Posted on 08/13/2011 1:13:31 PM PDT by Publius804
Generation Xers and Gen-Yers like me have a hard time showing interest in what goes on in Washington. But we had better end our apathy -- and soon -- or we'll spend the rest of our lives paying for it. Members of the generation that came before us -- the Baby Boomers -- are trying to pull a scam under the guise of "protecting" Social Security. If they succeed, we -- and our children -- will be the poorer for it.
Everyone knows Social Security is in trouble (and President Bush's Commission to Strengthen Social Security released its report on reform yesterday). But few people understand what that trouble is and whom it will affect. Understanding that is the key to understanding the scam.
Right now, Social Security is in great health. This year, like so many before, hundreds of billions of dollars will pour into it from FICA and payroll taxes, and only some will go back out as benefits to retirees. The rest will be exchanged for government bonds, which the federal government will pay back -- with interest -- to Social Security in the coming years.
But things will change in the next decade, when the Boomers will retire and start collecting benefits. By 2016, so many people will be drawing Social Security that the money needed to cover benefits will be more than what we Gen-X/Y workers will be paying in taxes. Fortunately, the program will be able to cash in the bonds that it's now buying, and will use the repaid principle and interest to keep up the benefits
(Excerpt) Read more at cato.org ...
Citizen slaves
20 years! Please!
You honestly believe that blaming young folks is going to make us feel better about righting the ship?
C’mon.
When am I going to get an admission from you that I’m not a liberal but I get tired of cleaning up boomer liberals messes...
Yup. These libs and their Pubbie co-conspiritors will have to collapse the economy before the ruling class can be goaded into action or replaced.Sad.
A 66% voting block will never become majority republican, and that is our under age 33 group, any one that refuses to even acknowledge that is no conservative, and is someone who wants to bury their head in the sand and let it continue unchallenged.
If we can’t make some change in the under 35 year old voter, and the Catholic voters, then we stand no chance at all in this nation.
Horsehockey.
The Boomer voting block dwarfs them.
You are right that the nation will eventually get to the point where the boomers are too small, but that point is over 20 years away.
There are more Boomers than either Xers and Ys, and more Boomer voters than both combined.
Boomers when they got the levers of power got more and more liberal, and continue to trend liberal. That long range trend isn’t likely to change because boomers have no reason to change.
The young folks on the other hand, this is our future that’s getting destroyed. I know many, many young conservatives. You want to know what angers us more than anything else?
The 50 million of us that are not here. 50 million! Think that might have defeated obama if the Boomer generation had actually stepped up and done their duty?
I agree and it starts with us. The notion that talk of politics and religion is taboo in the public sphere is hogwash. Any debased culture trash can be discussed but the two most important things in human relations can’t?
We have become disconnected and losing that social-capital that Alexis De Tocqueville noted about Americans. It was noted by Robert D. Putnam in, Bowling Alone.
IMO, the Church (youth groups) and Boy Scouts are great start.
You really don’t understand, the boomer vote did not elect Obama, and the democrats will never win the boomer vote again, ever, as rare as it was in the first place, this 50/50 split in 2008 was the last the democrats will see that.
The future that you see is the under 45 year old vote that is majority democrat, and the under 35 year old vote that is overwhelmingly, massively democrat.
You can’t seem to get it through your head that Generation Y and Catholic immigration, and the generation after gen. Y guarantees a permanent Democrat future after the older generations shrink in number.
I know that there is a hook, multiple hooks, that we can use to reach these groups to help remove the blinders from their eyes, and for them to look at things from a different angle, we just need to figure out what those hooks are.
Hogwash. The Catholics are not the problem, they are the only folks actually having children and keeping the whole train rolling.
The Boomers were 48/48 with Obama. How are they of any help at all to the preservation of the Republic? They need to shift at least 5 percent for the republicans to have a chance.
That means folks like you, need to actually help us younguns out who’ve never voted for Obama, and we’ll do our best to help you.
But we cannot do it alone. We need the boomers and we need them to repudiate Obama.
Catholics vote majority democrat, as do the under 45 year old voters, and the under 35 year old voters are astonishingly pro democrat, unlike anything that we have ever seen.
You cannot seem to get it through your head who elected Obama, the over 45 year old vote was AGAINST Obama, the under 45 year old vote was FOR Obama, it was by winning the majority of those younger voters that he won, for you to blame it on the groups that did not vote for him, because you want them to vote republican in such huge margins as to overcome that youth vote, is a weird argument and it sure doesn’t address the future which is a democrat population.
