Somewhat related, I’d love to gtfo. Just a couple of old folks keeping me here. See? While dysfunctional and angry, some white people actually do take care of their elders!
I've thought about this recently, as my mom and my wife's parents are getting on in age. Her parents are in her 70's, and while not terribly old, you can tell their overall health is starting to decline. Her Dad still works, but has started to slow down (he has his own upholstery shop). He feels like he has to work because they don't really have any retirement (despite this, he keeps talking about buying (financing) a $50K truck for some reason). Her mom is in slightly worse shape, just because she's retired already. Like, she might fall down every now and then from not having great walking mobility. My mom is 60, but I feel like she'll decline fairly rapidly (smoker since 18, no real form of exercise, etc.). Wife and I have just kind of determined that at some point someone is probably going to end up living with us. Will probably be a shock for us, and we'll probably end up buying a house to deal with it (we have a 1600 sqft 3 bed house, with 3 kids aged 1, 4, and 7). Honestly though, I am saving mainly for the reason that I don't want to have to depend on anyone when I get old. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Really, it's probably so that my wife doesn't have to depend on the kids to take care of her, as I fully suspect she'll outlive me.
"Deserve" is a loaded term that can't really be accounted for, but Old Economy Steve is a meme for a reason. Pretty much from the end of WW2 until the 1980s America was an equally prosperous nation for all. Somewhere along the way, the richest among us just became completely decoupled from the plebs. Housing, healthcare, and education all became completely unaffordable. The general sentiment, and why boomers catch so much **** for this, is that they rode this golden era of prosperity (based largely on the post WW2 boom and government investment) and then when their generation took control of society, they basically did everything they could to pull up the ladder behind them. Destroying unions, allowing regulatory capture, shipping jobs overseas, shifting tax burdens downward, ending government programs, discontinuing domestic investment, etc. Naturally that whole narrative has some flaws and gaps in it (a good example is how opening up the money pipes for college loans basically sent tuition to the moon.... but the caveat is that boomers made those debts non-dischargable), but overall the theme is accurate. Edit: I should preface this by saying that I don't have complete faith in my generation (millenials) to not do the exact same thing whenever we finally become the majority of the people who run government and business in this country, although early signs look promising.
Interesting how the wealth has gone up for everyone. If you saw people losing money, you may have had a point. But this is why people need to learn rather than watching certain programs...
