In 2019, the phrase “OK boomer” gained widespread use, especially in the United States, usually used in response to typical “Baby Boomer behavior” related to entitlement, social change, materialism, home prices, and more. It has become commonplace to blame the Baby Boomers for much of the economic woes and unprecedented level of wealth inequality in the United States, but is this blame based in reality? Is the rage targeted toward Baby Boomers misguided?

We looked through the data for the Baby Boomers, including economic contributions, the impact of their lives, and social trends, to find if there has been any study conducted that can refute or support the claim that Baby Boomers are to blame for our current predicament. Here is what we found.

The Impact of Economic Inequality

Robert J. Shiller, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize said that wealth inequality is “the most important problem” we face today. But if we’re going to explore who is to blame for our economic inequality, we have to understand why it is a big deal in the first place.

Economic inequality is a broad term that includes a handful of different areas of study, including income inequality, wealth inequality, and consumption inequality. For this article, however, we will limit our discussion to income and wealth inequality and use the terms interchangeably.

It is widely accepted among economists and historians that income inequality tends to increase over time. As societies, technologies, and nations mature, the amount of wealth that accumulates at the top also grows. There have been only two exceptions to this in modern history: the period between the two world wars during which the lower classes were able to benefit from the large military industries that had been created, and the years immediately after World War II, which saw the creation of the modern welfare state that created the foundation for the economic growth and success that occurred during the latter half of the 1900s and which has been weakened and eroded in modern years.

In all advanced and industrialized countries, however, wealth inequality has grown significantly over the last 30 years.

The debate around wealth inequality historically focused on what to do about it, with members of left- and right-aligned neoliberal parties advocating for different approaches. Yet in recent years, right-wing extremists have slowly adopted the perspective that wealth inequality is good after all and that more inequality leads to stronger economies and more motivation for the poor to work harder. Extreme left-wing advocates, on the other hand, have begun to work toward a society with no income inequality at all.

One of the most common phrases used by supporters of the current market system is some version of “a rising tide lifts all boats”, implying that wealth inequality is acceptable as long as all people are wealthier in the end. However, this is not the case and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how wealth and societies work.

The “level” of wealth (Especially when it is misleadingly compared to historical levels of wealth. For example: “You’re much better off than peasants during the Middle Ages, you should be thankful!”) is not as important as the gap between the levels of wealth. The larger the gap, the more harmful and dangerous wealth inequality becomes.

So why is wealth inequality bad? This is a question that is far too complicated for us to answer in just a couple paragraphs, but suffice it to say that as the gap between the rich and poor grows, the services that cater to the rich and the poor also separate further, with business that serve the poor offering cheaper, low-quality products and the business that serve the rich offering more expensive, high-quality products, while any middle-class people are slowly transformed into one or the other (with the vast majority becoming lower class). This separation of goods, services, classes, and society has huge consequences, with just a few listed below.

1. Countries with higher wealth inequality have higher rates of health and social problems (mental illness, homicides, teenage births, incarceration, obesity, drug use, child conflict, gang affiliation, etc.) than countries that are more equal. Some of the worst rates of these health and social problems were found in the United States in Utah and New Hampshire, in particular.
2. Countries with high wealth inequality have higher rates of suicide, alcoholism, alcohol-related deaths, drug use, and drug overdoses. And each major jump in inequality leads to a surge of deaths from these substances.
3. Countries with high wealth inequality have lower educational performance, social trust, equality for women, social mobility, life expectancy, and the number of patents issued every year.
4. In countries with more wealth inequality, people are less likely to trust each other and less likely to be involved in their local communities.
5. Wealth inequality is one of the primary causes of unhappiness in developed or industrialized nations (along with rising healthcare costs and an unhealthy work-life balance). On the other hand, lower inequality leads to higher levels of population-wide happiness and life satisfaction.
6. Wealth inequality contributes to higher homicide rates and is a primary factor in predicting domestic terrorism.
7. In countries with high wealth inequality, the rich are able to buy more land and property than the poor, driving up prices, while the poor are forced to take out loans and extreme levels of debt just to make ends meet. This makes income inequality the primary factor in the absurd levels of household debt in America as middle-class people have to take out higher levels of debt in order to maintain what was a middle-class lifestyle almost a century ago without a loan.
8. High levels of wealth inequality lead to less social and civic participation among the poor and middle class and lead to political instability, civil conflict, and the breakdown of democratic institutions. Studies have shown that growing wealth inequality is one significant factor in predicting civil wars.
9. As wealth inequality grows, left-aligned political parties will more ardently pursue redistributive policies and more extreme political remedies, while right-aligned political parties will more aggressively repress any redistribution attempts of any kind, even eliminating welfare programs.
10. Finally, high levels of wealth inequality cause economic growth to slow down.

