Posted on 02/07/2016 7:54:04 AM PST by DeathBeforeDishonor1
"This is the real reason Washington can’t create a long-term deficit reduction plan. The boomers love their safety nets."
Wow, so it looks like we have a budget deal in Washington. A debt ceiling and spending crisis has been averted. It’s good news. But let’s all calm down. It’s only temporary. The agreement does not address the long-term fiscal problems we have. Problems that were mostly created by none other than the “baby boomer†generation. Yeah, you know who you are.
You’re tanned and healthy and living way past average life expectancy. You’ve got a defined benefit pension plan from a large company or government that was created years ago when people didn’t understand how horribly these plans can go wrong and now can’t afford to meet its liabilities, but you don’t care as long as you get your check which you don’t really need anyway. And your social security check. And your Medicare reimbursement check. You once hated the government. You smoked pot and protested against Vietnam and President Nixon. That was a long, long time ago.
Life has been good for you. You’re a baby boomer. You were born between 1946 and the early 1960’s. You had Woodstock and the Stones in the ’60s, discos and coke in the ’70s, Wall Street in the ’80s, Bill Clinton in the ’90s and now you’re retiring to Arizona and Florida on the backs of your stressed-out kids whose own children stay at home with them into their 20s because they have no jobs. Tom Brokaw once wrote a book about the greatest generation, those brave people who survived the depression and fought in World War II. Unfortunately that great generation spawned a generation of narcissists: the baby boomers.
The boomers have created liabilities that will take generations to pay off. Our national debt is now at around $17 trillion, larger for the first time in recent history than the size of our entire economy. And it’s projected to continue to significantly grow over the next few decades unless something dramatic is done to reduce it. Boomers don’t like to talk about fiscal responsibility or living within their means. They like their credit cards and government secured mortgages on overvalued properties. They enjoy their malls and their cars and their houses and as long as someone’s willing to lend them the money to buy this stuff they don’t seem to care much about how it will be one day paid. They still represent an enormous voting block and have no intention to have this lifestyle threatened. This is the real reason Washington can’t create a long-term deficit reduction plan. The boomers love their safety nets.
Trending: 11 Things You Might Not Know About Philly’s 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic These safety nets were created over the past few decades by boomers and for boomers, with little regard to the future. One of the major reasons our national debt is so high is because 40 percent of our government’s spending goes to some type of insurance: social insurance, retirement, health benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. These systems are bankrupt. But they’re needed to pay for the boomers’ healthcare and pension plans. People that were born after 1965 are working hard to make sure that the boomer generation gets their retirement and disability paid for by the government. But it’s still not enough. So our government has to borrow and print money. And our debts balloon. Who will pay these debts? Ah, who cares says the boomers. Not my problem.
They are the source of one of the biggest problems with Obamacare. Whether you support the Affordable Care Act or not (and I think there are lots of great things about it), one undeniable fact is that the cost of this new system is being put squarely on the shoulders of the young. People in their 20s need less health care than the boomers in their 60s and 70s. This is not only because younger people today have healthier lifestyles but because many boomers spent most of their young lives smoking, drinking sugary sodas and engaging in risky, unprotected sex. There are 34 million mostly young and uninsured people who will be required on January 1, 2014, to pay for health insurance just so the boomers can take advantage of the added benefits that health insurance companies have to now legally provide.
SPONSORED CONTENT Suggested: How CHOP Helped a Family and Their Baby Tackle a Rare Birth Defect They are, thank God, the last reminders of our racist, homophobic, sexist past. When you look at those “white only†diners and drinking fountains in those photos from the 1960s you just can’t believe it. Or how women were treated. And gays. But many of our beloved boomers were teenagers back then, living with parents who watched Ozzie and Harriet and were raised to believe that people who weren’t white weren’t to be trusted, women were meant to stay at home, and gays were sinners. Over time, these attitudes have changed, mainly because people in their 20s and 30s are smarter, better educated and more open-minded. Unfortunately, and although we now have a black President, the last remnants of the boomer generation who still wield power in their churches and companies are doing their best to keep women out of the corporate suite, protest against gay marriage and fight immigration reform.
We’re scrambling to fix the environment because of their excesses. For years, and despite warnings, the boomers refused to recycle and ran companies that spewed ozone-destroying chemicals into the air. There are countless plots of land that are unusable because of chemicals and pesticides dumped by this generation. I’m no environmentalist, but even I have to shake my head at the destruction laid upon the planet over the past 40 years alone: decimated forests, extinct species, smog filled skies, islands of plastic floating in the ocean. Only recently are steps being taken by younger generations to attempt to reverse this trend.
The good news is that the baby boomer generation is quickly getting older. Ten thousand boomers are retiring each day. We can’t ship them all off to an island, unfortunately. But I’m optimistic that the next generation of leaders will not make the same mistakes. Governments will take care of people who are truly needy — not just because they turned 65 and have a car payment — and this will help fix our deficit problems. Racism will continue to decline as the world becomes smaller and more social. Our environment will improve because kids in elementary school are being taught to care about the planet. Ultimately, these generations will fix the problems that the boomers created. And we can soon bid farewell to that horrible generation.
Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/12/13/baby-boomers-worst-generation/#svLVB6LDLuTFH87c.99
But you don’t despise idiotic arguments like this one.
The elderly social net was vigorously defended by pre-boomers for decades, and now post-Boomers vote far more liberally than Boomers do.
Meanwhile, Boomers were out supporting themselves pretty much after high school—and certainly weren’t given a free ride on their parents’ employers’ backs for healthcare until they were 26.
Like all generations Boomers aren’t perfect. But had Millennials followed the voting lead of their parents in 2008 and 2012, the country would be much better off today—and the Millennials themselves would have been in a position to generate the prosperity with their own two hands that they apparently need to have done to not become such whining leeches.
(So how do you like the opposing generalizations?)
Stopped reading there.
One of the other reasons the national debt is so high is that your generation is defaulting on a trillion dollars worth of student loans. You lazy slackers refuse to earn STEM degrees and opt instead to get nonsense degrees. When you can’t get a job because you don’t actually know anything you default on those student loans.
The debt problem was created by Liberal Democrats, plain and simple! Whether they are bommers, gen”x”ers or whatever. The liberals got us into the mess we are in by spending like there is no tomorrow creating entitlements and government programs that buy them votes to keep them in control. To blanket blame boomers for all the problems is ridiculous!
The socialist generation will be worse.
Considering that 35% of you lazy idiots still live with your baby-boomer parents, it seems you are the most ungrateful and useless generations. You don’t produce, you consume. At least your parents produced at your age. They had educations and skill and, therefore, jobs. You bums just sit around blabbing your big mouths about things you know nothing about. So, if your parents are taking out that credit you claim to despise, it is mainly to support you childish slobs.
I’m a baby boomer and remember my parents getting cheap health insurance and collecting social security for close on 40 years. Let’s not even mention Medicare which my mother - a hypochondriac - abused for the same amount of time. She got MRIs the way John Boehner used a tanning bed.
There are frugal people in every generation as there are greedy people.
No offense and nothing personal, but I despise you, DA...
I, among many others in here, proudly served our country in Vietnam...Have you served in the military?
Do you accept all the benefits that your parents and the “baby boomers” as you call us, worked for to create a better place for you?
You must be a product of today’s public education system...receiving the leftist’s rewritten US History.
Maybe you just need to grow up....
Wisdom...
Ahem....
I would also like to add that the Boomers did not have defined pension plans, unless they worked for the government. The majority of us have 401 K which we fund ourselves. Boomer parents had the defined pension plan. The housing crisis was not started with the Boomers. We were already well into the housing market and had equity before the crash. I have seen your generation insist on huge homes with Granite countertops, sub zero refrigerators , huge square footage because you could not bear to live in a starter home with linoleum countertops like we all did. It took my husband and I years to build up until we had the house we have now. The younger generation was too inpatient, and took out huge mortgages they could not afford.
The dumbest thing in the world is to blame humanity for lack of perfection. Shut up and get a job crybaby.
I didn’t see any solutions offered by the author, do you have any?
“punk-ass little condom failure”
LOL!
The problems of America are due to indoctrination into the libtard worldview of emotionalism, collectivism, altruism, statism, and socialism,which started long before the baby boom generation. The baby boom generation was unlucky enough to come along at a time when the methods of indoctrination had been perfected and were able to brainwash a large percentage of the generation. The baby boomers were victims of evil before they became accessories to evil.
Extremely obnoxious article, as the generations that have followed the boomers have been incrimentally worse.
But I do agree that the country went off the rails with the baby-boomers, and has been going in the wrong direction ever since. A myriad assortment of cultural trends and historical dynamics led to a pretty incredibly self-absorbed and self-righteous worldview, which has led to so many of our current problems.
LOL, wardaddy. Baby Boomers, whatever their faults, are incredibly hardworking and they are not getting back what they put into the system. My husband still can’t get his full social security because they keep moving the retirement age - it’s now 66 or 67. And since he was laid off, he can’t get a job! This, a man who worked since he was 12 - in a candy store in the Bronx. We had to buy into Obamacare - 500 a month only to find our “option” was one Indian doctor three counties over!
And yes, 58,000 men died in Vietnam, the bulk being Baby Boomers. And how many continued into the endless wars of the Mideast?
Well I am of that generation and despise the parents of the BBERS who created them...so there. I had to overcome the lack of training by “parents” and the non teachings of a PCUSA (Presbyterian ) church to become what I am.
I am a Baby Boomer, Class of 1947. Unlike most of the boomers, I served in combat as an infantryman, completed a 25 year career in the Army and am still working. The only rock concerts I saw was USO shows. Didn’t smoke dope. I started working when I was 15 and am still working full time.
As for most of my fellow Boomers, I don’t care much for them, never embraced their lifestyle and values, and agree that it’s not a great generation. Their biggest failing is the way they raised the succeeding generation.
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