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
They continually hiked the amount you need to contribute, used any that they did not spend on themselves to buy votes and wasted the rest. They hiked the age you could expect any return from the program and reduced the amount you would get.
They elected liberals who, just as the first of their children were entering the work force, swamped the country with immigrants to depress their wages, drive up the cost of living and make the country less safe.
Was there ever a generation that hated it's children so much?
To perhaps further expound on my post, I believe the problem started when the self-identification of generations really began, cultivated by targeted advertising, in the immediate post-WW2 era. It sold the notion to young people that they were ‘unique’ and ‘special.’ And it eventually flowered into a real self-absorption, and in worse cases, a moral self-righteousness and sense of superiority. It’s been a horrible trait, and has continued multiplying ever since, with every follow-up generation. And we’ve grown weaker and weaker.
Despise us do you? Ok, do away with the programs that sustain seniors. Then go and get Mom, Dad and Granny and take care of them yourself. That sure would play havoc with your hedonistic, selfish lifestyle now wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have time for that twenty-five year education to compete for a job that thirty thousand others that have the same thing are vying for. Brilliant!
Despise us? With that attitude towards the people who gave you life, it’s a pretty fair bet that you have no respect for your own ascendants, which you throw away like so much garbage because they’re “inconvenient” just like us.
Despise us? Here’s wisdom: Proverbs 30:17 NIV for your understanding: The eye that mocks a father and scorns an aged mother will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley, will be eaten by vultures.”
Before you can turn around, you will be us and there will be an even more “enlightened” generation wishing death upon you because you dare to still breathe and eat. Given how things progress, I don’t think much of your chances.
Despise us? That pretty well describes what my generation thinks of your Pajama boys, your cultural chaos, your “strong”(read:butch) women and your vapid “virtual reality” world.
Stop crying in your milk and get busy making your own future instead of despising those that have dared to live past what you deem an acceptable age.
Well it’s probably true that most of these programs are unsustainable (and Ponzi schemes). However, most people bought into them in good faith and paid a good chunk of their earnings towards them. And don’t forget, they did not have a choice. I don’t think they thought of them as milking future generations. These programs were sold as self sustaining (which was a lie but most people do not have the economic background to decipher that).
As they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I’m sure every generation has/will put in place equivalent boondoggles. Why? Because the people at the top of these schemes make a lot of money. Layers and layers of bureaucrats for one thing.
By the way, it wasn’t the Boomers who put in place most of these programs (it was their parent’s generation or even their grandparent’s generation.) However, Boomers are benefitting from them it is true.
“and gays were sinners”
Homosexuals are still sinners as are unmarried fornicators and adulterers.
The Red cultural revolution may have cast off the power of influence of the Church but it has not successfully rewritten the religious texts to redefine sin.
Sounds like another slacker excuse blame others because you can’t have a free ride go back to your basement mother will call you when dinner is ready.
For your consideration...
Have you have wondered how mobs of French people would so gleefully cheer as the blade of the guillotine fell upon the necks of “enemies of the revolution” during the Reign of Terror? Or how ordinary Germans willingly turned in their Jewish neighbors to the Gestapo? Or how so many Russian workers and peasants would joyfully execute a blood revenge against the hated “bourgeoisie” and later the dangerous “kulaks.” Or how students would wave Mao’s Little Red Book as they donned the armbands of the Red Guards to throw their professors out the second floor windows of China’s universities during the Cultural Revolution?
Here we see the seeds of the same sort of Two Minutes Hate propaganda that all the tyrants from Robespierre to Che Guevara have used to turn one part of society against another. We hear it every day, in the lies of White Privilege, the envy of the Occupy Movement, the bitterness of radical Feminism, the delusion and fallacies of Global Warming, and the hate of resurgent Marxism. Gene Marks, the author of this piece (a fact the original poster was too lazy to include) appears to be a self hating, white, middle aged software guru who’s swallowed the bitter tonic of White Privilege and cries out to excoriate himself in throes of public self-flagellation.
