Meet the Greedy Grandparents

Slate ^ | Dec. 10, 2003 | Steve Chapman

[MEGoody]

"Memo to the baby boomers from Gen X: We have known how you are bankrupting us for a long time already. We already hate your guts, you greedy sons of b-tches."

Sweetie, the baby-boomers aren't even on social security yet. They've been paying into it a lot longer than you Gen Xers.

Now, go to the restroom and untwist your knickers.

[Glenn]

imagine how my generation feels, who will have paid into it for over FIFTY years, and won't see a single dime.

The government is playing you all for suckers. Your inter-generational finger pointing keeps the heat off them. They are the ones who took every dime they could from the fund and used it to finanance the "new world" we live in. They left an IOU. Had they invested the money, this arguing would be hypothetical.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Another wrinkle in the story is the meager fertility rates.

This why the politicians have no interest in ejecting the illegal aliens. They are paying into false SS accounts keeping SS solvent.

[MileHi]

Other than that, I want every effing dime, or there's going to be trouble.

ROTFLMAO! I like your attitude.

[Maria S]

I wonder if all of the little whinie-hinies who are cursing "old geezers" can even remember how hard their folks worked to get them those cars they thought they HAD TO HAVE the day they turned 16; or the $100 pair of shoes or jeans they couldn't live without; or the $500+ spent on graduation night for a limo, corsage, dress or suit; or all of the video tapes and CD's and computers and TV's...all of which you had to have in your VERY OWN room; or all of the stuff (amounting to thousands of dollars) that you demanded you 'needed' BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE HAS IT!

Grow up, little kids. You've been raised in the richest country that ever existed, and you're not showing much appreciation...imho.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Most "greedy grandparents" paid through the nose for social security for forty years and more, and got back far less than if they had put the money in a private retirement account.

---

No kidding. However, those who are supporting them will get a far worse deal. Just because the current retirees merely got only somewhat more than their money back does not mean that they aren't living off the next generation who will never even break even, let alone come close to private investment growth.

[thoughtomator]

Social Security isn't the only program with which the elder generations have been using to rape the younger one. Also, were a boomer to suggest to me that they've been paying into it longer and therefore they somehow have more of a claim to be a judge of the system ignores the fact that the boomers are the last generation that can expect to receive a dime from it. Big deal, they paid in more. They will get something back for what they paid. Those of us who come afterwards will get absolutely nothing.

The boomers support the subsidies to seniors only because they expect to cash in on it themselves. So the boomers have in fact been stealing the money of the generations after them already, in order to pay for their own parents' retirement, when historically this is their responsibility and not their childrens'. For some strange reason the boomers are the only generation that assumes no responsibility to support their parents in their old age.

[Atlas Sneezed]

What nerve these geezers have living when they should be dead. Wonder what the expected age to die is today? Should the retirement age be 85 or 90 for today's workers so they don't drain their children

---

Your exaggeration aside, if the system is to be sustained, and generationally equitable, then the retirement age should be adusted annually to ensure that it is self-funding on an annual basis. No "trust fund" for Congress to spend. If you are in a boom generation, you retire a few years later. If in a bust generation, you retire a few years sooner. And since you know from birth whether you are in a boom or bust, you have ample time to save, if you prefer not to have a delayed retirement.

Retiring early is nifty, but not if it is enabled by stealing from workers who have no hope of retiring anywhere near that early.

[Atlas Sneezed]

We need to keep the 'promise' to them.

---

Why keep a promise that they can retire before 72 when those who are funding their leisure have no hope for retiring any sooner?

And there has been no promise made by current workers. The promise was made by those elected years ago by the geezers. Being soaked for 15% of your income is not "making a promise". (And the few geezers got soaked anywhere near that bad.)

[Atlas Sneezed]

Sweetie, the baby-boomers aren't even on social security yet. They've been paying into it a lot longer than you Gen Xers.

---

...at lower rates, with full vesting for lower earnings, and with much earlier anticipated retirement ages.

[Skywalk]

Moron S

Do you understand the difference between your parent or grandparent giving you money and sacrificing and a young person trying to start his/her own family being forced to pay for people who aren't even related to him/her?

[Atlas Sneezed]

I wonder if all of the little whinie-hinies who are cursing "old geezers" can even remember how hard their folks worked to get them those cars they thought they HAD TO HAVE the day they turned 16...

---

You are confusing family dynamics with government tax policy.

Just because some boomers screwed up their own kids by spoiling them does not mean that they also are justified in stealing from others of their kids' generation.

[thoughtomator]

Were my parents concerned at any time with actually raising kids rather than simply shuffling them off into government-indoctrination warehouses, more concerned with motherhood than feminism and the indulgent pseudomysticism of 'self-actualization', more concerned with fatherhood than with easy divorce, alimony checks, child support payments, and using their children as weapons against each other in decade-long custody wars, I might actually care what they think about how I grew up.

They'd probably be scandalized, if they cared to know anything (for which there is no evidence whatsoever). After all, many of us turned out to be conservative, proved to be perceptive enough despite the propaganda to understand that abortion is child sacrifice, and to love our country. The Vietnam generation would be frankly aghast to learn that the generations after them are nowhere near as indulgent of bleeding-heart liberalism.

I would care what boomers thought if there was a reason to do so. I see none. 99 out of 100 boomers care for nothing but their own self-gratification, so I really don't see how anyone else can be expected to give a whit about them.

[litehaus]

I tell my kids that they are just handing it over to Mom n Dad..Of course, God willing, we will leave them what they will need since they sure won't get from the defunct Ponzi scheme....

[Skywalk]

And another thing:

Appreciation for what, for whom?

If my mom needs me, I'll be there for her.

But why should I subsidize the WEALTHIEST SEGMENT of the American population just because they want cheap drugs.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have strict means testing where only the truly indigent had access to the drugs?

And you do know that with this prescription plan that the companies will actually make a killing now? ANd that private firms will start reducing retirement plans and health plans because they can just pawn it off on government(iow, US.)

[Skywalk]

She's apparently none too bright, as she compares parents providing, even indulging, THEIR OWN KIDS with government extortion and the ruination of the futures of millions of citizens.

That'd be like me being killed for my organs so that someone I don't even know can receive a transplant because once upon a time, I was "given life" and "supported."

[Joe Brower]

You miss the point that the politicians who were running the government were voted in by the generations that preceded mine, and thus were installed long before I was born.

Mine has been the non-pleasure of having to fight them all my life. And as you probably know already, being professional bureaucrats, they are quite hard to dislodge once they are in place. Especially when they just keep upping the offers of largesse.

[Joe Brower]

"Think it will happen?"

No. Unfortunately.

[Joe Brower]

I agree with your approach 100%. That's what my wife and I are doing for our kids. It's called 'self-sufficiency'. The way things used to be.

Real estate is very profitable right now ...

[thoughtomator]

I am simply astonished to see people try and defend the generation that brought us 40 million murdered American children.