because that's when the modern 'everything ponzi' first started to waver. But that die was already cast before 2008 and many people were already fucked but just didn't know it yet. I think one of the biggest differences between Millenials is that initial period of ignorance allowed Millennials to be optimistic and that optimism was good for their mental health. The poor mental health of Gen Z has made their bad situation worse. In general Millennials didn't expect social security to last until retirement, the Gen Z people I've met do not expect society to last. Like Gen Z, I do think there will be an economic implosion, possibly precipitated due to a lost war. The Suez Crisis of 1956 marked the end of the UK empire, history might repeat and the failure to rope in the Houthis might mark the start of the end of the US empire. I think Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, etc may end up finding out that their retirement investments are no longer valuable and which will really suck for everyone except Gen Z which didn't have any to begin with. But maybe the slow process of economic death drags on for many more decades and the Boomers get to die out in peace.

binary132 3y ago

Sometimes I forget that so much of this stuff is so inaccessible. Capitalist apologetics are really drilled into us (at least in the US) since day 1. I guess I'll just leave this here and move on: http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docume...

snapplebobapple 3y ago

He's missing the massive other piece of this puzzle where integrating the third world into the world labor market effectively wiped out a lot of entry level/mid level manufacturing and remote services jobs, which cut labor competition and effectively capped a whole bunch of salaries across multiple sectors, stopping the wage growth from productivity growth that usually happens. Integrating the third world is still an exceptionally good idea, as the massive wage growth happening there has lifted literally over a billion people out of abject poverty and suffering, it's just going to suck for another 5-10 decades as labor prices equalize and excess labor in the third world is used up by far more productive pursuits than subsistence farming. As far as his solutions, they aren't very good. What we should be doing instead is crushing all the planning permission BS, rezoning to allow a lot higher density and fast tracking projects to build housing supply and push housing prices down via that method. If one could go from buying land to having a finished multi story residential with main floor shops/highrise/whatever built in a dramatically shorter time on a vastly larger swath of potential land more would get built and prices would fall. On the subsidy side of things the floor and cap idea is ok, it should really just be applied specifically to health care and have tiers based on some combination of income and wealth that determines what your copay is and where your copay for health tops out. That would directly tax what is costing the system the most and directly target high wealth/income boomers who are disproportionately using healthcare mostly without raising taxes on the young who are struggling. If this was combined with the housing reform above it would also probably increase supply of land to build more density as boomers are forced to sell their secondary properties to cover healthcare copays (if they are house rich and cash poor as many are).

mihaic 3y ago

Every single time I see these statistics, I think that this modern form of capitalism can only exist with modern life expectancies. Should human lives be shorter, we'd have real transfer of capital between generations. Should our lives be longer, we'd realize that 5% over 100 years (a multiplier of 130 times) is absurd to allow as passive income, and we'd most lively remove most options of passive investment.

RickJWagner 3y ago

I'm so very tired of this kind of nonsense. Every generation has unique challenges and opportunities. Each will have economic winners and losers.