Now Comes the Hard Part

That this extreme inequality is itself the primary threat to both democracy and social stability is poorly understood.

Scraped of pleasantries, the ultimate purpose of any status quo is to 1) distribute most of the economy's gains to the top tier and 2) offload the sacrifices this requires to the bottom tiers but in stealthy ways that aren't noticeable enough to spark political revolt.

The basic stealth mechanisms deployed over the past 50 years to offload the sacrifices on the bottom 90% are:

1) Reduce the share of the national income going to wages so the share going to corporate profits and finance could soar. (see charts below)

2) Place the tax burden for entitlements (Social Security and Medicare) on the wage earners while reducing the taxes levied on unearned income from the ownership of assets / capital.

3) Understate official inflation.

4) Inflate credit-asset bubbles that enriched the owners of assets at rates far above inflation.

The first dollar of every wage is taxed at 15.3% for entitlements (both the employee and employer pay 7.65%), while numerous forms of capital gains are exempt from tax. Capital is lightly taxed, earned income is heavily taxed. Wage earners lose ground, asset owners get richer. That's the net result of the taxation system.

Inflation is of course the hidden tax, but the status quo has relieved the wealthiest 10% who own most of the assets from the ravages of inflation by inflating asset bubbles which enrich the already rich at rates far above inflation. Those who own few assets absorb the losses of inflation via a slow-drip reduction in the purchasing power of their wages.

Borrowing money has always been the lowest-friction way to keep everyone happy--or at least onboard. The status quo needs enough money to fund both the gains from monopoly, tax havens, fraud and graft collected by the top few and the entitlements that keep everyone else onboard.

Alas, all good things come to an end. Interest rates fell for 40+ years, enabling more debt to be piled up without increasing the cost of servicing the debt enough to be noticeable. Now rates are rising, and despite the many claims that the Fed and other central banks can easily shove rates back to zero, the recent rise in Japanese sovereign bonds undercuts this breezy assumption that debt can be piled up indefinitely.

Japan's central bank printed money to buy the government's bonds to keep yields near zero for 30 years, but that apparently permanent solution has been revealed as impermanent.

Demographics--people living longer and the global Baby Boom retiring en masse--is pushing government spending higher as the workforce of wage earners paying most of the taxes stagnates or shrinks. Now that interest rates are in a long-term up-cycle, it's no longer possible to just borrow another few trillion dollars every year without increasing the cost of servicing all that debt to the point where the debt service starts squeezing out the spending needed to keep everyone happy.

The net result of all this is: now comes the hard part, distributing the sacrifices in ways that are finally noticeable.

The problem facing the status quo is not easily resolvable: the top few percent (corporations and the wealthiest households) who own most of the wealth have aggregated political power with their wealth, so politicians are under tremendous pressure to keep the immense river of profits, tax breaks, giveaways, graft, etc. flowing to corporations and the wealthiest few lest they throw a temper tantrum and fund a competing politico in the next election.

But the predations of the top few have already shifted most of the losses, costs and risks onto the bottom 2/3 of the populace, and so the buffers of cash, assets and credit this class has to absorb more sacrifices has already been worn thin.

The class that's doing well due to the current Everything Bubble--those in the 80% to 99% bracket--can afford to absorb some of the sacrifices, but should the bubble pop--and sadly, all bubbles pop despite herculean efforts to keep them inflated--the phantom wealth this class expected to be permanent will dissipate into thin air, leaving them less willing to absorb the scale of sacrifices needed to satisfy everyone: the politically influential top few, the technocratic class that keeps the status quo bureaucracies / institutions functioning and the bottom 2/3 who do the scutwork.

This chart below (from WSJ.com) shows that wages are still the dominant generator of income even in high-income households. Only the top 1% derive substantial shares of their income from business ownership and ownership of other assets.

In summary: the most politically influential class--those able to buy political protection from sacrifices--is the only class with the means to absorb financial sacrifices.

Politicians are caught in a bind. They need to cut spending and raise taxes lest the Good Ship Status Quo founder, but the class that is most able to absorb sacrifices also funds their campaigns.

The usual tricks that worked for the past 50 years to offload the sacrifices onto the bottom 90% wage-earner class now carry the risk of arousing political revolt.

The conventional "solution" many expect is to reduce the debt load by increasing inflation. But this only works if the bottom 90% wage-earner class receives wage increases sufficient to keep up with inflation. There is little to no evidence to support the assumption that this is likely, or even possible.

