Posted on 02/07/2016 7:54:04 AM PST by DeathBeforeDishonor1
"This is the real reason Washington can’t create a long-term deficit reduction plan. The boomers love their safety nets."
Wow, so it looks like we have a budget deal in Washington. A debt ceiling and spending crisis has been averted. It’s good news. But let’s all calm down. It’s only temporary. The agreement does not address the long-term fiscal problems we have. Problems that were mostly created by none other than the “baby boomer†generation. Yeah, you know who you are.
You’re tanned and healthy and living way past average life expectancy. You’ve got a defined benefit pension plan from a large company or government that was created years ago when people didn’t understand how horribly these plans can go wrong and now can’t afford to meet its liabilities, but you don’t care as long as you get your check which you don’t really need anyway. And your social security check. And your Medicare reimbursement check. You once hated the government. You smoked pot and protested against Vietnam and President Nixon. That was a long, long time ago.
Life has been good for you. You’re a baby boomer. You were born between 1946 and the early 1960’s. You had Woodstock and the Stones in the ’60s, discos and coke in the ’70s, Wall Street in the ’80s, Bill Clinton in the ’90s and now you’re retiring to Arizona and Florida on the backs of your stressed-out kids whose own children stay at home with them into their 20s because they have no jobs. Tom Brokaw once wrote a book about the greatest generation, those brave people who survived the depression and fought in World War II. Unfortunately that great generation spawned a generation of narcissists: the baby boomers.
The boomers have created liabilities that will take generations to pay off. Our national debt is now at around $17 trillion, larger for the first time in recent history than the size of our entire economy. And it’s projected to continue to significantly grow over the next few decades unless something dramatic is done to reduce it. Boomers don’t like to talk about fiscal responsibility or living within their means. They like their credit cards and government secured mortgages on overvalued properties. They enjoy their malls and their cars and their houses and as long as someone’s willing to lend them the money to buy this stuff they don’t seem to care much about how it will be one day paid. They still represent an enormous voting block and have no intention to have this lifestyle threatened. This is the real reason Washington can’t create a long-term deficit reduction plan. The boomers love their safety nets.
Trending: 11 Things You Might Not Know About Philly’s 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic These safety nets were created over the past few decades by boomers and for boomers, with little regard to the future. One of the major reasons our national debt is so high is because 40 percent of our government’s spending goes to some type of insurance: social insurance, retirement, health benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. These systems are bankrupt. But they’re needed to pay for the boomers’ healthcare and pension plans. People that were born after 1965 are working hard to make sure that the boomer generation gets their retirement and disability paid for by the government. But it’s still not enough. So our government has to borrow and print money. And our debts balloon. Who will pay these debts? Ah, who cares says the boomers. Not my problem.
They are the source of one of the biggest problems with Obamacare. Whether you support the Affordable Care Act or not (and I think there are lots of great things about it), one undeniable fact is that the cost of this new system is being put squarely on the shoulders of the young. People in their 20s need less health care than the boomers in their 60s and 70s. This is not only because younger people today have healthier lifestyles but because many boomers spent most of their young lives smoking, drinking sugary sodas and engaging in risky, unprotected sex. There are 34 million mostly young and uninsured people who will be required on January 1, 2014, to pay for health insurance just so the boomers can take advantage of the added benefits that health insurance companies have to now legally provide.
SPONSORED CONTENT Suggested: How CHOP Helped a Family and Their Baby Tackle a Rare Birth Defect They are, thank God, the last reminders of our racist, homophobic, sexist past. When you look at those “white only†diners and drinking fountains in those photos from the 1960s you just can’t believe it. Or how women were treated. And gays. But many of our beloved boomers were teenagers back then, living with parents who watched Ozzie and Harriet and were raised to believe that people who weren’t white weren’t to be trusted, women were meant to stay at home, and gays were sinners. Over time, these attitudes have changed, mainly because people in their 20s and 30s are smarter, better educated and more open-minded. Unfortunately, and although we now have a black President, the last remnants of the boomer generation who still wield power in their churches and companies are doing their best to keep women out of the corporate suite, protest against gay marriage and fight immigration reform.
We’re scrambling to fix the environment because of their excesses. For years, and despite warnings, the boomers refused to recycle and ran companies that spewed ozone-destroying chemicals into the air. There are countless plots of land that are unusable because of chemicals and pesticides dumped by this generation. I’m no environmentalist, but even I have to shake my head at the destruction laid upon the planet over the past 40 years alone: decimated forests, extinct species, smog filled skies, islands of plastic floating in the ocean. Only recently are steps being taken by younger generations to attempt to reverse this trend.
The good news is that the baby boomer generation is quickly getting older. Ten thousand boomers are retiring each day. We can’t ship them all off to an island, unfortunately. But I’m optimistic that the next generation of leaders will not make the same mistakes. Governments will take care of people who are truly needy — not just because they turned 65 and have a car payment — and this will help fix our deficit problems. Racism will continue to decline as the world becomes smaller and more social. Our environment will improve because kids in elementary school are being taught to care about the planet. Ultimately, these generations will fix the problems that the boomers created. And we can soon bid farewell to that horrible generation.
Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/12/13/baby-boomers-worst-generation/#svLVB6LDLuTFH87c.99
No, but we all know that the true power in DC is the money and through the staffs.
