Jeremiah

They are a historically unique generation for three intersecting reasons.

One, they are a uniquely large generation.

Two, they came of age as the country and its institutions were maturing.

And three, they are sticking around because of increased longevity.

These are analytical facts, and they produce what I call a concentration of our society's resources in one older generation that increases the tension we're experiencing from technological innovation.

Our demography is pulling us towards the past, the internet is pulling us into the future, and I think this is the major source of the anti-boomer frustration.

On the specifics of social security and why we might think boomers have played things to their advantage, not because they're specifically evil but because they have the political power to do so, the key thing is that they have prevented forward-thinking politicians from fixing the inevitable hole in social security that comes from our demographic pyramid.

It would have been relatively painless to increase the rate or incidence of the social security payroll tax at any point in the past 25 years.

The looming demographic cliff was obvious and the increased burden could have been shared more equally.

Instead, they prevented reforms and all of the fiscal pain from the demographic shifts will be borne by younger generations.

Scott writes, I agree this is a strong argument and part of why I think it's helpful to separate the three points I mentioned at the beginning.

RH writes, quote,

and I voted to accept all that because it was projected to be sufficient.

Then the immigrant haters decided we needed fewer workers in the country, or at least fewer paying social security taxes, so they slowed legal immigration and pushed illegals into the underground economy.

so they don't pay taxes to support social security.

And social security is going to get whacked again, plus the evils the social security system was intended to alleviate, people too old to work and too poor to live, will return.

End quote.

Scott writes,

Suppose RH is right, I haven't checked, and that social security would be sustainable with lots of immigration.

Then whether boomers are paying their fair share in quotes or not depends on whether immigration is good or bad, a hard question, and on whether we think of high versus low immigration as the natural unmarked state of the universe, such that immigration opponents must own closed borders and compensate the losers, and on what kind of compensation the losers from closed borders deserve.