The Baby Boomers have most of the wealth and power in America, so why are they so angry when this gets pointed out?
In recent weeks, a collection of economic data and explanations of structural forces preventing important things like housing affordability, household formation and economic mobility have provoked many responses—some thoughtful, some angry, some even defensive, but increasingly urging me to look beyond the reliable generational framing.
“Your article is gross,” one wrote to me.
“There is no balance in the world we live in!” another said, adding, “a golf ball is a golf ball no matter how you putt it. So is the economy! Adapt!”
Another gave me a sense of the angst felt when broad macro strokes don’t capture the reality on the ground for every micro-case: ” You write like every boomer is sitting on a McMansion and a seven‑figure IRA,” one bereaved Boomer wrote to me. “A lot of us are one bad diagnosis away from losing everything.”
