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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

Today was one of the few times I saw "social unrest" mentioned in this context. I suspect that will happen a lot more over the next few years.

The markets are a wobbling shitpile of unpayable debt just waiting to collapse. That was already true before Covid, but Covid has nailed the coffin shut while the corpse is still alive.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Fed is knowingly goosing the twitching body because the alternative is one of the biggest financial explosions in history. More free speculation vouchers at least buy a little time before the music stops, the bomb goes off, and we all run out of metaphors.

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An alternative to a meltdown is what's been happening since 2008- the poor start killing themselves and maybe they vote for the wrong guy, but the trend doesn't stop. Given that the market says 30% of the workers don't really matter (and remember, that's people participating in the labor market, which is at a historic low IIRC), maybe they just ignored. They can cause some level of social unrest, but the rich are mobile, and the factories are pretty automated. What we'll see soon is more private security and automated security.

> That was already true before Covid

I think there's a lot of people who don't remember or realize this. And it bothers me that having conversations now takes so much effort to address that particular part of the context: "they were having econ troubles before covid was on the radar"

Totally serious- this is one of my favorite comments on HN ever. I don't completely agree but I love the way you said what you said.

Some sectors are hard-hit by Covid but others are not. Furniture sales, Grocery, Tech, Entertainment are all doing quite well.

Debt is also not necessarily the time-bomb that everyone thinks it is. Debt is tied closely to the overall money supply, and world productivity has been increasing as has population. World debt is about 69 trillion with a population of 7.8 billion. That's under $9k USD per person.

Fed will continue printing until Boomers die off... there is a lot of wealth locked up in 401k that needs to be disbursed.

This block votes and they vote often and if their little pennies are threatened, they will vote people out.

Edit: If you think these market rises are anything other than a way for the rich to rinse their money before the market bombs, I have a bridge to sell you, it's very pretty.

Imagine referring to an entire generations' life savings as "their little pennies."

Only half of those over 55 have any retirement savings [1], the other half have no retirement pennies to speak of.

While not great for online discussion, I can understand where the sentiment comes (the evidence is clear older generations strip mined the country economically [and continue to do so], pulled the ladder up behind them, and then are shocked when younger citizens are resentful).

[1] https://www.gao.gov/assets/680/670153.pdf

I don't know, maybe I am out of touch but almost all boomers I know are extremely well off, they started as scientists or other typical professional occupations and now own assets in the millions, basically housing in California and other areas. Prop 13 has helped them(their prop. taxes do not go up) as well as dirt cheap college costs when they went to college. Housing was rather cheap as well considering salaries, I remember my Dad looking at houses in Palo Alto in the mid 90's and they were in the 300's(they are now 3-4M). I feel like gen X and Millennials are really getting the short end of the stick when it comes to alot of essential life costs. Sure economists say inflation is not happening but I think the formula to look into inflation is incorrect as Housing/Medical/College has skyrocketed where a gallon of milk and bread has not jumped in cost.

I expect housing to get a lot cheaper when the boomers actually need to wring some liquidity out of the real estate they've been holding (hoarding) to pay for elder care.

Even if they do something like barter free housing for live-in care instead of selling, you expect a big effect on the rental market and a corresponding effect on the value of investment properties.

I think this’ll be governed by how quickly their health declines, how easy it is to borrow against their equity (and the bank liquidating the property after they’ve passed), and how aggressive local jurisdictions are with clawing at assets to pay for long term care (Medicaid, five year look back). The can keeps getting kicked.

> I expect housing to get a lot cheaper when the boomers actually need to wring some liquidity out of the real estate they've been holding (hoarding) to pay for elder care.

Boomers are between 56 and 74, a lot of them already have either liquidated real estate holdings by downsizing even if not explicitly for care, or passed it on, whether inter vivos or by inheritance (because quite a lot of them have died, and you can't take it with you.)

The boomers you know (white collar professionals in the Bay Area apparently) are not a representative sample of the entire population. The group you mentioned has done well in every generation in modern times.

Some are, some are not. They are all friends parents and some family, a few others are blue collar business owners or workers. One striking example is a friend who's Dad(in the construction business) owns multiple properties and his son(late 30's) rents. They are doing the exact same job and it shows how skewed things are based on 30-40 years ago(his Dad owned a house at his age).

A "blue collar" business owner with multiple properties isn't really a great example either. I'm not arguing against your thesis that the boomer generation overall basically extracted resources from future generations (and their parents who lived through the depression and at least 1 world war), I'm just saying that there are lots of individual boomers who didn't have lucrative careers or happen to own property in the right places, and you don't seem to know any of those people (which is fine of course).

Edit: Disregard the below because I can't do math. But leaving it for context given the response.

Boomers by definition are going to be in their late 70's at the absolute youngest.

You're talking about their children, who have comparatively little (and is coincidentally why a lot of people hate the Boomer generation).

Baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. They're currently between 56-76 years old (roughly 76 million in U.S.). Anything older than that is the “silent generation“ (born 1928 to 1945).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation

sigh

Apparently date math is hard. You're 100% right.

Please accept my reply as it was intended: informative, not snarky or combative.

When the 1% own the majority of the market and use it to control the other 99% into making them richer, what would you call that?

Don't forget that the FED works closely with the WH, so it's in everyone's interest in that administration to keep the music going until the election.

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