Merry Inter-Generational Dialogue!

During this festive season in Fakenation, families young and old are gathering as we speak to ritually commemorate the childhoods of Baby Boomers...

But suffice it to say that this Rockwellian picture is not alive in the next generation. In fact, populist news site The Drudge Report recently linked to an article stating that married Millennials looking to have children are increasingly moving back home to finance this quixotic dream of saving and investment in our brave new 0 percent interest rate world. But don't worry: the Boomer media is in control of the situation, ready with an expert at hand on how to financially manage this growing drag on the national balance sheet of, well, an entire generation...

The living arrangement is growing in popularity.

“We were thinking that it would maybe be three months, maybe six months and it turned out to be a year,” said Kort.

This trend extends beyond housing. A survey found that nearly 30 percent of new parents get financial assistance from their parents. Ulrich points out that parents who support their children who have children have less time to save for their retirement.

“Supporting grown children is a strain and it can be a strain on your own financial future,” said Ulrich.

Experts agree that it is important to keep your savings on track. Ted Beck, President of the National Endowment for Financial Education, has advice for parents giving financial help.

“Have an adult agreement on what your expectations are. So if it’s a loan, when are you going to get paid back, what interest rates should be applied to the loan,” said Beck.

As for Kort, she was happy to spend so much quality time with her parents and she and her husband have saved enough to buy a new home.

Very good. We can't think of a better microcosm of the situation than Boomer parents giving their Millennial children loans while they are still living at home. With any luck, the kids will take that money and strike it big with Dogecoin, and the parents will finally get to retire as the loan payments are met. And all that quality time spent together is thrown in as a bonus. Such win. 

But with every article like this, and with every unraveling of the non-productive money drains saved in the 2008 crisis, the generational cold war risks going hot... 

A good point, that. But why can't these young people afford to live on their own...

Oh, right, because we abandoned those halcyon Bush years, when many of the older Millennials got themselves into the real estate, educational, or personal debt that brought us to this point, while Boomers were out flipping derivatives, juicing the stock market, and using their houses as credit cards. But no, it is all the fault of the doctrinaire young liberal of the Boomer conservative imagination, not the corruption in their own ranks that made their loss inevitable. 

We're sorry, John. Maybe we wouldn't be in this position if you could identify the problem more precisely than with the label of a 'liberal economy', whatever that even means. 

After all the full scale destruction of capital in the past several years, people are finally up in arms because a bill, much smaller than the total cost this destruction, has finally been sent their way. With this kind of an aware, proactive mentality, how did any of this happen...?

Clearly, the frustrations abound on both sides. Some people are finding the cute, sentimental side of generational reconnection in the situation; others are convinced that the younger men of this country are nothing but irredeemable scum. 

There is some room for common ground, and identification of the real problem...

... but there may be no hope to bridge the gap between the beneficiaries and the victims of the greatest currency debasement in world history.

Sadly, the Boomers are right about the pathetic mindless surrender of most Millennials...

... just as the Millennials are right about the unfathomable degree of Boomer irresponsibility it took to get us to this point. 

So Merry Christmas! There should be plenty of classic Archie Bunker rants in the air as the kids fly back home from their productive careers leave their room for once for a family celebration. 

As for us at Fakenation, we encourage both sides to consider this radicalizing nugget of wisdom from G.K. Chesterton, especially directed at the Boomers who pine for the Bush years, and the Millennials unable to so articulate themselves:

“THE whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have the two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called balance or mutual check, in our Constitution.”

~G.K. Chesterton: ‘The Blunders of Our Parties,’ (Illustrated London News, April 19, 1924)