Posted on 05/05/2013 6:12:39 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets
I couldn’t help but notice the amount of boomer-directed venom expressed in the comments section of yesterday’s thread.
I’ve noticed it many times before. Actually, I’ve noticed it almost every time I write about—well, about my generation. And here I think we need a musical interlude:
< snip>
Note, of course, the verse:
People try to put us d-down (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
(Excerpt) Read more at neoneocon.com ...
Low information voters know who is promising to keep the checks coming. When 47% of the electorate are freeloaders, democracy must fail.
And same for S.S. recipients. They are on the dole also and know whose back they must scratch to keep the checks coming.
Same applies to the younger generation too, fwiw. Boomers are especially quick to paint us as Obamaphiles.
Medical Savings Accounts (privatizing health care rather than socializing it)
Expanded Individual Retirement Accounts (allow citizens to invest whatever it is they've contributed to Socialist Security in exchange for dropping out as a recipient)
Repeal Davis-Bacon laws (allow local municipalities to pay going rates for non-union labor instead of artifically inflated rates)
Repeal Daylight Savings (I hate Daylight Savings)
And on a personal scale: Take your kids out of public education
Stand by for more ideas as the coffee kicks in (or beer as the case may be).
Amen. Well said sir.
“following generation are too selfish to do anything to help others out.”
Why should we young’uns pay good money in our earnings to support those wealthier and better off than we’ll ever be?
I’m 62 and a half. I will file when I am 66, even if I am working. I could retire tomorrow with about $80,000/year without SS, mostly because I have lived frugally and saved. I could and do support reforms to SS, my only caveat is that I oppose “means tested” reforms because that causes perverse incentives. People of my age and earning history who blew through money with expensive vacations, new cars and big houses shouldn’t be rewarded with fatter Social Security checks.
Good ideas sir. Especially letting SS be voluntary. There’s a reason it’s compulsory. Someone has to break the chain. Might as well be us.
I prefer "my good man", though. "Sir" sounds so stuffy.
Thanks just the same. Carry on.
To play Devil's Advocate, couldn't that be countered with, if everyone saved like you, instead of spending on goods and vacations and what not, the economy would crash? Because that's basically how our consumer-based economy is set up, the government hates savers, they want people to consume now.
In other words, Socialist Security is nothing but one big trough for the pigs in Washington to wallow around in.
If everyone was like me, or if everyone was the same, this would be very dull and much poorer world. If many more people were like me, rather than like the folks in Brookline, this would be a much more prosperous and pleasant country. How does taking a ski vacation in Switzerland in 1992 grow the store of wealth and capital in the United States in 2013?
Good point. The government is systematic destroying things to force in their marxist government. The fed has made sure my savings for retirement are worth less than half of what I put in. Inflation and taxes have insured that my savings went to the government. Obama wants us all to be poor to give the elitists government dictators.
It’s not over for us yet.
“Same applies to the younger generation too, fwiw. Boomers are especially quick to paint us as Obamaphiles.”
No argument here. I have three daughters; one 35 and two 22. All three are conservatives. They are as fiscally conservative as me but the 22year olds are more liberal than me on social issues which is typical of their generation it seems to me.
Are you the same now as you were at 22?
There is another choice. End it entirely through a phase-out that ask something of everyone and gives something back to everyone.
Old people in this country were lied to by the media and their government their entire lives. Everything concerning those programs that imprisoned them were a fraud dressed as icing on the cake by design. It is only now that many have awakened to the truth that our very own government is, has been, and will be our biggest obstacle to regaining the liberty and freedom we were given by our nations founding fathers. Unfortunately for many, their misplaced trust in what their government and media have preached to them over and over has been abused.
I am approaching retirement age. I want social security abolished entirely. It is nothing more than government ownership of the elderly. The way to do this is simple. It must be done over a long enough period of time to be enacted in such a way that everybody wins something and gives something up in return.
1. Everyone currently on social security who actually paid into the system remains on the system until they die. Their cost of living increases would be adjusted as to amount and how often they occur. This means that over a four year time span, those who should never have been on the system in the first place, the real freeloaders, can receive a twenty-five percent reduction in benefits per year until they no longer receive anything and are off of the system.
2. Offer a one-time buyout to anyone within ten years of retirement such that they would be removed from the plan entirely and would never receive benefits. Their paychecks also would now be totally untouched by social security taxation making them an experienced, dependable, less expensive group of employees for anyone who hires them. This step alone would remove a considerable amount of future expense from the program making it a bit easier to manage as it is eliminated over time. Anyone who decides not to take the buyout will have to live with whatever adjustment are made to the plan in order to manage its cost. Whatever you borrow to fund this "buyout" will be easier to pay off and far less over time than having to pay the benefits they replace.
3. Those in the ten to twenty year range can be offered a smaller buyout or be stuck with whatever they end up with as the plan changes to contain cost.
4. Anyone over twenty years from retirement would be ineligible to receive benefits but their paychecks would still incur social security taxes until such a time as those taxes are no longer needed to fund paying recipients. Their net pay would rise as the number of those receiving social security die off. In a forty year time span, the program can be totally gone. This means that in twenty years time, you can get rid of social security and allow those who won't get it enough time to start saving for a personal retirement plan that THEY own, not the government.
Once this has been done, the real problem (the government itself, not the "old" people) will have been dealt with and permanently removed from the scene of the crime.
“ineligible to receive benefits but their paychecks would still incur social security taxes”
Yet:
“Offer a one-time buyout to anyone within ten years of retirement.”
Your plan is the worst garbage ever. As you said:
” ask something of everyone and gives something back to everyone.”
What benefit do young people get from your ‘plan’? They get to shoulder all of the cost and receive none of the benefits. The only folks who receive anything at all are the folks who are 10 years from retirement. Not only do they get a sweet deal, they get to choose.
Young people need to be given the same deal.
They can choose to decline future benefits, and receive an immediate tax relief.
What that does mean is that the generation that spent everything that was supposed to be put away would have to deal with what they spent rather than robbing young folks.
If young folks wish to participate, great. But if we don’t, we should have the option of opting out.
“This means that in twenty years time, you can get rid of social security and allow those who won’t get it enough time to start saving for a personal retirement plan that THEY own, not the government.”
Your plan would do nothing of the sort. You’ve actually offered no ‘death date’, ie, workers born after X year no longer pay in. Until that happens, you’ve done nothing to actually reform social security.
I’d actually support your plan with one change. The young people over 18 today pay in, but the young people under 17 will never have to pay social security taxes. Ever. Break the chain.
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