Posted on 10/14/2012 8:53:42 PM PDT by Lorianne
The economic legacy left by the baby-boomers is leading to a battle between the generations ___ ANOTHER economic mess looms on the horizon—one with a great wrinkled visage. 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.
After the end of the second world war births surged across the rich world. Britain, Germany and Japan all enjoyed a baby boom, although it peaked in different years. America’s was most pronounced. By 1964 individuals born after the war accounted for 41% of the total population, forming a generation large enough to exert its own political and economic gravity.
These boomers have lived a charmed life, easily topping previous generations in income earned at every age. The sheer heft of the generation created a demographic dividend: a rise in labour supply, reinforced by a surge in the number of working women. Social change favoured it too. Households became smaller, populated with more earners and fewer children. And boomers enjoyed the distinction of being among the best-educated of American generations at a time when the return on education was soaring.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
“Most of us have paid our dues to society all along”
No. That’s the problem boomers DIDN’T fully pay for the services that they expect to receive today.
How do you expect to get the services, particularly Medicare, when there isn’t the money to pay for them, becase boomers expect a free ride on their health care costs?
Medicare users are a primary cause of soaring healthcare costs of younger folks, through cost-shifting onto private health insurance that younger folks increasingly can no longer afford due to rapidly escalating premiums.
Just be honest about that before whining about someone trying to “drag (you) out of (your) wheelchair”
“Enough of this crap! It’s time to lay the blame where it belongs - on government programs that rob us all and pit us against each other. Americans should look in the mirror if they want to see whose at fault. “
Indeed. There is no “fair” way to end government programs that rob us all. So they will continue until they suddenly stop.
This is something no politician of any stripe is willing to tell Americans.
The “third rail” in politics has become any and all government programs.
After working for more than 40 years,I took care of my Dad, and kept him out of a nursing home. I could have been working and socking away additional money for my retirement - Dad would have qualified for Medicaid, but I was raised to believe that family helps family and the government teat is the last resort.
I am still helping my children with financial aid when they are out of work, and free babysitting etc. When I get older, it appears that the government will hang a sign on me: Usless eater, and help hasten my demise so there is plenty of money to give to cronies like Solyndra, studies of cow poop and global-warming, and redistribution to third world cronies in places like Kenya and also places like Egypt.
A pox on all the greedy, dishonest politicians. There are only a handful that are worth anything.
Do you know what the government calls a non sponging Boomer? A cash cow.
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This is pure old BS. Inflation doesn't redistribute anything to the younger generations. Inflation is a huge tax that hurts all Americans, especially the lower and middle income people.
Wages and colas usually don't keep pace with inflation. I am soooo sick of all the lying as if everyone in the USA is so stupid they will believe anything.
Well we may have a lot of stupid people, but there's a lot of us out here that are a whole lot smarter than a bunch of dumb butt elitist bureaucrats, Congress Critters, and Journalists trying to keep us busy fighting each other, so they can use our money to enslave, control, and dictate to us how we can live, eat, and pray.
Social Security is nothing more or less than a social insurance scheme.
This has been ruled on by the Supreme Court as of 1960 in the case Flemming v. Nestor. No one who pays social security taxes has any property right interest in any future benefits that might be paid out. Also, the Congress can alter (increase or decrease) the payouts or eliminate them entirely.
The case arose out of a communist who was being deported back to eastern Europe. He claimed that since he paid into Social Security, he was due a payout on his way out of the country because it was money held in trust for him later on. The SCOTUS said “Sorry, no, Social Security is just a social insurance scheme.”
And that’s the real truth of Social Security.
So is auto insurance. Do you share the same opinion on that?
“Most of us weren’t hippie malcontents.”
Right; and we worked hard, kept our noses clean, and paid taxes to upkeep the grannies and grampas of these people who are now bashing us - for years, and through the nose.
Was this LBJ’s dream? Is it Obama’s dream? CLASS WARFARE and hatred? What a nightmare! - God, please grant me, at 66, to continue to be able to work and hard scrabble enough so my husband (69) and I, can survive. I know how to hard scrabble; but have seen how cross kids get when they don’t have “pizza” every day or have enough money to afford their silly “tats” and cell phones.
Many Boomers are armed and wouldn’t give a crap bout blowing you away if you fk with their future.
The reality is that Medicare is on the verge of complete insolvency, because the government has paid out far, far more for the care of elderly Americans than was paid in to the program by their payroll deductions.
Social Security has a while longer to go but will eventually take the same path.
There is no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube, to unmake the mistakes of the last forty years.
What we have to do now is (1) raise taxes on younger generations, (2) cut benefits for retirees, or (3) reduce payments to doctors and hospitals, which will of course result in fewer services being offered.
Or a combination of all three.
It looks like “they” are polishing up the excuses to wipe out another generation of “parasites”.
And to be fair, just because of the size of the Boomer generation means that we produced more and more and worked our butts off to do it, aka “productive citizens”, also means that the number of parasitical “hippie” types were also more quantitatively.
So what happens to America when the build-up of “grief and denial” occurs to the Generation X, Y and the millenials after they see their parents, grand-parents and other associated relatives “Medically Terminated” when they are no longer considered to be “productive” citizens?
Their analysis is off a bit. Blame the economic problems on LBJ’s great experiment. Generations on the dole. Massive dole, including but not limited to the Obama phone.
