A large, uncertain but important question. Here's the American perspective, anyway, since ours is the only one that matters as you well know.

Once upon a time people who worked a middle-class job got a middle-class pension - basically, your employer (or your union) took some of your money and put it in a fund where it would grow at 6% per year through prudent investment. Then when you were old they kicked you out and gave you a monthly check. This is on top of social security payments - basically, you turn 65 and you get a gold watch and two checks to live off of until you die, which will hopefully be soon because capitalism isn't made out of money in this one narrow definition of capitalism so stop asking.

then in 1973 a bunch of rich fucks from Kodak decided that pensions were for chumps, they wanted to play the ponies with their own money rather than expecting Kodak to do it for them. This warped the tax code such that companies saved a lot of money by taking their employees' pension contributions and putting it in a fund that the employee themselves had to manage. But hey. Today's baby boomers were just a bunch of whiney-ass kids back then and they were never going to die so they gave no fucks.

this was so great for the corporations that they basically stopped doing pensions at all, which made people have less reason to work there for very long, which gave the employers an excuse to stop paying people so much, which gave rise to a shortfall where all of a sudden the investment class decided that they'd figure out a way to sell retirement plans to people who had no 401(k)s or pensions and all of a sudden there were three or four different flavors of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). And now everyone is their own capitalist and masters of their own destiny and everything was better for everyone.

There was a sleight of hand in there, though - used to be your employer took care of you after they'd used you up. Now you and your money has to run a gauntlet created by stock brokers and the investment class and, by the way, you're now an individual investor attempting to recreate the leverage and professional management of a large-scale pension firm.

Better yet, the "stick your finger in the air and guess a number" appreciation rate since the late '80s has been 6%. We're now saying "expect 3%." here's why.

Hey, how 'bout life expectancy? What does that look like?

So. A system created when you had 13 years to live off of what your company saved for you with 10% returns has become a system where your own madd investment skillz have to keep your ass alive for 25 years at 3% returns.

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Nobody is a professional investor. They buy what they know, and they buy what they're told, and because of the perversity of retirement plans, the easiest thing they can buy is publicly-traded equities. Big companies. Big brands. the big dumb things the 'boomers have been building on either side of every 4-lane blacktop in the USA because, li'l secret, you've picked every brand you'll ever love by the time you're 25. If you were 24 when Applebee's was the hot new thing, Applebee's will be the hot young thing until you're a toothless geritol-sucker. Target. Toys'r'Us. Chevrolet. Gap. Zales. To you, millennial turncoat, these are the jurassic fossils of a consumerist era that never served you in the slightest. To the 'boomers they are unchanging monoliths of American culture, as permanent as the Rockies, as certain as day follows night.

and you're fucking everything up.

Pretend you're 58 years old. Your retirement fund took a massive kick in the nuts in the 2008 recession and has just now recovered. You were going to retire at 65 but now you're hoping you'll scrape by when they force you to retire at 70. You're desperately attempting to make the gains back on your portfolio that will allow you a Golden Age of something other than dogfood and camper vans but these fucking kids aren't eating at the restaurants you know, they aren't buying the brands of clothing you know, and the ungrateful wretches aren't filling your coffers by frequenting the stores and industries that make up your "blue chip" portfolio.

they are leaving you to starve.

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Honestly speaking? Capitalism is getting sick before the 'boomers are. The kids are adapting because kids are adaptable but the old folx are reaping what they sowed 40 fuckin' years ago. Worse than that, they fucked their kids over so Hunter and Britney are still pulling down $1500 a month in assistance to live with three roommates in a 900sqft 2br three miles from Venice Beach while they intern for free at Google (a stock you sold when you thought it would top out at $500).

Fortunately, Bitcoin is dead, having retreated to historic prices we haven't seen in at least 50 days. Hunter has stopped falling behind on his student loans ever since he gave up the acting classes and started driving for Uber with his free time. The kids are finally settling into a routine, so let's pile more money into Darden stock

because if there's one thing that's eternal, it's fucking Olive Garden.

At least, it fucking better be.

Because we've got $300k between the two of us and according to Quicken, we burn $150k a year right now and that's not the retirement "they" promised us when they dissolved our pension fund in 1974.

MAGAMAGAMAGAMAGAMAGA.

good thing we'll make $1100 a month each in social security. We could buy a used motor home and drive it down to Baton Rouge and make that work. Maybe by the time Tiffany and Hunter need their social security they'll have figured out a way to make it work; since we'll be dead and buried it won't be our problem.

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And that, my fine Russian friend, is why these discussions are always framed in terms of "millennials are killing X": because the twilight years of millennial parents are nakedly dependent on millennials keeping X on life support and when they don't, 'boomers see death staring them in the face.