In
No Country For Young Men, Megan McArdle projects how society will change with the retirement of the Boomers over the course of the next 20 years. Too bad ninme's out of town, as she'd like this observation:
You must give the Boomers credit: their uncanny ability to focus solely on themselves, approvingly, appears undiminished by age.
McArdle thinks, however, that the Boomer generation is heavy on the self-interest and short on the "enlightened" part the Founders enjoined:
The political battles over all of this will be bitter, and they will probably be, too often, won by the retirees, who vote in force (though not always as a bloc). Those same retirees may also vote against things that are actually in their interest—thus shutting out the immigrants who could help them stay at home, and out of the nursing home, longer; turning down school taxes that could create a more productive workforce to support them; fighting for zoning restrictions that make it harder for the low-income workers who provide their services to live within easy commuting distance.
Basically, unless the Boomers work past retirement age, they're all going to end up in second careers at Wal-Mart & Staples because they haven't planned adequately for being healthy much longer than their parents were. And young people are going to be taxed through the roof to support Medicare. She's not gloomy, though. RTWT.
Instacurtsy.
