Posted on 07/30/2011 10:32:57 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Baby boomers -- those born between 1946 and 1964 -- have been described as "the pig in the python" and the "sandwich generation."
They lived well, grew up in relative abundance and, some say, expected their Social Security, health care and government support to be there as they grew old.
Now, as the future of the country's economy is up in the air, is this group of 80 million aging Americans -- many of whom are sprinting toward retirement age -- the ones to blame for the nation's shaky economic system?
(snip)
Thomas Firey, a senior editor at the conservative Cato Institute and member of generation X, said it's unclear as to what's going to happen to Social Security.
"Under current law, what's supposed to happen is once the trust fund runs dry, the benefits are to be cut by roughly 25% to bring it back into balance. Each year's income will equalize the outflow," said Frey..."But no one expects that to happen. (So) are we going to raise taxes on current workers? Are we going to get rid of the tax?"
But criticizing baby boomers is not necessarily a politically wise thing to do, especially when it comes to their voting behavior.
(snip)
Jerry Shereshewsky, the self-described "chief grown-up" at the firm GrownUpMarketing, is a baby boomer. The 65-year-old said it's not his generation group to blame, it's Congress'.
"It was not a secret that this largest cohort in American history was going to get older every year," he said. "The fact that Congress has not done a very good job of keeping up with what is really happening in the world: life expectancy, better medical care. You give people a lot of cake and ice cream, they're going to eat it."
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.cnn.com ...
But they did vote for politicians - Democrat and Republican - who maintained and continued the Ponzi scheme.
They have paid into their whole lives and we can’t break the promise to them.
Unborn individuals are incapable of entering into contracts prior to their births.
This so-called "promise" is nothing more than taxation without representation - something that Americans two hundred and thirty five years ago fought a bitter war against an English tyrant to stop.
No, that was LBJ. But it continued under every administration - Republican and Democrat - since.
If you voted for the ticket that included LBJ, guess what - you voted for LBJ.
LOL.
But they did vote for politicians - Democrat and Republican - who maintained and continued the Ponzi scheme.
And they folks you voted for didn’t?
Unborn individuals are incapable of entering into contracts prior to their births.
So we should tell our parents to get bent?
This so-called “promise” is nothing more than taxation without representation - something that Americans two hundred and thirty five years ago fought a bitter war against an English tyrant to stop.
True. The reason we are in this mess is because too many people forgot that. (Or never taught that in public screwls)
???
That’s pretty much what I said.
Even the most aggressive measures to reform goverment spending and government dependency by its citizenery won’t address the underlying cause.
That’s because the deficit that matters the most isn’t dollars. Its currency of the heart and mind. Its a manifestation of values within which we subscribe our actions, our purposes and our values. It is a deficit of CHARACTER, which arguably is the root of all our major economic and social troubles today.
Your character is not defined by what you say you believe. It’s defined by the choices you make. History painfully records when a people allow their personal character to dissipate they become putty in the hands of tyrants and demagogues. Such tyranny often takes the form of actual rulers, but it can also involve serfdom of our nobler nature to a lord of lustful impulse.
Among the traits that define strong character are honesty, humility, self-discipline, courage, self-reliance and long-term thinking.
HOW WE SUBTRACT FROM OUR CHARACTER
When a person spurns his conscience and fails to do what is right he subtracts from his character. When he eveades his responsibilities, foists his problems and burdens on others, or fails to exert self-discipline; when he allows or encourages wrong doing on any scale; when he attempts to refom the world without first reforming himself; when he obligates the yet-unborn to pay his current bills for him; when he expects politicians to solve problems that are his alone; he subtracts from his character-and drags the rest of us down with him.
Mountainous debts, unconscionable deficits, irresponsible bailouts and reckless spending: These are all economic problems that sprang first from character problems.
Refrom starts with recognition. Not the easy kind that points out flaws in others, but the hard kind that reflects on, then roots out, errors in ourselves.
It is wrong to take a dollar from the responsible and give it to the irresponsible, which is why many of us decry the billion-dollar bailouts given to reckless, but politically well-connected government agencies and private firms/individuals. Yet how many of us accepted tax payer funded aid to buy a house we couldn’t afford, go to an expensive college we couldn’t afford or pay for a family member to go to an assistaed living facility because it would allow us to not have to sacrifice our current lifestyle?
We would express outrage over parents who, after borrowing heavily to buy expensive gadgets and meals, then cancel their childrens preschool when the bills came due. So why do we cheer for government cutbacks as long as it is our neighbor getting cut and not us?
Once upon a time in America, most citizens expected government to keep the peace and otherwise leave them alone. We built a vibrant, self-reliant, entrepeneurial culture with strong families and solid values.
Somewhere along the way we lost our moral compass. Like the Roman Republic that rose on integrity and collapsed in turpitude, we thought the “bread and circuses” government could provide for us and would buy us comfort and security. We act as if we really do not want to be free and responsible citizens, so we get less responsibility from our leaders and less freedom for us.
Our federal government is ultimately a reflection of our self-government so Americans who are serious about fixing the country’s fiscal mess must begin by fixing their own character.
RESOULTIONS FOR REFORM
I pledge myself to a lifetime of self-improvement so I can be a model of integrity that friends, family and acquaintenances will want to emulate.
I resolve to show the utmost reverence and respect for the lives, property and rights of my fellow citizens. I will remember that government money is really my neighbor’s money, so I will not vote to loot them. I will stand on my own two feet, behave like an adult in a free and civil society and expect the same from my children.