Nasty thing to say to her for sure.
The cardiologist for my 95 YO mother in law recommended a pacemaker. She had the surgery and died 6 months later from massive infection thought to have been introduced by a catheter.
Yep. Just because you paid into it for years doesn’t mean that you get anything back. That’s in the terms of the auto insurance policy.
This isn’t my opinion. This is the opinion of the US Supreme Court. So what I have to say about it really doesn’t amount to anything in the grand scheme of things.
My point is that this issue has been decided a LONG time ago, and BOTH parties have been lying to the public as to what Social Security is and isn’t. There is no property right. It isn’t a pension. It isn’t like a whole life insurance policy. The money you might (NB, “MIGHT”) receive isn’t “yours” - there is no “lockbox,” there is no “personal account.” All of that is a pile of lies. The decision in 1960 settled for once and all what Social Security is - a social insurance scheme, which Congress may modify at any time they see fit.
That last part, BTW, comes about because in the enabling legislation for Social Security, the Congress reserved to themselves in 1935 the power to do so. Says right there in the law that Congress may make changes at any time. So if the Congress decided to install means-testing tomorrow, they could.
Flemming v. Nestor is one of those cases which, when you bring it up, causes politicians to scatter like leaves in front of an autumn wind. They’ve heard of it - they’re not stupid. I’m sure in some closed-door session, the case law has been explained to them. But they also know that the overwhelming majority of people in the US have never heard of the case, even tho it is explained on the Social Security Administration web site. The SSA themselves know of Flemming v. Nestor and they explain what it means on their web site. And still.... people think that the money they’ve paid in is ‘theirs.’
http://www.ssa.gov/history/nestor.html
BTW, I have to laugh at the turn of the phrase: “This is often expressed in the idea that Social Security benefits are “an earned right.” This is true enough in a moral and political sense.”
Political hacks have no morals. There’s only the political. Until now, they’ve peddled the lie, because it served their political ends. Now that we’re truly out of money, they’re going to start peddling a different tune... just you watch.
Yep. They are trying to set up the culture of death to desire Obama’s death care rationing system to kill old people and to confiscate middle class boomer retirement funds and benefits. They just need one shot to get it all done in a 3,000 page economic “emergency” leglislation that no one reads and can oppose.
Liberal race hate plays into generational economic warfare, too. They want “redistribution” of life and property (from a racist and inferior whitey generation) to the “younger generation” (a superior, more deserving majority minority generation).
They want to protray old people as greedy, ugly, racist and undeserving of dignity, life and property rights. The TSA show of pulling down old people’s pants while ignoring their distress as goon agents invade their surgical wounds and naked scan them, etc. is conditioning. No generation of Americans would tolerate agents of the government abusing the elderly like this before.
As they condition the American idol, abortion herd to hate and disrespect handicapped, old and vulnerable white people, imagine how diversity racist elderly care workers and government health care agents will deal with the liberalism’s creation of the ugly, elderly animals.
Democrats will grab hold of this because it is the desire of globalists who have embraced environmentalism to kill off large human populations. The American old hold the memory of National constitutional freedom, ethics, morality and idenity and that gets in the way of globalism’s goals.
The old are useless eaters to them. There is no value in human life beyond what it can produce for the government and globalists, economically. It’s going to get ugly and they are betting that boomers will be too suicidal, disorganized, stupid and weak to stop them. AARP is for deathcare and many boomers see AARP as their political organizer/representatives.
By the time my friends and I were in our mid-40’s, our children were grown, generally employed and contributing to the social security fund. That left us with another 20 years to add to our own retirement fund.
OTOH, when my kiddos and their friends were in their late 30’s and early 40’s, they were just beginning to have children. By the time those children (my grandchildren) are contributing to the social security fund, their parents will be almost ready to retire. We could conceivably end up with a 15-20 year gap of decreased payments into the fund with disastrous financial results.
Sadly, the Economist has veered left for so long it cannot even think straight anymore. After reading article and ignoring the silliness here’s the big error - it lists only three possible solutions:
1.Faster growth.
2. Austerity - a 35% cut in all transfer payments and a 35% rise in all taxes
3. Inflation. (5% per annum is the suggested amount)
Yet, nowhere in the article is a free market solution. All the above solutions originate from and are imposed by government. How about simply removing all the regulations restricting interstate trade in healthcare?
Why can’t you buy insurance from anywhere in America?
Is an Indiana doctor, nurse or pharmacist so poorly vetted and trained that this same licensed professional becomes a menace in Illinois?
The beautiful and under appreciated Commerce and General Welfare Clauses exist to remedy the natural abuse of one state preferring its citizens to the next and using licensing to restrict free trade internal to America.
Why not use the Constitution to benefit America for a change?
Excellent summation.
“Many Boomers are armed and wouldn’t give a crap bout blowing you away if you fk with their future.”
Yep. Boomers (as a group) have had no problem with electing people that destroy this country, drastically infringe on freedom and the liberty of their fellow patriots. Selling out the very things our forefathers spilled their blood for
Now in Boomerville, according to you, the only thing worth spilling blood for is the check that the government promises to give them that is taken by force from other Americans who actually earn it.
You sir, have your head way up your posterior orifice.
I’m technically a boomer, by the way.
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