Certainly the senior management in major US firms during that era was made up of prime time Silents who would have been n their late forties and early fifties right after Vietnam Nam.
I guarantee you that your exposure to the younger generation is quite limited.
With the exception of a few, the ones that I have seen have developed an entitlement attitude.
“a $200 bedspread for her dorm room.”
—
I’ve never owned a $200.00 bedspread in my life.
The kids today don’t have a clue.
I have a grandson who goes to a pricey college fly across the country to visit a friend for 4 days.
Astonishing to me.
.
SSI was created by the so called “Greatest Generation” in 1972, when only the very oldest of Boomers could vote. It funds those 65 and older, so Boomers have only been collecting since 2011.
EBT is simply an electronic delivery system for programs already in place, which were implemented again by the WWII Generation.
The expansion of SNAP was indeed largely passed by Boomer politicians. On the other hand, the entire SNAP program represents just $74 billion of the total $3.8 trillion of Federal spending in fiscal year 2015. Since 76% of SNAP benefits go towards households with children, and as you pointed out the big expansion came in 2009, Millennials and Gen-Xers have been the big beneficiaries of the largess.
WIC also began in 1972, so the argument that Boomers created it falls flat. In fact the big expansion of Federal debt, as another poster pointed out, has come under Obama. Once more I must remind you that Obama was elected by Millennials, not by Boomers.
I would say, yes please, do further research. You might just learn something.
Philly mag ping
The difference between Millenials and our generation, is that our parents did not pay for our luxuries. The only exception was if your parents were rich. My generation paid for our own stuff. We had cheap cars, and high tech was not in place, so we had no computers and i phones. Back in my day,kids lived in dorms in college. Now, parents are funding apartments for their children to live in. The problem is, those kis are not going to have the same lifestyle as their parents, and they are now angry.
Since your statement includes a generational reference, you must think it’s a great example of sociology, right? Sorry, no participation trophies for you!
Thanks
The boomers--i.e., those born 1946-1964--the boomers did not create Social Security or Medicare. Franklin Roosevelt (b. 1882) was not a boomer. Lyndon Johnson (b. 1908) was not a boomer. These were the guys who laid these Big Government burdens on our backs. I, a boomer (b. 1953), wish these gargantuan wealth-redistribution programs were never created, and if it were up to me, they would be phased out over time as equitably as possible. But as it is, I have paid heavily into those programs, it's my money the government has stolen, and I would like some of my money back.
Their apparent plan was
1. Use the boomers to finance buying the votes needed to take and retain power.
2. Steal as much from the population as possible while in power.
3. When the money runs out, finance everything as long as you can get away with it by passing the debt down to those who come after us.
4. As the boomers come closer to wanting their benefits, demonize them, wreck their healthcare, and finally, STEAL their 401K contributions as the country is destroyed into separate political entities.
The last two items are in the works you can be sure.
We have been governed by lies and deception for last 100 years. Their ability to keep a lid on everything is quickly coming to an end. One example is the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. They doctored it to show what they wanted us to believe. They got away with it because the technology did not exist at that time to expose what they did. Once this is proven by today's technology, their little game of lies and deception will start to unravel and THEY are finished.
I believe they are planning a big event to bring in martial law before Obama leaves office because they are in a desperate condition.
Their fixed that!
Dear Gene Marks:
If it wasn’t for us, you would be speaking Russian today.
5.56mm
Good afternoon. Welcome to FR.
Much to learn...
5.56mm
How many do you know?
How many have you spoken to, beyond your grandkids?
I worked for fourteen years on no fewer than 25 college campuses over the past fifteen years.
They are smarter, more focused, more aware than we were when we were their age. Sure, a lot of them live with their parents. But if you look back just two generations, that was the norm, not the exception.
The boomers and the X’ers were very good at moving away and putting their parents in “homes.” Back in the 20s and 30s, that did not happen.
I have to agree to some extent with the OP. While no generation is without its faults our society really began to go off the rails with the arrival of the boomers on the scene. The last generation that I had much use for is the so called “silent generation” those between the so “greatest generation” and the boomers. My experience with these people is they generally kept their heads down worked hard, raised families, with many serving in Korea with little fanfare and lived honorable traditional lives. While the boomers in many respects represent a historical break in our country’s history it’s not like any of the succeeding generations are any better, in fact I’d argue they’re all much, much worse. The so called millennials, of which I’m ashamed to admit that I’m tentatively a member of, are a verifiable Frankenstein freak show.
On a related note somebody on here posted a quip about how the “greatest generation” is really the “statest generation”, they voted for FDR and his New Deal and then voted for LBJ and his “Great Society”.
Voters at 20 years 1965, birth date 1945+
1965 Supreme court, the right to contraception
Vietnam
1973 row v wade, the right to an abortion
1973 Homosexual behavior no longer considered mental disease.
1998 executive order sexual orientation protections in the work place
Afghanistan/Iraq
2005 Terri Schiavo, the right to be euthanize
2010 Judge rules military policy on gays unconstitutional (Openly gay given right to serve in the military)
Syria/ Libya
2015 Gay Marriage is made a right.
Those born 1945 now 70 years old
Not much green on those branches.
Whatever. You are the expert. Who am I to suggest you are not?
“Our national debt is now at around $17 trillion”
The article is incorrect. We just hit $19T.
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