If I need help I will ask my family, friends, faith network, neighbors, local charities or even strangers first and government LAST.
If I have a good idea I will resolve to elict support for it through peaceful persuasion, not the force of government. I will not ask politicians to foist it on others because I think it is good for them.
I resolve to help others who genuinely need it by involving myself directly or by supporting those who provide assistance through charitable institutions. I will not complain about a problem and then insist that government tinker with it at twice the cost and half the effectiveness.
Finally I will resolve that the highest authority in which I place my strongest faith will not be the United States Congress.
Full article link: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0611/character_deficit.php3
It didn’t take all of them. But they set the tone. IMHO we were the worst generation in the history of the nation.
The Baby Boomers: America’s Failed Generation.
The boomers tried to take credit for “peace and love”. But as you state, they were only reaping the benefits of the sacrifices of blood and toil of previous generations who built the framework of civil society in which the boomers gleefully frolicked.
It’s only taken a generation - THEIR generation - for it to start crumbling.
Children did not set the tone, the generations that ran the nation from the 1930s to the 1990s were the most destructive in our history and set the tone, and our future in stone with the unionization of government, and mass importation of democrat voters, whites have not voted democrat since 1964.
Boomers (the Reagan Generation) have actually moved the country right since they came into power, they are having to deal with a voter base made of up of largely democrats imported from foreign nations because of the 1965 Immigration Act, so no one will ever be able to return the nation to the conservative principles pre-1930s, but we have stopped some of the worst gains of the left in the last 20 years, and have even brought to the forefront many conservative issues that were impossible to deal with until the boomers came to power in the last 15 to 20 years.
You are ignoring a generation, boomers did not create the 60s and the Doors, Hendrix, The Beatles, The Chicago Seven, Jane Fonda, etc, the 1960s was created and led by the generation of the people that were famous in the 1960s, check their birth dates, they were not 4 year old and ten year old boomers.
What has the Boomers done? It was the boomers that made the Reagan revolution happen. Take a gander at the tea party gatherings around the country and you’ll see more boomers than anyone else. We vote and we participate. Younger generations could learn a few things from us.
JFK was merely a more handsome LBJ, don’t waste effort furthering the brainwashing that JFK was competent, or not radical.
Entitlements started way before babyboomers
and the age group you are belittling are about the only reliable group that has voted GOP by a fat margin in recent elections
kids sure don’t
if everyone voted like any age white in Mississippi or Alabama we’d all be in high cotton
One thing that GWBush did attempt to get done was to privatize SS and the majority acted deaf, dumb, and blind. And that ‘fault’ rests on all American voters.
Most boomers since Clinton have voted GOP not Democrat ..nationally
Even in 1968..maybe and 1972 for sure most voted GOP
Boomers voted Democrat in 1976 and likely in 1996...only two elections since Humphrey
hardly cause for Rabs screed
Rabs..I love ya but I’m putting this thread in your Sarah Palin lockbox of wrongheadedness
I prefer to blame demographics..racial, ethnic , religious and regional and only one age group..kids...they almost always vote Left...idealistic immaturity
In 1972, during the draft, the Vietnam War, when Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Not boomers) were releasing “Deja Vu”, the 18 to 29 year old vote went 52% Republican.
The Millennials on the other hand, voted for Obama by 66%.
Exactly....it was the power of TV and the schools to create a “worldview” and make the Boomers into “group thinkers”. Group think resulted in the sixties sexual revolution—it was mass conformity to the ideology rampant in public schools since the early fifties.
It was constant agitprop of the Kinsey/Freud/Marx ideas that were subtly injected into all the media to determine people’s “perception” of the world and what was happening. The Big Lies.....they were dished up as truth and no normal thinking person- especially the boomers—would have been able to conceive the great evil forces that were controlling media and the schools their children were attending to intentionally undermine all the “fixed beliefs” that they “tried” to install in their children.
This sick ideas of Kinsey’s were injected into the minds of all adults in the 50’s to undermine men and values and the “idea” of marriage and Virtues such as Truth and Trust. It was the beginning of pitting one group against the other—Marxists technique—man against woman, woman against children, and race against race.
Intentional elevation and awards to sick perverted minds, like The Beats, over the minds like Milton, Dickens, Shakespeare—all the Classics, where the Good was rewarded and the evil punished. There were clear boundaries of right and wrong for kids to model and no confusion to what is Virtue. There were Moral Absolutes-—never “feel good, do it”—ignore the intellect and go by pure emotion—idea of Herbert Marcuse was injected into all songs, and all literature and all soap operas...etc.... To rearrange the morality—to where there is no morality.
Once morality is destroyed...the children are destroyed and their future relationships. Immoral people can never have lasting relationships and the ignore their children...this was understood by the cultural Marxists in the 30’s who did the Long March through all our institutions to destroy them and to destroy America (they wrote this all down, BTW) and the minds of our children. They destroyed the schools first.
So the Boomers were lied to and were “pushed” into thinking they were doing “good” etc. when they were actually destroying every decent thing that was created in the previous 200 years in America and throwing out the morality which created Western Civilization and made it the greatest culture ever which peaked with the USA in the 50’s. The decline is on.
if you voted in 1960 then you are no boomer hon
My dad voted Nixon..and we were deep Southern..and Goldwater later
we never though too much about Catholics like media did
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