An 11th-Hour Raid by the Wealthiest Baby Boomers
The baby boom is being evicted from the penthouse of American politics. And on the way out, it has decided to trash the place.
.. In that way, the bills would intensify the generational inequity in how Washington allocates resources between the country’s increasingly diverse youthful generations and its predominantly white older population, groups I’ve called “the brown and the gray.” At a moment when political influence is inexorably shifting to the brown, the tax bill represents an 11th hour raid by the wealthiest of the gray.
.. The baby-boom generation, which has voted reliably Republican in recent years, has been the largest generation of eligible voters since 1978. But in 2018, for the first time, slightly more Millennials than baby boomers will be eligible to vote
.. Higher turnout rates among baby boomers will preserve their advantage among actual voters for a while. But sometime around 2024, Millennials will likely surpass them.
.. While about 80 percent of the baby boom is white, over two-fifths of Millennials and nearly half of the post-Millennials are not.
.. Washington today is spending nearly the lowest amount ever recorded on the domestic discretionary programs that invest in the productivity of future generations, such as education and advanced scientific research.
.. One of 21st-century America’s central dynamics is that an increasingly non-white workforce will be funding Social Security and Medicare for a rapidly growing number of white seniors as the baby boomers retire.
.. Tellingly, though, the “Better Way” budget blueprint House Republicans released last year proposed delaying changes in Medicare until 2024, when almost all of the baby boom has already retired. That would leave younger generations, starting with Generation X, to bear most of any future cutbacks—even as they shoulder the costs for the boomers’ more generous retirement.
.. Young people will also pay the tax plans’ most direct cost: the interest on that $1.5 trillion in additional federal debt. More debt could benefit younger generations if it’s spent on investments in their futures. But this tax cut will bury younger generations in debt to fund the current consumption of their elders.
.. the irony is that older, white America needs more of younger, diverse America to ascend into the middle class so it can generate the tax revenue to support the baby boom’s retirement. Yet with these tax bills, the old are strapping a boulder onto the backs of the young as they attempt that climb.