Guest Post by The Zman
Major social events are often a lot like moving furniture around the house. Moving the bookcase from one side of the room to the other is a mundane task. What you find behind it, however, can be quite interesting. Sometimes you find something you searched high and low for at some point. Other times you find something that you never knew was missing. Maybe just moving things around a bit gives you a new perspective on your living space that leads to other changes in your environment.
That’s how big social events feel sometimes. The event itself is not as important as what it reveals. Maybe you find out your neighbor is a bit of kook, who quietly has been stocking the basement with dried food and ammunition. Maybe we learn that the local government is more useless than anyone imagined possible. The Chinese pandemic is one of those events that will be more important for what it reveals than for the impact of the virus itself, unless you die from it, of course.
For example, we are getting a glimpse of what the great Baby Boomer retirement is going to look like in the coming decade. If we execute all of the people, who like debating the precise dates of generational divisions, we can agree that the cohort in question is roughly those who came of age in the late 1960’s and the late 1970’s. Two waves of the post-war baby boom. Right now, the number of elderly people grows by an average of 2.8 percent annually. It will peak at about 80 million.
For as long as anyone reading this has been alive, Baby Boomers have driven American politics. In the 80’s, they wanted to make money, so we financialized the economy and gave everyone a 401K. In the 1990’s, better schools were all the rage then better access to college. Health care became an issue, first because Boomer parents were getting old then when the Boomers themselves got old. Cheap health insurance was the most important political issue until now.
Notice that Bernie Sanders promising free health care got no senior support. The reason is seniors have Medicare. Blacks have Medicaid. The only people who care about health insurance premiums are younger white people and no one cares about them anymore. In fact, Bernie’s Medicare for all probably scared the crap out of older people, who rightly assumed it would mean longer lines for them. Worse yet, it could mean taxing their retirement to pay for it.
This brings us back to the Chinese Flu. Otherwise sensible people like Greg Cochran and Steve Sailer are clanging the bell, trying to get people to declare a war on the Covid19 virus. What they are suggesting, short of some miracle cure or a vaccine, would require rearranging American society. It would need rounds of universal testing, mass quarantines and testing of every human crossing the border. North America would have to become something like North Korea, in terms of travel restrictions.
Keep in mind that polio is still around, despite generations of eradication efforts. We have vaccines for a lot of nasty viruses. For the most part, these have been eradicated in the West, but they still exist in the world. If stop vaccinating people, those viruses will reemerge in the West, which is why we remain vigilant. We have no vaccine for the Chinese Flu and no one is sure we can get one. In other words, eradicating this virus, without vaccine, will require a massive reorganization of society.
What we’re seeing is the first glimpse of what democracy looks like when 20% of the population is elderly. Baby Boomers have always voted for stuff they want and soon, they will want to be insulated from the dangers of old age. If it requires us to turn America into a hermit kingdom in order to prevent a Boomer Pox from getting loose, then that’s the price the younger generation must pay. The salient political issue of this decade will be how best to guard the old coots from the Grim Reaper.
Now, this is the part where angry oldsters stop reading and post a comment about how not all Boomers are like that. This is true. In fact, it is plausible that no Boomers are willing to crater society to get a few extra days. This is a variation on the Simpson’s paradox. That is, this trend is uncommon in small groups or individuals, but appears when looking at the cohort as a whole. This turned up with education, abortion and health care. The data says Boomers collectively vote their interest.
Now, there is another angle to this. The sorts of collective action proposed by people like Steve Sailer and Greg Cochran can only happen in a cohesive, high-trust country with lots of social capital. The sorts of communities where people like Cochran and Sailer grew up had those qualities. Modern America, in contrast, is a multicultural amalgamation of low-trust clusters. The store of social capital has been burned up a long time ago in order to have cheap stuff.
This raises the question as to whether this cohort will suddenly have a come to Jesus moment over demographics. Most of those Trump voters in comfort fit slacks, carrying over-sized constitutions to the rally, think we can get back to the way things were when they were kids. If you dispute this, look at the comment section of Breitbart or Conservative Treehouse. For those people, it is always 1985.
What happens when they find out that ain’t happening? Will it make any difference if the oldsters finally see their interest are threatened by the great brown wave that is washing over America? We’ll soon find out. This panic, and that what we are seeing, will change things far more than the virus. We’re about to learn just how much social capital is left and the answer is probably not going to be encouraging.
