The Other Greatest Wealth Transfer Of Our Lives
"The Greatest Wealth Transfer" that i have heard people talking about is the assets like gold, silver and crypto. Numerous people, like Mike Maloney have used this term to describe how much wealth is going to come rushing into these assets as the financial system collapses.
However, lately i have been seeing the "The Greatest Wealth Transfer" being used on videos describing the selling off of Boomer assets as they grow old and are looking to downsize.
Unfortunately, i see this wealth transfer as not being very great. What could have helped our economy a while ago would have been boomers releasing their properties to the younger generations, but instead the boomers kept their house held tightly. Their jobs held tightly. Their cars held tightly. Their collections held tightly. So, the younger generations basically had to build their own. Make do. Do without. And/or move back in with their parents. The younger generations have nothing with which to buy what the boomers (or their inheritors) will be selling.
Further, the younger generation doesn't want that shit. The old furniture is not of their taste. The collections are not something the young generations even relate to. The gold watches… who uses those anymore? So, the younger generations not only have no money to buy this stuff, but they also have no desire to own this stuff.
Many a boomer is going to look down from heaven and shriek as their children take all their precious possession and throw it in a dumpster.
The Junk
The boomers have accumulated a lot stuff. Stuff that was, at one time, very valuable.
All that money spent on furniture, which most young people find ghastly.
All that money spend on china, and no young person even knows that it is valuable. You can get plates from China at the dollar store.
Those baseball cards, they used to be so very expensive, but the entire industry is dying, as the boomers aren't supporting it anymore. Magic the Gathering cards are more in demand.
All those pictures. Shoe boxes full of pictures, actually on paper. And most of them completely useless as a historical note. And there isn't many to remember the sentimentality of them.
Most of the stuff that boomers keep is seen as worthless to the younger generations. So much junk, that if only sold during its hey day, would have been a lot of money in the bank, but boomers wouldn't give it up then, and will only give it up now because you can't take it with you into the afterlife.
Real estate
If the boomers do not sell their houses soon, they are going to have to give them away. Or someone is going to have to come along and clean out the dessicated corpse.
Boomers own 25% of the houses in America. We have lots of people who would like a house of their own, but not enough to fill up this ¼ of all houses. Our homeless population is growing large, but it is not 25% of the population.
Further, there is no one to buy these houses. Not at the current market rate. Already, actual offers on houses is REALLY low. There are few people who qualify for loans, that are in the market for a house. And the recession we are in, coupled with the higher interest rates, and we can see why there is no one to buy the houses.
The first boomers entering the market will have to drop their price at least 10%. In a few years, it will be at least 50%. Half the value of the house gone.
And this is just calculating based on demographics. I anticipate it to be even worse, when you add in VAXXX deaths, and people fleeing the cities because of fiery, but mostly fiery civil (oh yes it is quite civil) wars.
Stocks and bonds
"You don't understand, the money is already gone" - Catherine Austin Fitts talking about retirement funds.
If it was just the boomers selling, and not all the other issues in the market right now, the boomers are going to crash the market. The younger generations do not have the money to buy up all the shares that will be sold from retirement accounts. And when you offer something for sale, and there are no buyers, the price drops or nothing gets sold.
So, the stock market is going to go down, down, down (that is, if it even still exists)
Bonds are already taking a beating. Already no one wants to buy the new debt. What happens when the boomers dump their bonds onto the market?
All of this is just from boomers taking monthly payments. What happens when some die and the accounts have to be liquidated for inheritance? The markets are going to drop even further.
The boomers have placed themselves in a trap. Not enough wealth went to their children, or their children's children. It was all locked up at the top. And so, when it comes time to liquidate these "assets", they are going to find that there is no one to buy them.
Instead of being the greatest wealth transfer, it is going to be the greatest wealth disappearance.
Not only did none of the younger generations get to play in the asset price appreciation, but the economy is collapsing right now. We are in a recession (but the definition was changed) if not a depression. There just isn't any money in this "wealth transfer". I wouldn't be surprised if many, many houses just end up owned by the country, because no one will pay the property tax bill to transfer ownership.
So, for the most part, what i see in this "greatest wealth transfer" is transferring all of grandma's junk to the dump.
Boomers are the first generation to destroy the American dream.
To be fair, it was that they didn't resist the destruction.
The rallied against everything, except what was real.
They were called "the me generation". And they got theirs, and kept ahold of it.
They were born and came of age during the most prosperous period in American history and just assumed things would always be that way. They assumed housing would always be affordable and plentiful and a college degree would always be a ticket to the middle class and upper management and if you just kept your head down and worked hard you'd always climb the corporate ladder. They passed these false assumptions down to their children late Gen X and millennials even as the economy shifted before their eyes. I think a lot of anti-capitalist sentiment among millennials and zoomers is because their parent's taught them assumptions about the economy that were only true when they were growing up. They never bothered with the fundamentals.