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OK, millennial.
Nearly 90% Baby Boomers would raise taxes on younger workers to protect their own retirement benefits — and the majority of Gen Xers and millennials surprisingly agree, according to a viral poll.
Only the youngest group, Gen Zers, weren’t in favor of raising taxes to pay for Social Security benefits, according to a survey conducted by the Cato Institute.
In total, 89% of people over age 65 said current retiree benefits should be protected even if that means higher income taxes on young people.
Among 30 to 44-year-olds — aka millennials — 57% agreed, along with 74% of Gen Xers ages 45 to 54.
“I may not have guessed it would be that high for seniors,” Emily Ekins, Vice President and Director of Polling for the Cato Institute, told The Post.
“You might expect seniors to be more conscientious of the tax burden they’re placing on their children and grandchildren,” she said. “That’s where the generational divide comes in.”
By contrast, 53% of Gen Zers, defined as people under age 30, said they’d rather cut benefits to seniors in order to protect younger people from higher taxes, according to the poll.
They were the only age group that favored cutting Social Security benefits.
“I think Gen Z would say older people are the richest Americans … why are young Americans, with the least wealth and assets, paying their benefits?” Ekins said.
“They know they can barely afford their student debt payments and they’re not sure they can ever afford their house,” she said of Gen Z.
Overall, Gen Zers are eight times more likely than those 65 and older to support reducing benefits for current and future retirees, according to the poll.
“Having paid far less into the system, younger Americans are significantly more likely than older [Americans] are to accept reducing their own benefits as long as they are guaranteed to get back at least what [they and their] employer paid in — plus reasonable growth or interest,” the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, said in the report.
One reason for the general divide may be that people under age 30 were the least confident that the Social Security program will exist in the future.
“Gen Z, which shoulders a growing share of the Social Security program’s financing, are the least confident that the system will exist for them, the least informed about its mechanics, and the most open to structural reforms including benefit cuts, means-testing, and flat benefits,” the report states.
Half of Gen Zers, however, didn’t even know that payroll taxes were used to fund current retirees, according to the survey.
The poll, which was published in December, sparked fierce debate on social media this week — with some conservatives ripping boomers for supporting tax hikes.
“Just as it isn’t boomers’ fault that politicians stole their social security — or that leftists of all generations voted for the pols who did it — it’s not the responsibility of the generations that follow to make up for it by giving up more of our incomes,” conservative radio host Dana Loesch wrote on X.
“We worked our whole lives and paid our dues. Now we are old, many of us sick, and suddenly we are a burden. What exactly would make you happy? Should we all just die?” one user fumed.
Political commentator Matt Walsh, meanwhile, called the idea to raise taxes on younger workers “perverse.”
“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,” he wrote on X.
“Looks like there is a generational war a brewing,” another commenter added.
For the poll, the institute teamed up with the data firm YouGov to survey 2,000 Americans last year.
It also found 90% of Democrats, 82% of Republicans, and 81% of independents hold positive views of Social Security — while admitting deep concerns about the program’s future.