Once the Everything Bubble pops, the financial buffers of the bottom 90% wage-earner classes will thin or disappear entirely. Once this happens, their stake in the status quo changes, and they become dry kindling awaiting a spark to erupt in a political firestorm that burns down the status quo's current distribution of gains, losses, costs and risks.

Markets / economies are embedded in a social order, not the other way round. The social order has to balance the distribution fairly enough (the 80/20 Pareto Distribution comes to mind) to keep the majority from concluding there is definitive upside in overthrowing the status quo.

(Note that in the US, the bottom 90% own 32% of total household wealth, the top 10% own 68%, of which the top 1% own 31%.)



One might imagine the hyper-wealthy class who have added the entire net worth of the bottom 90% to their own hoard in the past 16 years might awaken to the systemic risks of their politically sanctioned, self-serving distribution and accept the need for some sacrifices to preserve the status quo that enriches and protects them.

But it seems they're more interested in constructing bunkers and fortresses to keep the mobs at bay. They seem to believe a fortress will protect them from the consequences of their destabilizing aggregation of wealth and power.

Nobody ever correctly predicts the spark that ignites the dry kindling of discontent into a political firestorm. The ignition event is unpredictable, for history shows that a small-scale event that would normally be inconsequential can start a political firestorm when discontent reaches levels where non-linear phase-change transitions become likely.

We can only observe the forest floor is now covered with a thickening layer of bone-dry brush and branches.

The concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the few at the expense of the many has been hidden behind the "make everyone happy" borrowing binge and the phantom-wealth created by the Everything Bubble. That this immense concentration is itself the primary threat to both democracy and social stability is poorly understood. That may change in ways few anticipate.

Wages of the bottom 90% have been declining as a share of national income for decades:



Another look at the same trend:



Income by source, the top 10% segments:




Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kerjanga N. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark W. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Nikolai ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John G. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

What Would Happen If Sydney Sweeney Started Gardening and Baking Bread?

This is a catastrophic decline of health that no one dares calls a catastrophe.

Today's topic: can a culture sleepwalking off a cliff be awakened? If so, how? This is the source of my thought experiment question: what would happen if Sydney Sweeney started gardening and baking bread? I know nothing about Ms. Sweeney's private life and it may well be that she is an avid gardener and bakes bread at home, but the question is less about an individual celebrity and more about how cultural values change: can celebrities awaken a culture from self-destruction, or is something else required?

Let's start with what's obvious: in terms of health, diet and fitness, America has been sleepwalking into an unhealthy lifestyle / diet for 40+ years, a somnambulance uninterrupted by any high-ranking political figure until RFK, Jr. opened the Overton Window of what's politically possible with statements such as this: "Taxpayer dollars shouldn't go to junk food that makes our kids sick. We're fixing that--state by state, step by step--to Make America Healthy Again."

What's striking is that no one in a position of political influence said anything this truthful in the past 40 years, four decades in which taxpayer funds subsidized the destruction of America's health by funding ultra-processed beverages, snacks and other forms of addictive-by-design junk food to the point that 2/3 of children's diets are ultra-processed products--edible but not nutritious.

CDC Reveals Children Have Highest Intake Of Ultra-Processed Foods Americans aged 1+ consumed 55% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods. Youth (ages 1 - 18): Averaged 61.9%.

That ultra-processed foods--low in fiber and nutrition, high in sweeteners, salt and unhealthy fats--is the source of the collapse of our national health has long been known. I've been writing about this topic for 15+ years, highlighting the core driver: ultra-processed food is highly profitable. Real food, not so much.

Sugar: the Bitter Truth (January 29, 2010)

The Profitable Destruction of Americans' Health (October 23, 2023)

This video was recorded in 2009, and yet nothing has slowed the invasion of ultra-processed foods into the nation's diet, to the point that an estimated 70% of our food is now ultra-processed.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth (video, 1:30 hrs) Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. Fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be the cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.

Consider this map of obesity by state in 1985, where no state had an obesity rate above 20%, to the recent CDC map, where no state had a rate under 20%:



Since the data shown is self-reported, it's likely the reality is even bleaker than depicted here:



If we combine overweight (i.e. close to obese) and obesity, roughly 3/4 of the nation's adults are at elevated risk of chronic diseases. This is a catastrophic decline of health that no one dares calls a catastrophe.



