Posted on 04/10/2007 7:21:00 PM PDT by shrinkermd
Cassandra Devine knows how to solve the coming "entitlements" crisis, preordained when the 77 million baby boomers begin hitting 65 in 2011: Pay retirees to kill themselves, a program she calls "transitioning."
Volunteers could receive a lavish vacation beforehand ("a farewell honeymoon"), courtesy of the government, and their heirs would be spared the estate tax. If only 20% of boomers select suicide before the age of 70, she says, "Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid will be solvent. End of crisis."
OK, Devine is a 29-year-old fictional blogger in Christopher Buckley's satirical novel "Boomsday." Infuriated at the injustices awaiting her generation, she becomes an instant media celebrity with a gift for incendiary rhetoric. "Someone my age will have to spend their entire life paying unfair taxes, just so the Boomers can hit the golf course at 62 and drink gin and tonics until they're 90," she tells one TV reporter.
Her plan, once in cyberspace, incites spontaneous uprisings. In Florida, "several hundred people in their twenties stormed the gates of a retirement community. . . . Residents were assaulted as they played golf."
Buckley, born in 1952, is a boomer himself, and his novel is in the best tradition of Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745 (the writer who once suggested that the Irish relieve a famine by eating their young), of using the absurd to discuss moral outrages. Buckley's comic tale revolves around two truths usually buried in our dreary budget debates.
First, a generational backlash is inevitable. It may not come as attacks on sunbathing retirees, but the idea that younger workers will meekly bear the huge tax increases needed to pay all boomers' promised benefits is delusional. The increases are too steep, and too many boomers — fairly wealthy and healthy — will seem undeserving.
Consider: In 2007, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid constitute 44% of the $2.7 trillion federal budget. To pay all future benefits could (depending on assumptions) easily require tax increases of 30% to 50% by 2030. Many retirees are quite comfortable. About 42% of Americans 65 to 75 have assets (homes, stocks, cash) worth $250,000 or more; 23% have annual incomes exceeding $69,000, says the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Second, boomers will want even more benefits. Buckley imagines them clamoring for subsidies for Botox, grandparent day care and "giant flat-screen plasma TVs (for boomers with deteriorating eyesight)." Their actual demands may be less exotic and more expensive: closing the "doughnut hole" — a gap of coverage — in Medicare's drug benefit; more lenient tax treatment for retirement accounts; more payments for nursing homes.
Out in front will be the 38 million-member AARP, the nation's most powerful interest group. In the past four years, notes National Journal, it's spent $88 million on lobbying. AARP says that in the last election half the voters were older than 50 and a quarter were its members.
AARP's new public-relations campaign (slogan: "Divided We Fail") misleadingly aims to project an unselfish and high-minded image. In practice, it means AARP will support higher government spending for all age groups, which (of course) will increase taxes further for tomorrow's workers.
For example, AARP urges the expansion of SCHIP, a program of health insurance for poor children that, ironically, illustrates the nation's twisted priorities. In 2007, SCHIP will cost $5.7 billion; Social Security and Medicare, $1 trillion. Well, maybe SCHIP should be expanded, but only if — a test of AARP's real commitment — cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits pay for the expansion. A doubling of SCHIP would require cuts of about one half of 1%.
Social Security and Medicare are an essential part of the social fabric. Millions depend on them. But the vast benefits — paid too early and too indiscriminately — have become disconnected from genuine need. Unless the two are reconnected, these successful programs will tear at the social fabric.
It is unfair to blame only baby boomers for not acting pre-emptively to curb the known costs of their retirement. The "greatest generation" bears equal responsibility. Politicians have done nothing, because voters — present and prospective retirees — have wanted them to do nothing.
Still, boomers deserve special disapproval. "Baby Boomers," says Buckley's Devine, "made self-indulgence a virtue." Sure, that's a stereotype, but for opinion leaders and politicians, it is uncomfortably accurate.
Consider Newsweek. It has a regular feature, "The Boomer Files," that celebrates boomer musicians, comedians, sports heroes and TV series. It discusses how boomers are "redefining the 'golden years' " — but not a peep about the costs for their children.
I was born in late 1945 and count myself a part of this failure. In our careless self-absorption, we are committing a political and economic crime against our children and perhaps — when they awaken to their victimization — even ourselves.
“And I do expect to get my SS (maybe I’ll take tango lessons). I paid into it starting in 1970. Maxxed it out in 1Q for twenty years. A deal is a deal. At least to honorable people.”
