Posted on 12/11/2003 10:48:56 AM PST by luckydevi
When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn't take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a tedious interregnum between two long periods of comfortable dependence.
America's elderly have never had it so good. They enjoy better health than any previous generation of old people, high incomes and ample assets, access to a host of medical treatments that not only keep them alive but let them enjoy their extra years, and a riotous multitude of ways to spoil their grandchildren. Still they are not content. From gratefully accepting a basic level of assistance back in the early decades of Social Security, America's elderly have come to expect everything their durable little hearts desire.
They often get their way, as they did recently when years of complaints finally induced Congress and the president to agree to bear much of the cost of their prescription drugs. From the tenor of the debate, you would think these medications were a terrible burden inflicted by an uncaring fate. In fact, past generations of old people didn't have to make room in their budgets for pharmaceuticals because there weren't many to buy. If you suffered from high cholesterol, chronic heartburn, or depression, you were left to primitive remedies, or none. Today, there are pills and potions for just about any complaint—except the chronic complaint that many of them are pricey. It's not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free.
That's on top of everything else they get. Retirement benefits used to be just one of the federal government's many maternal functions. But in recent years, the federal government has begun to look like an appendage of Social Security. In 2000, 35 percent of all federal spending dollars went to Social Security and Medicare. By 2040, barring an increase in total federal outlays, they'll account for more than 60 percent of the budget. And that's before you add in the prescription drug benefit. Most of the projected growth is due to rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
Why do we keep indulging the grizzled ones? The most obvious reason is that they are so tireless and well-organized in demanding alms. No politician ever lost an election because he was too generous to little old ladies. A lot of people are suckered by the image of financially strapped seniors, even though the poverty rate among those 65 and over has been lower than that for the population as a whole since 1974. But it's not just the interests of old coots that are being served here. Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won't be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it's nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today's seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It's not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice.
It's surely no coincidence that the new drug benefit is being enacted just as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. Nor can it be forgotten that the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired People—it's now just AARP—has lately broadened its membership to include all the boomers it can get its wrinkled hands on. AARP, to the surprise of many, endorsed the plan. And what a surprise it is that the prescription drug program, which will cost some $400 billion over the next 10 years, could balloon to $2 trillion in the 10 years following that—when guess-who will be collecting. You would expect taxpayers in their peak earning years to recoil in horror from a program that will vastly increase Washington's fiscal obligations for decades to come. In fact, they—make that we—can see that the time to lock in a prosperous old age is now, before twentysomethings know what's hit them.
Boomers have gotten our way every since we arrived in this world, and the onset of gray hair, bifocals, and arthritis is not going to moderate our unswerving self-indulgence. We are the same people, after all, who forced the lowering of the drinking age when we were young, so we could drink, and forced it back up when we got older, so our kids couldn't. On top of that, we're used to the best of everything, and plenty of it. We weren't dubbed the Me Generation because we neglect our own needs, Junior. If politicians think the current geezers are greedy, they ain't seen nothin' yet.
But responsible middle-aged sorts may yet be brought to their senses when they realize that their usual impulse to get all they can will sooner or later collide with another boomer obsession: the insatiable desire to furnish our kids with every advantage known to humanity. Load Social Security with more obligations than it can bear, and our precious offspring will be squashed under the weight. To fund all the obligations of the Social Security system, payroll taxes will have to more than double by 2040—on top of whatever it costs to buy all those prescription drugs. At that point, our children will realize the trick we've pulled and start to hate our guts. That would be a cruel blow to a generation that thinks of itself as the most wonderful parents in history.
To avoid that fate, boomers need to recognize the need to stop writing checks that today's youngsters will have to cash. With the eager help of our own parents, we've created an entitlement that is fast becoming unaffordable. To bring Social Security into conformity with reality, we'll have to resign ourselves to a higher retirement age reflecting our prospective vigor and life expectancy. We'll have to accept more stringent controls on Medicare spending and take more responsibility for our own medical needs. We'll have to abandon our assumption that the point of the health-care system is to keep each of us alive forever. At some point—don't worry, not anytime soon—we will have to embrace a duty to stop functioning as a fiscal burden on our children and start serving as a nutritional resource for worms.
Come on now, Shouldn't the baby boomers get paid just because once they got in power they made our educational system the best in the world.
And hell the WWII just fought in a war and the Xers just brought computers into the mainstream, It was the Baby boomers who really made an positive impact on the world by becoming lawyers. Hitler and Tojo that the WWII generation defended us against were pussycats, It's evil corporations like Mcdonalds that makes their coffee to hot which I might spill on myself that's the real danger and lucky we have boomer lawyers to stop that.
If it weren't for all the Health and Safety regulations passed by enlightened Boomer politicians I don't even know how I could get out of bed
My kids are grown or almost grown (18-28) and in spite of the usual teen-age angst driven difficulties they're all productive and, appropriate to age, successful.
While I agree that politicians squandered the proceeds from SS, the blame for the program should be placed squarely on the voters during the Depression who demanded such a program from their representatives.
Politicians do what the voters demand or they don't get reelected. It goes directly to the old truism that democracies last only as long as it takes the voters to learn they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. Roosevelt's New Deal taught Americans that lesson.
I paid into SS from the age of 11, when I lied about my age to get a job delivering newspapers. At retirement I'd been contributing for 54 years. I'd be happy just to receive back the original amount I contributed over that time -- adjusted for inflation! Until then I'll thankfully cash my monthly SS check which I use mostly to help my kids. For the next year or so it'll be helping to pay for my grandson's orthodontistry.
