The next forty years will look like absolute hell and the lack of proper services for the explosive number of diseases in the millennial cohort will directly contribute.

1. Milliennials by and large don't have enough money to retire, and they are experiencing in striking numbers high rates of immunodeficiency and cancers. (I was personally diagnosed with cancer at 42. You know, the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything...) This will mean they will need more elder care and sooner... and they won't really be able to afford it.

2. No Child Left Behind has properly fucked US education for the foreseeable future, and US education was abysmal before that already. The elderly are going to be being taken care of by adults who may be functionally illiterate and when you're functionally illiterate, you can become anti-vax even if you got hired as caretaker for the elderly. (Not all will grow up to be functionally illiterate, but if we're to take teachers at their word, the gap between the struggling kids and the smart kids is wider than ever. As in C students functionally don't exist, only A students and F students, and the F students are the larger group who are being passed on to higher grades just to hit numbers.)

3. On top of education being gutted and there being a dangerous future of incapable people being put in these jobs because there's no one else to do them: The collapse in birth rate because nobody can afford to have fucking kids will also make this problem worse as fewer and fewer workers will be available to take care of more and more elderly and infirm people.

4. Most of the places that take care of the elderly are being bought up at rapid pace by investment groups, private equity, hedge funds, and the like, and all they do is cut services, make things worse, and cause more suffering and death so they can wring more money out of people suffering at the end of their lives. How many of these businesses will even still exist in 20 years? Many of them are shutting down constantly because the numbers just don't add up, or because the private equity group that bought it has finished hollowing it out and there's simply no money left.

5. Because of all of this, we will see an absolute explosion of homelessness in the elderly.

6. You can bet your ass fuck-nothing will be done to prevent any of this. Especially if Trump wins in November, then we're dealing with this process outright accelerating at a breakneck pace.

7. Oh and just for "fun" we can expect to see a lot more police violence against poverty-striken old people. "STOP RESISTING OLD MAN!"

EDIT: Oh yeah, and that's not even counting climate change, finite amounts of topsoil left, potential pandemics, and the fact that most of the world doesn't even have access to clean water. I try to keep an eye on neat, simple engineering projects from poor countries because we may need to rely on similar options soon enough ourselves.

EDIT II: Get involved in Mutual Aid Groups. We all have skills. No one is coming to save us. No government or political party or corporation. We have to save each other, and that will be very difficult to achieve. I forget the writer, but she said something like "No dictator is ever going to bring about the revolution. It will always have to come from the bottom organizing together." The only thing we can do is help one another. It will not be easy or fair or entirely successful.

Good post, but we really need to get out of the generational thinking.

I know rich and poor boomers. I know rich and poor millenials, and gen X/Z.

It's a class struggle. Always has been.

Stop making it a generational battle. That only serves to divide the working class.

Yes, there is racism, ageism, sexism. We should debate those things and improve, but we can't let those things divide us politically.

And since I'm ranting, let me end with a solution. We need to find themes that help all of us.

So perhaps we should say: for example, everyone with less than $1M in wealth gets a $20K tax deduction.

Who could oppose that? It doesn't benefit home owners vs. renters. It doesn't benefit students vs. retirees. It doesn't benefit city dwellers vs. rural. Or white vs. black.

But it does benefit the class who owns nothing and gives them a better chance to own something.

My wife has a job with an awesome pension and as a result there is basically no situation she will ever leave. I pointed out to her that the golden handcuffs are still golden.

One day some MBAs are going to learn that if you don't want constant turn over you give workers a pension so great they would crawl over their mother's corpse to get it.

What am I saying? MBAs learning? Hahaha I love being silly.

What's on the other side of middle age? Well, I'm not there yet, but it sure looks like the answer is "more work".

I'm a late gen-Xer (born in '80, so I'm more of a "Xennial"). I have a stable job, pension, matching 401k, no kids, no debt (paid off my car and student loans), make 6 figures, and I am STILL convinced that I will never be able to retire. I feel horrible for all those who are in a worse financial situation than me, but we are all really fucked in the next 20 years.