This is the kind of empty-calorie product being hyped 24/7: edible but not nutritious.



Can an entire culture sleepwalking off a cliff be awakened before recovery is no longer possible? No one knows, of course, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if influencers with audiences in the millions started promoting healthy lifestyles (gardening, preparing real food, going Cold Turkey on ultra-processed goo, a daily walk) by example.


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kerjanga N. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark W. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Nikolai ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John G. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Resilient, Self-Reliant Life Is Hard

Every single thing that increases resilience and self-reliance is impossible.

This reader's email cut through the clutter: "I'm seeing multiple sites and people that give great insight into what's wrong with our society and economy etc but what I'm looking for is more information regarding how to protect and prepare myself and those that I care about."

I've been addressing how to forge a more resilient, self-reliant life since 2009 when I published Survival+. More recently, I wrote a brief guide to Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

But quite frankly, talking about a resilient life of self-reliance feels like being a street-corner preacher: few are actually interested in pursuing self-reliance, and even fewer are willing to make the dramatic life changes required to actually become more resilient / self-reliant.

The reason is that it's hard, and it's hard for several reasons. One is the work itself is demanding; there's nothing easy about the work or the learning-by-doing. Second, in a culture and economy devoted to comfort, convenience, novelty, attracting attention ("engagement") and status signaling, resilience requires swimming against this immense tide of marketing and "well, if everyone else is pursuing all this, it must be valuable, so I'll pursue it, too."

My perspective is based on systems and common sense, but it comes across as doom-and-gloom because we naturally want to believe (and be reassured) that everything we depend on is permanent and solid.

So let's consider every megalopolis / urban sprawl in the nation, where the majority of people live and work. Cities no longer produce much of anything. Their primary economic activities are: tourism, entertainment (amusing ourselves by spending money), real estate (gaming the RE bubble), credit/banking (expanding the debt bubble), healthcare, the higher education industry (that lives off $1.5 trillion in student loans) and a wide spectrum of complexity work: marketing, compliance, work-flow optimization, insurance, forms / payments / applications processing, oversight, issuing credentials and so on, tasks that are necessary in an overly complex system that depends on the ceaseless expansion of debt to fund itself, but which produces little of what we need to live.

This describes my job as a writer, too, of course. As someone wisely pointed out a few years ago, "We can't eat an iPad," nor can we eat the words or images on the screen.

If a Carrington Event fried the electronic / digital circuitry running all this, life would go on, albeit with some initial difficulties. But if water, food and fuel vanish, life doesn't go on.

With writing and all that other stuff gone, I'd revert to doing work that doesn't require digital assets: repairing stuff with hand tools, growing food, teaching kids how to grow food, preparing food for elderly folks, etc. Life goes on.

This immensely complex concentration of humanity has no more than a few days of actual life essentials such as food and fuel on hand, and the systems of re-supply have been optimized to the point of fragility: the entire system is tightly bound and heavily centralized, i.e. stripped of redundancy and resilience.

Author Charles Perrow invested his career in explaining how such tightly bound centralized systems are vulnerable to what he called normal accidents, not Black Swans or aliens landing, just the everyday routine things that break or fail and trigger consequences. The problem is the more tightly bound, centralized and optimized the system, the more catastrophic the potential consequences.

Once we grasp this, common sense suggests removing ourselves from this nexus of vulnerability. But when I suggest that maybe moving out of the city might be a wise risk-reduction move, the response is as if I'd suggested moving to a penal colony in the asteroid belt.

In other words, every single thing that increases resilience and self-reliance is impossible. Only eating real food? Impossible. Getting healthy without supplements, "wellness" clinics, gyms, etc.? Impossible. Limiting screentime on all devices? Impossible. Reducing expenses? Impossible. Growing some of your own food? Impossible. And so on. Everything's impossible until there's no other option. And then it's too late.

When you're thirsty, it's too late to dig a well.

Self-reliance is not self-sufficiency. My definition of self-reliance is: the less you need, the easier it is to get what you need. We all need industrial products: gaskets, valves, saw blades, spare parts, high-grade steel, fertilizer, concrete and a thousand other highly specialized bits and pieces. The point of self-reliance isn't to attempt self-sufficiency; the point is to reduce risks and vulnerabilities by reducing our needs and increasing our productive capacity for the essentials of life.

