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by RestlessMind 3414 days ago
A complaint against boomers is that they pulled up the ladder for upward mobility. That they benefited from cheap education, a booming economy, relatively cheap houses and stock market and fully funded social security and medicare. Whereas millennials have to face expensive education, stagnant economy and uncertain prospects for social security / medicare.

If that's the case, we should welcome parent->children transfer of wealth to balance out the situation of two generations, no? Some people might prefer government to do this, but that is just a different mechanism (with lots of political opposition) to achieve the same end goal - wealth transfer from boomers to millennials.

1 comments

The problem with parental wealth transfer is when your parents may not be in the position to help you. Which is why this is most certainly not a good trend.
Yes, and a lot of Government wealth transfer projects would also result in problems where they are unable to help a subset of people. Eg. Obamacare not helping a middle class family with income just above the threshold to receive subsidies but not enough to afford a high deductible or high premium insurance plan

As I said, there can be different mechanisms for wealth transfer from boomers to millennials. Govt directed programs (means-tested or universal) might be preference of some and might even perform better, but they also tend to have a lot of political opposition.

So while we are gridlocked on other fronts, its better to see some transfer happening between parents and children.