Posted on 11/10/2005 1:22:46 PM PST by qam1
America should prepare for a big fat war between the generations. It’s going to be ugly.
On one side is the baby boom generation, which retires and claims a ton of government benefits. On the other are younger workers, forced to fund those benefits plus pay the bills their elders left them.
When the war comes, the Federal Reserve chairman will have to be a general. That person will likely be Bush nominee Ben Bernanke. The question is, for which side will he fight?
Outgoing Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tried to represent both sides. He supported the Bush tax cuts.
This gave comfort to today’s taxpayers, who chose not to charge themselves for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the new Medicare drug benefit and the quarter-billion-dollar bridge to nowhere.
Last spring, Greenspan did service for the other side. “I fear that we may have already committed more physical resources to the baby boom generation in its retirement years than our economy has the capacity to deliver,” he said.
One solution would be to ramp-up means-testing for Medicare, the health insurance plan for the elderly. Greenspan would reconfigure the program “to be relatively generous to the poor and stingy to the rich.”
The political reality is that the baby boom generation expects to see the nice government handouts its retired parents enjoyed, and then some. Younger workers expect to be taxed at today’s lower rates. One group will be very disappointed — or perhaps both groups — because there is no way the Candyland economics of today can go on.
The whole alarming future is nicely mapped out in a book, “The Coming Generational Storm,” by Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, a personal-finance columnist at The Dallas Morning News.
Kotlikoff and Burns clearly sympathize with younger Americans and Americans not yet born, who will be paying both our bills and their own. “Does it feel better,” the authors write, “if those unknown victims of our rapacity are someone else’s children and the children of those children and the children of those children of those children?”
Sounds like war to me. Kotlikoff and Burns try to be meticulously nonpartisan, but I won’t. Though the irresponsible policymaking spanned decades, today’s mad deficits rush us closer to disaster. Democrats are not shy about pushing for retiree benefits, but at least they consider raising taxes to pay for them. Not the current crowd, whose spend-and-borrow strategy is the 1919 Versailles Treaty of this-century America: an unstable setup that guarantees future conflict.
The scam is that the tax cuts are not really wiping the nation’s slate clean of tax obligations. When spending exceeds tax revenues, the difference must be borrowed. That debt does not disappear. It gets paid for, with interest, by someone’s taxes. So the Bush cuts simply move the taxes from one generation of shoulders to another.
Bernanke would certainly come to the Fed job with good credentials. Head of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, he formerly chaired the Princeton economics department. Bernanke seems OK, but other candidates were more upfront about deficits.
One was Martin Feldstein, President Ronald Reagan’s top economic adviser. Feldstein drew flak for criticizing the Reagan deficits. The Bush White House wouldn’t want to hear that kind of thing. Anyway, there’s no need to worry about making ends meet when you can use the next generation’s credit card.
Another Republican contender for the Fed job was Larry Lindsey. He was fired as a Bush adviser in 2002, after predicting that the war in Iraq would cost up to $200 billion, a figure already passed. Lindsey did not understand: One simply does not talk price in the Bush administration.
Given the president’s tendency to give top jobs to those closest, we can give thanks that he did not nominate his banker brother. Neil Bush played a major role in the Silverado Savings & Loan fiasco of the 1980s, which cost taxpayers $1 billion.
Or perhaps the president was doing the big-brotherly thing in protecting Neil from a job sure to be filled with strife.
The person who heads the Fed in the next decade will be trying to steer the nation through the perfect economic storm. Good luck to the new chairman, and to all the generations.
As it was, the Soviets sensed weakness when we didn't leave a few divisions behind to buttress the South and sensing that weakness they spread their wings in South America where we are still dealing with marixist assholes like Chavez.
A proper war for good reasons is fine.
There is a war, the winner dictates terms of surrender.
LBJ was caught in a quandry trying to calm the American public by the deaths happening daily in Vietnam, while having to address the troops Gen Westmoreland was asking for on the ground.
Great Society, 50,000 plus dead in a war Johnson never intended winning, Abe Fortas and Thurgood Marshall to SCOTUS, untold liberals to lesser courts.
Yeah, he was a lefty and the most despicable man ever to occupy the oval office.
Politically, the toll of Vietnam is also evident in path of public support for President Johnson from January 1965 through the end of December in 1968. The mounting casualties, along with domestic unrest, had a most corrosive impact on the president's support. In retirement, LBJ spoke of this. He referred to his Great Society program as a "beautiful woman" and noted that she was gradually replaced by the "bitch" that was the Vietnam War.
Imagine that little summary of social security taxes collected over the past 30 years and adjust those dollars for the present value of that money. It would be an enormous sum. Sadly, that money was spent after it was collected. It is just a record keeping entry in a phoney government ledger. No interest will be paid. It is unlikely that we will ever even see a repayment of the principal.
