Gen X emerging from pandemic with firmer grip on America's wallet

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-wealth/gen-x-emerging-from-pandemic-with-firmer-grip-on-americas-wallet-idUSKBN2BL1BL

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

42 65 5 years ago

reuters.com

sidlls2• 5 years ago

I’m not surprised my generation is only considered worth mentioning when money is involved. Whatever.

firmnoodle• 5 years ago

I miss when we were called slackers. Then we built the Internet and modern world but nobody gives us credit for that.

eptcyka• 5 years ago

I'm sure when boomers eventually will relieve the world of themselves, you'll get to bear the blame for all the wrongdoings.

fartcannon• 5 years ago

I'll give you credit. The early Gen X is where most of my mentors reside and I've had a number of exceptional ones.

So, thanks, Gen X. You did good.

Kye• 5 years ago

I was briefly unstuck in time when I watched Bio-Dome for the first time since I was little (millennial) and the adults were complaining about Gen X slackers Bud and Doyle. The '90s don't feel that long ago, and yet...

Darmody3• 5 years ago

Gen X is the last good gen. (I'm a millennial)

millipedegears• 5 years ago

Those were heady days. Using news groups before everything in them morphed into German pornography. The glory days of Gopher. We had the foresight to write the whole thing in C; paving the way for many future generations to work on endlessly patching it.

justin662• 5 years ago

I miss when we were called slackers. Then we built the Internet and modern world but nobody gives us credit for that.

The internet? Our parents and grandparents did that.

I'm pretty sure we get to take credit for cat memes, though.

LanceH• 5 years ago

26.9% of wealth distributed amongst 26.8% of households -- firm grip indeed.

wiremine• 5 years ago

Right: the story seems to be "Gen X catches up"

foobiekr• 5 years ago

That’s not even good given where genX should be in terms of wealth accumulation vs, say, 20 year olds.

sidlls2• 5 years ago

The article even mentions how boomers still have 50% of the wealth despite comprising just 33% of the population. I guess we really are slackers compared to them.

rmah3• 5 years ago

That's all? I'd have thought more. And it makes perfect sense since "boomers" they have worked for 50+ years to expand their wealth. Think about it for a little bit -- older generations should have more wealth than younger generations if things are working correctly.

d1zzy• 5 years ago

I don't think having more wealth per capita is unreasonable, unexpected or unfair. In life you acquire things over time (capital, skills, experience, relationships), you get more of this the more time passes so it's to be expected that older generations just have more of everything (maybe except health and energy, can't really buy biology, not yet).

The numbers that we _should_ be looking at is not how much they have vs how many they are (ie the wealth per capita) but wealth per capita at different stages in their life vs same stages in other generation's lives. Compare how much wealth per capita boomers had in their mid twienties, mid thirdies, etc compared to younger generation. I feel those comparisons are much more fair and telling (and yes, AFAIK, there is a discrepancy that makes it seem unfair).

pwinnski• 5 years ago

It always depends on with whom you're comparing. Millennials hold less than 5% of wealth despite comprising almost 30% of households, and until very recently, Gen X were mostly grouped with Millennials, in contrast with Boomers and older.

The "news" is that Gen X is joining the other groups, pulling away from Millennials.

jeffbee2• 5 years ago

When Boomers were collectively this old they held half of US wealth. https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1376175606925291528

AlexanderDhoore• 5 years ago

What percentage of total population were the Boomers? What percentage is gen X? Or just calculate how much they had/have per person. That's what counts.

jeffbee2• 5 years ago

At their peak the Boomers were 1/3rd of Americans.

jdminhbg• 5 years ago

As a GenXer, I am happy my parents and grandparents didn't die early to make viral pie charts look more even.

jedberg• 5 years ago

As someone in that Twitter thread pointed out, 75% of that effect is accounted for by differences in cohort size vs total population.

rubiquity2• 5 years ago

My only regret in life is that I wasn’t born 8 years earlier. My older sister paid 60% less for college and bought a house twice the size for half the price of what my family is currently considering. Timing is everything.

vsareto2• 5 years ago

10 years from now, someone else will be looking on whatever you were able to do with envy... well, maybe.

rubiquity2• 5 years ago

I sincerely hope not. If such a thing were to happen that means the wealth divide would be significantly worse. That’s the opposite of the direction the world needs to be going in.

uncletammy• 5 years ago

Middle millennial here. I've pretty much given up home for my generation getting the opportunity to experience this effect. The problem seems to be a combination of boomers having been too greedy and millennial expecting opportunities to "trickle down" if they play within the system they were taught to.

Newer generations lucked out because they learned early that boomers will only help themselves and the only chance they have for social mobility is to gamble their way into wealth. Lucky for them, they'll get to live out their life being served coffee by some of the smartest, most well educated baristas the world has ever seen.

at_a_remove• 5 years ago

As one firmly in Gen X, I often remark to younger generations that we could actually see the Boomers' ladder being pulled up behind them, rungs slipping out of our fingers. Nor was it just tuition, opportunities, and so on; we went from nervous anticipation of the sexual freedom that had been quite popular to a dreadful SEX = DEATH, with GRID and the uncertainties of whether or not it was a virus, and if so, how easily it was transmitted. The future was so bright, it just looked like an atomic flash.

We are a small cohort and I sometimes wonder if we are less slackers than just preemptively traumatized, waiting for the other shoe to drop like a neutron bomb, The Road Warrior as training for those who wish to survive, holding our collective breath waiting for the apocalypse to finally show up.

What a puny plan.

screye• 5 years ago

As a millennial, GenX seems like the most reasonable generation to me.

They got the best of a lot of things. (Very anecdotal)

* Excellent Music - Top tier Rock and Rap

* Moderate on Politics - Saw the evils of Communism, but don't have the rosy eyed image of Capitalism as 2008/2000 hit them at critical ages (20-30) in their lives.