This is why I suggested in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal that maybe it would be wiser to focus on rebuilding and maintaining our national ability to produce these essentials rather than focus on boosting "growth" of throwaway consumption by borrowing more from the future.

The less we need, the easier it is to get what we need. Let's say one household can get by perfectly well on 10 gallons of gasoline a month and another household needs 100 gallons a month just to survive. Which is easier, getting 10 gallons or getting 100 gallons? The same can be said of water, food and income.

The other part of self-reliance is figuring out how to be productive on our own. In my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career, I lay out an alternative to the credential / accreditation hamster wheel: accredit yourself. Is that easy? No, like everything else in self-reliance, it's hard--but ultimately rewarding.

In a money-wealth obsessed culture, the "solution" to all problems is to pile up money / wealth. But all this "money" in whatever form is simply a means to buy what somebody else produced. Wouldn't it be better to be the producer rather than the buyer?

Put another way: gold can be stolen or expropriated. Dirt--no so much, and skills--not at all. Stealing dirt is difficult, and unless the thief knows what to do with the dirt, i.e. how to actually grow food, the dirt is worthless. Food doesn't grow itself. It takes a lot of work and experiential knowledge. But it's highly satisfying in ways that few have ever experienced in our Ultra-Processed Life.

My definition of Ultra-Processed Life: Ultra-Processed Life replaces an authentic experience with a synthetic, simulated, commoditized, highly profitable version that's superficially attractive but destructive / debilitating.

So 70% of our food is now ultra-processed, and we wonder why we're burdened by chronic lifestyle diseases?



There is nothing easy, comfortable, convenient, novel or status-enhancing about living a resilient, self-reliant life. It's hard, demands sacrifices and often tedious work with little immediate reward. The system we inhabit makes it difficult on every level.

Now that I've offended or pissed off everyone, please excuse my derangement. It's the meds. Yeah, the meds. I just need some Substance D and I'll be fine.

"A healthy homecooked family meal and a home garden are revolutionary acts." (CHS, May 2008)

"You don't miss what you no longer want." (CHS, August 2008)

"Food is wealth, health is wealth, energy is wealth; all else is illusion." (CHS, December 15, 2008)

"Meaningful work and meaningful skills make a meaningful life, even if the work is unpaid." (CHS, March 6, 2009)

"If you like eating, begin liking dirt." (CHS, April 6, 2009)

"The Mobile Creative credo: trust your network, not the corporation or the state." (CHS)


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kerjanga N. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark W. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Nikolai ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John G. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Two Ways to Fix Generational Wealth Inequality

One way or another, some significant percentage of the wealth of the nation will have to start supporting children and young families if this nation is going to have a future worth saving.

When I address knotty issues such as generational wealth inequality, I am naturally asked: "what do you propose as a solution?" As I concluded in my recent post Go Ahead and Rage at Boomers, But the Problem Is the Entire Economic Order (8/1/25): It doesn't have to be this way, but we're going to have to change our values and the fundamental structures of our economy if we want a different outcome.

So let's dig in, starting with an analogy.

We go to the dentist or oral surgeon, and the diagnosis is not good. Our gums have receded, our teeth are getting loose and if we don't undergo painful, costly surgery, we're going to start losing teeth. If we do nothing, fixing the future problems will be even more painful and costly than acting now.

But then someone else says all that is "doom and gloom," we're fine, everything will sort itself out without any pain or cost. This is what we want to hear, of course, but it's not reality-based; the realistic assessment is our teeth will fall out if we do nothing, and then our problems will be much worse. It's not going to sort itself out if we do nothing.

In the realm of economics and finance, there are veritable armies of apologists and PR flacks whose job (self-appointed or paid) is to reassure us everything is fine and it will all sort itself out without any pain, sacrifice or cost.

In summary: the Fed, AI, crypto, fusion, etc. Some form of financial engineering or techno-wizardry will make all our problems go away without any pain, sacrifice or cost.

The apologists and PR flacks paint a very pretty picture, but back in the real world, none of these supposed fixes will fix the generational wealth divide. There are two oft-proposed "it will all sort itself out without any of us having to do anything" pseudo-solutions:

1. As the economy grows, the younger generations will get wealthier as wages rise. That sounds good, but the economy has been growing smartly for many years and this has basically done nothing to close the generational wealth gap, so this is fantasy, not reality.

