Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner.
For more information read:
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Posted on 10/08/2012 8:11:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Retirees and near-retirees are leaving behind a devastated economy for their children ... but are we doing anything to fix it? Here, two generations debate who's really to blame for the wreckage.
*****
CRESCENT LAKE, Ore.--My father taught me how to throw a baseball and divide big numbers in my head and build a life where I'd be home in time to eat dinner with my kid most nights. He and my mother put me through college and urged me to follow my dreams. He never complained when I entered a field even less respected than his. He lives across the country and still calls just to check in and say he loves me.
His name is Tom. He is 63, tall and lean, a contracts lawyer in a small Oregon town. A few wisps of hair still reach across his scalp. The moustache I have never seen him without has faded from deep brown to silver. The puns he tormented my younger brother and me with throughout our childhood have evolved, improbably, into the funniest jokes my 6-year-old son has ever heard. I love my dad fiercely, even though he's beaten me in every argument we've ever had except two, and even though he is, statistically and generationally speaking, a parasite.
This is the charge I've leveled against him on a summer day in our Pacific Northwest vision of paradise. I have asked my favorite attorney to represent a very troublesome client, the entire baby-boom generation, in what should be a slam-dunk trial--for me. On behalf of future generations, I am accusing him and all the other parasites his age of breaking the sacred bargain that every American generation will pass a better country on to its children than the one it inherited.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
“The economy was destroyed by the Dems attempt to make home ownership an entitlement.”
The concept of home ownership for all dates back to the settlement of the colonies and frontier; there was land for all, and subsequent homesteading laws would transfer ownership to people who would settle and work land.
Without home ownership, you end up with too many people with no stake in an area/town/state; it is a noble goal, though it has been applied in bad ways.
As for blaming generations, I think if the boomers’ children preferred new babies over new cars we’d be in better shape; we are importing whole cultures to replace the “Americans” that will never be born.
Boomers didn't give us the "Great Society." None of them could even vote for LBJ. Only the oldest boomers voted for Bobby Kennedy in 68 or McGovern in 72. It wasn't until the 82 midterms when all of the boomers could even vote.
Not every boomer was a hippie. Boomers gave us Reagan, and also Clinton. Some of them gave us Osama (although that's more split), but the older millennials (Younger ones haven't voted yet) are the most guilty of giving us that clown.
I went to this guys Urban center website, and took a look at his info...
Based upon income data, most will take out more than they put in...
However, there is 1 category, what they call high wage ( couple making more than 75K ) that in 2020 retirement, will have paid in more than they will get out..
I fall into this category...
So, I am not a parasite, but I get to call the ones that say I am a parasite, a greedy leech that wants something for nothing, and willing to take away from the payers to give to the non payers...
Ha!!!!
There is a deeper truth behind these charts.
What happened to the boomers? To varying degrees they were subjected to an educational system, purposely corrupted by Cultural Marxism. The political class was subjected to it much earlier than the rest.
There is no recognition of the hundreds of billions illegals cost NET each year.
There is no recognition of the $20,000 NET per each immigrant household who works at low wages cost each year.
There is no recognition of $~71,000 million blown annually on foreign aid to those who hate us regardless.
There is no recognition of $~25,000 million blown annually on the DOE.
There is no recognition of $~46,000 million blown annually on the HUD.
There is not mention of the $~10,000 million blown annually on the EPA.
There is no mention of the $900 Billion in easily identified medicare/medicaid fraud that IBM offered to fix for free. The offer was rejected more than once.
yada, yada, yada
Nor any recognition of the damage done to our economy and job opportunities by the so-called ‘Free Trade’ agreements that up to recently were somewhat hidden by enhanced government statistics and access to cheap credit.
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_22_4/tsc_22_4_fletcher.shtml
Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner.
For more information read:
After reading the article, I have a strong desire to take a tire iron to both these pricks.
The author of this story is so full of crap on so many levals it’s unbelievable.There are many reasons the economy of this country has been destroyed and being a baby boomer has nothing to do with it.
I,a baby boomer have worked all of my life and have gotten ZIP from the Federal Government as have a large portion of the other FReepers here.
What destroyed this country is the uncontrolled immigration from the third world.People who can barely add one plus one together coming here and immediately requiring social services and creating huge families that required new schools to support them.
