Meet the Greedy Grandparents

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.

That's an extremely stupid post considering:

1)Your family is YOUR business.
2)If someone spent money up on you, that's THEIR mistake. No one told them to spend themselves out of their retirement to satisfy you.
3)Most people did not spend that much money on their kids. I have never gotten a new car for graduation or my birthday.
4)Besides the fact that not everyone was that much of an "expense" no one is telling old people to die. But why do they think they are entitled to other peoples money?
5)The "elderly" are the richest class in America. They aren't starving or dying.
6)You're an idiot
7)These are not people you are related to. If they had a program that took from you and put into an individual account that paid DIRECTLY for your own parents, then you'd have a point. But the government wastes the money on a huge bureaucracy and a labyrinth of agencies and regs and entitlements.
8)When did FR become home to socialists?

Start a business, pay yourself a meager, subsistence-level salary, and take out most of your earnings in dividends

Have you actually done this? I owned my own business and I remember they hit me up for an equivilant of SSI to put into SSI -- based on gross profits.

But maybe I disremember....

Sounds familiar. I worked my tail off one summer at the age of 14, only to have Pop take my savings to go buy stuff. Spoiled indeed.

But to be fair: just as many of us young folk weren't showered with riches, there are many responsible Boomers who want the Social Security beast destroyed as much as we do. We should be careful, painting our generational counterparts with broad brushes....

What kinda amazes me is that I personally know of two people that never even cash their social security checks. They don't need to, they have a lot of money, and it goes right into their savings and investment accounts. Maybe they'll pass it down to their kids someday. I don't know. It just seems rather strange as they have deposited these checks for years now....

You're kidding yourself and seem deeply troubled. The violent ideation that your posts contain indicate that there is much more going on with you than some self-congratulatory sense of outrage over abortion. (btw, how many boomers sat on the Supreme Court and decided on Roe v. Wade?)

Your obvious anger, thirst for revenge (your word) and the violence in your vision for the future of your parents' generation taken with the troubling comic book art on your profile page paint a picture of someone with too heavy an emotional burden. I sincerely hope you work things out.

Good luck.

I think that is a big part of it. What do the generations BB's produced feel they have to support. BB's are directly responsible for the state of affairs we live in today. I mean the cultural climate. I am 30 something and my brothers are 20 something. Our parents still use us to fight between them. I nearly passed out after my nasty father said something so horrendous recently. Self-centered, egotistical jerk and I know plenty of others my age who feel the same thing. and for those who think we just hate our elders. Rubbish. I loved my grandparents, all 4 of them. They were wonderful folks who I admired greatly. They had a great devotion to their families that somehow their children did not. I really idolize my now deceased grandparents. I don't see anything in my parents character that even compares.

I Hear you sister. Mine are now blowing about the new 40 grand filth wheel they just purchased with the 35 grand Deisel to haul in and how they had to make a second drive to their 80 foot Pole Barn built to put it in, so they don't damage their new paved drive way. Atlest while they are here, the rest of the time the rest up in their Place in Floriduh!

And then she bitches about how the New Republican Perscription coverage isn't going to cover alot of things.

Greedy old geezers is right! 900 bucks a month, both of them, plus medical coverage. Now Perscriptions. What a gig.

To bad she can't look me straight in the eye, when I tell her she ought to be arrested for stealing from her great grandchildren that aren't even born yet.

I also let her know that when the kids start complaining about the taxes I will show them a picture of Great Grandma and grandpa along with thier paved drive and 80,000 dollar traveling rig. And let them know that is what they will pay taxes for the rest of their lives for.

Yes the genocidal holocaust championed by the boomers, and all the attendant perversion and deviancy ushered in with it, do disturb me.

What troubles you about my amateur cartooning, besides my obvious lack of illustration skills? Are you a supporter of the doctrines I mock - Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, and the others cited?

I suppose his boomer parents had nothing at all to do now with his attitudes and "emotional burden" did they? Naw, of course not. Nothing new for the self-centered attitude of the boomers though.

