Curse of the boomer hegemony

Curse of the boomer hegemony

http://salon.com/tech/htww/2009/12/10/boomer_hegemony/index.html?source=newsletter

Can't find a job? Blame the cohort of Americans refusing to retire,
desperate to maintain their cushy way of life

By Andrew Leonard
Dec 10, 2009

Those darn boomers. For decades, they've dominated pop culture,
politics, the economy and the media, and even now, as they finally
edge their way toward retirement, they refuse to let go.

In fact, chastened by the economic downturn, they're refusing to retire.

Felix Salmon points us to a very downbeat assessment of the U.S.
economy from former Merrill Lynch top economist David Rosenberg.
There's plenty of distressing analysis to ponder in his 2010 outlook,
but the most provocative point may be his analysis of how the boomer
generation is coping with hard times.

The last time we had a consumer recession in the early 1990s, the
boomer population was in their early 30s and they were still
expanding their balance sheets. The last time we had a bubble burst
in 2001 they were in their early 40s. Now they are in their early
50s, the first of the boomers are in their early 60s, and we are
talking about a critical mass of 78 million people who have driven
everything in the economy and capital markets over the last five
decades. This cohort realize that they may never fully recoup their
lost net worth, and yet they will probably live another 20 or 30 years.

So, what is happening, which is at the same time fascinating and
disturbing, is that the only part of the population actually seeing
any job growth in this recession are people over the age of 55.
Everyone else can't get a job or are losing jobs -- there is a youth
unemployment crisis in the United States of epic proportions and a
record number of Americans have been out of work for longer than six
months in part because the "aging but not aged" crowd is not retiring
as early as they used to. My contention is that many retirees who
took themselves out of the workforce because they believed that their
net worth would provide for them sufficiently in their golden years
are redoing their calculations and coming back to the workforce to
make up for their lost wealth. They are seeking income in the labor
market, not because they want to but because they have to in order to
satisfy their retirement lifestyles.

There's no stopping the "me" generation. In the '60s they got all the
good drugs, in the '70s all the sex, in the '80s all the money, and
now, in the waning days of the aughts, they won't let go of all the
jobs. It's goes without saying that during the next decade they'll
gobble up all the good healthcare.

Felix Salmon looks at this picture and becomes as glum as I've ever seen him:

I'm not optimistic that those of us in the post-boomer generation
will be able to rekindle America's historic rates of growth even as
the percentage of the population of working age continues to dwindle
and the boomers continue to demand the lifestyle to which they have
become accustomed.

The point here is that while most recessions are cyclical phenomena,
this one could mark a secular turning point -- the beginning of the
end of America's hegemony in the global economy and the capital
markets. And the turning point has come too early, before the rest of
the world has generated enough internal momentum to take America's place.

I am not sure that the end of any "hegemony" is necessarily a bad
thing, and it would not surprise me to see China and India fill the
leadership gap a lot more quickly than anyone expects. As Rosenberg
notes in his dour assessment, the Chinese are already buying more
cars, more computers and more big-box appliances than Americans. As
the American boomers reluctantly fade, kicking, biting and
scratching, there will be a new generation to take their place.
Conspicuous, self-involved consumption abhors a vacuum.
--

UPDATE: A note concerning my despicable boomer hatred.

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/12/11/my_boomer_hatred/index.html

Contrary to reports, HTWW does not want to sentence an entire
generation to mandatory euthanasia

By Andrew Leonard
12/11/09

Judging by the comments thread on yesterday's post, "Curse of the
Boomer Hegemony," and some extremely upset and vituperative letters
written to me personally, I really hit a nerve with my comments on
the generation that supposedly won't let go.

I will cop to an inflammatory headline, but for the record, I am not
calling for mandatory euthanasia for baby boomers, nor do I bear them
any special ill will. Indeed, as a 47-year-old born in 1962, I
belong, according to some demographic calculations, to the final
trailing edge of the boomer generation, although I have always
considered myself part of the pitiable "lost" generation, stuck
between the boomers and Gen X, with no identity to call my own. But
if you want to, consider me a self-hating boomer wannabe.

I would have thought that the tongue-in-cheek humor implicit in my
favorite paragraph was obvious, or should have been to regular readers:

There's no stopping the "me" generation. In the '60s they got all
the good drugs, in the '70s all the sex, in the '80s all the money,
and now, in the waning days of the aughts, they won't let go of all
the jobs. It goes without saying that during the next decade they'll
gobble up all the good healthcare.

But I'm used to humor and sarcasm missing the mark online. To me, the
most fascinating thing about David Rosenberg's analysis was that the
over-55 cohort of Americans is the only age demographic in the U.S.
experiencing job growth right now. That's pretty interesting, and it
does suggest that economic exigencies are postponing retirement. As
for myself, I can't even imagine retiring, ever, so I'm sure I'll be
fending off my own legions of, to quote one correspondent, "ignorant
snots" jealous of my stranglehold on self-involved blogging, deep
into the 21st century.

And just to make the point of my last sentence -- "Conspicuous,
self-involved consumption abhors a vacuum" -- totally clear: While I
can understand why that might sound hurtful to a 55-year-old who has
kids in college and is living on the edge of unemployment, my point
was actually hopeful, in that it pointed to the possibility of a new
generation of Chinese and Indian consumers pulling the locomotive of
the world economy, replacing the yeoman efforts of American baby boomers.

As long as such consumption doesn't overheat the planet into
unlivability, I'm fine with that.

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