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Don't own a smartphone although I used to. Now it's pay-as-you-go. And if I needed one for work, I'd get it, but as a tool, not a fifth appendage. Don't drink big gulps and never have. I actively lobby my representatives to create legislation supporting pay-as-you-go (unbundled) cable. In case you didn't know, ESPN is a far bigger bite out of your cable bill than any other network (not to mention said network it's currently the guiding force destroying college sports by creating winners and losers, which will affect funding levels of numerous universities, which will ultimately affect academics).
Anything else?
We are amazing indeed. Screw those old farts from the Renaissance, we're the singlemost inventive generation in history.
We've managed to scientifically create "natural" things that don't include a single atom of the previously natural things they were designed to replace. We created ammonia-laced pink slime to serve to schoolkids. We came up with a brilliant plan to propegate monoculture farming without regard to also creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. And why not, no voters live there. If all the shrimp die, we'll just import 'em from Vietnam. We keep passing farm bills that represent the ultimate in corporate welfare so that the companies who invented the above can invent even more stuff. All the while claiming it's necessary to feed the planet, and our generation is so persuasive, we sold that baldface lie around the world. I could go on too.
In fact, we were brilliant enough to not only profit outrageously while making the USA the fattest country on the planet, we've created entire cottage industries around that - diet books and videos, weight-loss pills, gym memberships that will never be used, psychologists who will help you rationalize and validate your weight, and even reality TV shows featuring the morbidly obese. All the while pushing health care costs to unsupportable levels and denying insurance. So we've designed a perfect system that gets you coming and going.
I don't know about you, but my great-grandparents lived hand to mouth and my grandparents used everything they owned to get on a boat and get over to this country. My parents lived in a slum for several years before saving enough to buy a 1 bath bungalow where I grew up. They both died in that house without ever having a new car or a designer label anything.
So stick your comment you know where, Miss Entitled. FWIW, despite a career where I made six-figures for several years, only two of the 10 cars I've owned were new - one of which I didn't even want, but needed for the catering end of our small business.
As for our generation's marketing and sales savvy, we've perfected data mining to identify the gullible and weak so we can strip them of as much disposable income as possible. And we've even managed to offshore many of those jobs. Yes, we created email and the Web. We also created spam. I don't know if boomers can take credit for creating those inscrutable Wall St. derivatives, but I have to think a boomer approved them for sale.
Now, it's obvious that personal responsibility from those who consume all this crap is lacking. But we're happy to take advantage of the tens of millions who don't have personal responsibility because it's easy money. We don't care as long as Q1 balance sheets are in order. We'll just keep creating stuff that harms the gullible while also create the "cures" for those ailments, whether that be a multimillion dollar pill so you can get an erection, a multibillion dollar credit counseling industry or even a multitrillion dollar corporate bailout so we can do it all over again.
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I know from reading other of your posts that you grow your own vegetables, so good for you. I hope you save some seeds each year.
Why all the references to "we", "us", and ours, I'm sixty seven and have been saying for forty years that America was headed in the wrong direction, I don't relate to all that stuff of generational guilt, nor do I think that it is a fair representation of most people I've known over those years. "Blame the boomers" is simply the result of years of propaganda on the part of those who really did screw the country. And now "they" are hoping to get the youth to buy into a new scheme of moving their SS into the the same "market" that "they" manipulated to our destruction.
The notion that ALL people of a certain age group are somehow linked at the hip and engaged in a lockstep formation of uni-think, uni-action, is absurd at best and just plain nuts at the worst. Yes some of those on Wall Street were the old dogs, but, a hell of a lot of them were the young lions of finance, cutting their teeth on a ripoff of proportions that made the old dogs look like pikers. They ate the lunch of future generations in our country.
Those off shored jobs were also the jobs of boomers, and many young bucks were the underwriters for a lot of those "bundled"securities that turned out to be worthless, the game on the "street" in the nineties was a competition to see who could "make their million" before the age of 25, boomers? Do the math and you'll see that it wasn't just a single generation of American's who screwed the rest. NO GENERATION SCREWED ANYONE, PEOPLE SCREWED PEOPLE, regardless of age.
Maztoman, if you have a better idea then lets hear it. The Earth is finite we will either have to give up our standard of living or move on. I hope that we take advantage of the abundance we have now and begin to seriously work towards space colonization because it is unlikely that we will ever have another opportunity to do so.
I think ounce we get off world, we will be sent back right where we came from. I don't think earthlings are very well liked up in the other galaxy's. I could be wrong, maybe we are great entertainment for them, kind of like a intergalactic Real Housepeople Of Planet Idiots.
Looks to me like new homeowners get royally screwed in favor of long-time homeowners.
I bought 10 years ago and the people buying in my area are paying less in taxes than I am...
It's the new Homeowners that are locking in the low rates because some in my city are paying the same price as property sold for as far back as the late 90's.
Prop 13 is very simple... it is not volumes or even pages of law... the ENTIRE statute is a few simple paragraphs and applies to all assessable property in the State.
Prop 13 is 100% based on the value at the time of transfer... nothing more and nothing less.
Prop 13 allows the voters to approve increases/assessments above Prop 13 inflation adjustment factor.
For decades revenues to the State increased year over year...
Last edited by Ultrarunner; 01-24-2013 at 04:22 AM..
