CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@Jestbill OK it is clear you have missed the point of this whole thread so I will disengage now thanks.

@Jestbill AKA "the fortunate few", old enough to remember wartime hardship from a children's perspective, young enough not to be sent into battle, like my parents.

They share a lot of characteristics of early boomers, with the added dimension of knowing to some degree the hardship of pre ww2 life. They have long held the belief that prosperity came through hard work and merit.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here?

@Jestbill my parents were born in the late 1930s and the leading edge of the boomers have been retired for some time, and many of them are comfortably retired. That is exactly who I mean by early boomers...a specific subgroup of them who were born into postwar prosperity but retired for perhaps over a decade. Their own children may even be about to retire.

A good many of them do indeed live in a different reality from most other people.

People in this cohort are aware that these are..."trying times"...but really do not have a full awareness of what it is like for younger generations any more.

@stux I am not sure *how* old these elderly people are but a good portion of elderly people aren't truly aware of "just how it is".

As just a surface example, I bought my home in 1999 for about $140k, and a home just like mine on my street recently sold for over $600k. My parents see this sort of thing on the news and are aware of it and will say things like "it must be hard for young people to buy a home if they are barely making $200k/year eh?" And I am like "oh mum they're lucky to make much more than half that" and they are just mind blown.

My parents were born before WW2 and grew up through the end of the depression and wartime rations so know hardship, but have lived their entire lives through fairly constant progress and prosperity. For older boomers they don't even know that pre war hardship, and comfortably retired they are all quite isolated from the experience of young adults. They cannot conceive of the concept 1st world society has unacceptably declined in recent years.