Blame FDR and the "New Deal".
Posted on 10/14/2012 3:34:55 PM PDT by Publius804
The Economist ominously reports:
The struggle to digest the swollen generation of ageing baby-boomers threatens to strangle economic growth. As the nature and scale of the problem become clear, a showdown between the generations may be inevitable.
The statistics are frightening:
The average federal tax rate for a median American household, including income and payroll taxes, dropped from more than 18% in 1981 to just over 11% in 2011. Yet sensible tax reforms left less revenue for the generous benefits boomers have continued to vote themselves, such as a prescription-drug benefit paired with inadequate premiums. Deficits exploded. Erick Eschker, an economist at Humboldt State University, reckons that each American born in 1945 can expect nearly $2.2m in lifetime net transfers from the state—more than any previous cohort.
Boomers’ sponging may well outstrip that of younger generations as well. A study by the International Monetary Fund in 2011 compared the tax bills of a cohort’s members over their lifetime with the value of the benefits that they are forecast to receive. The boomers are leaving a huge bill. Those aged 65 in 2010 may receive $333 billion more in benefits than they pay in taxes (see chart), an obligation 17 times larger than that likely to be left by those aged 25.
The Boomers are a powerful, large group of both voters and policymakers:
More worrying is that this generation seems to be able to leverage its size into favourable policy. Governments slashed tax rates in the 1980s to revitalise lagging economies, just as boomers approached their prime earning years.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.the-american-interest.com ...
You are over-simplifying.
What is needed is not just a generational shift. What is needed is a return to AMERICA.
America first.
I’m a boomer. Damn those young!
Yup!
Well that's sure interesting, especially since the baby boom didn't start until 1946.
“The boomers are leaving a huge bill. “
Yeah, but it’s worth it to be rid of us isn’t it?
What a wasted generation. We could have led mankind to the stars instead we chose the iron bowl.
What a deal.
The first time conservative Boomers got a chance was the Republican Revolution of 1994. Those ‘conservatives’ went to Washington DC and started acting like elite RINOs.
You can't blame the rest of us for what has happened.
The Greatest Generation set it up and we've been fighting back ever since.
Good grief! Boomers didn't vote in a prescription-drug benefit. Our dolt of a president and Congress did this to us.
This class warfare is no more flattering when well-meaning people on the right stoop to it.
Yes we need to address the issue of government handouts, and returning things to the private sector is the way to go. And studies on longevity reveal that it only takes about 20 years for senior programs to be completely swapped out.
That's what we should focus on.
Under the right replacement program, we could have a significant reduction on the cost of seniors on federal programs in ten years. Let's get on with it.
Sorry. Iron bowl is what?
I, card-carrying member of the Boomer generation, remember clearly the wailing and the gnashing of teeth in the early seventies by the media that there weren't enough jobs to go around to employ all the young Boomers entering the workforce.
There was also a great deal of worrying that there weren't enough shares of stock to provide Boomers with investment opportunities for their old age. Their selfish parents held them all.
These people still think there's a pie and we have to divide it. That we might bake another is beyond their ken.
“Iron rice bowl” is the term most frequently used-
Meaning cradle to grave government care of a citizen.
Actually Im thinking more generally of government responsibility for our needs. The epitome of that choice for my generation was abandoning space exploration and settlement to fund the ‘War On Poverty’.
Blame FDR and the "New Deal".
Substitute progressives instead of boomers and the story will fly. Socialism in the US started with the Wilson progressives and continues to today.
I don’t think those on the right espousing “warfare” are well meaning. They are trying to wage a divide, just like their Democratic counterparts.
Younger folks, ready to be truly productive in factories, will find a way to dispose of government/services Baby Boomers, rich from government incomes/revenues, who aren’t self-sufficient or productive. And I’m a Baby Boomer. We’re the Useless, Thieving, Lying, Vain Generation. Oh, and did I say mouthy? More of my peers are mouthy, too. Except for my peers who are prior military service (like me, not really Baby Boomers at heart), my Baby Boomer peers also comprise the most cowardly generation.
[I recently quit smoking and started enjoying the extra grouchiness on top of becoming an old man. Deal with it.]
I agree.
This idea that baby boomers are into using Big Government to line their pockets at the expense of younger generations is contradicticted by just about all the presidential election polling breakdowns I've seen. It's the majority of the younger voters who are supporting the party foolishly advocating continuing Social Security and Medicare as they are, while the majority of the older voters support the party which realistically sees that that demographic trends will inevitably cause the government spigot to run dry unless significant structural change is made to these programs in the near future.
Yes, the major impetus for the start of Social Security in the 1930s was the feeling among the ruling Democrats then that giving seniors a little government handout would cause the elderly to vote for them for years to come.
Democrat politicians have continued to play on this theme up until today, and Obama and Biden are still using it. (Since the 1960s, they have added Medicare to the list of government goodies for the elderly.)
But the only problem is that today's seniors aren't necessarily buying the well-worn Democrat line, as polls now show.
Just stupidly continuing SS and Medicare “as is” is nothing more or less than continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result. (A Democrat talking point that they disavow when it’s convenient.) BREAD & CIRCUSES & CAKES & JELLYROLLS.
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