"No Soylent Green Soup For You! "
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.
Pay retirees to kill themselves, a program she calls “transitioning.”
Sounds like Hillary care old people must die
This has got to be a joke.
It is.
Tomorrow morning a bright young 42-year-old and her husband and child, leave on an all-expenses-paid business trip to Dubai to discuss working with people who want her there. She is an excellent maker of wedding cakes and is in high demand. She is being offered very good money to leave for Dubai, where things are tax free.
More and more young entrepreneurs will LEAVE the USA and not pay taxes, retaining the right to return when they are older or if things go bad overseas. In the meantime the ridiculous taxes paid here, will not be paid by them.
A far better way to solve the problem would be incentives for boomers to work until they are 70 (or older). Most boomers got through public schools before they we dumbed down with political correctness and, as a result, can run circles around their modern-day counterparts when it comes to reading, writing and math.
We're constantly told we must import the third world due to our coming labor shortage. We wouldn't if boomers could stay in the workforce longer. And maybe some of the people collecting welfare checks could pick vegetables and clean hotel rooms.
But the US taxes foreign income. How could you avoid paying US taxes, if you retain your US citizenship? If you don't retain US citizenship, how do you maintain a right to return?
These 20-somethings can thank the Democrat Party and AARP for their future problems. Pres. Bush tried to do something about it, and those fool dems chained themselves to the statue of FDR - both figuratively and literally. So, suck it up, 20-somethings, until you learn how to vote and can come up with a plan to deal with this.
Sounds like Hillary care old people must die
...
A lot? LOL, more like “all of”.
Thanks Wilson. Thanks FDR. Thanks Johnson.
I think we should outsource the problem. Ship the poor and infirm to china or vietnam where the can receive decent care at a very low price.
Needs an X-er ping.
It is a joke, sort of. It's from a satirical novel by William F. Buckley's son Christopher. Read the article.
Why can’t anybody read the article before becoming hysterical and commenting?
You forgot to thank the president who added drug coverage to the already financially unsound Medicare program.
"No Soylent Green Soup For You! "
He pulled one of the greatest pranks against the MSM ever. In 1991, while at Forbes FYI, he faxed out a press release that the Russian government was so desparate for cash that they were auctioning off Lenin's body. ABC bit on it and Peter Jennings reported it on the news.
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