For decades, the places you might move to in your golden years were not only sunny and nice, they were cheap. Arizona and Florida were not high-priced real estate bubbles. So for decades people who retired could move where the sun was and maybe even end up ahead financially especially if they were moving from the high-cost eastern seaboard metroplex.
But they ain't making more land. As more and more people retired and moved to the sun, the land all got bought and developed. And instead of dying, those people are living. Maybe 10 years maybe 20 years longer than the first generation of "Snowbirds". Classic macroecomics then ensued: the price of land (housing) goes up as demand outstrips supply. This isn't some radical new failure of capitalism, it's just demographics and macroeconomcs. First in gets the better deal.
There is still cheap land (housing) in the US. MOST of the US is cheap to live in. The problem is that that cheap land (housing) isn't by a warm beach in a beautifully developed retirement community surrounded by services catering to retired people.
It's in the middle of Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, etc. It's in the smaller rust belt cities. It's in North and South Dakota. It's in Washington, Oregon and California east of the great western mountains (Cascades / Sierra Madres).
Or you could go further south. Mexico is a cheap place to live where you can still find land (housing) on a sunny beach without living in a real estate bubble. You'll have to hablo espanol and pay in pesos, and you won't own the land (house). But you can enjoy your golden years watching the sun go down over the Pacific or come up over the Caribbean without being a millionaire. Those first generation snowbirds who moved into sandy moldy poorly constructed homes in Florida didn't have it perfect either.
The thing that drives Boomers in particular absolutely nuts is being told they can't have what they want. For their entire lives the system was reconstructed to enable them to indulge all their whims and fancies; but at the end, it just doesn't work that way for many of them. Instead of dealing with it rationally and moving to where they can match their income/assets to their expenses, they'd rather suffer and moan about how unfair it all is while waiting for someone to acknowledge they're unhappy and fix it - and the only "fix" is a massive government subsidy to which they feel absolutely entitled - and might actually get.
When my generation retires (Gen X; the generation that has NEVER gotten what we want without struggle and hard work) we're going to be just fine even though we'll have 70% of the Boomer's social security and will inherit a sliver of their peak net worth.
