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Aging Boomers To Leave Trillions To Kids – Or Will They?

Published

5 years ago

4 minute read

Say you are a millennial or Gen Xer – that is, anyone born after 1964. You are, if a Gen Xer, pondering retirement with some anxiety, and watching in horror as your body enters middle age. If a millennial you’re possibly just stressed out about everything, or so the stereotype goes, anything but that distant mirage called retirement.

One thing is certain though – both those groups, and other institutions, are intently watching that huge pile of Boomer money, the multi-trillion-dollar wealth transfer that has bulked up spectacularly over the past decades. Where is it going to go to, how, and what will the recipients do with it?

There is a danger in thinking of this too simplistically, that the death of the boomers will mean boomer children gathered for the reading of the will simply be handed huge cheques with which to go frolic in the sunshine. Others see the looming wealth transfer as a vast turbo for the stock market, assuming that hordes of inheritors will park their money in stocks (bonds are too boring and pay nothing – not an easy sell to jaded youth) if the world survives the coronavirus meltdown (and if it doesn’t, there will be much bigger worries at hand, like trying to learn how to grow a carrot or chop firewood with that dull axe in the garage).

Of course the answer is far more complex than that; some inheritors will travel, some will invest, some will buy houses, and some will party like its 1999. Some stubborn boomers will not die for a very long time – recall that the Boomers are defined as being born before 1946 and 1964, or now aged between 74 and 56 – spring chickens here in the western world. How they will spend it is purely speculative and individual, but it’s worth considering some of the aspects that we know will happen for sure.

Demographically, children of boomers have tended to move to large centers, become urbanized, and not as enamored of the two cars in a two-car garage in the suburbs boomer mecca. A large question then becomes: what happens to all that boomer habitat?

A Google search of boomer homes indicates somewhere between 20 and 30 million homes in the US (and probably directly proportional in Canada) own homes (the number depending on vacation properties, rentals, etc.) are owned by boomers. Most of these are in suburbia, where millennials are not all that keen on hanging out. So, as one Wall Street Journal article from late 2019 asks, Boomers: Who’s going to buy your 21 million homes?

This is an important question, because much of that boomer wealth is tied up in those paid-for homes. Now, how does that muddy the waters?

We’ve tended to see the wealth transfer as a bunch of cash being thrown to inheritors, but what if the inheritance is millions of McMansions and other suburban treasures that few millennials want? What happens to the value of that pile, and, for the tail end of boomers and Gen Xers, what happens to the value of that real estate?

Given the fact that millennials prefer experience to stuff – that is, they tend to be motivated by things other than bigger fancier cars and bigger fancier houses – they may choose to take time traveling, or extreme-sporting to deal with anxious lives, or lord knows what. But we do know also that the younger generation is not nearly as interested in the stock market, so maybe that vast wealth transfer will turn out to be anything but what we imagine.

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

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Terry Etam is a twenty-five-year veteran of Canada’s energy business. He has worked at a number of occupations spanning the finance, accounting, communications, and trading aspects of energy, and has written for several years on his own website Public Energy Number One and the widely-read industry site the BOE Report. In 2019, his first book, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity, was published. Mr. Etam has been called an industry thought leader and the most influential voice in the oil patch. He lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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Next federal government should reverse Ottawa’s plastics ban

Published on March 6, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

As noted by the Trudeau government, plastic substitutes contribute to lower air quality and “typically have higher climate change impacts” due to higher GHG emissions.

Recently at the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing the Biden administration’s plan to phase out plastic straws. The Trudeau government, however, continues with its plan to ban single-use plastics, even though this prohibition will have minimal impact worldwide, will actually increase waste in Canada, and force a transition to alternatives that impose greater environmental harm. Rather than doubling down on a flawed policy, the next federal government should reverse Trudeau’s plastic ban.

In 2021, the Trudeau government classified plastic items as “toxic,” paving the way for the ban on the manufacturing, importing and selling of checkout bags, cutlery, stir sticks and straws—all single-use plastics. In 2023, the Federal Court deemed the designation “unreasonable and unconstitutional”—but the Trudeau government defended the measure and is appealing, with a ruling expected this year.

