Fold.
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.
“Want people to wake up? Point out that sports are a dangerous, addictive product marketed to children and get them banned. That ought to do it.”
Excellent Point!!!
“what the H do people want from us....
you better believe we will take whatever SS benefit there is....we deserve it.”
We want the same thing you want. Free stuff back from our outrageous taxes.
However, most X’ers are quite clear on the fact that not only are we not going to ever see a dime of the social security taxes you’re soaking out of us, to think because the government has told us we’re to receive something means we *deserve* it is innane.
You guys amaze me. We’re in the exact same position you are, but you *deserve* our money. Fantastic.
It’s people.
Hate to tell you this, but I'm 46, and the government already decided "no social security for you" until I'm 68.
But the government is already working to solve this problem. It's been going on since the Clinton Admin. They simply understate the real rate of inflation, and COLA adjustments don't keep up with actual inflation as a result.
Over the course of 20-30 years, this achieves negative compounding so that benefits will be about 60 percent of their real 1990 equivalent amount.
And that's about what SS tax revenues will cover come 2030 or so.
This Gen-X'er says it sure is.
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Yeah? What are you going to do?
I believe Americans are supposed to file tax returns on foreign earnings, even when living abroad. Failure to do so might make returning in the future a dicey proposition.
Fold.
This is the issue that is subordinate to only one other issue which is tax reform.
The road to serfdom is laid out by the private interests behind the ‘Federal’ Reserve.
Here’s a must see internet film: (you need a high-speed connection)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4312730277175242198
A friend of mine once joked that our elderly could live better for less in Mexico. He quipped “We should outsource our seniors to Mexico!”.
This is interesting. I take it that many Jones's watched in horror as the sixties happened and rejected most of the Boomer ideology out of hand.
We have also been known as "Reagan Youth" and "The Generation that should have gone to Vietnam" by our older Boomer detractors.
Much of our professional career has been spent in organizations where we are trapped behind "the bulge in the python" generation leaders who have poor skills, outdated ideology and boundless arrogance.
Much of the internet-era technology has been either created or popularized by Jones'ers.
And we will be the first to be screwed by Boomers failed politics, if many of the more pessimistic projections are correct
And we know it.
I feel you pain. But that doesn't address the issue. Your feeling of entitlment, however valid, does not mean there is money there to give you in the future.
In my opinion, what anyone deserves from Social Security is: their investment in it + compounded interest at the prevailing rates over the lifetime of the investment.
A just solution would be to calculate this for every person in the USA (who has not retired) and give it to them as either a bulk sum, or allow them to purchase an annuity with it. Of course those who have worked only the minimum (and there are lots of oldster scammers out there who spent 30 years dodging taxes doing off-the-books work who go work the 20 quarters at the end of their life to get the minimum SSI benefit who would get far, far less under this plan. Not to mention all the 'disabled' people who put nothing in and take tons out)... this plan ends SSI as a goodies bag for all these people.
You've been laid off 4 times! Did they fire everyone or just some? Wonder why your name was on the list (4 times!)?
Maybe you should have prepared yourself a little better.
Not only does he lay out all of this in detail, he suggests practical investment strategies to do the best you can. For instance tax deffered accounts are not-so-great because future tax rates are going to be higher, and the accounts are an obvious target for future cash-starved politicians.
This book is well worth the $20.
Having a company pension wiped out is a terrible thing, no doubt. It has happened a lot in the past, including the recent past.
What is the governments responsibility to you when you pension is wiped out? You made a contract with an individual or company who failed to keep it. Other than allowing you to sue them, what should the government do for you now that you have suffered this loss.
My answer is: nothing. Do you object to that? Why?
And this is what will happen when some other country implements Boortz’ fairtax before America does.
Businesses and talented individuals will drain out of America.
Conversely, if we implement it first, talent and business will be beating down the doors to come here.
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Your question makes no sense in relation to my post.
U.S. citizens owe federal taxes on income earned anywhere in the world.
Anybody who retires at 62 to play golf and drink gin and tonic, has more going for him than a social security check.
Why should I want to stay here and witness a bunch of rabid dogs drool over what I have managed to accumulate and try to figure out a new way every week to steal it from me via taxes? "Ship me my SS check till it runs out and screw you all very much" he said as he stepped onto the plane.
Right. And the speed limit in suburbs is 25 mph, it is illegal to download mp3s, the legal drinking age is 21, and smoking marijuana is against the law......, oh yeah, it is a crime not to declare all of your income if you are self employed.
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