In a piece that I enjoyed quite a lot, Michael Brendan Dougherty observes that it can be true that Americans today are materially better off than previous generations and that younger Americans have real reasons to feel anxious and pessimistic about upward mobility. To them, “but your iPhone” arguments are not persuasive. Michael writes:
American society used to be defined by the vast majority of people doing better than their parents. Since that time, all the badges of middle-class life — marriage, children, a home of one’s own — have become harder to achieve. This decline is real and obvious, and unevenly distributed.
Setting aside my differences with Michael on some of these points, I wish that conservatives who are serious about the well-being of younger Americans would prioritize the reforming of the largest and most distortionary redistribution scheme in modern America. That scheme transfers massive amounts of wealth from the relatively young and relatively poor to the relatively old and relatively wealthy through Social Security and Medicare. Denouncing this unfairness is far less popular than lamenting cultural decline or indulging in nostalgia about the past. Yet failing to confront it will only exacerbate the very problems people believe we face today.
Here is how much richer today’s seniors are than younger Americans. According to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the median net worth of households headed by someone under 35 is about $39,000, compared with roughly $410,000 for those aged 65–74. Among renters, median wealth is just $10,400; among homeowners, it is $396,500. In and of itself, none of this is problematic. Wealth naturally accumulates with age, and differences in housing tenure explain a large share of the gap.
The problem arises when these wealth differences are paired with a fiscal system that systematically transfers resources in the same direction. Today’s seniors are not merely wealthier; they are also the primary beneficiaries of a payroll-tax- and debt-financed entitlement state. The payroll tax is the largest tax most Americans pay — both directly and indirectly through lower wages — and it finances, alongside mounting debt, extraordinarily generous benefits for the wealthiest cohort in U.S. history. That imbalance is compounded by federal borrowing: In 2022, Americans under 45 held essentially no government bonds, while those over 75 held, on average, about $1.2 million in government bonds. Younger workers are thus taxed to fund benefits for wealthy retirees and to pay interest on the debt issued to sustain those benefits.
This is what Russ Greene calls “total Boomer luxury communism,” which, he argues, “is driving every aspect of American decline”:
There’s six times as much wealth redistribution happening in America as in China. That’s the “communism,” but only for the “Boomers.” The “luxury” part comes in how the government distributes these benefits.
As Greene notes, Social Security can transfer up to $60,000 a year to an individual and over $100,000 to a household, with the largest benefits flowing to the most affluent retirees. Medicare is even more lopsided, routinely delivering benefits worth three to five times what recipients have paid into the program.
Depending on how Congress decides to address the upcoming drying up of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, the system could become even more unfair for many working and younger Americans. These programs carry roughly $73 trillion in unfunded obligations (not counting interest on the debt). If Congress “protects benefits” by borrowing, the adjustment will come quickly through inflation — a tax that falls hardest on younger workers with few assets. If Congress, instead, raises taxes, those taxes would also fall disproportionately on the same group, doubling down on the unfair imbalance.
Either way, the burden lands on the very people whom Michael urges conservatives to take seriously. I take them very seriously, too, which is why I am adamant that we should make reforming entitlement programs a priority. Of course, not all seniors are rich, but means-testing benefits wouldn’t affect those who are poor.
Michael is right that younger Americans are not ungrateful. But many of them are confused about the biggest problem they face: An entitlement time bomb that will likely hurt them the most because politicians are too cowardly to say to seniors, “I know you vote, but this has gone on for too long and is profoundly unfair to the younger generation of workers that will have to clean up the mess.”