What Contributed to Today’s Inequality?

So, how did we get here? The existence of wealth inequality is an established fact, and experts acknowledge that it exists and is growing at unprecedented rates.

In the United States, the top 20% of households have accumulated increasingly larger shares of the total income in the country, leading to the highest income inequality of all the G7 nations. Americans can see and feel it, too. Over 61% of all U.S. citizens say there is too much wealth inequality.

Overall, the gap between the richest and poorest families in the United States has more than doubled since 1989, and the incomes of middle-class citizens have grown at a much slower rate (49%) than the incomes of the rich (64%) over the last 50 years.

The trend of the rich accumulating more wealth at the expense of the middle class is especially clear when comparing the share of incomes over time. In 1970, middle-class Americans earned 62% of aggregate incomes in America and the rich earned 29%. In 2018, the rich took 48% of aggregate incomes while the middle class earned only 43%.

In 2024, the top 10% of Americans held over 67% of all the wealth in the country, and the bottom 50% held only 2.5% of all the wealth.

The main causes of wealth inequality include:

1. The compounding nature of money. This means rich people have money left over after paying debts and for essentials (like food and housing) that they can spend or invest in assets that will appreciate in value, while the poor do not. In the United States, over 62% of all families with single parents have no savings at all.
2. High levels of debt. Debt erodes any savings or growth from investments and prevents the poor from accumulating wealth or improving their situation. This includes student debt and mortgages, in particular.
3. Differences in income. This includes everything from wage theft and the faster increase in rich wages over poor wages which have not even kept up with inflation.
4. Blatant and consistent nepotism, including the elimination of inheritance taxes.
5. Tax policies that perpetuate and encourage wealth inequality, allowing the rich to avoid taxes while punishing the poor for being poor.
6. The weakening of labor unions. Labor unions help reduce inequality, and right-wing politicians have systematically weakened U.S. unions, allowing CEOs to increase income inequality.
7. The inability of poor people to access well-paying jobs.

The growth of the income of the typical American family very closely matched the growth of economic productivity since the early 1900s. As technology progressed, productivity increased, and workers were paid a higher wage as the company made more money. However, in the 1970s, productivity continued to increase but the median wage of the typical American family fell. The International Labour Organization concluded that this shows a larger share of GDP growth being transferred from the working class to the ruling class.

Who do we blame for this mess? Naturally, one of the top suspects (and popular targets) for this blame would be the generation that was in control while our wealth gap grew at high rates, the same generation that saw the destruction of the strongest economy the United States has ever seen, lived through the eradication of our unions and labor protection laws, was forming the workforce in the 1970s and contributed to the rise of nationalism around the world. So, let’s look at the Baby Boomers.

Background on Baby Boomers

Titled “the luckiest generation” of all time, Baby Boomers inherited the strongest economy in United States history, along with its strongest labor protections and a wave of expanding human rights. This inheritance of wealth catapulted the Baby Boomers straight into success.

Inspired by their parents, the Silent Generation, to express themselves more as individuals, Baby Boomers fought hard for social and cultural change and revolution, expanding human rights and equal representation for people of all races, genders, sexualities, and faiths. Cultural monoliths like the nuclear family, patriarchal-run households, fundamental Christianity, and more began to change, becoming more adaptable, accepting, and healthy.

On the other hand, with all this wealth and power came an incredible feeling of entitlement. Baby Boomers were the first generation to see and treat higher education as a right and a commodity that is only useful for making more money, and they believed they were entitled to good grades. According to social scientists, materialism and selfish me-first attitudes became the norm in America thanks to the Baby Boomers, leading many to title them the “me generation”, and eventually mutating into today’s self-centered nationalism.