2. As Boomers pass on, their immense wealth will pass on to their offspring. Once again, this sounds nice but it's not realistic. One issue is the majority of this wealth is an artifact of unsustainable asset bubbles, i.e. phantom-wealth that will disappear when the bubbles pop.

The second issue is the cost of care is now so high that even $1 million can be consumed down to the last morsel. As I noted in The Stoicism of the Caregiver (3/5/25):

The financial costs of care are staggering. A bed in private assisted living is around $75,000 and up a year, a private room in a nursing home is around $150,000 a year, and round-the-clock care at home costs from $150,000 to $250,000+ annually.

The Crushing Financial Burden of Aging at Home (WSJ.com, paywalled)

"Christine Salhany spends about $240,000 a year for 24-hour in-home care for her husband who has Alzheimer's. In Illinois, Carolyn Brugioni's dad exhausted his savings and took out a home-equity line-of-credit to pay for home healthcare."

More than 11,000 people in the U.S. are turning 65 every day and the vast majority--77% of Americans age 50 and older according to an AARP survey--want to live as long as possible in their current home. At some point, many will need help. About one-fourth of those 65 and older will eventually require significant support and services for more than three years, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

About one-third of retirees don't have resources to afford even a year of minimal care, according to the Boston College center.

"The new inheritance is not having enough money to give to kids but to have enough money to cover long-term care costs, says Liz O'Donnell, the Boston-based founder of Working Daughter, an online community of caregivers.

The costs of home care are so high that not just inheritances are exhausted; the home equity is also drained. $350,000 sounds like a lot of money but that might cover two years in a nursing home but not be enough to cover two years of round-the-clock care at home.

The cost of maintaining the home doesn't go away: property taxes, insurance and maintenance expenses must be paid, too.

In other words, the idea that the retired generation will leave ample inheritances is increasingly detached from reality. As noted, the new inheritance is to get through the years of caregiving without acquiring debt.

63 million adults are moonlighting as caregivers, with little support.

So where does that leave us? Let's start with an eye-opening chart depicting the percentage of young people who are both married and homeowners: Shocking Chart Exposes America's "Civilizational Crisis". Note that the rate has fallen from 45% to 15% in the 35 years during which the economy became increasingly dependent on credit-asset bubbles for its "growth."



The well-paid apologists are already poring over statistics to "explain this away" and we can imagine the "explanations" that will be offered: young people simply don't want to get married and own a home. Um, OK, and so they also prefer financial precarity and nihilism, too, right?

I think there's far more truth in film director Celine Song's quote than in anything the apologists and PR hacks come up with. The quote is from 'Everybody's starved of affection' (The Guardian, paywalled):

"I think it has so much to do with how deeply broken our economic systems are, especially in the US. As we have learned, the American dream is not achievable. You cannot jump your class. But what's one of the few ways that you can still jump your class? Well, marriage."

In other words, stripped of plastic platitudes, the only way out is to marry way above mere middle class. The above chart reveals the low success rate of this "Cinderella" strategy. There simply aren't enough top 10% people who haven't already married another top 10% person left to meet the "Cinderella" demand.

OK, so now we're finally down to the painful, costly options, where the urge to attack the messenger becomes overwhelming. Look, I'm not saying I'm a fan of these options, I'm saying my job is to offer a realistic appraisal, and everyone can take that any way they want.

There are only two realistic ways to close the generational wealth inequality gap:

1. The Everything Bubble pops and wipes out 2/3 of the phantom wealth, the vast majority of which is held by the top 10% and the older generations (Boomers and the older cohort of Gen X). The gap is closed not by the younger generations getting wealthier but by the older generations getting poorer.

History suggests this is a very common way of closing the gap: all bubbles pop, and those who never owned the assets that bubbled up have nothing to lose. The wealthy lose most of their wealth, and that narrows the gap.

2. The younger Gen-Xers, Millennials and Gen Z start voting in high enough percentages to wrest political power from the older generations, and the younger political leaders who replace the old leaders come up with a much different policy-tax mix that addresses generational wealth inequality directly.



One way or another, some significant percentage of the wealth of the nation will have to start supporting children and young families if this nation is going to have a future worth saving.



How this plays out is anyone's guess. One thing I've learned the hard way as a business owner and self-employed precariat is: "liking" or "not liking" has nothing to do with it. We either get the painful, costly work done now or the problems quickly get beyond being fixable at any cost.

