Older Americans Overwhelmingly Favor Higher Taxes on the Young to Protect Their Retirement Benefits

A year-old poll is making the rounds on social media, capturing an increasingly contentious debate in American politics.

In late 2025, a Cato Institute/YouGov poll found overwhelming support among older Americans for raising taxes on younger Americans to keep their retiree benefits funded. Support reached 89 percent among those 65 and older, 84 percent among those ages 55-64, and 74 percent among those ages 45-54. It fell to 57 percent among those ages 30-44, and just 47 percent among Americans under 30.

Several have raised the question, why should we even consider a greater tax burden placed on a younger generation already struggling, to fund a generation of people who already hold most of the wealth in the United States.

The poll in question was conducted in Dec 2025. “…89% of seniors age 65 and older believe current retirees’ benefits should be protected even if that means higher taxes on younger workers.” “Gen Z (defined here as Americans under 30) are eight times more likely than those 65 and older to support reducing benefits for current and future retirees to address Social Security’s financial problems (47% vs. 6%).” “…few understand how the program’s demographic foundations have shifted. In 1950, about 16 workers supported each retiree; today only 2.7 workers do.”

— Matt (@Matt_Bro_WI) October 5, 2026

The United States will soon have to confront the mounting cost of retirement benefits and other entitlement spending. The question is whether older Americans will vote to protect their benefits by passing an ever-larger bill to younger Americans already struggling to afford housing, college, and groceries.

Older generations are often held up as bastions of wisdom: parents and grandparents willing to sacrifice for their children’s future. Broadly, that reputation may be deserved. But when it comes to public policy, this poll suggests the opposite. Social Security and other retirement benefits encouraged generations of Americans to believe that government, and the taxpayers behind it, should take responsibility for their financial future. Millions now depend on a system sustained by the workers who follow them. Worse, many support sacrificing younger generations on the altar of taxation to keep their own financial security intact. 

To Russ Greene of the Prime Mover Institute, this is “Total Boomer Luxury Communism.” The name needs some work, but the premise is simple: America’s most socialist generation may be its older Americans, who enjoy a policy structure tilted in their favor. Lower taxes, restrictions on housing development that protect their home values, and a retirement entitlement system that takes from younger Americans still building financial security to support older Americans who have had decades to build their own. 

Just as an FYI for everybody: the median annual individual Social Security benefit is $20,000 per year. The median net worth of households under 35 is $39,000. The typical social security recipient is getting the net worth of a working household with kids every two years.

— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) October 6, 2026

That last point is what makes the arrangement so hard to defend. Some commentators argue that older generations enjoyed some of the strongest years of the American economy, yet millions still failed to build sufficient retirement savings. Government deserves blame for encouraging confidence in promises it would struggle to keep. But that failure should not give older Americans a blank check to take more from younger workers, their families, and their futures. A bad promise should not become an unlimited claim on the next generation’s paycheck.

Stealing from young families to pay much higher net worth Boomers is immoral and ridiculous. Young families already have to deal with an economy where everything is exponentially more expensive than it was for Boomers at the same age. Older people clamoring to raise taxes on the young, on top of it all, is just perverse.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 6, 2026

And as for younger Americans’ supposed financial irresponsibility, who taught them that? For generations, the example set in government and by voters has been to spend now and let someone else pay later. Younger Americans are told to live within their means, save for the future, and take responsibility for their choices, then asked to pay more so older Americans can avoid confronting the cost of theirs. That does not excuse irresponsible spending, but lectures about personal responsibility ring hollow when they come from a generation whose political legacy has in many ways been the opposite.

That leaves the United States in a difficult position. How do we address all these problems in one fell swoop? Few have a complete answer, but perhaps it begins with acknowledging that we cannot increase taxes on younger Americans to fulfill the promises made to America’s arguably most socialist generation. Maybe it means letting the current entitlement system run dry while mandating contributions to 401(k)s. 

Whatever the solution, we cannot continue pitting the young against the old, sacrificing the young on the altar of the old, and encouraging financial irresponsibility in the name of entitlements. A retirement system that mortgages the next generation’s future is not a legacy worth protecting.

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