Posted on 04/24/2011 9:36:23 AM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
...a 64-year-old man in wire-rimmed glasses leaned forward and quietly raised his hand. Clarence Cammers had come to ask a question...
A lifelong Republican, Cammers had studied all 73 pages of Ryan’s proposal, which aims to erase the $14 trillion national debt in part by minimizing popular entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He had punched Ryan’s numbers into a worn gray calculator, trying to decipher how those gigantic sums would affect his family’s income of hourly wages and the very entitlements Ryan had targeted.
...
“I guess what I’m saying is, what are all these changes going to mean for my son?”
...
Tim Cammers [son], 32, has always lived in the bedroom down the hall from his parents, the one with two “Lord of the Rings” posters still hanging on the wall. He makes $10 an hour working in food prep at a nearby resort, but the bosses cut his hours whenever business is slow. Lately, he has been collecting part of his income through unemployment and spending a lot of time in the recliner, watching news about the federal budget and wondering how politicians expect him to retire on “a bunch of worthless vouchers.”
...
Now the son came downstairs carrying a double mocha, sat at his own desk and started watching videos on the Internet. He clicked on one about senior citizens learning to fight using their wooden canes.
“Dad, check this out,” he said. “They’re doing cane-fu!”
“I’m busy,” Clarence said.
“With what?”
“With budgeting. Maybe you should be doing some of this.”
Tim groaned and put on headphones to listen to Creed.
When the budget debate is all said and done, he wondered, what will be left for Tim?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Instead, it's all about his deadbeat son, 32, who never got a real job, lives at home, spends all his money on crap, and thinks that taxpayers owe him a comfortable life.
Tim's complaint about "useless vouchers" sums it up.
The article has a nice section about the father working through his budget, allocating money to the different things he has to pay for, and wondering why the feds never bothered to do that.
The little quote above of the exchange with his son is during his budget work -- the son interrupts him with stupid you-tube videos, and gets upset when his father suggests he might try budgetting.
But the father is an enabler. He probably meant well, wanted his kids to have things a little easier, a little better, be a little more prosperous than he was. We all want our children to have a good life.
The story ends with the father putting part of HIS social security check aside into a fund for his son, so his son will have a retirement. He is still enabling -- and he's beginning to fall into the trap of thinking that other taxpayers should also pay for his deadbeat son.
If the government doesn’t stop spending, the only thing that will be left for our children and grandchildren is debt.
there once was a time when Clarence’s son would have had no trouble finding a job-not so anymore. There once was a time when Clarence would have been able to afford to put his kid through college so he would have a chance at one of the better jobs-no so anymore. There once was a time when people retired at a reasonable age and their old job went to the next generation-not so anymore. There once was a time that Americans fought communism, be it Russian or Chinese in nature-not so anymore. It is definiotely all about choices now. Seems like there are four of them. Cut defense, cut social spending, default, or hyperinflate (which is a form of default). I suspect, ultimately, we can expect a lot of bickering, posturing, and bullshi**ing followed by 1.6 trillion dollars worth of quantitative easing. That’s why I own gold and silver.
Is that the best WaPo can do? When they started talking about the son I was expecting him to be paraplegic or have Down’s syndrome or .... well something. But it seems the only thing wrong with him is that he’s a lazy mooch.
The ‘kid’ is fat and an eating machine, and lazy. The dad is an enabler. AS a vet he ought to know some people can only respond to a ‘tough love’ approach, and he ought to know he’s not doing his ‘kid’ any favors.
I wish our side would do more commercials like the one where the Chinese guy says “they work for us now” and do it more forcefully.I truly think they would ahve no problem enslaving Americans to repay the debt.Look at how they treat their own people.America needs to wake up and understand that we are selling future generations to China.
This guy's son doesn't want anything more than to live off his parents and get what's left after they die. He has a job making $10 an hour to shut his Dad up and that's it.
He's a freaking BUM!
Sounds more like Tim is 16 instead of 32.
When the budget debate is all said and done, he wondered, what will be left for Tim?
Exactly what Tim deserves.
Oh please spare me with this BS. This guy raised a 32 year old perpetual adolescent.
Kick his ass out the door and maybe he will start to grow up.
Good thing his son isn’t an alcoholic or drug user. The old man would be dead from anxiety by now.
Anyone know more spepcifics about Soc Security disability....He gets $1,912 from Soc. Sec. yet he is 64 years old. So is that a disability payment?
Wonder how long he has gotten that subsidy? Interesting, article seems to portray him as a conservative financially independent senior, yet in reality he is not. I think perhaps he used to be, but now has fallen into that 49% tipping zone of folks who receive from the government... he eralla m is portraying him as a mix of independency and dependency...
What we are saying is that if nothing is done in about 5 years your $1,500 S/S check will get you a loaf of bread and your Medicare card an interview with a death panel.
and there was a time when $10/hr was a living wage-not any more. The children of today didn’t entirely create their circumstances, that’s all I’m saying. Clarence wants to know what kind of a world he’s handing down to his son? He should have wondered that 20 YEARS AGO. The bums I know make $10/hr or better begging at stoplights btw.
And neither has any group of children in the past. The generations of parents and grandparents before them helped create the circumstances that the children now find themselves in...and that is the same for all past generations. The real point is, now that we are in this mess, what are we as parents and our adult children going to do to change it. Turning to the government should not even enter into the picture.
I agree 100%. I should not have to pay for other people's problems. I have enough of my own. Clarence, you had the kid, not me. You deal with him and leave us out of it.
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