Posted on 12/26/2006 3:44:13 PM PST by qam1
Continuing our coverage of the next generation of seniors, this one is for the kids - men and women in their 40s or 50s.
They are our grown children, most of whom have not known privation, economic depression, a world without television or what it was like in a country that was truly at war to save democracy.
In short, it's for a generation with little or no memory of what came before. As my late colleague Lars-Erik Nelson once wrote, few of these people "can imagine why there was ever a need for Social Security, Medicare, the GI Bill, federal wage and hours laws, a federally underwritten welfare program, environmental protection, affirmative action, banking and security regulation, consumer protection and public defenders."
Maybe because this busy, ambitious generation knows little about what life was like before those protective acts of the federal government, there has been only a shrug when these laws have been ignored, weakened or allowed to die. In the past decade or so, the nation seems to have turned again to Calvin Coolidge's nostrum that "the business of America is business."
According to several polls and studies, says AARP's policy director John Rother, many adult Americans younger than 50 have little regard for the federal government and almost no knowledge about its most basic social programs, Social Security and Medicare.
"They are busy with their own lives, and they rarely speak to their parents about their finances to learn how they depend on these programs," Rother told me. "They don't think about these things until they're 64. But they ought to, or these benefits could disappear."
Social Security and Medicare are seen as benefits for "old people" and seem far removed from their lives, says Rother. The men and women of Generation X...........
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
This guy claims that the younger generations (in this case the late Baby Boomers & Gen-x) are too spoiled and being tricked by the media, so we don't appriciate all these wonderful federal government programs that we are being forced to pay for.
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 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.
Good news if the next generation is willing to pull the plug on these kind of unconstitutional programs.
I prefer to think of the boomers as the generation that discovered everything and learned nothing. Everything references back upon themselves. (And yes, I am one)
"The jest of it..."
You might have meant "the gist of it", but the jest will be on those who depend on the gubmint to take care of them from the cradle to the grave.
There are only two kinds of people: those who divide everybody into two groups and those who don't. I can see that you and I are of the former.
The generation that had everything handed to them wants the next generation to keep paying for their gravy train? I'll pass, thanks.
Thanks, I think.....
"I prefer to think of the boomers as the generation that discovered everything and learned nothing"
I think of them as our last educated, patriotic generation.
The teacher's union didn't really gain control until the late 60s, which since then we have seen a dumbing down of America, and more than seven million Americans men enlisted in the military between 1960 and 1975, with another two million serving through the draft.
Good points, but the influence seems to be weighted by those who were radicalized and made the "long march" up through government and academia.
Federal wages and hours? WTF is that? I get paid on salary, and I work until my work is done. The whole "wages and hours" crap is utter rubbish.
Dump social security now. End it today. No more payments.
When you hit age 65, the socialist federal government sends you a check for every penny you paid in. Then you get no more, not a cent. Invest it, go to las vegas, give it away to your favorite charity. It's yours.
How to pay for it? Sell the socialist federal forests. There's 193 million acres the feds have no business owning. Sell the trees first and then the land, as needed. Year after year until everyone who paid into the ponzi scam is paid off.
"Good points, but the influence seems to be weighted by those who were radicalized and made the "long march" up through government and academia."
Yes it is, Something related to this, is that it seems to me like the left has been less successful in their grand destructions in the last 30 years than they were in the 40 years before that.
The left is still there and powerful, but they can't pass the nation destroying legislation that they were, from about 1935 to 1975, or maybe 1913 to 1973.
I resemble that remark!!! Awesome!
I'm 50. NOTHING has been handed to me. I've been paying huge income taxes and maximum social security for 25+ years. I expect to be working and paying the same way for another 15-20 years. The whining about some imaginary "gravy train" is misdirected. I never expect to be able to retire and recover any part of the money I've been "contributing" since 1973.
Especially when they get a load of that 88% tax rate.
Our generation will phase these programs out. the only question is whether we'll rationally privatize them now or slamm on the breaks in panic three decades down the road.
You are wrong, especially since you bring up the military service of the Boomers. The kids going into the military today are smarter, better educated and better soldiers than any we've ever had, and they are patriotic as all get out.
There's nothing wrong with lauding the sacrifice of those brave Boomer men, but most of today's soldiers went through those same public schools and still are, in the words of R. Lee "Gunny" Ermey, "ready to eat their own guts for this country."
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