The massive amount of wealth the Baby Boomers inherited allowed them to secure huge swaths of land, housing, and money during their working years, which they have managed to hold onto until today. It was during their lifetimes, however, that some of the biggest and most destructive erosions of worker protections and civil liberties were also implemented. Right-wing and conservative politicians attacked labor unions and minority groups, gradually abolishing many of the laws and institutions that allowed Baby Boomers to accumulate as much wealth as they did.

Truman, Nixon, and Reagan attacked and weakened worker unions repeatedly and implemented the War on Drugs which destroyed minority and poor neighborhoods, destroying any hope they had of accumulating savings. New tax laws placed higher tax burdens on the poor and middle class, gradually moving from a 91% marginal tax rate for the richest Americans to a point where they now pay nothing in taxes. Today, the poor and working-class fund the government while the billionaires control it and reap the benefits.

Are Baby Boomers to Blame?

After analyzing the data, reading what economists, social scientists, and historians have said about the topic, and living through this time period ourselves, we are forced to conclude that no, Baby Boomers are not to blame for the current wealth inequality.

Like all generations before them, and probably for all generations throughout time and into the future, Baby Boomers acted rationally in response to the condition of the world into which they were born. The idea that generations have a unifying identity and act with some gestalt hive consciousness is a modern invention heavily influenced by media and propaganda.

What generation wouldn’t jump at the opportunity that was laid at the feet of the Baby Boomers? To their credit, Baby Boomers worked hard to advance civil liberties and equal rights. It was the Baby Boomers who began to see through the fog of U.S. propaganda and refused to support American genocide in Vietnam and other offensive invasions around the world.

So, if there is blame to be placed, where does it go?

The answer can be found by analyzing the structure of our society, and following the path of money.

Our modern capitalist society grew out of the mercantile industries of the Age of Enlightenment which saw the expanding power of the lower classes in feudal societies, particularly in Europe. During this time, when the royals owned the land, the nobles administered and controlled the land, and the peasants worked the land, capital flowed from the fields to the coffers of the royals.

As human rights expanded and technology advanced, the power of the peasant classes also grew, giving them greater ability to educate themselves and secure savings for future generations. The ownership of land was no longer the grant of power, but the owning of factories, machines, and tools to produce goods for the quickly expanding peasant class. The nobles who owned or bought these factories and machines took the place of royalty.

As part of the Enlightenment and neoliberalism to champion human rights and equality, the concept of “classes” became distasteful, and literature and education eventually did away with class identities. But the classes persisted, nonetheless.

The structure of the “owners” and “workers” that existed from ancient times and grew through medieval times in the form of lords and peasants still exists today in the form of the owning class and the working class.

Every other class or societal distinction has been and continues to be, a distraction, either intentionally or by accident, meant to keep the poor and working man focused on attacking his neighbor instead of expanding his rights and power that his owner (see: employer) has taken from him.

It is not the Baby Boomers who destroyed labor laws, equal rights, and the real estate market. It is not the Baby Boomers who run the country headlong into recession after recession and pass one tax law after another that forces the poor to shoulder ever greater shares of the national budget. It was the ruling class, the owners of industry, the private equity, and corporations that control and lobby our government.

It is not generation vs. generation, Boomer vs. Millennial, it is rich vs. poor, the owner vs worker, the exploiter vs. the exploited, class vs. class. While Millennials and Gen Y rage against Baby Boomers for benefiting from their extreme luck and pulling the ladder up after themselves, the owners of the companies that control what we see, what we eat, what we know, and what we do, make money hand over fist while taking away our freedoms. And we pay them to do it.

Every other conflict; the culture wars, the constant fearmongering about terrorists abroad, migrant caravans invading our country, the War on Drugs, the Bush Doctrine, the oppression of Christianity, the rise of nationalism and racism, and every other daytime news broadcast that seeks to pit us against each other only serve to keep the people divided instead of uniting against our oppressors. They are fabricated lies and propaganda meant to keep us angry at our neighbor or content with our scraps while those who write it laugh behind the scenes. Baby Boomers are only the current target of this divided anger amongst Millennials.

As one famous social scientist put it:

“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

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