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The Federal Student Loan program started in 1965, but not a lot of young people took advantage of it at that time. Would you like to know why? Because over 2 million of them were drafted to go fight a war in VietNam - during which nearly 60,000 were killed, over 300,000 were injured, 2500 were/are missing in action, and thousands more were prisoners of war. Many that did come home uninjured(physically) continue to suffer from PTSD. Since the war ended, more VietNam vets have committed suicide than the number killed in combat.
Yes, that is a fair point for a subset of the Boomers, but it is not really relevant when we talk about the longer-term financial future of the country. The reason that other generations heap scorn on "the Baby Boomers" is because the Baby Boomers have taken full control of the levers of power in America - corporate, political, academic, and in media - and yet, the country seems to be bounding from crisis to crisis. Where is the Baby Boomer leadership that is probably necessary to extricate the country from this mess in the short/medium term? It seems to be absent.
I don't think that an entirely unreasonable assessment of affairs, either. The Baby Boomers have been seasoned by decades of life experience... and this is what they've chosen to do with American politics and culture? It's more than a bit shocking to a lot of younger folks.
Anyway, "generational warfare" will probably only grow as financial differentials between generations become more apparent. The net worth of people under 35 or so has actually been dipping over time, relative to other age brackets. The economy increasingly looks and feels like a zero-sum game, where in order to win, others must lose.
What are we to do with this? It'd be great to have some Baby Boomer political/economic sages provide some guidance, but that does not seem to be very forthcoming.
I'm not one of those sages but I just want to add that it seemed as though many in our baby boomer generation sold out and became exactly like what they had stood in opposition to.
I remember in the 60s we were against materialism. BIG TIME. Live simple, close to the earth. No big cars or ostentatious homes, grow your own organic food, make things yourself instead of buying them. Not so much greed.
And while many of us were faithfully abiding by those ideas, others appear to have defected and gone back to the me-me-me and more for me status. Probably they're the ones who have all the money now, because they caved in and gave up on their ideals and just went for the gold.
Everyone I know personally stayed true to the cause. We all worked at low paying jobs like human services and teaching because we believed in helping rather than personal gain. So we're not rich and not touring the country in huge RVs. My friends who are retired are worried about their futures. You can't lump all baby boomers into one box.
I'm not one of those sages but I just want to add that it seemed as though many in our baby boomer generation sold out and became exactly like what they had stood in opposition to.
I remember in the 60s we were against materialism. BIG TIME. Live simple, close to the earth. No big cars or ostentatious homes, grow your own organic food, make things yourself instead of buying them. Not so much greed.
And while many of us were faithfully abiding by those ideas, others appear to have defected and gone back to the me-me-me and more for me status. Probably they're the ones who have all the money now, because they caved in and gave up on their ideals and just went for the gold.
Everyone I know personally stayed true to the cause. We all worked at low paying jobs like human services and teaching because we believed in helping rather than personal gain. So we're not rich and not touring the country in huge RVs. My friends who are retired are worried about their futures. You can't lump all baby boomers into one box.
Everything is relative. Teaching, for example is not really a "low-paying" job unless the comparison is to doctoring and lawyering. A teaching salary is a middle-class salary, or maybe you could argue lower middle-class, but in any case most teachers who stuck with it for 35 years now have an O.K. pension to live on and don't have to "worry about their futures". Idealism doesn't have to mean dirt-poor.
Your last sentence is certainly true; I agree that baby boomers represent a wide spectrum of attitudes and lifestyle choices.
I'm not one of those sages but I just want to add that it seemed as though many in our baby boomer generation sold out and became exactly like what they had stood in opposition to.
I remember in the 60s we were against materialism. BIG TIME. Live simple, close to the earth. No big cars or ostentatious homes, grow your own organic food, make things yourself instead of buying them. Not so much greed.
And while many of us were faithfully abiding by those ideas, others appear to have defected and gone back to the me-me-me and more for me status. Probably they're the ones who have all the money now, because they caved in and gave up on their ideals and just went for the gold.
Everyone I know personally stayed true to the cause. We all worked at low paying jobs like human services and teaching because we believed in helping rather than personal gain. So we're not rich and not touring the country in huge RVs. My friends who are retired are worried about their futures. You can't lump all baby boomers into one box.
Some of the people I grew up with ended up with nice houses and large credit debt. Some ended up working in tech. Some ended up trying to hold it together as the first generation poorer than mom and dad. Some embrased the materialism of their parents and sweetened it with a stack of credit cards, and eventually have to face the music..
Like you said, you can't lump all in one box.
What happens now is that as the economy lies in ruin since the world's economy has changed, and the politicians can do nothing but blame one another (and its the global bosses that should be blamed, not each other) things are evening out again except downward. Those who didn't have the best yuppy life will be far better able to cope. And I feel for the kids who were raised with the dream which may never come true for them.
Yes, it will for some, but there are less jobs for fewer bodies and you can't get around that math. Learning how to survive should be basic training for everyone.