A deal’s a deal.
Unless you’re naive enough to think any deal the government offers is a deal. That’s the real problem here. The Greatest Generation was duped into believing the government would protect them, and the Boomers, even worse, continue to cling to their entitlements, even though they should know by now it’s a scam.
I hope you enjoy your tango lessons, the ones I won’t be able to afford because I’m paying for yours. I hope you enjoy them A GREAT DEAL.
“I’ve got my 401(k) maxed out, have a Roth going, and every month, like clockwork, I drive over to the bank and buy a CD (7 months at 5% annual yield, big money). Start now, because, mark my words, Social Security is going away.”
Darn straight. Bonus for me since I’m at a mortgage company where I can give myself my own annuity commissions. However, with the amount I’ve already lost (and I say lost specifically because the money is gone, poof, bye-bye, sayonara) I could have made a down payment on a house by now.
Hello folks, earth to Freepers, no one can provide for your retirement but yourself, government money disappears into politicians’ pet projects as soon as it leaves your paycheck, don’t know why this is a difficult concept....
Excuse me,
Free my a$$, I worked since 1961, excluding Medicare, I've 'contributed' well over $150k to SS. I didn't want to.
Darn right I want something back.
----------------------------------------------------
Thank you so much, I will.
btw...I will use my SS for whatever I want, even Tango lessons, because I don't need it. Why? Because I took care of myself and worked smart with what I had while paying every penny of taxes that was due. You can do the same or you can sit at the curb crying. Not hard to figure which road you'll take.
Tough tooties.
It isn’t there, you spent it as soon as you made it.
Suffer.
No sympathy.
- GenX
There never was a deal.
That was your mistake.
Your second mistake was insisting on deluding yourself after WE TOLD YOU there was no deal.
-GenX
Yes.
You will be “less old” at 70 than Grandpa was at 70.
Please allow me to explain. When the Social Security system was set up, it was set up to pay out only the relatively FEW people who survived to age 65.
Now, there are relatively few people who WILL NOT SURVIVE to age 70.
There never was a deal, FDR gambled that y’all would die before he had to pay out...so he took the money and ran...for his generation and every generation after.
HOWEVER...WE TOLD YOU SO...more than a decade ago.
Exactly.
Just makes me wonder why they want to continue the farce when they know it’s hurting their children and grandchildren.
I sure as hell don’t want it to continue.
Tax poverty and you’ll get less of it.
Most Gen Yers (the most annoying generation since the Boomers) are supporting Obama. FWIW, they can stick their Macs where the sun don’t shine.
So your kids are conservative/libertarian and opposed to taxes and to euthanasia. How would they deal with the issue of poor elderly people who can no longer work?
I’m kinda scared because I’m a poor near-elderly person.
Why would this cause a need for more labor to be imported?
Would Gen Y stop working or something? If they are not willing to work, neither should they eat.
I’ve worked my whole life at or near minimum wage. Am I an improvident dope?
I don’t think there has been government cheese for some years now.
I’ve worked for decades at or near minimum wage. And yes, I paid in the same flat rate taxes for Social Security and Medicare.
So I look at it as getting back some of the money I paid in.
And how much did you expect me to save for retirement after the government got done taxing me?
Looks like the Joneses are primarily the younger boomers who missed out on the top jobs because they were always a few years younger than the older boomers and thus always a few steps behind on the career curve.
I’m looking forward to it (in some other country) because I want to see how the fairtax losers fare.
So far I’m unwilling to enlist my support until I am assured I’m not going to get hosed as badly as I think I will be.
We in the churches owe it to our society to provide for the truly deserving needy folks around us through charity and personal visits, taking care of each other, meals, whatever else that might entail. We’ve fobbed this duty off onto the welfare system and it doesn’t really work.
I sympathize with you. I have multiple myeloma (incurable cancer) and go to the dialysis center three days per week. Thank God for the technology that’s keeping me alive. But it can be hard to be optimistic. I’m still working full time but I don’t know how long I can keep that up. Hopefully long enough to keep my life insurance in force...
I hope you can find a solution to your situation. Can you room with someone?
I will pray for you, FRiend.
Wow, I was anxiously awaiting a reply to that April 11, 2007 post!!!
Thanks!
just funnin’ ya, because your reply was way out of my current context - “when did I say anything about the fairtax recently...”
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