Are Baby Boomers Better Off Than Other Generations ?

It's not like me to be optimistic, but I think we are; and for a lot of reasons, not all of which are necessarily a good idea.

Even without a retirement plan, we do have Social Security, Medicare, and the presence of Medicaid. Yes, I know it's done, but people are less likely to put seniors out into the street today. Not because they are more compassionate necessarily, but because there can be repercussions.

In southern Maine, last winter, a city was going to take the house of an elderly couple who hadn't paid property taxes or water bills for years, or even made arrangements for payments. People went to Facebook with it, and the city backed down, although taking their house was probably the reasonable thing to do.

Here, probably because the housing market is very low, with houses selling for $20,000 or less, when they sell at all, mortgage companies have been washing their hands of houses rather than foreclosing. I have spoken to a few people who, because the paper mill is out of business, and not honoring retirement plans or healthcare policies, have been unable to make mortgage payments, and have received letters from the mortgage company telling them that they do not need to make any further mortgage payments, despite the fact that the mortgages are not paid up. I don't know whether they are given a clear title to their home, but they are still responsible for property taxes, but are making no further mortgage payments. The elderly get a discount on property taxes. I don't know how this works out legally, but am thinking the mortgage companies don't want to be stuck with a lot of high-maintenance houses that they can't sell.

Regardless, every state has programs that offer subsidized housing options for those who can't afford to buy or rent, and the elderly generally have an edge on these. These might be places where they don't necessarily want to live, but there are no reasons why someone needs to be homeless.

Although not everyone is equipped (or realizes that they are equipped) to take advantage of it, but the Internet has opened up opportunities for retired people to make money from home. Yes, it may require a lot of scrambling, and trying one thing after another, but it is possible to have money coming in from several sources, without having to leave the house for a job every morning. My wife and I both work a regular 30-hour a week job with a Canadian company, and have money coming in from Amazon and Google from some of our web sites, and my wife brings home a fair amount of cash from selling on eBay, Amazon, and another bookselling place that she uses.

Last century's equivalent to that might have been earning money by mail order, writing articles for magazines and newspapers, taking in other people's laundry, or having a skill that could be done at home. My grandfather used to sell cedar boughs, wreaths, and that sort of thing. There is less work involved on the Internet, I think.

What we are missing are retirement plans. Unless someone works for a government agency, they are unlikely to have an employer-paid retirement plan available to them. But most people didn't work for the same place long enough to be vested in the retirement program anyhow, and companies tend not to stay in business long enough to have to pay off on whatever retirement plans they have.

Here in Millinocket, Great Northern Paper Company had a great retirement program for its employees, but when they sold the company, the new buyer bought it as an asset sale, and did not pick up the medical or retirement obligations. A law suit was filed on behalf of retired employees seeking payment from the estate, but they lost. The former owners of GNP got to keep the money from the sale, and the new owner did not buy the obligations.

If that wasn't shocking, the town of Millinocket reneged on its own retirement program, so city employees who had retired with a nice retirement plan no longer had it.

So depending on a retirement plan is sketchy, anyhow.

 

I think that we have kind of a double-sided topic going here. One part (and the original question) was whether our generation is better off that earlier generations were. The other part, which we have also been discussing here as part of that topic, more concerns whether society is better/safer now than when we were younger.
As far as the first part goes, I do think that we are living easier lives than most of the people who were our parents and grandparents lived. Wood heat was common, or even coal, and fires had to be built and tended to, even for someone to cook a meal, as well as for keeping warm and heating water for the weekly bath.
Many of the jobs that are done by machinery now, were all done by hand in earlier times, and people (even children) worked long hours doing hard jobs.
Medicine has come along way in the last 100 years, and before that, it was even worse. No way would I want to have surgery with only whiskey to use as an anesthetic ! People might not be as healthy as they were back then, but we are mostly living longer anyway. Of course, we do not eat as many natural and healthy foods as was the normal fare for our parents and grandparents, and the processed foods that most people live on today are certainly contributing to a lot more health problems.
Even though there was no criticism of smoking back then, we still have a lot more people getting cancer in this day and age than they used to get.

As far as society as a whole, I agree that we have all lost a lot of our freedoms, and security in life. We never locked our door in either the car or the house, we went all over the neighborhood with no danger, and no one even thought about putting razor blades in the halloween apples.
Most people of any religion tolerated the other religious beliefs, and we never even considered that a terrorist might come along and just start killing people.
No one was going to shoot you from what we now term as "road rage", and even if the drivers might cuss a little at other drivers, that was about as far as it usually went, and if you were broke down along the road, people were going to stop and help you fix the problem, or get some help.
So, over all, we have some things that were much better in earlier generations, and some advances that make life much easier for us now.