Boomers!= over 45 group.
As for Catholics, they voted for Bush.
“because you want them to vote republican in such huge margins as to overcome that youth vote”
Uh, I stated that 55-45 would be sufficient to make Obama unelectable.
You believe that this is wrong of me to expect the Boomer generation to vote 55-45 against Obama in 2012?
Probably because they thought that McCain was too old and they didn’t want to vote for somebody older then them. That’s been the boomer cry since day 1, n’est-ce pas?
.....
Never trust anyone over 65.
Polls are only in agreement of Catholics having voted Republican three times in our history, an additional three times are disputed, 2004 is one of those that is disputed, we do know that Catholics voted against Bush in 2000, and for Obama in 2008. Catholics are a Democrat voting block, and destined to become more so as the over 45 Catholics are replaced by younger ones.
What you don’t understand is that if the under 45 year old vote had been 50/50, or even only slightly pro Obama, then Obama would have lost, instead Obama took the Gen Y vote by 66%.
The race in 2012 will be to see if the older voters can overcome that huge Obama love among the young.
Your constant defense of that 66% Obama vote and your seeming hopes for it’s continued growth in the future is astounding, you actually look forward to that Obama youth vote taking over.
The Boomers have spent the inheritance of wealth their forefathers built up for 200 years, and after that they went on to bankrupt their children and grandchildren by spending their future earnings as well.
They are without a doubt, the worst generation in American history.
He also would have lost if the Boomers had voted 53-42 for McCain.
That’s not a big shift. That’s the point I’m making. A 5 point shift in the boomers changes the whole election.
You are right that Catholics have traditionally been a democrat voting block, but the fact that the two elections in which they have voted republican were in 2000 and 2004, suggests that Catholics are becoming, more not less republican over time.
The opposite is true of the baby boomers. Hence my concern. You forget that the majority of the problems in the Catholic church come from the Ted Kennedy, Vatican II bunch which includes the boomers. They are the Catholics who voted lockstep for the Kennedys, etc.
“Your constant defense of that 66% Obama vote and your seeming hopes for it’s continued growth in the future is astounding, you actually look forward to that Obama youth vote taking over.”
I do, yes, look forward to the young people taking over. They certainly can’t do worse than the Boomers like Obama and co. I’d be thrilled if another boomer president was never elected, but we shall see. We have to take what we can get. I like Cain. He’s a boomer, but he gets it.
So does Bachmann. Palin would be awesome because she’s not a boomer and would do a great job running the country. Perry too. There’s lots of good boomer candidates out there.
Now we just have to hope the Boomers can vote in one of their own.
I would say that the worst of America, the period that destroyed us, was the one from about 1935 to 1975 or 1980, long before the boomers were running anything.
I just told you that Catholics voted against Bush in 2000, and that polls are in dispute for whether they voted for him in 2004, Gallup and the National Election Studies say they didn’t.
Ted Kennedy was not a boomer, nor was any human involved in Vatican II. No boomer ever voted for JFK, Herman Cain is not a boomer, Sarah Palin is a boomer.
Herman was born in ‘45.
Palin in ‘64.
Palin’s not a boomer, but Herman is.
Boomers are born from 1946 to 1964 and including those two years Cain is no boomer and Palin is.
“This chapter discusses the utilization of VA health services by baby boomers (individuals born between 1946 and 1964). Utilization of services was measured within the VA only.” http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/aging/chap9.htm
“Selected Characteristics of BabyBoomers 42 to 60 Years Old in 2006” http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/age/2006%20Baby%20Boomers.pdf
This is what I learned from watching my parents and others in the nursing home - Dying when you are old and in a nursing home is a long slow drawn out process. It is painful, frightening, humiliating and expensive. A huge amount of money is spent on these helpless old people in the last year of their lives.
There are a few ways to deal with this this:
1. Pay for expensive medical care to keep them alive and in less pain. This probably means higher taxes for the next generation.
2. Let them just lay there and suffer.
3. Do what we do for a pet that we love when it comes to the end of it's life and is in pain and doesn't have much longer to live.
You can pick one of these, get mad at me for talking about this, or suggest a 4th possibility.
I loved my mother and father, but as I watched what they were going through I wished it were legal to give them peace like I have done with my pets.
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