The "Greatest Generation" are in nursing homes.

[HughBeaumont]

The older "Baby Boomers" fall in a few financial categories; Retirement, but not a comfortable one, Near Retirement, but having to take care of their "Greatest" parents due to benefit cutting, or Unable to Retire due to their own ongoing medical expenses/kid's student loans/investments not panning out/general financial difficulties.

Generation X and the younger Boomers are in their earning years, but are now both wide targets for ageism-driven firing or automation (which, unlike the industrial revolution, takes labor OUT of the equation entirely). And good luck trying to get a job after 40. Or starting your own business when your competition is Amazon or WalMart and your potential customer base lacks discretionary income. Their spending is going to be halted at the slightest hint of corporate "rightsizing" or political tumult . . . say, for example, a cadre of labor-hating, tax-cuttin', social safety net-gutting billionaires taking over Washington D.C.

Millennials cannot buy big ticket items like homes, cars, appliances, etc. because they're already financing 1/2 to 3/4 of a mortgage for the crime of wanting to develop a skillset or an education beyond High School. IF they get hired in this shoddy job market, their pay is not even near what it needs to be in order to successfully pay their debts down and purchase products or services, let alone homes and cars.

For all of these groups, any social safety net that can assist them promises to SHRINK, not expand like it desperately needs to.

With each generation, how does retirement happen? How does the next generation get any sort of fiscal start?

Someone PLEASE tell me how this is a healthy and sound long-term plan for America's economy.

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. You OP Is Exactly Right. I Have Been Posting The Idea That You Are Done By 50 On The Job Market.

You post exposes a catastrophe in the wings. The new economy ages a person out even before they get started. It used to be you highest income was from 50 to 65 when you needed it most to give your kids a good send off. Now you might reach you highest income by the time you are 40. Workers are aged out by 50 now. And younger workers have a slim time line when they make their most income.

The new economy is a really a disaster because long term employment is going extinct. The "uber" economy is a dead end fraud.

[HughBeaumont]

3. I don't understand why more people aren't concerned about this.

Anyone ever hear of the saying "Past performance is no guarantee of future results"?

Are we just assuming because we've weathered bad economic storms, technological shifts, career changes and financial landmines, we'll ALWAYS have the means to weather these obstacles?

The difference is, there was always a body of labor that gravitated to each technological shift and during those technological shifts, wages always kept up with the cost of living. The difference is, college was AFFORDABLE; something it very much isn't today.

The difference IS, even if we didn't agree with them, we usually had politicians and businesspersons who were competent and had some semblance of long-term outlook.

Capitalism's "evolving" results in cancelling us out. Without a strong social safety net, greater pay or employment, I'm not sure how this doesn't implode on itself.

[TheMastersNemesis]

4. I Worked For DOL For 24 Years. Retired 1998. It Is Worse Now. Much Worse Than You Think.

You would not want to know what I know after 24 years at DOL. Reagan started all this carnage. Only now is the damage obvious. The media covers up what I view as a HOPELESS situation. The new business model is a "labor exploitation" model that effects all workers. Retirement will be extinct as a concept within a generation. The millennial generation has NO ROAD TO RETIREMENT.

Unless we restore the "social contract" between employer and employee that worked for a generation. Right now it no longer exists. Look up FDR's Second Economic Bill Of Rights. His vision is where we need to be. Teddy Roosevelt brought up the same concepts in 1912.

Trump is such a fraudulent candidate who will intentionally make matters much worse. He is part of the corporate world and its new business model. And that model is workers as expendable and disposable resources. If you look around the new business model is to shed employees once they reach a certain level of monetary liabilities.

Now on is talking about putting American workers on the same level as the global economy wage wise. It's called "wage parity".

[WinkyDink]

2. I'm 67 and have a (so far, knock on wood) "comfortable" retirement. Widow, no kids, no parents. But

my husband and I didn't have a single home until he was 47 and I was 38. We went from an apartment to an older row-home with the landlord's barber shop where our living room should have been; then to a townhouse.

The move to Suburbia took us 15 years. One car. Never a garage.

Today's college graduates do not have any stomach for the wait.

[d_r]

5. Generation X here

we are caught in the sandwich between our 9- and 13-year-old children and our mothers in their 70s (my wife and I are both only chidren) and a great Aunt in her 70s who had no children. One in early stage dementia, one who fell and broke her shoulder and they won't operate because there's not enough joint to work with, and one who fell and broke her foot and couldn't get up. Our student loan balance is twice what it was when we graduated 25 years ago. Generation X is the sandwich between baby boomers and millennials and we are smaller than either.

[crazycatlady]

6. Borderline generation here

I'm either Gen X, millennial, or neither depending on who's definition you use.

My retirement plan is a wooden box and a shovel.