Well let me tell you I pretty much worked and paid for everything
But I know a lot of Boomer parents who did lavish those "Goodies" on their children and those children all ended up screwed up because the "Trinkets" the parent gave their kids weren't given because they wanted the best for them, No they were given as a substitute for time because the self absorbed baby boomer parents were too busy Finding themselves and/or doing their own thing and couldn't be bothered with the effort it takes to do actual parenting. Either that or they handed out goodies in an attempt to try and buy the love of their kids in order to get back at the other parent in their divorce wars
They can pay me off in one lump sum and I won't bother them again. Let the SOB's in Congress give up some of their vacation pay in order to balance the books or stop sending welfare checks to a bunch of crackheads and whores who live like leeches on the backs of those of us who "did the right thing" and worked and raised a family and slaved under the yoke of a less than benevolent, lying, tyrannical government and an overwhelming tax burden for a third of a century. I've completely written off all the tax money that represents the theft of nearly 50% of my earnings - I don't mind buying a few bombs to knock off the ragheads - but I am damn sick and tired of having the RATs (and a lot of Repubos too) telling me that I owe "my fair share" so that a bunch of illegal aliens, hookers, morons, dopers, drug pushers, corporate pirates, criminal politicians and assorted riffraff and vermin can live sucking off the taxtit at my expense forever.
That might be a lot better than having a stroke, ending up in a second rate nursing home and spending what life savings you built up on your long-term care. Its already happened to some of my family members.
Medicare alone (along with the trial lawyers, of course) is already slowly destroying medical care. Eventually, these will so destroy the medical services industry we will be forced to go to a Single Payer System aka socialized medicine.
As in other countries with these grand schemes, there is de facto rationing of care. Guess who needs the most care? Right! Guess who gets to die quicker because the complicated and expensive care will not be available? Right again!
The problem has already been addressed and solved. All that remains in the future is to haggle over the details.
Huh? I was just pointing out the complete lack of originality in Gen X (something that has gone unchallenged btw).
I won't be seeing a dime of SSI and I have paid a LOT of money into it my many decades of work. Don't try to hand me that "the Boomers took my money" nonsense. Gen X has a heck of a lot more subsidies than BB ever had. And they get them now, not later. And they generally don't make enough to pay for them. Who pays the tab? The Baby Boomers, what's who!
Ingrates, the lot of you.
LOL. That's pretty good.
First, In regards to music all the great artist from the boomer generation were in fact from the previous generation, So if anything the musical legacy of the boomers is Disco. Even so, When musical artist of our generation speak out with anti-American statements (Like the Dixie Chicks) we shun them, When musical artist that your generation listened to spoke out against America (Like John Lenin) you made them heroes/Gods.
I hate to tell you but we Gen-Xers even though we are still relatively young already changed the world for the better and had a bigger positive influence on the world than the baby boomers. It was us who spawned the internet and brought computers into the mainstream and ushered in the new era of the Information Age which has had an overall major positive effect all over the world that will be felt and enjoyed for generations to come. When we set out to change the world we created something unlike the Boomers who when they set out to change the world instead of creating something they instead became Lawyers and we all know how wonderful it is that we have all these lawyers and regulations running around.
The Baby Boomers accomplished nothing and destroyed everything they touched and are basically self serving parasites and will go down as the worst generation in history.
Shall we review
Compare the Legacy
Gen-X
Spawned a new era in the history of mankind: The Information Age
Will Fight and Win the war on Terrorism.
Voted in a Republican Majority*
VS
The Baby Boomers
The ACLU, Activist Judges, Junk Science, Tune in, Turn on and drop out, Health/Safety Nazis, RINOS, Destruction of the Nuclear Family, Destruction of the Black Extended family, Frivolous lawsuit, The Constitution as a living document, The Welfare State, The Nanny State, It it feels good do it, The Liberal Media elite, The founding fathers were nothing more than evil slave owners, Sound bites over substance or facts, Smoking bans in bars, Abortion on demand, The Clintons, Seatbelt laws, Feminism, Tree Huggers, Criminals that have more rights than the victim, Meathead, Blame America First, Latch key kids, Kids being raised by their grandparents and/or strangers, Helmet laws for Motorcycles, Helmet laws for freaking Bicycles, Cradle to grave entitlements, War on Fat, 21 year old drinking age, Yuppies, Careers over your children, Hatred of the Military, Reporters who think they are not only part of but bigger than the story they are covering, Focus groups, Weekend dads, Single moms, Prisoner rights groups, Prozac, Ritilin, Viagra, ½ our income going for taxes, America owes me, Living past failed dreams through your children, Republicans who grow the government nearly as much as the Democrats, Cocktail Parties with the like of Micheal Bloomberg, Turning an educational system that once was the best in the world to S!@, The 2nd Amendment doesn't mean the Right to bear arms, Peacekeepers instead of soldiers, The weakening of the CIA, Power Couples, Soccer Moms, NPR, Eradication of Dodge Ball, It's all society's fault type excuses and made up syndromes instead of personal responsibility, and so many more but I will close with.
And an Obscene National $6,915,000,000,000 and growing Debt that WE have to pay off.
* Yes we did vote in a Republican majority in Congress, Senate and White House but unfortuanetely those Republicans we voted in also happen to be Baby boomers and just like everything else connected to that pitiful generation they to are turning out to be disappointments and failures.
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