According to the latest available data, Canada’s contributes 0.04 per cent to global plastic waste. The United States contributes 0.43 per cent—more than 10 times Canada’s share. But neither country is a major contributor to global plastic waste.

According to a 2024 article published in Nature, a leading scientific journal, no western country ranks among the top 90 global plastic polluters, thanks to their near-total waste collection and controlled disposal systems. Conversely, eight countries—India, Nigeria, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil—generate more than half of global plastic waste. And nearly 75 per cent of the world’s ocean plastic comes from Asia with only six countries (Philippines, India, Malaysia, China, Indonesia and Myanmar) accounting for most of the world’s ocean plastic pollution.

The Trudeau government’s own science assessment, cited in the court appeal, states that 99 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste is already disposed of safely through recycling, incinerating and environmentally-friendly landfills. Despite these facts, plastic has become a target for blanket restrictions without fully considering its benefits or the downsides of switching to alternatives.

Consider this. Plastics are lightweight, durable and indispensable to modern life. From medical devices, food packaging, construction materials, textiles, electronics and agricultural equipment, plastics play a critical role in sectors that improve living standards.

Alternatives to plastic come with their own environmental cost. Again, according to the government’s own analysis, banning single-use plastics will actually increase waste generation rather than reduce it. While the government expects to remove 1.5 million tonnes of plastics by 2032 with the prohibition, it will generate nearly twice as much that weight in waste from alternatives such as paper, wood and aluminum over the same period. Put simply, the ban will result in more, not less, waste in Canada.

And there’s more. Studies suggest that plastic substitutes such as paper are heavier, require more water and energy to be produced, demand more energy to transport, contribute to greater smog formation, present more ozone depletion potential and result in higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

As noted by the Trudeau government, plastic substitutes contribute to lower air quality and “typically have higher climate change impacts” due to higher GHG emissions.

While plastic pollution is a pressing global environmental issue, Canada is not a major contributor to this problem. The rationale behind the Trudeau government’s plastic ban lacks foundation, and as major economies including the U.S. go back to plastic, Canada’s plastic prohibition becomes increasingly futile. The next federal government, whoever that may be, should reverse this plastic ban, which will do more harm than good.

Julio Mejía

Policy Analyst

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute
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Business

Trump walks back tariffs on Mexico, Canada for another month

Published on March 6, 2025

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From The Center Square

By 

Stocks sunk Thursday afternoon despite President Donald Trump’s decision to grant major exceptions to the 25% tariffs he put on Mexico and Canada earlier this week.

All three major U.S. market indexes were in the red by the time of Trump’s afternoon bill signing. Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office that steel and aluminum tariffs were on track for next week without modifications.

Trump shrugged off the stock losses, blaming the decline on “globalists.”

“I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country is going to be and don’t like it,” he said.

Trump has promised that his tariffs would shift the tax burden away from Americans and onto foreign countries, but tariffs are generally paid by the people who import the products. Those importers then have a choice: They can either absorb the loss or pass it on to consumers through higher prices. He also promised tariffs would make America “rich as hell.” And he’s used tariffs as a negotiating tactic to tighten border security.

Trump granted temporary tariff relief to both Canada and Mexico on Thursday by exempting goods under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement from tariffs until April 2.

On April 2, Trump plans to announce broader reciprocal tariffs against countries that impose tariffs on U.S. goods or keep U.S. goods out of their markets through other methods.

Since imposing his latest round of tariffs on top of trading partners this week, Trump has been paring them back. On Wednesday, Trump said the Big Three automakers – Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV – would be exempt from his tariffs for a month.

In February, Trump took a step forward on his plan to put reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners by signing a memo directing staff to come up with solutions in 180 days. Trump previously said he would put those tariffs in place on April 2 to avoid any confusion on April 1.

In his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump said all countries would have to either make their products in the U.S. or be subject to tariffs.

“Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them. Whatever they tax us, we tax them,” Trump said. “If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. We will take in trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.”

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, governs trade between the U.S. and its northern and southern neighbors. It went into force on July 1, 2020. Trump signed the deal. That agreement continued to allow for duty-free trading between the three countries for products largely made in North America.

U.S. goods and services trade with USMCA totaled an estimated $1.8 trillion in 2022. Exports were $789.7 billion and imports were $974.3 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with USMCA was $184.6 billion in 2022, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

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