I'm 49 and my situation is exactly the same. No pension. I've paid into social security since taking my first job in 1973 washing dishes at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour. My house is paid for. I've contributed to employer sponsored defined contribution plans since 1980. My investments are mostly in company stock and real estate.
When I'm ready to back off of 60 to 70 hour weeks doing mind numbing volumes of software and hardware development work, then I'll entertain a return to teaching computer science and electronics. The local university is hurting for teaching talent that has any practical experience in either discipline.
Tell it to Johnson and McNamara, when you get to the River Styx, just pick up the phone on this side.
We have a few kids in their 20's on my current DoD project. Most of us are 45 to 65 years old and putting in long hours including time on military combat aircraft to test our work.
Some of my co-workers were sent to Iraq/Kuwait for the first Desert Storm activity. Civilian DoD contractors training no less that Gen Schwarzkopf in how to use our battle theater modeling software.
When I'm not doing DoD work, I have another line of business building specialized software for the railroads. Detroit keeps me busy doing special electronic packages too. There's not enough hours in the day to cover all the demand. I try to get 5 hours sleep each night when circumstances permit. Tonight has been a big "screw off" night since all my software deliverables are completed for the Monday activities and the government people are taking Veteran's Day off.
The media and the anti-war activists who created that political pressure sure were lefties. Did I say LBJ and McNamara? I'm talking about the folks who used the war as an excuse to campaign against their country, those who collaborated with the enemy.
Not all Anti-War Protestors were 'Lefties" my parents were cnservative and my dad who was a World War11 Vet and did not want my brother going into that war.
The country was divided because of Politicians and young people rejected the ideas of those Politicans, had we been attacked by the enemy then, those Young Anti-War Protestors would be the ones fighting for our country.
I lived in a neighborhood with a kid few years older than I who was happy go lucky wanted to got to College instead he was drafted into the Marines came back home a heroin addict and depressed it was awful...
I was born in '78. In general (and I am generalizing greatly here), the Boomers have been the most selfish generation of self-indulgent scum-suckers in the history of the planet. In their old age they shall become the ultimate generation of welfare queens, which makes perfect sense.
On the other hand, Generations X (us) and Y have not taken as active a hand in screwing up the planet as our parents did, simply because we're too dumb and lazy to. Ours are generations for which war is some strange, distant thing that a volunteer military fights on TV. Depression is a thing for which we have shrinks prescribe us medications. Work is a thing for which we expect six-figure salaries while whining and complaining about having to devote any more than 25 hours a week to it. "Sacrifice" for us is having to choose between buying Grand Theft Auto XXIII for our XBoxes and outfitting the jacked-up new cars our parents bought us with the latest model of obnoxious bass speakers through which to blare the shitty, atonal crap we call music. (Even the Boomers at least had music going for them.)
We have nothing in common with our grandparents.
-Dan
Why not stop ALL social entitlement programs spending until the debt is repaid. Spend only money authorized by the Constitution for the defense of the country from foreign aggressors. There is no need to steal money and redistribute it to those who have not earned it. Correct the wrong headed legislation that started the socialist behavior in the beginning.
If we're going back to 16, then I have to toss in 30+ hours per week at Farrells. No work permit. It didn't occur to me to ask permission to work. I graduated UCSD at 19.
Returning to the topic of the thread, social security is a money confiscating scam operated by the politicians to give themselves extra spending money beyond the obligatory monthly payout. In 2018, the money collected equals the obligatory payout. No surplus for politicians to spend as they see fit. As time goes forward, the obligation exceeds the income due to massive reductions in the work force. It is a program that just needs to be ended.
You are historically challenged...again. The social security scam was created during the FDR era. I wasn't born until 1956...well after FDR was dead. My very first opportunity to vote didn't happen until 1974. The social security scam was instituted long before I had any opportunity to participate in the political process.
You're not evil. It was a very noisy minority that caused the Boomer Revolt. It's going to be hard for my generation to remember that and to fight for our elderly when the time comes, but I pray that there are enough of us to do so.
I'm 35, filled with angst against the Boomer mess, but not stupid enough to think that *all* of you were in on this. It was the fault of Commie Agent Provocateurs on college campuses that caused most of the issues we're left to clean up. Most of those in your generation who went along with it were just dumb kids at the time. I was once a dumb Commie kid myself. How can I blame you're generation for falling into the same trap I did?
Sadly, you guys are going to have to rely on the few of us Gen Xers and the Rush kids who figured this out early. You may be fortunate that we're a crude, vicious bunch if ever we must protect our vulnerable elderly from the "compassionate" left.
Just how old were the judges who made that decision in 1973? From what generation did they hail? Certainly not baby boomers.
--and loving it.
Would you please tell me more... via FReepMail? (I *was* thinking about Mexico, but I'm always open to alternatives.)
Have you considered seeking psychiatric help?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.