Oh and as for abortion. Who was of child bearing age when Roe v Wade passed? Who was the group who would have effected the most pressure because they were of child bearing, free love age and needed their abortions to correct their mistakes? What's that *gasp* BABY BOOMERS!!! I know my grandparents weren't crying for Roe v Wade in the early 70's, but I do know my boomer parents were at least ambivalent. That says a lot about WHY Roe v Wade passed.

Were you organized as a corporation, or as a sole proprietorship? A sole proprietorship technically doesn't pay any dividends -- so all your income is taxed as income.

In the case of corporate ownership, there may be some regulations that are put in place to restrict how much you can pay yourself in dividends compared to what you pay yourself in salary. You can sometimes get around this by listing family members as shareholders and paying them dividends, too. Just make sure you have little Johnny buy his own school clothes and maybe spring for groceries once a month, if you know what I mean -- it's "his" money, after all.

Memo to Gen X from baby boomers: Get over yourselves. You are least-productive and whiniest generation ever created. A bunch of slacker losers who can't even make their own music (you rhyme-speak or steal, oh excuse me, "cover" or "sample," ours). BB should be very ashamed of having built you.

67 posted on 12/11/2003 1:17:51 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Peace through Strength)
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Keep kicking gramps. But know this. When the choice has to be made between providing for my kids and grandkids versus sending money to a bitter, whining, self centered generation of social parasites their won't be a bit of hesitation to cut you off at the knees.

Don't bitch to me because WE make the hard decisions that HAVE to be made your generation lacked the balls to make.
Or were too busy screwing your neighbors wife and smoking a doobie to notice.

Were you organized as a corporation, or as a sole proprietorship? A sole proprietorship technically doesn't pay any dividends -- so all your income is taxed as income.

I had both but it never occured to me to try to reduce my hit there. Good advice for everyone -- thanks

There seem to be a more than a few kids here who never got over the fact that their mommy and daddy weren't perfect or were too self involved to wipe their noses for them every time they sniffled. Gee, too bad they missed growing up in the fifties when everything was Ozzie and Harriet. Of course, since they can't get over being screwed by the parental lottery, everyone in mommy's club is evil and must pay. Buncha losers. I wonder how long before they start a reparations movement.

Yes I had exactly the same experience... my grandparents were loving, caring, traditional parents who held the care of their children to be their top priority. The spirit of the boomers was the explicit rejection of everything that makes for a happy healthy family - and their children (us) paid a staggering price for it.

But we remember our grandparents, and the way they expressed the love they truly felt for their families. I for one have sworn that I will not bring a child into the world until I am prepared to do as they did. (And I will certainly not bring a child into the world just to kill it off in the womb!)

I think what the boomers don't get about abortion is that it is the ultimate expression of how they view all other human beings - as objects to manipulate or destroy at their pleasure. And that only scratches the surface of the culture of child abuse that is now epidemic - miseducation, drugging active children into submission, the sexualization of children, ignoring the magnitude and seriousness of molestation, and on and on.

Sorry, this is a sore spot for me. Perhaps I have incredibly greedy parents, but I don't think I'm alone in this.

My parents too, and a scarily high percentage of other Boomer parents that I know. They bleat on about how they "need" this and "need" that, but heaven forbid that they have to spend some of their personal time and resources acquiring those things. It is a total lack of personal responsibility on their parts, and therefore I feel a complete lack of sympathy for the consequences of undisciplined and immature life choices.

As I see it, GenX has a right to be completely unsympathetic to the "plight" of the older generations. While it is starting to be written about, I think that the Boomer and older generations still don't "get" that the younger generations feel this way pretty strongly.

a bitter, whining, self centered generation

I think you have your generations confused sonny. Look in a mirror and look at your posts. Tell me who is "whiny."

For all the ills created by the Baby Boom at least we had ideals. Your generation just had toys.

their [sic] won't be a bit of hesitation to cut you off at the knees.

Quite the chip on your shoulder there, mijo. Shouldn't you be directing your anger at your parents?

Pull up to the therapy couch...there's room for all you whiners. When I hear children like you and compare them to my own grown kids and their cousins it makes me realize how right we got it.

Good luck.

Xer Ping

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