* Less involved in identity politics - Went to college before campus activism was based around identity.

* Understanding of the Millenial's struggles, cautiously liberal, and stuck in a terrible housing market because Boomers refuse to die.

Sadly, The Boomer's stranglehold over politics has affected them the most. This is most evident in this [1] graph, where the GenX wave clearly never came and Millenials are already nipping at their heels with Jon Ossof in the senate. This is visible in in presidential runs too. Obama, McCain, Trump, Bernie, Warren, Kamala and Biden are all Boomers or older. Yang and Pete came closest, which is still embarrassingly far for a generation at the top of the Presidential age bell curve [2].

[1] https://flowingdata.com/2021/02/01/age-generations-in-the-u-...

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Age_dist...

UncleOxidant3• 5 years ago

It seems like I saw something about how the majority of folks arrested so far for the Jan 6th insurrection were X'ers.

SketchySeaBeast• 5 years ago

Young enough to still want to protest, old enough to be slower than the rest.

cmrdporcupine• 5 years ago

Honestly, the political tone of my generation (Gen X) as youth was resoundingly apathetic and cynical, and this was remarked on at the time. At least in North America.

The early 90s was a terrible recession where I was. It went along with the drab grunge music and the floppy fashions. There were no cranes on the skyline, and minimum wage was the deal, if you could get a job after high school at all. A pretty bleak time.

(It wasn't until the mid-90s that things picked up and then it went from all that plaid and grey and "I'd be really angry but even that is too much work" to the hayday of late 90s rave culture and total excess)

I was very politically active and radical, but I was definitely in a minority.

monksy2• 5 years ago

* Had the chance to make mistakes and learn from them - * Had a sense of privacy (pre-facebook)

KoftaBob• 5 years ago

What I find interesting about this whole "baby boomers hold a disproportionate percentage of US wealth", is the fact that this also means that eventually, their Gen X and Millennial children are going to inherit vast amounts of wealth.

It's going to be one of the largest, albeit gradual, generational transfers of wealth in history. I'm very curious to see how all that wealth in Gen X and Millennial hands will be put to use.

justaguy88• 5 years ago

Maybe they'll just spend it on lavish retirements instead

joaomacp• 5 years ago

And then pass it over to Gen Z, Gen α, and Gen XMen

Eric_WVGG• 5 years ago

Sort of. A lot of that wealth is tied up in "McMansions" that nobody wants, due to both changing tastes and generally poor construction. The land will still be worth something, but a lot of that value is going to evaporate. https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/boomers-millennials-and-...

MrRadar• 5 years ago

And it's likely that a lot of the value of their savings that can be realized will be hoovered up by medical providers and nursing homes.

panzagl• 5 years ago

I feel like a lot will also evaporate when Boomer retirement accounts get liquidated to pay off Millennial student loans. As a Gen-Xer I 100% believe this will happen a year after I retire.

torwayburger2• 5 years ago

This. The amount of gaudy 2 story mansions that's standing vacant while delapitated and for sale. Most of them end up as rentals as they don't sell, and deteriorate even more in value as they're not cared for. Add this to the inevitable fire insurance quotes you'll get for owning in a place that can accommodate such a monstrous build and it all comes out extremely wasteful and risky.

UncleOxidant3• 5 years ago

A lot of that boomer "wealth" has gone into RVs, McMansions & Harleys. What remains will be spent on medical care in the last few years of life.

lrem• 5 years ago

Well, reading ft.com I see a gradual but firm increase of mentions of hiking the inheritance tax...

StefanKarpinski• 5 years ago

The trouble with that is that inherited wealth replicates existing inequalities, whereas newly earned wealth at least offers the chance for social mobility. I'd be more interested in median wealth of each generation.

monksy2• 5 years ago

Money is really mostly good when you had it in the past and invested it stablely.

fiftyacorn• 5 years ago

I wonder how much inheritance from boomers to Gen X will influence the transfer of wealth in the next 5-10 years

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

members of Generation X saw their wealth jump [...] as they hit their prime earning years during a record bull market for stocks.

...just like the Boomers.

And, in a couple decades, the same line, with different parts under the ellipsis, will be written about Millennials.

Because record (if you adopt the right measure) stock market booms happen frequently enough, and named age cohorts are broad enough, and them becoming more financially dominant as they hit their prime earning years certain enough, that you can pretty much guarantee the opportunity to apply this frame.

It's “news” the way “the sun rose in the East today”, and it's connection to whatever else is going on and which gets reported with it as if it were particularly relevant is nearly as tenuous as if those things were being attributed as relevant to the sunrise.

dfxm12• 5 years ago

Take a look at this graph: https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/GREATREBOOT/xegpbgw...

Coming out of the pandemic, Boomers, Gen X and Millenials all have a firmer grip on America's wallet, coming at the expense of the silent & earlier generation who saw their households drop :(, but still, the Boomers' grip is tighter than others', which I think is the real lede, if any.

In all honesty, you could read this as members of the Silent generation are dying and they're bequeathing their wealth to Boomers and Gen X... I guess Millenials have to hope they'll be so lucky when Boomers die.

majewsky• 5 years ago

I don't dispute that Boomers hold an unreasonably large amount of wealth. but besides that, I struggle to see anything but normal demographics in the movements shown in this chart.

you could read this as members of the Silent generation are dying and they're bequeathing their wealth to Boomers and Gen X

How could you read it any differently?

I guess Millenials have to hope they'll be so lucky when Boomers die.

What's there to hope? Where else is the Boomers' wealth supposed to go when they die?

Gen X emerging from pandemic with firmer grip on America's wallet

Related Stories