The hipsters of the millennial age might stop to consider what happens as their waistline expands and their hairlines recedes. The next generation might be no kinder to them than they were to those who came before. The revolutionaries of the sixties advised only to “never trust anyone over thirty.” Be careful, Mr. Marks, for things can spin out of control when the Devil is set loose. The Gen-Xers might not like the fit when the shoe is placed upon the other foot. After all, the sharp edge of the guillotine’s cold steel cleaved the head of Robespierre from his body just as swiftly as it had Marie Antoinette’s.
Most of the political/financial dysfunction and moral decay in this country that has been associated with the Baby Boomers can actually be attributed directly to the prior generation -- the so-called "Greatest Generation."
Most Baby Boomers weren't even eligible to vote until after Richard Nixon was elected in 1968.
Here’s an idea, loser - go upstairs, pull the Fedex driver off of your mommy and ask her for a juice box. Then GFY.
You’re making the authors point. You dont care that you’re currently or will soon be funded entirely on the backs of people you don’t know and are not beholden to in any way. The money you paid to the system was spent IMEDIATELY. You have no account. You only have those working now slaving away for you as you did for those that came before. Why perpetuate the system instead of doing the right thing? Is it because you’re neoconservative and support socialiam when it benifits you?
I expressed the same response, in more long-winded fashion, in my post number 68.
You are so correct. The Boomers who actually were paying for the Ponzi scheme that the Greatest Generation enacted are the true victims here. The only thing the Boomers did wrong was to raise a generation of entitled people who thought they could have the same lifestyle ( that their parents took years to acquire) with a woman’s studies degree.
If you got robbed, and the robber took all your money away, would you forgive and forget? That is what you are asking of us, and in no way am I going to forgive the debt.
Most of the Boomers raised Gen-X who, despite being a bit geeky, were hard working people who got their degrees in technology.
It was the generation after that that was the women studies degrees and they went in that direction for two reason, they had seen what happened to Mom and (maybe) Dad when the HB1 visa holders arrived and decided working as opposed to playing with computers was for chumps. The second reason is they had pounded into them "everyone must have a college degree it does not matter what that degree is in." Being told they had to have a degree and it didn't matter what it was in many chose the easy A route.
Actually most of the fault lies not with the boomers, but with their predecessors the “Silents.” There were too young for WWII, and had to spend their lives trying to live up to the accomplishments of their older brothers and sisters in the GG.
These are the Ted Kennedys and John McCains of the world. They were the parents of the younger boomers.
The generation that gets screwed are the Gen Xrs. They were the latch key babies, they are the 50 year old tech guys who got laid off, they cannot retire, and no one will hire them.
The long and short of it is that every generation has their stuff to deal with. The way the cycles go, the current Millenials are going to have it as rough as their grandparents. And they are not the least bit prepared.
Good points.
However, I inadvertently left off the author.
I sometimes forget to put in the link, or the date or whatever when I make posts. I usually catch it after it posts and immediately alert the moderator to add what I forgot to put in.
However, if I miss it, as in this case, I would hope people would let me know or send me a private message to let me know that I left out something ... and then I’ll alert the moderator to add the missing thing.
Thanks.
I think you made some excellent points about how people are turned against one another.
“Any article defining generations from a sociologists point of few are lost on vast majority of folks around here.”
By all means, please post one. This article was NOT written by a sociologist.
Baby boomer here. Born in 1947. Dropped out of High School, joined the Army. Viet Nam Combat Vet.
Got out of the Army at 20, a few bucks in my pocket, no skill, no trade, no high school diploma. First job $2 an hour in construction as a common laborer. Even from that small check each week, the government took out for social security and medicare.
I wanted more out of life so I returned to school. Got first my high school diploma, then a college degree (using the GI Bill and working and no student loans).
Fast forward,I am now 69 years old,retired, home paid for, money in the bank an a nice 401K. True, I draw my Social Security check but I did pay into the fund (and I understand some will draw more then they paid in, but it is also true some will die without ever drawing a penny).
I do not have a retirement from any company, I simply saved part of my income each year, and invested some, and yes,I would consider my self in a comfortable position.
As a conservative I have opposed to more and more government spending. Yes, I am a baby boomer, but I paid my dues.
If you ever voted for a Democrat I do not want to hear you whining about how the world turned out. You voted for this, I did not.
YOU left off the author? Do you use two different screen names?
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