[quote=sdrealtor]brian
i beleive they will be better off because wealth grows generation by generation unless you are a nitwit and blow it all. This demise of the middle class stuff boggles my mind and sounds like bad PR to me for the uber bears[/quote]

I’m not sure this is really true. Us baby boomers certainly inherited or will inherit more from their parents, than the generation that preceeded them.

But that’s a broad generality. There is a large and growing underclass which will inherit the exact same zero which their parents inherited. Some minority populations have never had significant assets to pass from generation to generation and there is little indication that will change any time soon.

The African-American population, which is roughly 15% of the total population currently owns only approximately 1% of the wealth. And possibly more troubling, only 1/2% more than that population owned the year after the Civil War, though it’s percentage of the total population isn’t significantly different today than it was then.

I suspect the current and intermediate future trend is/will be that as baby boomer estates get passed on, the top quintile of wealth-holders will continue to pass on larger and larger estates to their descendents. While those below that will pass on smaller estates than were passed to them by their parents.