Three Ways that Boomers are Being Thumped by the Economic Crisis

The majority of people – here and abroad – have been sucker-punched by the economic mess. We’re paying, in wretchedly concrete fashion, for the American government’s irresponsible encouragement of the greediest, rich-boy behavior. Capitalism gone mad is capitalism at its most “successful.”

There are many groups who can claim a very particular set of injuries from this “downturn,” as it is euphemistically called. Here are just a few.

Kids trying for higher education are facing a double-whammy of reduced support: colleges have lost investors and investments and parents may be un- or under-employed.

Elders are depressed to see their lives sandwiched in between two dire depressions.

Union members are watching the gains they fought their asses off for being traded away – supposedly to keep their industry alive, while their bosses, as a gesture, shave the old million off their own bountiful packages.

Freelancers are losing jobs to laid-off staff, who now do piece-work for the departments they know so intimately from the inside.

Mass murdering men are proliferating, and the usual victims of home abuse – elders, children and women – are multiplying.

Boomers from their mid-fifties through their mid-sixties are especially hard-hit. Here are three specific ways in which they are feeling screwed:

1. EMPLOYMENT
Even before the economic chaos, people over 50 were finding it difficult in most fields to get work. One of the trends of capitalism that led us to this crisis has been the consolidation of companies. Lacking essential regulation, whole industries – media not the least – have been taken over by just a few huge corporations. Such conglomerates, when they eat their smaller siblings, can find themselves with doubled staff.

Which marketing manager gets fired? Which editor is dumped? It is likely to be the more senior person, the one who after decades of experience has achieved the heftier salary. Better to keep their assistant or the junior staff from the swallowed company – easier to control and cheaper to maintain. One result? Former professional people are now competing with young folks for jobs at Walmart and McDonalds, without much joy.

  2. HOUSING
Everyone seems to be squashed in the housing crunch. I’ve seen this situation before. When that reactionary maniac Margaret Thatcher decided to eviscerate the splendid public housing system in Britain, she changed the rules so that just about anyone could buy their municipality-owned flat. An exuberant public relations campaign promised poor people – those who were living in these subsidized units – that they could become condo-owners. Mayhem ensued, with many people unable to maintain their payments and finding themselves living in a cardboard box instead of residing in the ownership class as they had been promised.

If there’s one childhood lesson every Boomer was taught, it was that you can’t go wrong with real estate. Now Boomers are retiring and wanting to put their long-held plans in motion: moving to the sunbelt, or to DC to be near the kids, or buying that RV and travelling, or moving to a senior complex with a range of support services. But like everyone else, Boomers have lost the home equity all their plans were built on, and they can’t shift the big house anyway. The contractor of the senior complex may have suspended building. The Boomers are stuck in a place and a life they were all along intending to dump. When you are 60 or 70, time is of the essence and the last thing you want to be doing, when you’ve decided on a condo in Arizona, is shoveling the walk of the old house in Hartford.

3. INVESTMENTS
Everyone who has managed to pull together money enough to invest during their lives has watched supposed gains shrivel. The given wisdom is that we’ve all lost 33%, give or take. This is bad news all around, but probably the worst for Boomers. Those in their 30s and 40s have a couple of decades – assuming that the job market recovers – to work and save and wait for the stocks to rise again. Those in their 80s and 90s may well be spending down their capital already. With out-of-work Boomers unlikely to get good jobs in these last years of their working lives, they have no way to add to their “portfolio” and no time to wait for the recovery. For those of us who have been life-long anti-capitalists, it is the ultimate tear-gassing by the establishment.

And somewhere along the way, the most rebellious of generations has lost its passion for protest, its love of taking over the streets, its brilliant movement-building skills. Hey Boomers, if they’re tear gassing our future, the least we can do is raise hell.

 

NOTE: This posting is my Day Two homework for a free course I’m hoping to complete called “31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge.” Apparently it is run annually by Darren Rowse, known as the ProBlogger, an Australian expert recommended to me by my agent. If you’d like to join, it’s not too late. Just check out his site here.

Comments

[lynne friedli]

Sue, I find it hard to agree that 'boomers' are as multiply disadvantaged as you suggest. I can't speak for Americans, but notwithstanding the recession, in the UK, those who have owned property for around a decade or more(which would tend to be those who are fifty plus) have made very significant profits - money that those who were not able to 'get on the property ladder' couldn't dream of making through selling their labour.

In fact, many people in this age group have accumulated considerable wealth simply through the timely acquisition of property and the tax concessions of 'buy to let'. The people who have suffered from council house sales are those who currently can't afford to buy and cannot get social housing because it's all been sold. These tend to be the younger generation - young couples and families starting out - not boomers. I would say on the contrary, boomers have enjoyed both the remnants of the welfare state and the quick profits of capitalism in the boom years. Those who were never able to be part of the property bonanza are of course still poor, whatever their age, and are being joined by a whole generation of younger people who cannot hope to afford somewhere to live, even as prices fall.

When you and I lived in London, we were able to save up and afford to buy a house or flat, albeit in the cheaper areas, as single women on middle ranking salaries in the public and not for profit sector. This would be impossible now and has been for at least 7 or 8 years, if not more.

The uncomfortable truth is, whether we bought private housing or council housing, the property boom has meant that this has contributed significantly to inequalities and to the gap between those who have and those who do not have, decent housing. The personal is political and that goes for the purchasing choices we made - whether we anticipated the consequences or not. I'm not suggesting a mass beating ourselves up, but I do think boomers could spend more time acknowledging their privilege, rather than touting for sympathy.... and if we're going to march, it should be to secure greater equality, not to extract further advantages for ourselves.

[ED]

Lynne, no matter what you think "many" have accomplished in the UK or here, the statistics on median is what I'd go by rather than anecdotes about what "many" have succeeded. Capitalism is screwing everyone, including the capitalists themselves, putting everyone on a high-stress planet-wrecking treadmill including the boomers which I'm a half decade too young to be a member of, but the statistics on US median wages for the last 30 or so years, most of their careers, tell a story of stagnating or declining wages, which is bad enough, but it's also with less public safety net and other give-backs,...on top of all of that, to have the worst crash since the great depression and what every honest person is admitting is "unchartered territory" and anyone's guess, is a horrible place to be in, and suggesting someone in that boat is whining (which without using the term your post smells to my ears to be doing, to mix metaphors) is simply out of touch with the facts and realities outlined above, and spelled out in detail in many places, even the business pages now and then. They are not trying to "Extract further advantages" for themselves, merely to have some peace of mind and security...say what you like about the problems of national health care in the UK or elsewhere, at least you have one, here you're thrown to the dogs, and even if you have health insurance, there are 100 ways for the company to twist the words of the fine print and try to deny you coverage, if you're dying of cancer, and that's the "lucky" ones with insurance, add to that very low payment levels from social security and the last backup of the retirement savings getting the wind kicked out of it means people do not have BASIC security, they are not asking to "Extract further advantages" but basic, retirment and health care and basic-needs security and it is a national disgrace that we don't have it for everyone.

Telling everyone to shut up and suck it up and how lucky they are and how this is fine and dandy does not accomplish anything

Except maybe wake more people up that if this is "acceptable" under capitalism (really: corporate feudalism) then we need a new economic model that is not top-down like USSR and this corporate capitalism but one that's from the bottom up