Rock the Vote Is Stuck in a Hard Place ($700k in debt, left with 2 employees)

Kenton, here is my third response to this post (the first and second were zotted for reasons unknown to me):

You have this general message of wanting both of us to engage in decorous posting but you put comments in your own that are still demeaning to say the least. To wit:

"Do you guys have some issues you'd like to talk about? Is this hatred you seem to have for people a generation older than you all about your parents? Because when I was your age I had a lot of intergenerational anger too; it's pretty common, actually. You'll outgrow it, don't worry."

That is condescending and patronizing, as if somehow our justified response at being stuck with the check for your generation's retirement is the same as your being an angry teen because your Mommy didn't like your haircut. It's not at all the same. You could get a new haircut when you turned 21 and you were out from under Mommy's thumb. If things go the way you want, we will have to pay taxes for the rest of our lives to retire the debt with which your generation and its predecessor have saddled us. Let me repeat it again (and place the words in proper context), and you can refute it if you want, but don't try to make it out as some sort of heated rhetoric simply because it's rhetoric you can't refute:

"The Silent and Boomer generations have already taken more from the country through mob government's munificence than those generations could possibly have contributed through umpteen years of donations, spending government money they don't have on their families and kids or worse, on assuaging their guilt through silly entitlement programs. Now, they are claiming money they have already spent, money that will have to come from their kids' pockets. Debtors in the U.S. aren't allowed to pass bills to their children, unless it's government debt, of course. It isn't whining to say that it's wrong to force innocents to pay for their guilty parents' debts. So no matter who says "Social Security" sucks, since it does the same thing, to say that it sucks is not whining. It is truth. If you have redefined truth as whining, DU has a signin screen with your name on it. That you were molested or shot doesn't give you the right to go molest or shoot someone. Stealing from others because your parents ripped you off is still wrong."

It is just as unfair to put children in a position that forces them to pay their parents' debts to a bank, corporation, or landlord, as it is to put children in a position where they are forced to pay for their parents' debts to a government--and yes, you are a guilty Boomer or Silent Generation member if you perpetuate or encourage such a system in the quest to maintain your own crack at senior welfare benefits, and your kids' interests at a fair shake be damned. If that is untrue, say it, and say how, but do not tell me that I am promoting 'intragenerational strife' by calling out the blameworthy. In post-WWII Germany American troops yanked German townspeople into the Jewish death camps and made those townspeople bury the dead because the towns near the camps at the very least knew or should have known of the Holocaust. Social Security is not remotely a Holocaust--but paying for it will entail a coming era of economic depression which will make the 30s look like a trip to Coney Island. You and your generation have voted in the Congress and the President for years, and have had every opportunity to shoulder at least some of the burden, but instead your elected representatives have foisted upon us that burden to deal with entirely on our own. You knew, or should have known, to stop this shameful practice. If you are not collectively guilty for the stultifying tax rates and inevitable apple-selling sure to come, after accepting the benefits knowing the price paid by others for it, then who is culpable? Was it wrong to herd the German townspeople into the camps, or is it wrong to herd you in with the members of your generation who continue urging me and my children into the Third World?

Another comment of yours with which I take umbrage:

"I am glad to see that you are taking your future seriously at your age, but I truly hope that means privately investing for your future NOW, not just complaining about Social Security."

I am posting about Social Security as it exists because I have a very good reason to--the way things are proceeding, paying off government debts due to overpromising entitlements will cripple my own AND my kids income stream and bleed my chances of paying for my own retirement. And I don't mean I'll be hamstrung and leeched by the silly SSI withholding, but by the huge tax increase that will inevitably fall on the generations succeeding yours if things do not change. To call that 'complaining' is more Rat-ish language twisting. Might as well call me 'angry' or 'divisive,' too, as long as you don't actually say I'm lying--because you know I'm not. It IS injustice to do to people what the generations soon to retire or already retired have done to America, and to accuse the generations that follow you of having some sort of anti-oldster agenda or 'complaining' simply because we have a self-interest to go along with an interest in setting things right, while you have simply an interest in maintaining the unjust Ponzi scheme, well, that is just distraction and projection. If there's an agenda here that is in opposition to any one age group, it's in the playbooks of the people promoting the preservation of this redistributionism, who obviously have as their agenda screwing their kids and their kids' kids after they die.

"when I paid that money into Social Security, it wasn't a gift, it was a loan, a social insurance policy, and I just expect it to be repaid...nobody has the moral right to expect that just because the contract is maturing, that one of the contracting parties could simply renege on their part of the contract...cancel it tomorrow, if you are willing to ensure that the money I have loaned the country over the years is repaid...if in doing that, you are willing to "write off" what you've already paid into it, that's your choice, but it's not one you can make for me."

Now see, you seize upon this theme that you have a contract or a 'retirement annuity program' or some other immutable God-given RIGHT to your Social Security benefits. But you are simply wrong. Big W. W-rong. The federal judiciary determined in Flemming v. Nestor, waaay back before Social Security got into the deep trouble it's in now, that even in the event you are fully qualified for the bennies you don't have to get them if the gummint decides otherwise. You get Social Security on the sufferance of Uncle Sam, and that's it. That is to say, IT IS AN ENTITLEMENT PROGRAM. It is not a Constitutional mandate of government. It is not a guaranteed income stream. There are no bonds or contract or paper actually indebting the U.S. to you personally. If Congress decided tomorrow to toss every senior to the curb by slashing your benefits, it would be just as justified in doing so as it was to slim eligibility for Pell Grants to practically nil, as it was to increase flexibility in state guidelines for welfare recipient, as it is in passing new borrowing plans every twenty seconds.

Now, you may aver that it is 'reasonable' for you to want money that doesn't belong to you because you lost money that DID belong to you to the tax man, but it's not reasonable or just at all. What you're doing is transferring your anger at the people who deserve it onto your kids. You got screwed and have no way to pay back the people who do deserve the payback. It's like frat boys hazing new pledges to get even with the now-graduated brothers who hazed them--except, of course, pledges can decide to stop pledging, and most folks won't stop paying taxes, and most folks think we can't stop paying you.

Of course, some of us WILL stop paying taxes, and many of us will try to stop paying you, and that is what you really ought to be worried about. There is simply no way that people with any other option will freely accept the taxation levels necessary to pay for the benefits you feel you deserve for long, no matter the bureaucracy in place assuming such. And never mind your assertions to the contrary, we CAN make the decision to lower your benefits, and you'd do better to assume we will, too, after enough of you die off, instead of assuming the gravy train will continue rolling and we'll acquiesce to the continuing party at the home. That would be 'reasonable' for us, and justice for us and our kids, AND for you, whether your self-interest blinds you to it or not.

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