Yeah, my category of people who have established themselves swings older for obvious reasons, but it’s certainly not the case that all seniors are a part of it. One result of real estate values (driven in part by interest rates), though, is that many people had the chance to acquire property when it was affordable to the middle class that has since become fantastically valuable. If my spouse’s parents had kept the home they lived in when she was born, they’d be rich now. Not everyone had that opportunity.
I thought about it some more and what really grinds my gears about interest rates is that they are set by technocrats. I can’t think of an argument for having an independent treasury setting interest rates that couldn’t be made for having an independent body that sets tax rates or an independent body that sets healthcare spending. There are tons of public policy issues of huge importance, interest rates are just one of them. And that’s allowed central bankers to build up a special mystique around themselves as gurus when the reality is that I don’t think anyone really understands the full implications of higher and lower interest rates (really I feel like people don’t understand even at a really basic level; case in point, people think that low interest rates make it easier to buy real estate!).
Of course if I do a quick google search I find that people who think we should do away with central bank independence are right-wing think tanks who clearly want to do away with it so they can make things even stupider. But the fact that we keep voting for kleptocrats is it’s own problem.
