Boomers are hoarding most of America's wealth and power | Hacker News Reader

Boomers are hoarding most of America's wealth and power

finance.yahoo.com

> None of this is evenly distributed. Wealth data show extreme inequality among older Americans: early work using the AHEAD survey found that households with someone 70 or older in the top tenth of the wealth distribution held around 2,500 times as much wealth as those in the bottom tenth, and more recent work finds that inequality has widened further since the late 1990s.

How can you draw a "conclusion" from such data, where the mean is way far from the median? Personally, I am 77, a 49'er, living in an area in CA that's half the median home value, since a divorce. Not wealthy at all, and I gave my daughter some of my savings to help her get started in the Bay Area. (more than what I paid for my first home.)

Inflation is something else. My highest year's pay seems small these days. Naturally, homes cost way more, but people in the Bay Area always commuted long distances from Tracy and beyond without mass transit to help.

And, by the way, we USED to have a middle class. That's being systematically destroyed by the further concentration of wealth by the few, not the vast majority of us who went daily to our engineering jobs.

Let's face it, even "downsizing" takes my home equity plus another $100K or so just to move out of the woods. Renting will work only if all my equity (amortized into income) and IRA RMD's pay the rent. I check that now and then.

If Social Security is hacked, as some would love to do, I and many millions are instantly on the edge.

Since both my ex and I own homes outright (which seem to be worth a bit less than what we sold the home for) our daughter stands to inherit two homes, which she is not crazy about, since we are both somewhat in the boondocks. She advises me to spend it all, though good health (cross my fingers) says that be for a good while.

Fixing the "you can pay my fair share" situation will help millions. Way more than if I gave away all my equity and lived in a cardboard box. It would take millions of us and cities vigorously destroy those cardboard homes anyway. I've seen it in action.

But the ballroom!

You and your ex wife both own homes outright and you helped buy your kid a home in a VHCOL area. I mean, the point stands that you had plenty of concentrated wealth before the divorce and voluntarily gifting it away.

That being said, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. You just aren’t exactly contesting the point that you didn’t have concentrated wealth.

I was more replying to the word "hoarding"

What if the really wealthy didn't hoard so much?

I checked the Buddhist notion of wealth. Perhaps in the earlier teachings, it's all about denial, but the later teachings are all about flow: having and sharing, exemplified by the rare bird, King Ashoka, who abandoned violence to benevolence.

As expected, someone working for 50 years, and saving some, having more money than someone who worked less

Same for power, for example in companies generally comes with seniority and career years of experience

Not sure what other distribution could anyone expect and which system rules would support it

I think people object more to an alleged disruption of the conditions for generating wealth / power by said generation

Yeah; it's one thing to get a kickback so you waste $75M of taxpayer dollars on coal export terminals in Oakland in 2026.

It's quite another to do $75B in damage to Oakland in 20 years when climate change from the coal exports hit.

Indeed. The issue is that a subset of old folks (not all, importantly, the ones in power or outsized wealth) are running up the tab, and when they dip out (~2M 55+ age out every year in the US), the folks who remains are going to have to pay the tab (all manner of debt, local up to federal, climate costs, etc amounting to at least $50T dollars at a minimum, as of this comment).

US Federal debt: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-debt-does-the-us-have/...

US State and Local debt: https://reason.org/transparency-project/gov-finance-2025/

US Forward Looking Climate Costs: https://climate.uchicago.edu/news/u-s-weather-and-climate-di...

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL11...

(not to mention off the books debt that isn’t counted as debt because it hasn’t been issued yet, think costs for deferred maintenance around infrastructure)

More power to them. When they eventually pass on most of that will go to their children and/or grandchildren and many of them will very likely spend it all. Those without progeny will likely donate it to charities via their trust and will. Perceived problem solved.

Good on them for saving money as to not become a burden on society when bad things happen and bad things do happen. Insurance companies are quick to find excuses to drop elderly. Stay out of other peoples pockets and mind your own business.

As many commenters have pointed out, a lot of that wealth will disappear into the grubby hands of private-equity-owned assisted living facilities and nursing homes.

Yeah that's awful. I can only hope most of those people can afford a full time or live-in nurse. Are we suggesting they should take the Canadian MAID option?

You're being sarcastic when the alternative can be a more reasonable retirement option

Well if we are going the MAID option then along the path of your idea I suggest all the other burdens go with them. Anyone on welfare, SNAP and similar programs, etc... Anyone part of the recent floods into the country that are also on welfare, especially groups that have brought violent tribal blood feuds. All violent felons that are just going to sit in prison and milk the taxes. All the rioters that cause damages to property. Anyone that has not assimilated to the countries culture. Actually I could make a really long list the more I think about it. This should be a blog write-up. Thank-you for inspiring the ideas.

What do you mean by that?

So today you open a savings account, put money there every month of your life, and in 50 years someone takes it away and gives you a more "reasonable option"?

Yeah, right

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