News flash: everyone who pays into Social Security collects it when their time comes. Not just poor people. In fact, this is another case where the rich are getting a break because of the income cap.
My father paid a lifetime into Social Security and passed away having received 3 payments...
I bought 10 years ago and the people buying in my area are paying less in taxes than I am...
It's the new Homeowners that are locking in the low rates because some in my city are paying the same price as property sold for as far back as the late 90's.
Sounds like you made a bad purchase.
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Prop 13 is very simple... it is not volumes or even pages of law... the ENTIRE statute is a few simple paragraphs and applies to all assessable property in the State.
Prop 13 is 100% based on the value at the time of transfer... nothing more and nothing less.
Right, and this is completely screwed up. The fact that it ended up biting some "homesteaders" in the ass due to property value declines is nothing more than sweet justice.
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Prop 13 allows the voters to approve increases/assessments above Prop 13 inflation adjustment factor.
And how often does that happen ?
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For decades revenues to the State increased year over year...
This can be achieved more fairly through a revenue-neutral property tax collection scheme.
The bottom line is, in a state system when you keep someone's taxes artificially low, someone ELSE has to make up for it.
Social security was suppose to be "reserved" though, at least in a sense, but it wasn't.....and that is part of the problem. The government can't put its money in a big pool, but it can run surpluses and it did for a short while after social security taxes were increased and after Clinton increased other taxes. But people (e.g., boomer voters) didn't like the surpluses because that meant they were paying more taxes than they had to to meet current needs. So as Bush turned surpluses into deficits...the boomers effectively spent their retirement money.
The boomers spent their retirement funds and now they want younger generations to pick up the bill...
Medicare is a greater disasters because the boomers decided to poison their bodies with junk for decades, the US now is 70% overweight and once again the younger generations are suppose to pay for their mistake.
If the boomers get their way, its going to destroy the nation.
Good post, and this really sums up the "blame the boomers" argument at the national level. They spent much their social security contributions on dividend tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, and capital gains tax cuts.
I bought the home to live in and that I do... Could have been worse as it was for many that did buy before the collapse.
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Right, and this is completely screwed up. The fact that it ended up biting some "homesteaders" in the ass due to property value declines is nothing more than sweet justice.
What do you have against home ownership? No one has to be a homeowner if they do not want to be.
I thank those that came before me for having the foresight to sweep Prop 13 into law... it started a tax revolt across the nation and within 5 years a total of 43 States had enacted reforms.
It also got rid of the old boy network where those of power and influence were granted preferential treatment be Tax Assessors... Several Assessors went to prison and others committed suicide their underhanded dealings.
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And how often does that happen ?
Happens all the time... my tax rate is 60% higher than Prop 13's Statewide rate... the citizens of Oakland CA have been very generous in approving assessments... at last count well over 20 have been approved by voters... it's the Democratic process in action.
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This can be achieved more fairly through a revenue-neutral property tax collection scheme.
The bottom line is, in a state system when you keep some one's taxes artificially low, someone ELSE has to make up for it.
Or, spending could be cut and the Serrano Decision reversed....
Good post, and this really sums up the "blame the boomers" argument at the national level. They spent much their social security contributions on dividend tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, and capital gains tax cuts.
Here we can see the terrible mental deficit that is causing so much of the big yawn in most debates, some folks just can't accept facts, so........ America will continue to be a divided nation, until real education displaces notions. Blaming an entire generation for anything makes me laugh at times, why? because it's so silly on the face of it, but worse is the fact that so many of us fail to do the work that would be required to come up with a realistic view of our common problems. Financial distress is a cause for concern for ALL American's, the youth acting as though they have some lock on the national misery is just plain nuts........
What do you have against home ownership? No one has to be a homeowner if they do not want to be.
I have nothing against homeownership, what I have something against is a tyrannical majority legislating that everyone else make up their share of the tax burden.
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I thank those that came before me for having the foresight to sweep Prop 13 into law... it started a tax revolt across the nation and within 5 years a total of 43 States had enacted reforms.
Prop 13 has nothing to do with lowering tax revenue as a whole. It simply shifts the burden away from certain taxpayers.
Here we can see the terrible mental deficit that is causing so much of the big yawn in most debates, some folks just can't accept facts, so........ America will continue to be a divided nation, until real education displaces notions.
^ not much meat here
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Blaming an entire generation for anything makes me laugh at times, why?
I don't know, i suppose that the only way you can handle the reality is to ignore it or trivialize it.
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because it's so silly on the face of it, but worse is the fact that so many of us fail to do the work that would be required to come up with a realistic view of our common problems. Financial distress is a cause for concern for ALL American's, the youth acting as though they have some lock on the national misery is just plain nuts........
You struggle with reading comprehension.
No one said the youth have "a lock on the national misery." Nor has anyone claimed that the boomers are all the same. We're simply talking about the net effect of the collective decisions made by all boomers over the past 20 years and the denial of responsibility that seems pretty pervasive.
The issue here is the inter-generational transfers that are occuring fiscally at the federal level, the debt that represents those transfers, and who exactly will be paying that debt. Boomers inherited structural economic problems from the greatest generation, especially with regards to Social Security, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it but make it worse by (A) Cutting taxes, (B) blowing debt bubbles, and (C) Promising themselves more Medicare.
I posted this earlier as clarification but evidently no one is interested in the opinion of The Economist.
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