Silver into Gold

Longevity market. That’s the term being tossed around for over-50 market. I like the sound of it. If only because it infers that boomers are going to be around for a while.

We know that entrepreneurs are going to profit off us by coming up with products and services that are specifically targeted to an aging population. And I’m okay with that. Whether it’s electric bicycles or stylish walking shoes or home care, I’m in.

According to AARP, this longevity market accounts for $7.6 trillion in economic activity. That’s a trillion pound elephant. What makes it interesting is that millennials are coming up with great product ideas out of personal experiences with parents or grandparents. Grandson sees how hard his parents are struggling with Grandpa’s care and he comes up with a new app for homecare providers. Daughter wants to help her parents continue to exercise and designs an electric bicycle.

Note to self: the next time I want to disparage a millennial, remember that she might be the one who invents an automated prescription pill dispenser.

New business ideas that cater to baby boomers are most likely going to be coming forth in a constant stream over the next decade. Ironically, that means that millennials who have been blaming boomers for everything wrong in our society may one day be thanking us for all the start-up opportunities that we have stimulated. Venture capitalists have taken notice and there are now numerous crowdfunding options for any startup that has targeted the longevity market.

What’s in it for boomers? Investment opportunities for one thing. I’ve been saying for years that I really should invest in whatever company makes the most advanced and barely visible hearing aid, because that should be a very profitable business. Just the fact that so many millennials are interested in creating products and services targeted to boomers bodes well.

Now we just have to worry about Social Security remaining solvent enough for us to pay for the new products and new apps. What am I thinking? Some millennial out there is working on a Social Security Management App at this very moment.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Mo’ Babies Please

Much like the one word advice the young Benjamin Braddock receives in the film The Graduate, the most important advice of our time comes down to one word, and it’s not plastics, but it does begin with a “P.” And that word is procreate.

That’s right, we’re counting on Millenials to produce lots of kids. Lots and lots. Population growth means new entrants to labor force, but more importantly, they create demand….for clothes, cars, homes and gobs of consumer goods. And growing demand means an expanding labor force. You do see where this is going, yes? New jobs are good for the economy, most certainly. But new jobs means more folks paying social security taxes and that means baby boomers can collect their social security checks.

If you want continuing support in your twilight years, you need to be cheering on these millenials to have more babies. Perhaps we should volunteer to baby sit their existing broods while they go out for date nights. Maybe we can sign them up (anonymously, of course) for porn pay-per-view. We can lobby for higher tax credits for dependent children. Whatever it takes, we need to get these millenials in the mood for love.

There was a time in our history as a nation, when families were much larger than the nuclear family average of 2.5 children (don’t get me started on the .5 kid). Large families meant free labor on the farm, with every child helping to raise crops and livestock. Think of all the advantages of returning to this family model. The home building industry would benefit from new demand for 6 or 7 bedroom houses. Automakers would retool for 10-passenger vans and station wagons. The garment industry could literally begin to offer shirts, pants and dresses that are cheaper by the dozen. We would need bigger schools and more teachers.

Stop me now if you can’t see the upside of this new baby boom. The only loser in this new paradigm might be makers of birth control products. So my advice to you is start right now, today, to encourage the millenials in your family or social circle to get cracking on making those babies. Our whole future could depend on the actions we take today.

Two, four, six, eight, who do we want to procreate!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Mo’ Boom

So the sluggish economy sent the birth rate in the U.S. into a tailspin. Besides not buying homes or cars, people decided to put off having babies. According to a Pew Research Center survey, about 22 per cent of 18 to 34 year-olds surveyed said they postponed starting a family because of economic considerations.

And now what can we expect as the economy improves? That’s right – a baby boom. The children of baby boomers are going to be starting families in a big way, and it’s already being referred to as the “Echo Boom.” Personally, I prefer my own name for it – the Boom Boom. Not only does it have more alliteration, it also sounds vaguely like the name of a strip club (the Boom Boom Room?) with even more alliteration.

The typical American woman plans to have an average of 2.3 children. Don’t get me started on the .3 part of the equation because I have never been able to understand the existence of fractional children, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to know the explanation. What I do know is that the number of women entering their childbearing years is on the rise. They are between the ages of 20 and 35 and they want to have sex. More specifically, they want to have sex that leads to the birth of a child (they’re not just sex-crazed for crying out loud). Oh, and one more thing. They are our daughters.

When I say “our” I really mean “your” daughters, since I don’t have one, but the point is that there are a lot of baby boomers out there (78 million by most counts) and they have a lot of daughters. If only a quarter of them have 2.3 babies…..well, you can see where this is going. It may be time to buy stock in disposable diaper companies.

Personally, I couldn’t be happier that there is a new baby boom coming along. For one thing, it will give everyone a new generation to blame for being selfish/spoiled/self-centered/demeaning-adjective-of-your-choice. Secondly, we need more worker bees paying into the system so that Social Security remains solvent. If we scale back the child labor laws, we could have these babies working at the age of 10!

So I say bring on the Boom Boom.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

The Blame Game: Part 67

This just in from the “You Saw This Coming, Didn’t You?” department:

Will Baby Boomers Bankrupt Social Security?

It’s ripped directly from the web pages of CNBC, and why, you might ask, should we have seen this coming? Because baby boomers get the blame for everything. Our sheer mass makes us a target, and while we are certain that we are not a monolithic group by any means, that doesn’t stop journalists and pundits from placing the blame for everything at our feet.

Social Security will be paying out more than it collects in payroll taxes by 2017. By 2037, Social Security will be able to pay out only 75% of its benefits. Gen Xers are lined up to take shots at us, as though we conspired to create this problem. They seem to enjoy pitting one generation against another, as though that will somehow be a constructive way to solve the problem.

Is it our fault that there are so many of us? No. Our parents (you remember, the Greatest Generation) are to blame. In 1946, the war was over and Americans celebrated by having sex for many years. The result? In no time at all (between 1946 and 1964), love social security they had 78 million babies. So they may have had their fun, but in the words of Jimi Hendrix, we’re now the ones with “tire tracks all across our backs.”

While it’s true that Gen Xers have paid higher payroll taxes for most of their working lives, boomers paid in what was asked of us. You can’t blame us for the smaller size of succeeding generations. And remember, with so many of us paying those payroll taxes, there was a lot more money going in than coming out. Like a large health insurance pool, we helped to spread the retirement benefit costs out among the many rather than burden the few.

Keep in mind that with pensions almost extinct, most boomers are going to have to live off what they have saved, and even that isn’t going to take us too far. So we are going to continue to work as long as we can, whether it’s full-time or part-time, and that means we are going to keep paying into the Social Security fund.

Put another way, the fact remains that nothing is certain but death and payroll taxes.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.