Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The great wealth transfer reality check

usa.visa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 120 posts

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#91

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

jimbob45 wrote: post #75
CamJN wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then, you’re obligated to take care of them No, you very much are not.

Most of us are thankful our parents took care of us and do love them. I recognize that it’s not everyone but I think most kids don’t want to see their parents suffer.

If a parent starts with a home bought by the grandparent and dual income and a lot of money, and end up not having a pension because they spent all the money on holidays and multiple homes and zero investing, would you feel like you need to support them?

I feel constantly conflicted, the previous generation started with way more and wasted a lot more and now we are called in to support them, affecting their grandchildren? I don't think that's ok

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#92

Post by loeg »

jakeydus wrote: post #60
loeg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not have tens of millions of hungry people unless you're including being a bit peckish before lunch time.

USDA says that 13.7% of US households experienced food insecurity in 2024 [0]. Extrapolate that against population and you get 47 million people. [0]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... EDIT since I can't reply to irish-coffee for some reason: nobody said literally starving, OP said experiencing hunger or deprivation.

Food insecurity is a bullshit category we invented because actual hunger is basically solved. Yes, it's (obviously) a much bigger category.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#93

Post by loeg »

Danox wrote: post #84
loeg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new building methods and materials are genuinely better. (Criticizing OSB and glazing plywood is crazy. They're both just composite wood products. OSB is totally fine for what it's used for.)

Not better just faster to put up, all those expensive cheap track homes and luxury apartments going up they are not made or built better not by a longshot.

Faster and cheaper to put up is better! Modern insulation is more comfortable and saves you on utility bills; modern electric is safer and supports more usecases; it's easier to attach things to drywall walls than plaster; etc, etc, etc. "The old ways were better" is rosy retrospection.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#94

Post by Avicebron »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #82
jimbob45 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us are thankful our parents took care of us and do love them. I recognize that it’s not everyone but I think most kids don’t want to see their parents suffer.

As a parent I would far rather suffer than see my kids suffer.

As a child of parents who think like this, I refuse to let them.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#95

Post by massysett »

Heh, I saw the title and the domain, and I thought it was referring to wealth transferred from poor to rich by all the credit card fees that merchants pay that are refunded to well-off cardholders through rebates. Poorer customers do not get lucrative rebates, it they use debit and get none at all.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#96

Post by cucumber3732842 »

AshamedBadger56 wrote: post #61

Keep in mind these charts are almost useless if you're trying to determine how much the typical millennial or gen x person has compared to boomers. I'd go as far as to say it's misleading at best to portray "The kids are alright" and that "Gen X and millennial heirs are starting from a position of strength", when the charts used to back that up are based on net worth per capita, a very poor metric to use for this. Th…

It's not even a "top few percent" thing. It's an exercise in creative measurement.

A large fraction of the boomers were useless hippies for many years in their 20s so they were living hand to mouth, no assets. Everyone since went to work. The boomers when they did get serious quickly could afford houses got mortgages, putting them in the red for years. Everyone since has had to wait way longer to be in the red like that. So of course when you pause and take a static measurement it looks like generations since are "doing ok" because at whatever point you measure there's more of them banking assets to get to the next step.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#97

Post by aianus »

_doctor_love wrote: post #21
atleastoptimal wrote: post #3

80% of the GDP over the next two decades will be siphoning money out of baby boomers (medical care, retirement homes, luxury cruises) before their children see a cent of it. Coupled with AI taking everyone's job, the end result is neo-feudalism where familial dynasties call all the shots.

> the end result is neo-feudalism where familial dynasties call all the shots I'm going to stick my neck out and say that this is mostly where we are already. Agree that before the boomers can pass money to their children, our corporate overlords will find a way to hoover that money into their vaults. Don't think AI will take everyone's job and is actually orthogonal to this entire issue.

Ok but the corporations are ultimately owned by humans who are alive so there is no way around the generational wealth transfer other than destroying wealth.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#98

Post by cucumber3732842 »

rayiner wrote: post #56
skybrian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places you couldn't even buy "starter houses" like they had anymore. They wouldn't meet modern building codes. When people do manage to buy a house, it will likely be a nicer one.

At least in part, that's because the positional status of "many places" has changed dramatically. We have a growing population with a high degree of internal mobility. That means that places don't stay in a fixed position on the product lineup. Santa Clara County today isn't Santa Clara County in 1990. It's more akin to what Beverly Hills or the Gold Coast were in 1990.

Those places who got rich wrote laws for the whole state in the intervening time. In 1970-whatever if some poor mill town on the outskirts or some exurb didn't want to play by the rich big citys rules they didn't have to. They could allow street after street of garbage starter homes on postage stamps with nary a fuck about muh stormwater. These days they'll be fined by the state, lose their grant funding, etc, etc. if they did that.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#99

Post by saltcured »

Avicebron wrote: post #94
hdgvhicv wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent I would far rather suffer than see my kids suffer.

As a child of parents who think like this, I refuse to let them.

People with irresponsible parents often end up feeling less responsibility towards them. People with responsible parents often feel more responsibility towards them. Often, the irresponsible groups are suffering more consequences too, which adds to the bitterness.

Of course there are other permutations, since life is full of so many uncontrollable factors.

Re: The great wealth transfer reality check

#100

Post by tzs »

Danox wrote: post #81
cortesoft wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your home 10x’s in value so does your property tax. That depends on where you live. For example, in California we have Prop 13, which limits how much the assessed value for a home can increase without being sold. This means that even if your house goes up 10x in value, California will only increase the assessed value for tax purposes by 2% each year.

If you are of retirement age prop 13 saves you if you own your house and are on a fixed income and not a member of the 5%, because if it wasn’t for prop 13, the local municipalities would continue to jack up your property tax to the moon. Prop 13 was passed through a statewide initiative process, because at the time the statewide politicians were never going do the right thing for retirees that managed to own a house…

We've got a pretty good system in Washington for helping retired and disabled people not get taxed out of their homes.

• Applies to age 61+, age 57+ surviving spouse if the person who qualified dies, unable to work due to disability, or disabled veteran with a service connected rating of 40%+.

• Disposable income must be less than 70% of median county income.

• Your assessed value for property tax purposes is the minimum of the actual accessed value and the accessed value when you qualified for the program.

• You are exempted from paying one of the statewide school levies (there are two of them) and from paying "excess levies". Generally, "excess levies" are voter approved levies.

• If your disposable income is less than 60% of the county median household income you also are exempt from regular levies on min($70000, max($50000, 0.35 V)) where V is the assessed taxable value.

• If your disposable income is less then 50% of the county median household income the exemption from regular levies is max($60000, 0.60 V).

In my county those income levels are $65k, $56k, and $46k but are updated every three years and for 2027-2029 will be $93k, $81k, $70k. For a house with a tax of $3600, the tax as you go through those levels would be about $2200, $1900, and $1000 (or maybe it was $2400, $2200, and $1000...it was a while ago that I calculated it and I'm not sure which it was). (For King County, which is where Seattle is, the levels next year will be $101k, $89k, and $76k).

Disposable income is basically all your income, even if it is not taxable, with deductions for various medical things like drugs, in-home care and assistance, Medicare and Medigap premiums, and many others.

If your disposable income goes over the 70% threshold and you lose eligibility but it comes back down after one year and you reapply you get back your original frozen assessment. You can repeat this so you could qualify and get the frozen assessment and the exemptions, then alternate years in which you take a big IRA withdrawal which pushes you over and you pay tax that year based on your actually assessment and with no exemptions, then do a year with the frozen assessment and the exemptions.

Post reply on HN