If I were around 100 years ago, I would be dead. Instead, I’m rich. (Pictured are my grandparents, May and Edmund O'Donnell, in 1918.)
It’s a demographic and economic transformation that is destroying hope for change in America and (perhaps) making us the last generation.
Until recently, people lived their first 20 years dependent on parents, the next 20 as parents, the next (if they were lucky) 20 as grandparents and anything past that dependent on the children. Most of the world still lives this way.
But starting with Social Security in 1934, and continuing through general prosperity to today, America has turned this on its head. Seniors aren’t just living to an average age of 83, we’re doing it with money. I’m just a 68-year old journalist but, thanks in large part to a wife who works in tech, I’m a millionaire. We own our house. We have enough invested to guarantee a fine retirement, God willing. There may even be something left when we’re gone.
This has changed political incentives. There’s no better example than Florida where The Villages, a huge retirement town of 150,000 (almost all of whom vote), has turned the state’s politics on its head. Add them to those already living up-and-down the state’s east, west and south coasts, and you get a huge state entirely devoted to short term thinking. Education, the environment? Fuck ‘em. We’ll be gone.
(Our 2021 Christmas card.) These forces are transforming the whole country. If you own land you’re rich. Millions of white Texans own land. Not only are they rich but so are the kids. This is at the heart of our right-wing politics, the desire to turn back the clock, the fear of the other, or others’ thoughts, the willingness to go full Nazi because we got ours. This has been around since All in the Family, but now it is the central force in American life.
This isn’t true for everyone. It’s not true for me. Or is it? I want stocks and real estate to do well because I got some. I want to pass on comfort to my kids. This will give them a lifetime of advantage over their peers. The richer you are the bigger the advantage. That’s economic feudalism, despite any liberal politics that may accept social change.
The rest of the world isn’t like that. The global south isn’t like that. The median age in the U.S. is 38. In Mexico it’s 29. Walls won’t change this. Trying to turn white women into baby-making chattel won’t work, either.
This is today’s generation gap. It’s a global generation gap, reflected in global politics.
It’s going to eat us alive.
