There is not nearly enough housing stock for poor renters.

On your point 1 above, I agree. Not sure the vulnerability to scams has that much of a macro level impact (I could easily be wrong there), but the fact that the ‘older’ generation is much more willing to tap savings is absolutely critical. There is a larger social issue here in that the baby boomers were not exposed to savings and retirement plans like my generation is. I’ve never not been able to have a pre-tax retirement account. Many baby boomers *still* don’t have one. A portion of this generation is like the one before them who thought social security, pensions and other traditional retirement methods would be sufficient. However, consumption for baby boomers has not smoothed efficiently; therefore, you get a lot of folks who do not manage spending/consumption as they should. This is typical of a ‘cross-over’ generation, in that the baby boomers lie in the middle of two completely different types of economic agents/systems (‘greatest generation’ and ‘gen x-ers’). Unfortunately for us, this cross-over generation is huge, so the impact of the lags associated with this generation will likely have a larger impact on the next one or two generations after them.

I also wanted to chime in one more issue since you brought it up. You’re exactly correct on Medicare, in that this is one of the biggest issues that we will be forced to address, because it is completely insufficient, based on the demographic trends. Indeed, (and I hate to get political, but since you initiated the discussion…) the Bush Administration created the drug benefit, but this was only a short term solution to a much longer term problem and most would agree this wasn’t the most popular move. However, the other thing this administration has done is prevent reimbursement cuts to physicians that CMS has recommeneded for almost five years now. These payment cuts have had drastic effects on doctors’ ability to provide quality care to Medicare beneficiaries. For instance, CMS recommended 10% cuts to physician reimbursement this year, which was prevented by the Congress and Administration. If these cuts would have gone into play, doctors would not be able to even cover their costs of seeing a Medicare patient versus what they get paid for treating them (indeed, some already do not). What do you think that would do to the access to quality healthcare for Medicare patients? The demographics of increasing Medicare beneficiaries would obviously only compound that problem. So, you’re right … Medicare is one of the key issues here, but I wouldn’t say all of the short-term moves by Bush have hurt Medicare.

Cheers!

Mark

While boomers and Gen Y won’t directly compete w/each for jobs, how might the combination of non-US wage downward wage pressures, baby boomers remaining in the labor force out of necessity and Gen Y play out?

Cheers