Michael's Corner

2025 marks the ninetieth anniversary of America’s most discussed safety net: Social Security. Indeed, the most volatile political football (discounting reproductive rights) has reached a milestone birthday (Yikes, social security was eligible to retire twenty-five years ago!). But has decrepitude at long last set in? Back when FDR signed SS into law, the age one could collect was not far off from the national mortality rate. In other words, the government hoped you turned 65 on Monday and dropped dead no later than the following weekend and that your spouse followed shortly after. For men who worked in glue factories and other entities where, all day long, they inhaled industrial waste, were married to women who wore themselves down to nothing, managing households while raising eight kids, the abovementioned marked a typical scenario. Ninety years after FDR whisked his pen into history, no one works in glue factories, and families beyond a couple and their loyal canine are disappearing. Yes, the race is on to see how many childless Americans, not claimed by fentanyl, reach the century mark. But I don’t mean for this to be a “devil in the details” initiative; we all know how and why the numbers, as they apply to SS, misalign. The question is what has SS done to the American ethos.

The Boomers ate the cake.

And why wouldn’t we? If you place a piece of cake on a plate, then slide the plate in front of someone, there is better than even odds that they will eat it. Indeed, we Boomers broke the mold; we were the first generation to abandon thrift to live primarily in the present. After all, there was a social safety net waiting to forgive us should we live beyond our means and forget to save. And live beyond our means we did! We ran from the cities that raised us, to suburbia, to occupy large dwellings we could barely afford and pay property tax we’re forever grousing about.

So how were middleclass urbanites able to adopt this new lifestyle?

With SS waiting, and a property with thirty years of appreciation to sell upon the final mortgage payment, one no longer had to allocate funds for retirement and could live as children in the moment. Indeed, a post-retirement social safety net gave Americans the opportunity to lead lifestyles that would have been unattainable before the institution of SS. We Boomers ran to the suburbs, created our habitats, took cruises, and then put up our For Sale signs and downsized. The old homestead that The Silent Generation and its predecessors worked so hard to build is silently slipping out of existence. Meanwhile, we Boomers, from the vantage point of fifty-five-plus communities, watch as America continues to transfer wealth from the young to the old, or from those with little purchasing power and access to the market, to those who bought everything that wasn’t nailed down and benefited from multiple boom cycles. I can well guess what some must be thinking: Yeah, but these entitled Zoomers don’t have anything because they buy vape pens and use Door Dash. I would rebut: You want them to have no pathway to build the kind of life that you enjoyed and also have no vices? You’d be asking an awful lot, wouldn’t you?

Will Zoomers have the last laugh?

What does a nation do with a generation forced into a “rent only” mindset, snubs the notion of procreation, and aspires to live as urban bohemians whose only charge walks at the end of a leash? How will the goose continue to lay its golden eggs? Moreover, how close are we to incentivizing Zoomers into having children by waving checks under their noses? If America doesn’t figure out how to better balance its investment between its seniors and youth, a pay-for-procreation initiative may be closer than we realize.