The best thing that can happen to the millennial Generation (the only one I care about) is for the economy to stagnate of keep declining until they're in the work force. The reasoning being is that if the economy stagnates til then, they'll have the same ground floor opportunity that the WWII Generation experienced as they entered the work force, just as the Depression was starting to end.
I feel the Gen X-ers got royally screwed due to the fact that the needed correction in the economy was forestalled to benefit the Boomers. The correction that happened in 2008 should have happened in the early 90s(ie. Read Batri Rava's book the Depression in 1990, written in 1987). Because the economy was artificially propped up all that time, the Gen X-ers got stuck having to pay a lot for a house that was over-priced and ended up living through the most painful bout of inflation and economic uncertainty in generations.
The bottom line is, if you have kids born after 2000, I'd love to know what your rationale for wanting the economy to go anywhere before your kids are old enough to benefit from it.
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Different generations have different values. The values of the WW2 generation were ridiculed and for the most part abandoned by the hippies and flower children of the Baby Boom generation. TV, the PILL and Hollywood influenced the attitudes and morals of the Boomers in a big way. Eventually the youngest generation is going to do a turn around also. Whether it will be detrimental or beneficial to our society is the $64,000 question.
GL2
What about those tax free lump sum inheritences some "boomer babies" will get after we die off??
I can tell you right now, our 35yr old son [still living with us in his own private apt with free utilities, cable and internet because he can't support himself] will end up far better off than we ever were in our 20's struggling to make a living as mature grown-ups.
His home will be paid for and he can live off our 401. Life doesn't seem fair, now does it?
That's not why you're getting short-changed. It's because the gov't has dragged its feet about correcting the problem. The solution is simple, but there's no political will to fix it, or there's political gridlock. The top 10% (roughly) get Social Security checks they don't need or even particularly want (this, based on conversations with such people). One option would be to not pay out to those people. In the past this has been considered unthinkable, but things that were previously off the table are now on the table, due to the pending crisis. Another option would be to eliminate the earnings ceiling that determines how much people will pay into the system. Again, the top 10% don't gettaxed fully for Social Security. Either of those options would save SS. Our leaders are failing us.
Certainly you must be aware that there is a taxation cap because there is a corresponding benefit cap at the same level. So you need to state whether you propose to retain the benefit cap while increasing the payroll taxation or raise the benefits too, which would not net very much into the Social Secuirty system. Not to raise the benefit cap while raising the taxation cap would be a gross unfairness to the people who are already subsidizing all the low wage earners. Certainly you are aware of that? High wage earners subsize low wage earners in Social Security by receiving a substantially lower percentage of their taxes back as benefits than the low wage earners.
To respond to the OP. The economy was exceptionally good during the 90's. After 2001, they propped up the economy with credit handed out to everyone and anyone. I knew then that it couldn't be sustained. My guess is that the economy will continue to bump along like this and it will get tougher actually, and stay like this for many years as people get back to reality, and the need for hard work, and thrift.
To respond to the OP. The economy was exceptionally good during the 90's. After 2001, they propped up the economy with credit handed out to everyone and anyone. I knew then that it couldn't be sustained. My guess is that the economy will continue to bump along like this and it will get tougher actually, and stay like this for many years as people get back to reality, and the need for hard work, and thrift.
I agree, the US has had an unsustainable growth before the bottom dropped out.........it was an artificial expansion fueled primarily by credit.
Blaming the Boomers is so way off base............a good size chunk of Americans from their early 20's to the late 60's are wallowing in debt right now. Those younger than me surprise me everyday when I find out just how far they are in debt with both husband and wife working making 6 figures and those my age and older who thought they could flip homes before they retire to cash out.
It is going to take a while for this economy to level off, unfortunately sustained use of credit is what is needed to fuel the economy again. Get people spending....thats what they want.
My children are being taught the same frugality that my parents taught me.......will that work in this disposable buy it now society? I hope so...but in the age of the Kardashians and $500 smart phones that everyone has to have, we have a tough road ahead.
Everyone I know personally stayed true to the cause. We all worked at low paying jobs like human services and teaching because we believed in helping rather than personal gain. So we're not rich and not touring the country in huge RVs. My friends who are retired are worried about their futures. You can't lump all baby boomers into one box.
If you're blaming those of us who happened to choose a career we enjoyed, in my case, engineering, worked my way through college and decided to join the military (Vietnam era), served 20+ years and then took another job, worked 20 years in the civilian world, and YES we are the ones touring in the large RVs.....
I served 20+ years in the military for my country, am paying my grand children's tuition because their parents, both teachers, can't afford it. I paid for three children's college educations, at costs that were ridiculous, because those "teachers/professors/administrators" are making more than I did. So forgive me for not working at a low paying job to "stay true to the cause," rather choosing a career I loved and working my way up the ladder so now I can tour in that big RV.
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Some ABC's of Social Security
