@Bonsai @sickburnbro This is it exactly. It's easy to pacify people. Even the minimal ability to live that welfare provides is enough to keep people from rebelling.

I'm a tail end boomer that watched every ladder get pulled up through the X'ers span. Got balled up in that myself working in tech and having jobs moved overseas or displaced by migrants moving here. I have every sympathy with the generations after me that have seen stolen opportunity after stolen opportunity taken from them.

Pensions are what is keeping boomers and soon to be X'ers pacified as well. You won't risk anything if the result is literal homelessness. Not when you have a home now. But even boomers are ending up on the streets and in shelters because they worked a less than optimal career, on the margins. And now they slip over the edge with no real savings. Something that virtually never happened even 20 years ago.