The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

More seriously though, it's not as simple as 25% fewer jobs, or an economy that grows 25%. For example the number of elected positions is pretty fixed, and all those octogenarians in the senate are certainly blocking younger talent.

Politics may be an extreme example, but lots of other jobs are "proportional". There's a fixed number of plumbing jobs (per million head of population) so adding 25% more plumbers dilutes the plumbing pool. A boon in construction would drive up the demand for plumbers, but construction booms come and go.

The "economy" is (again simplistically) a measure of money flow. It doesn't really measure "production" as much as it measures "cash velocity". As such having a retired tranche spending all day long is a good thing.

And yes, more labor would lead to a growing economy. But a lot of that growth is in "poor quality" jobs (aka service level jobs) not "new production".

In other words the economy "grows" if money changes hands quickly. The standard of living though is more tied to "production".

Take, for example, health care. The sector can grow 25% by adding more admin staff, claims evaluators etc. None of which results in better health outcomes. Or it can grow by building hospitals, training doctors and nurses. Both increase the economy, both offer more jobs, but only one leads to a higher standard of health.

In truth the current economy is built around the customers free time. From music, movies and tv, to sports, travel, phones, social media, online advertising and sales, deliveries (of goods or people), restaurants (fast or slow), home improvement, it's all about monetizing free time.

Having a large customer base with nothing but free time is what makes it all work.

I'd just tax it at 100% unless they declare bankruptcy. The US national debt skyrocketed during their lifetimes. Mathematically speaking, they did not pay enough in tax to support the spending that their duly-elected officials enacted. They also didn't, mathematically speaking, have enough children to make up the difference in future taxpayers, either. The American birth rate never recovered after 1970. Someone's got to pay off those bills, and if the numbers comparing the Boomers to Millennials at the same age say anything, they say "the Millennials will not have the money to pay off their parents' government debt."

Is that harsh? I don't know. I do know that your children's generation is supposed to have it better than you, and by pretty much every objective measure, the Boomers did not do that for their children, at least not economically. So it's time for them to put up.

> If the couple you're pillorying is so wealthy, then most of their Social Security is being taxed, and they're paying higher Medicare premiums as well. And their house? As they get older and require nursing care, they'll end up liquidating it (or Medicaid will take it).

Why should they be receiving Social Security at all? Same with Medicare. This is the demographic that has more collected wealth than any other age cohort. If they do, in fact, need government help, they can prove their need, like you have to with unemployment insurance or Medicaid.

> The average retiree receives around $25k per year in SS benefits. That's not a ton of money.

Then those who don't really need it won't miss it. Those who do will have a more sustainable program to support them.

But you seem to be talking about taking the retirement savings and homes of people who are using them to live.

You find different numbers in different places, but the median retirement savings for boomers is under $200,000. That's a lot of money, but it needs to last ~15 years or so, years where they're likely to have reduced or no capacity to work.

A lot of old people have paid-off houses, which is a major asset. You could take those (e.g., by taxing them out), but then where do the old people on a small, fixed income live?

The attitude seems to be, "to hell with them, who cares?"

But I think a lot of people care: the old people themselves, of course. The people who love them. And everyone self-aware enough to realize they too hope to become old.

There is no other meaningful definition of the value of an item or service.

> either of those is a far cry from claiming it's "the value they create".

Nobody is going to hire someone who produces less value than their pay.