Then there’s all of the welfare going to these third world cess pools in the billions of dollars that we’re borrowing from the Chinese.
I could continue on and on but I’d be here all day.
The boomers had nothing to do with this disaster.Their Government did.Though the boomers will be the ones who will be paying for it in the end thanks to Obama.
bkmk
Let’s get ready to rumble ping....
BTTT. You beat me to it.
The lies, spin, and errors of omission here are too numerous to point out and refute individually. But you don’t have to get very far into the column for the clues to emerge that the author is a Democrat “blame-America-first” scumbag who, mainly, thinks taxes should be (much) higher and that people who worked all their lives and dumped half their paychecks down the government toilet - - rather than the welfare bums, deadbeats, and parasites who comprise his party’s “base” - - are the “parasites”.
The author’s father is apparently a liberal Democrat scumbag, too, and he essentially agrees that yeah, his generation, the “baby boomers”, is a bunch of parasites but, hey, so was the previous generation, the so-called “greatest generation”.
You can bet the author is just another Democrat punk who pushes the false dichotomy that Americans are confused schizophrenics who want lots of government “services” but “don’t want to pay for them”. It’s a con job. A lie.
The people who demand all the “services” and “free” money from government are NOT the hard-working, traditional American families who pay all the taxes. And the hard-working, traditional American families who pay all the taxes are NOT the bums, deadbeats, and parasites who exchange their votes for “free” stuff from Democrat politicians. These are two separate and distinct groups of people. One group is the Republican “base” and the other is the Democrat “base”.
“The Greatest Generation was all for the too-good-to-be-true transfer of wealth that was the SS/Medicare Ponzi scheme.”
Social security is fully funded for the next twenty years or so. It has paid hundreds of billions in excess for the last twenty years, since Reagan raised the contributions to “save” the program. It is not a Ponzi scheme. Medicare is a problem because medical costs have risen far faster than anyone could reasonably have anticipated. Still, if you eliminated both programs, and the payroll taxes that fund them, the government would continue to run a massive deficit. The problem is not that SS/Medicare is a Ponzi scheme—it’s the the whole of government is a Ponzi scheme. We’ve been promised we can have what we want (most recently, two wars in the Middle East and free prescription drugs for seniors) without having to pay for them. And who keeps voting for the politicians that promise us that we can have more from the government and cut our taxes as well? We do. No one wants to do the math.
Credit is just a concept. It people’s misuse of credit that is the problem.
Lovely Alinsky tactics here. Divide and conquer works.
The biggest federal budget problem by far is Medicare, and SS is only fine for the next 20 years because it is handing out today donations that are supposed to be funding retirements 40 to 60 years into the future. That is exactly how a Ponzi scheme works.
Also, medical costs have risen so fast precisely because half of our system is socialized without even the watchdog capabilities of private sector third- or fourth-party payers.
The money the Boomers paid in to SS over the past 40 years was used for their parents while the Boomers will probably see the money in SS run out in their own lifetime. At least we got something for the money we paid in and our parents were able to benefit from it.
freepers are so daft as a rule...God love them
do most even know the ages of the folks who really voted in the entitlements in the 1960s in Congress?
a fair amount were actually born in the very late 1800s or pre WWI and many were pre WWII generation...possibly a majority
there is blame to spread everywhere to be honest
what we have now are the first coming on line who actually have paid Medicare premiums their whole life and would-should-could get the benefit of that
one stat that the yutes here never like to self examine is that that under 35 kids today are markedly even more liberal than the same group in that detested hippie era
anyone can look up voting by age in 1972 and compare to 2008
that bodes even worse down the road
any generation tends to get more conservative with age overall..we can cross out fingers
Who destroyed the economy. Stupid question. Simple answer: liberals.
I've seen this up close and personal with my parents and in-laws. I don't begrudge them, it's the system. But longevity has also added extra costs. My FIL immigrated here (legally) worked from the age of 50-65, while paying into SS and Medicare, retired at 65 and lived to be 93, all the while collecting SS and using Medicare (he was a pretty healthy guy, so his Medicare usage was minimal until the end.) The outpay compared to the inpay must have been huge. The system was/is broken.
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