Shock poll: 89 percent of boomers want higher taxes on young people

If you spent any time on social media this week, you might have seen a trending news item that really boils my blood, and maybe yours: The headline is this:

“JUST IN: 89% of American seniors support higher taxes on younger workers to protect current Social Security benefits, per Cato Institute”

And that got shared over and over by all sorts of different accounts. In fact, it isn’t breaking news — I tracked down the Cato Institute study that produced this result, and it was published last December .

But aside from the false portrayal of this as breaking news, I totally agree with the freakout and the fury it produced on social media. Yes, it is a moral scandal that the boomers — retirees, the wealthiest generation in American history — will stop at nothing to protect their welfare payments from the government, and would be happy to raise taxes on younger, poorer Americans in order to save Social Security.

From Cato: “A striking generational divide emerges over Social Security reform. A majority (53%) of Americans under age 30 say younger workers should be protected from higher taxes even if doing so requires reducing benefits for current retirees. In sharp contrast, 89% of seniors age 65 and older believe current retirees’ benefits should be protected even if that means higher taxes on younger workers.”

When Social Security was enacted nearly 100 years ago, it was necessary to prevent people who were too old to work from dying of poverty on the streets. But the situation is very different today. Now, it is elder Americans who own most of the wealth in society.

And they have been able to rig the system to protect their largesse. We have a housing shortage because they support zoning laws that make it difficult to build new houses, for instance. In fact, so many of the things young people need — housing, childcare, medical care, education, jobs — are made less obtainable because government regulation gets in the way. Regulation supported by the boomers.

And now they want to raise our taxes too?

It’s generational theft. Keep in mind, no one is going to raise their taxes. Both Republicans and Democrats are actually competing to make the elderly pay less in taxes, including by eliminating property taxes for them — but not for you, first-time homebuyer.

And some conservative commentators, to their credit, recognize it as absurd. On X, Matt Walsh writes :

“I understand that the social security conversation is political poison. But I’m not running for office so I don’t care about that. Taking huge chunks out of the paychecks of young working Americans in order to pay for the retirements of older Americans who have a net worth several times higher, all to prop up a system that everyone knows likely won’t be there when those younger people are retirement age themselves, is morally abhorrent and economically insane. Everyone knows it, too, but we’re held hostage by elderly politicians who refuse to surrender power, and older voters who, as a group (with exceptions, obviously), simply don’t care all that much about the financial and cultural future their grandchildren will inherit.”

On the other hand, if older Americans are actually determined to maintain their current Social Security payouts, it’s going to mean a lot more taxes for everyone else. Jessica Reidl, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, has done the math.

She writes : “Maintaining full Social Security benefits would mean raising the payroll tax from 12.4% to nearly 17%. Also fully funding Medicare would require adding another 9pp, or perhaps adding a 25% VAT. So that (often wealthy) seniors can keep getting back far more than they paid in.”

That’s right, they’re getting much more than they paid in, because they live longer on average than was considered normal at the time the program was designed. This is simply unworkable. It’s bankrupting our country and it’s dooming our children and our grandchildren. We need more people, hopefully more politicians, to stand up and say enough is enough, even though it’s politically unpopular.

It’s simply wrong to sentence the next generation to indentured servitude.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.