The $73 Trillion Bill Boomers Left Gen Z

The wealth transfer isn't happening by accident. It's policy. And it accelerates every single year.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1960 that Social Security benefits aren’t property. They’re not a contract. They’re not your money. Congress can cut them to zero tomorrow if it wants, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

That’s Flemming v. Nestor. A guy paid in for nineteen years, got deported, lost everything. Sued the government. Lost. The Court’s reasoning? To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of ‘accrued property rights’ would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands.

It’s a tax, not a savings account. The government owes nothing.

So naturally, the entire political class pretends otherwise. They treat Social Security like a sacred promise, an untouchable contract, a moral obligation that transcends mere law. Touch it and you die. The third rail. Career suicide.

All while knowing it’s legally optional.

The disconnect between legal reality and political theater would be funny if it weren’t bankrupting the country. The unfunded obligations for Social Security and Medicare exceed $73 trillion over the infinite horizon. That’s not the deficit. That’s the gap between promised benefits and expected revenue. Three times GDP. More than double the public debt. A bill for $220,000 per person, including newborns.

In 1945, there were forty-two workers per beneficiary. By 1960, five workers per beneficiary. Today it’s 2.7. By 2035, it drops to 2.3.

The system was designed for a demographic pyramid that no longer exists. It worked when the base was wide and the top was narrow. Now the pyramid is inverting. More retirees, fewer workers. The load per worker doubles as the ratio collapses.

This is not a solvable problem within the current framework. And yet the political class acts like it’s a temporary accounting issue that can be fixed with minor tweaks and better messaging.

Meanwhile, the beneficiaries of this doomed system are the wealthiest cohort in American history. The median net worth for households over seventy-five is $335,600. The average is $1.6 million. For households under thirty-five, the median is $39,040.

The young subsidize the old. The poor subsidize the rich. The system is running backward.

The average Boomer retiree receives 37% more in Social Security benefits than they paid in taxes, even after adjusting for inflation and reasonable returns. That premium doesn’t come from investments. The Trust Fund is an accounting fiction. When the system ran surpluses in the 1980s and 1990s, that money got spent immediately. The government wrote itself IOUs and called it a day.

Now the IOUs are coming due. There’s no cash. So the Treasury borrows more or raises taxes on workers making a fraction of what the retirees are worth.

A bartender earning $40,000 funds the retirement of someone sitting on a seven-figure nest egg. That’s the transfer.

And it’s not even limited to basic survival anymore. Medicare Advantage plans, funded with federal dollars, now cover gym memberships explicitly including golf, tennis, swimming, and yoga. They cover pet food. Massages. Monthly allowances for drugstore items that people admit using to buy household goods.

Total Boomer Luxury Communism is the term. Coined in irony, accurate in substance.

The old get guaranteed inflation-indexed annuities from Social Security, a product that would cost hundreds of thousands to buy privately if it even existed. They get comprehensive healthcare regardless of wealth. They get leisure perks funded by people who can’t afford their own rent.

The young get gig work, no benefits, crushing student debt, and housing costs that make family formation financially suicidal.

Two economies. One socialist paradise for the elderly, funded by ruthless capitalist extraction from everyone else.

The system is blind to need. Social Security pays up to $60,000 annually to individuals and $117,000 to couples, regardless of outside income or assets. A retired CEO with $10 million in the bank gets the same check as a janitor with nothing. No means-testing. No income limits. Universal benefits for the sake of political sustainability.

The rationale is that means-testing would undermine support for the program. Which is to say, wealthy seniors would oppose a system that didn’t give them free money, so the free money continues.

The AARP has 38 million members. They vote at 70% rates. People under thirty vote at 50%. Democracy in action. The gerontocracy extracts wealth from the young, who don’t show up to stop it.

Politicians know the system is unsustainable. They know the Trust Fund is fake. They know the benefits aren’t earned. They know Flemming gives them legal cover to reform everything.

They do nothing.