Millennials now outnumber Boomers and can enact policies once considered unthinkable

It’s almost impossible to overstate how much the Baby Boomers have distorted American society and government. The story of the second half of 20th-century American government has basically been a story about the Boomers. The expansion of highways and suburbs allowed them to have a childhood unlike anyone before them. By the early 1960s, almost the whole of popular culture and the bulk of advertising dollars were dedicated exclusively to them, and this continued into their tawdry middle age (The Big Chill), and into their oncoming sexual dysfunction (Viagra and Cialis commercials). At nearly every step since their birth, government bent to subsidize their lives more. When Boomers depended on the financial markets, the response to a financial crisis was to save Wall Street long before saving the entry-level jobs that Millennials needed. Zoning and building policies inflate the value of Boomer-owned homes. Even policies that are putatively for Boomers’ children, expanded Pell grants and preferential treatment of student loans, were ways of surreptitiously lifting the financial burden on Boomers. And so, buoyed by government and society, Boomers now control almost half of the household wealth in the nation. Millennials control roughly 3 percent. Nearly three in five childless Millennials say they don’t have kids because it is too expensive to raise them. This sudden push to use the government to smooth income for young people is a generational watershed.