Posted on 05/17/2005 1:27:17 PM PDT by weegee
I'm feeling a little guilty these days. in fact, President Bush sometimes makes me feel awful. He and I both hail from Texas, we've both been Republicans, and we're about the same age. But he's constantly reminding all of us baby boomers that when we first started working each of us was 1 of nearly 7 workers paying Social Security taxes for every retiree. By the time we retire, however, there will only be two workers supporting each of us. As we say in Texas, that ain't right.
But I do wish the president, with a lot of heavy burdens that come with his high office, wouldn't be quite so concerned about us baby boomers. After all, Bush has a lot to worry over: a war against radical Islamist terrorists, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a record $412 billion budget deficit, a $617 billion record trade deficit, and of course he has a bunch of economic advisers I wouldn't put in a posse. I sure don't want to be a further burden to the president or anyone else, and I'm sure a lot of my fellow baby boomers feel the same way.
For one thing, we're not quite in the fix the president seems to think: In fact, we boomers are pretty well fixed. Our total net worth is estimated to be $17.5 trillion, and we've got retirement assets of $2.8 trillion, according to the Census Bureau. And while we may be getting older, we're not exactly folding up. In fact, a recent Merrill Lynch survey shows that more than three fourths of us plan to keep working in retirement. We may not make as much then, but we'll continue to earn and add to those boomer billions.
The president and all the rest of us who will be moving into retirement in the years ahead might do a lot more head scratchin' about those young folks who might have to take care of us. They'll have to face the tremendous debt we've built up for them as a result of our budget and trade deficits, our failure to invest in our public education system, and the startling decline in the national savings rate and employer-sponsored retirement options like pension plans. They're the ones who'd better be checking for snakes in their bedrolls.
Baby boomers are not the ones going bankrupt. In fact, Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 now have the second-highest rate of bankruptcy. In first place are those ages 35 to 44.
"It's taking much longer for gen X-ers to achieve financial security, to get out of the rough-and-tumble 20s into real financial stability on the path to savings," says Tamara Draut, director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, a nonpartisan research group. "For a lot of young people, that's just not going to happen at all. They will still be living paycheck to paycheck well into their 40s, even at the upper end of the income spectrum."
Unschooled. Our generation ranks first among all industrialized nations in the number of high school diplomas held by those between the ages of 45 and 64. Our 35-44 age group, however, is in fifth place, and our 25-to-34-year-olds place 10th. Considering that a large percentage of new jobs will require some level of postsecondary education, this is an extremely troubling trend.
The portion of Americans who hold at least a bachelor's degree has risen from 17 percent three decades ago to 28 percent. But those graduates who are completing college are finding that a degree isn't an automatic ticket to financial stability. While more people are attending college, they're leaving school saddled with an average debt of nearly $19,000. Recent college graduates owe 85 percent more in student loans than did their counterparts of a decade ago, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. What's more, their annual earnings may be higher than those of high school graduates, but they aren't rising faster than inflation.
The president might want to pull up on privatizing Social Security, too. That won't help the program. Means-testing will, and a bunch of us who don't need Social Security would understand giving up a little for our fellow citizens. And younger Americans may need more help than we older folks do. The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates that under the proposal to change the indexation formula for benefits, an average worker now in his or her early 20s would receive $152,000 less than the currently scheduled benefits.
Instead of wasting time figuring out how future generations will support the baby boomers, it just might be we boomers who end up supporting America's youth. Now I reckon that's what we'd call a real retirement crisis.
Fixing Social Security when 2 workers will be supporting every retiring boomer is about protecting the workers more than it is about protecting the Boomers ("In fact, we boomers are pretty well fixed.").
"Means testing" just proves that SS has been just another tax all along. I thought there were oppositions to cutting peoples' social security. Denying some (who are "too well off" does just that).
What do the baby boomers expect? They've known their entire lives that they were providing for their parents with money stolen from their children. Of course they're set - they didn't have to pay for any of the things that they foisted off to the following generations, they just "borrowed" it from posterity knowing it would be someone else who would have to pay it back. They almost deserve confiscatory socialism.
Gee, it turns out Lou knows even less about Social Security than he does about the Stock Market.
What a tool...
Social Security should be closed down. Everyone should be given the option of taking a lump sum cash settlement, right away. This would equal aggregate employee and employer contributions, plus some interest (maybe 2.5% annual rate). After all, we Do have an account balance, right? :)- If this were done, most people under about 40-45 years old would bail out. Those approaching or in retirement would stay with it. More debt would fund the payments, which is the cost of the "reorg". (Any solution will involved more debt, except maybe Higher and Higer Taxes!) The Socialist redistribution of income would eventually die, as retireees die and the Ponzi scheme is closed to new suckers. (This still leaves Medicare/Medicaid to be changed/terminated, before the cost destroys the U.S.)
IMHO, Medicare/Medicaid is going to be a problem that makes the SS scenario look like a walk in the park.
What do boomers expect??? I'll tell you snapper- when I retire
I will have paid SS taxes for over 50 years ! You bet your *ss
that I expect to get something in return !
I didn't set up this system, so don't paint all "boomers" with
a broad brush.
When I retire I will get $0 because the system will long be bankrupt - in large part because the baby boomers will have voted to maintain the status quo in the full knowledge that it was unsustainable. I expect nothing in return for my SS taxes... I view it as just another add-on to my income tax.
Social Security is a scam on several counts.
Privatization means that the government (A) could not borrow the funds anymore for pork projects and (B) could not play up to the voters by promising to "save" it or get them "higher" checks.
The current talk of privatization would permit those who want to keep with this government system to do so. They should not be permitted to hold everyone else back.
Getting you to accept the concept that you won't get the money is just the first bit of the bad news. Candidate Jerry Springer was also pushing for exempting the poor from paying into Social Security.
Expect your share of the SS tax to go even higher in future decades.
Half the reason we'll lose out on SS is the leeches and parasites. So I have a plan: shoot and/or deport the illegals, sterilze the chronically promiscuous so we don't have to pay for their damn brats, then stop sending money to foreign pissholes like Africa. Then, and here's something I doubt our politicians have thought of, cut the pork and figure out a way to penalize companies who ship our jobs overseas. Oh, and instigate a double tax on those who hide money overseas in tax havens. I know it's their money, but they should be paying their rightful share if they advocate it to others.
Sounds like it comes right out of the Liberal handbook.
Well yeah, that's exactly what it is. And it's a regressive tax at that, a primary effect of which is to make it much harder for low-income workers to save anything.
And where would they get the cash for the lump sum? Steal it from someone else?
Ditto. They can keep every penny I've put into SS for the past 9 years (I'm only a lowly 27 year old so perhaps my opinion has little merit). Let me invest the money I make in real estate, adult stem cell technology and funeral homes; I think I'll do fine without SS.
It seems obvious to me that cutting benefits is much better than raising taxes or increasing deficit spending. And as a practical matter, you're not going to be able to cut benefits for those for whom SS is their only source of income. Ergo, means testing.
As I said, "More debt would fund the payments, which is the cost of the 'reorg'".
There would be no future, additional obligation to those who have (wisely) taken the lump sum payment. And they would stop paying SS taxes, leaving them free to save and invest more on their own.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
The workers are still there only now they are in China. If Clinton-Bush had not exported the jobs for the workers, the ratio would be in good shape. The answer is put to a SS tax on imports.
I have thought that the SS system was a joke since I was in middle school lo the many moons ago. If a kid in junior high can see that it is a joke, then the emperor truly has no clothes.
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