The fact is, all the snarky comments about the Boomers and the irreverent mocking of the Zoomers is not changing the reality on the ground. America has operated like a young country for a long time. It still does in many ways. It is an old country now, a country run by old people just coming to terms with their mortality. The psychological revolution in American culture that is upon us will make the past decade seem like golden age. Instead, it will be the prelude to the time of the Golden Agers.
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Wow, if you don’t believe in the 4th turning…
“The salient political issue of this decade will be how best to guard the old coots from the Grim Reaper.”
Die boomer die seems appropriate, no?
A new phrase for the millennial’s – OK Boomer, you can die now.
“Baby Boomers have always voted for stuff they want and soon, they will want to be insulated from the dangers of old age.”
Death is a permanent insulation from the dangers of getting old. This virus seems to be aimed at us and if our savings evaporate, there will be little left to leave to the kids/grandkids. It is a win-win for TPTB – kill off the boomers, saving billions in SS/medicare and eliminating the inheritance to their kids, keeping them hungry for jobs and security.
The polio epidemic of the early 50″s and the vaccine created for the cure was a story of a whole nation working together to fix a major problem. One major difference was we didn’t have the 24-7 Media.
This is his best column in several years. We’re going to crash the economy And destroy young lives so a few 80 year olds can live an extra year. We have a gerontocracy willing to eat our seed corn, import health aides in large numbers who will vote Progressive and destroy what’s left of the country.
This has been the most depressing week since 9/11.
Zee says: ” In the 1990’s, better schools were all the rage then better access to college”. Huh???
I entered college 30 years prior-smaller state college of 6,000 students-paid $103/semester tuition, and was guaranteed a spot on the basis of having graduated from a state accredited high school. Did 5 years work in 4 years; few if any graduates needed or took 5 or 6 years before leaving like today’s students do. Productive 35 year career in high tech.
Probably the biggest mistake on the part of the Greatest Generation and their Boomer kids was allowing the start of the demise of what was once an efficient and cost effective health care system. Care was excellent and affordable; health insurance was available with reasonable premiums. That demise started with the advent of Managed Care in the 1974-76 time frame. The Greats were getting too old to care-they were already on Medicare-and the Boomers were too young to challenge the politicians who knew better than anyone else. Plus, Ted Kennedy’s support of ridiculously liberalized immigration in the mid-60’s set in motion the first wave of the free shit army.
Some Boomers are worthless, some are priceless. Myself-for the last 19 years since exiting employer supported healthcare I have sucked up very little in the way of medical resources and incurred very little in claims costs. Those who stay healthy give a collective middle finger to our betters who now mercilessly ration healthcare for many.
Now, for those of you who are still kids: get off your ass and support me in a way I expect to be supported! (I can just hear all the howls of anger coming my way for that comment). Seriously, if the government were to cut income tax rates 50%, end all support to us old farts who are on Medicare and Social Security-then that would be jolly well fine with me. Then 90% of the elderly would sink while the other 10% would survive quite nicely since we have the survival instinct, know how to be self-supporting, are healthy, and don’t need no kids to pay our way for us.
A word of advice for those who are not quite there yet: do yourself a big favor and understand the implications of rationed healthcare and how that will affect you as you begin to age. The 10% of you who are ahead of the curve need not worry. The other 90%? Yeah, the train is heading down the track and you are tied to the rails. Good luck-and yes, no one will then be caring about you. Kind of like you reap what you sow.
Obviously those who wish us fighting among ourselves have won. When the boomers die off, as zman wishes, who will vote for gun rights? Brexit?
I used to read zman until I figured out his hatred of his parent’s generation. Everything is the fault of boomers, since it happened on boomers’ watch. Read his other stuff and you will understand. Hell, read this one and you can see it.
By the way, his plans involve the ruthless application of power. Some surprise, huh.
SWR-spot on. You sound like one who spends time to read what the other side spews out; here is an interesting take on Boomer’s. Given the author’s warped thinking it could just as easily been written by Elon. To be fair, there some useful and likely valid points made in the book.
A generation of sociopaths : how the baby boomers betrayed America / Bruce Cannon Gibney