I laid out my own views two decades ago: Boomers, Prepare to Fall on Your Swords (June 2005)


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Janet D. ($3/month), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Shawn ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Randy G. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Frans L. ($70), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Go Ahead and Rage at Boomers, But the Problem Is the Entire Economic Order

The entire economic order is bankrupt--ideologically, politically and financially.

A friend sent me a clip of Tucker Carlson going off on the Boomer generation, and I get it. Tucker's takedown was epic and entertaining (at least for me), but his disgust and rage were real. So let's dig into the sources of those emotions.

If you watch the clip, it's apparent that what really disgusts Tucker is the sanctimoniousness of the Boomers he references, the glibness of their virtue-signaling and claims to righteousness and significance. This extends to the financial level, where the sanctimony is expressed as a high-minded confidence that "we earned it," overlooking the trillions of dollars handed to them on a Federal Reserve / bubble-economy / entitlements platter.

I think we all get that, but the problem isn't the Boomers, it's the entire economic order. The Boomers were just the hitchhiker who were lucky enough to be picked up by the big-finned Cadillac on the way into Vegas.

Even if everyone were absolute saints, they'd still own most of the wealth. Here's why.

When Social Security was enacted in the 1930s, the retirement age was 65 and the average lifespan of Americans was 62. In other words, the program was intentionally designed to be self-funded (paid by a very modest tax on wages paid by both employer and employee) and act as a safety net for the fortunate few who lived long enough to collect it but who weren't lucky enough to be wealthy.

As the economy boomed in the postwar era, the age of retirement (at a lower percentage of full benefits) was lowered to 62 as the average lifespan increased to 70 by 1965, when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted. At their inception, these programs were mere fractions of federal spending, and appeared to be "good things" that were affordable.

The Boomers weren't born in the 1930s, and in 1965 they were kids. These entitlements were initiated in response to the grim reality that old age for the non-wealthy was generally a ticket to poverty.

Fast-forward to today, and the average lifespan is 80 (with millions of elderly living a decade longer) and 3/4 of adult Americans are at risk of lifestyle diseases / metabolic disorders due to an unhealthy diet and poor fitness. Over half of Americans are diabetic or prediabetic.



The entitlement programs to aid the elderly that were modest decades ago are now almost 50% of the entire federal budget, dwarfing all other spending. Entitlements aiding young families are so modest they aren't even a blip compared to the soaring budgets of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (Disability entitlements were added to Social Security, greatly expanding the program's costs.)

The budgets of these entitlement programs are on unsustainable parabolic trajectories. Medicare:



And Medicaid: healthcare has soared from 5% of GDP to almost 20%. "Unlimited free money" tends to do that...



Now we come to the main course, neoliberal economic magic. The basic idea of neoliberal economics is if we just free market forces, that will permanently generate growth and wealth. The net result was an orgy of financialization that benefited the few, not the many, and so policy makers turned to inflating asset bubbles as the "cost-free" way to boost growth and wealth.

By lowering interest rates and flooding the economy with low-cost credit--monetary stimulus--assets will skyrocket, generating a wealth effect that loosens the purse strings of the asset owners as they see their wealth rise without them having to create any value whatsoever. Just sit back and watch your house and stock portfolio generate thousands of dollars of "free money."

The other neoliberal theory was "trickle-down economics": as the upper-middle class and wealthy spent freely, some of their immense gains in income and wealth would trickle down to the bottom 90%.

But since the vast majority of the economy's gains were flowing to capital/assets rather than wages, this didn't happen. What happened instead is the already-rich who owned most of the assets got richer while those depending on wages got poorer.

Add these forces together and what you get is extreme generational wealth inequality. Those who bought houses in the 1970s, 80s and 90s have profited immensely from housing bubbles #1 and #2 (the current bubble), and from stock bubbles #1 (dot-com), #2 (2007-08) and now #3 (The Everything Bubble).



The entire economic order is bankrupt--ideologically, politically and financially. If nothing changes at the fundamental level, the rich will continue to get richer at the expense of those priced out of the bubblicious assets, and the older generations will continue to accrue unearned wealth while younger wage earners are reduced to debt-serfdom and wage slavery.

It doesn't have to be this way, but we're going to have to change our values and the fundamental structures of our economy if we want a different outcome.


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Janet D. ($3/month), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Shawn ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Randy G. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Frans L. ($70), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...