Blame the Baby Boomers
We’re living in tumultuous times of rapidly changing cultural and societal norms with politics to match. But frozen in time are too many public policies established or expanded by the Baby Boom generation, those born between 1946 and 1964.
The Boomer legacy: A variety of impediments that force younger generations to swim upstream in a struggle to match Boomers’ success.
Take a look at several areas where Boomers have stymied progress.
Housing
Land-use zoning was started well before Boomers came of age. Its general purpose is to protect property values, but as Boomers became homeowners, we’ve seen a sharp increase in land-use rules.
Today’s strict zoning and related requirements such as parking, green space, height limits, aesthetics, and historic preservation make affordable housing more difficult and unnecessarily costly. It’s impossible to build in many places due to restrictive zoning and antigrowth activism by Boomer homeowners.
The upshot: The National Association of Home Builders reports a 29 percent increase in regulatory costs from 2011 to 2016.
While not unique to California, recent events there have highlighted Boomers’ impact on housing.
San Diego zoning requires church parking lots to have one parking space for every 60 inches of pew space. A local Lutheran church has spent years seeking permission to build affordable housing in its underused parking lot.
The Council of Economic Advisors found relaxing California’s zoning laws would collapse rent prices by more than half in the Bay Area and nearly as much in Los Angeles.
Ironically, recent California legislation has made housing less affordable. Every new home statewide must have its own solar power, adding about $10,000 to its cost, a major factor for affordable homes.
Utah’s 2018 Affordable Housing Report highlights the issues we face as a state and especially here in southern Utah. After selling high-priced single-family homes elsewhere, Boomers arrive here with plenty of cash in hand, ready to buy what Utah sees as upscale housing.
And upscale is where the money is for builders. Affordable housing plays second fiddle with its lower margins amid a labor shortage.
Employment
Employment licensing requirements have expanded beyond reason in recent decades. Do people really need hours of classroom training and special examinations to be florists or hair braiders?
These professions and others do not impact public health and safety. Wouldn’t customer online reviews and word-of-mouth be enough to weed out the less competent?
Lengthy and costly training are the product of older, established workers — Boomers — wanting to limit competition for their jobs. Excessive licensing requirements boost the incomes of older workers while closing doors for young people, increasing income inequality.
The proliferation of government student loans has greatly increased the percentage of the work force with college degrees. As a result, Boomers often specify degrees for middle-class jobs that don’t require them. In turn, this pushes young people into debt to get degrees that aren’t really needed.
Ever-growing and often-excessive paperwork and regulatory complexity to start a new business deters younger people wanting to enter into competition with existing Boomer-owned businesses.
Government retirement benefits
Last but certainly not least, Boomers aggressively protect their Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Congress catered to senior voters by increasing Social Security benefits 135 percent between 1965 and 1975 while the Consumer Price Index increased only 67 percent. Your parents and grandparents made out like bandits, receiving benefits far in excess of what they contributed.
Starting from this elevated level, benefits have continued well in excess of the contributions needed to sustain them. The political courage needed to face fiscal reality is noticeably lacking as increasing numbers of Boomers start receiving checks.
Medicare is growing faster and is in even worse shape. I’ve offered practical ideas on “saving Medicare from fiscal disaster that will take only modest changes and a small amount of political courage.”
Instead, we have Democratic presidential hopefuls one-upping each other on fantastically expensive Medicare for All proposals.
Boomers didn’t set out to sabotage younger generations; after all, it’s their children and grandchildren who are disadvantaged. But an intoxicating combination of unfettered government power and the country’s wealth have allowed them to push the American dream beyond the reach of many.
The Boomer population bulge will pass in several decades, but undoing the legacy they leave behind will be both messy and politically difficult.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
How to submit an article, guest opinion piece, or letter to the editor to The Independent
Do you have something to say? Want your voice to be heard by thousands of readers? Send The Independent your letter to the editor or guest opinion piece. All submissions will be considered for publication by our editorial staff. If your letter or editorial is accepted, it will run on suindependent.com, and we’ll promote it through all of our social media channels. We may even decide to include it in our monthly print edition. Just follow our simple submission guidelines and make your voice heard:
—Submissions should be between 300 and 1,500 words.
—Submissions must be sent to editor@infowest.com as a .doc, .docx, .txt, or .rtf file.
—The subject line of the email containing your submission should read “Letter to the editor.”
—Attach your name to both the email and the document file (we don’t run anonymous letters).
—If you have a photo or image you’d like us to use and it’s in .jpg format, at least 1200 X 754 pixels large, and your intellectual property (you own the copyright), feel free to attach it as well, though we reserve the right to choose a different image.
—If you are on Twitter and would like a shout-out when your piece or letter is published, include that in your correspondence and we’ll give you a mention at the time of publication.
Articles related to “Blame the Baby Boomers”
Three ways Millennials can help their baby boomer parents get fit
As one of the earliest baby boomers I have to take umbrage at Mr.Sierer’s article. Blaming baby boomers for all the ills he lists is like blaming oxygen for the eventual death of everyone that breathes – correlation doesn’t equal causation. The ills decried by Sierer are the results of greed, protectiveness, and selfishness and would have shown up way before the baby boomers were it not for the great depression, which was also brought on by greed, etc. Blaming a generation is taking identity politics to a new ridiculous level. There are plenty of baby boomers that deserve criticism/disdain, but there are far more worthy of praise for contributions to health, science, technology and the well-being of our country and the world. Mr. Sierer finished his career in fiber optic communications, which generation brought that technology to fruition?