As someone born in '82, I plan to feel a strong dispassion for human society, and then die.

Am millennial… xenniel or “elder millennial to be exact… I have completely given up on ever owning a home or being able to retire. Short of some major acts of public disruption at unprecedented, economy-toppling, billionaire-eating scale, my entire generation - and those after us - are fucked.

LOL I'm never retiring. I've already accepted that I'll be working until I'm dead. There are those who get dealt the right cards and will get to retire comfortably. I'm just not one of them.

X'er here. I have what most would consider a good job, with good pay, and a good boss. I consider it a good job with good pay and a good boss. My spouse is unable to work, and we have two children. I'm currently seeking some skill or product I can develop without taking time away from my existing responsibilities such that I have a chance of not having to work until I die at my desk one day.

With no shade against millenials, this is the only time I'm grumpy about being forgotten in the generational sniping that goes on. All these articles (like OP) about this very valid angst from older millenials and I identify with it pretty much every time. I know I'm not the only X'er who does.

Now try being a mid 30s millenial that couldn't even make it running a business

For the last 10 years when I've been asked about my career goals during job interviews I always respond, "I would like to retire." I then clarify that I don't mean tomorrow, next year, or even 5 years down the road. I just don't want to die a wage slave.

Hell. Gen X also are worried about retirement.

Will social security be here in 15 years? My 401k has not kept up at all.... Everything today costs soooooooo much there's no real room for saving.

No.

But one day I will get so desperatly poor that taking out someone in siphoning wealth from the country and ending them might seem like a fitting end.

If we don't change things anyways.

Lol!

No.

What a quaint question. I honestly wonder if I'll live my full life and die with a dignity instead of how i suspect, with a fistfull of dirt and a pigs boot on my skull.

Gonna leave a bit of advice for any young folks that might see this. Something I wish to god someone had told me when I was 20.

Start an annuity plan. They're generally stable, all but guaranteed to accrue money. You can set a percentage of your paycheck to be deposited automatically into the account. If you have the option to do this through your employer, do it, find out if they match the deposit like mine. Put 10% of your paycheck in there. After 10 years, I have $40,000 sitting in a retirement account with a progressive series of bonds set to mature in between now and my retirement age. Those bonds will roll back into shorter term bonds as they mature, and add more value to the account. My projected retirement age is still 72, but at least I know that money is there.

Also, after 4 years, the account matures and you're able to borrow against it, like collateral for a loan. So if I wanted to right now, I could take that money and use it as a down payment on a house. I'll be expected to put it back, but the interest is generally lower than a home owner's loan.

she has about $75,000 saved up for a downpayment

Oh you poor child. That’s not even close to enough. 💀

You won't retire, no. No longer work a job because everything is slowly falling apart as our climate apocalypse trudges on? Sure, but you'll still be working hard to survive.

This is another one of many things that the government should be taking care of for people (and they sort of tried to with Social Security) but of course the "privatize everything" sociopath elites killed that idea, and our culture expects everyone to just learn how to Warren Buffet better. Bro, do you even index fund?

Of course I’ll retire, when I can no longer get a job, and that time is coming up fast. I only hope it’s not until I get my teens through college and off to a running start. I don’t see how I can afford to keep my house or even continue to live in this town, though

I’m not sure I agree with the narrative about being worse off by generation, though, because it is so tied to what you do. I’m a little sad about my older son starting adult life “in hard mode”: i’m proud that he wants to teach, and we live in an area with generally better teacher pay, but he’ll never earn much. It has certainly made my life easier to be paid better as a software engineer, even if circumstances mean I’m not financially able to retire. He’ll almost certainly live with less, have fewer opportunities, purely by choice of career, and without regard to his generation. Tack on the excessive housing inflation and his desire to stay in a hcol state, and I can’t help but worry for him