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How right you are. Life was perfect up until three years ago. Then Obama came along, and bam! Suddenly there were deficits! There was debt! The banks faltered! The stock market crashed! Jobs were outsourced overseas! Immigrants started coming into the country illegally! NONE of that existed before Obama, right?
I would call you an idiot, but that would be against the rules.
Hey Jude, you can say anything you want to me. I will never report an insult.
That being said, obama's policies have greatly exacerbated the problems.
He used all of his political capital on a "stimulus" and "obamacare". The economy was, and still is, on the back burner.
Records under obama....
1) Longest period of high unemployment since the depression.
2) Highest number of people on food stamps in history.
3) Greatest disparity in wealth in history.
4) Largest deficits year after year in our history.
No, Yooperkat, cold, callous people seldom feel shame. (sar)
PS, paper route at 12..who hasn't done such stuff. Whether that or mowing lawns or cleaning school floors, its a normal childhood experience..one no one should be looking for applause for. But defending the baby boomers is defending the undefendable. Its the generation that stayed children their whole lives, now whining don't take away my SS Bocce years in Boca Raton , pass the debt to my kids. Just like YOU.
While the boomer generation may have accumulated the national debt you'll find that the well-heeled retirees did not spend it on themselves. It was largely spent on two things: national defense and social welfare programs. Apart from the mortgage tax credit I suspect few retirees can point to a specific government program that benefitted them directly. The fault of the boomers, if there is fault, is to have listened to the politicians who promised they could create a "Great Society" by taking from the productive and re-distributing it to the unproductive and dysfunctional. In the process they have brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and have burdened succeeding generations with crushing debt. That's what I blame my generation for.
Hey Jude, you can say anything you want to me. I will never report an insult.
That being said, obama's policies have greatly exacerbated the problems.
He used all of his political capital on a "stimulus" and "obamacare". The economy was, and still is, on the back burner.
Records under obama....
1) Longest period of high unemployment since the depression.
2) Highest number of people on food stamps in history.
3) Greatest disparity in wealth in history.
4) Largest deficits year after year in our history.
5) Largest debt in history.
6) Highest health insurance rates in history.
7) Highest misery index in history.
8) Worst housing crisis in history.
and now this.
But I'm an idiot!
And the eight years of the previous administration had NOTHING to do with any of that, right? All of the things you mention are a result of the Obama administration? If you truly believe that, then yeah, you are an idiot.
Shocking study- Older people and newly retiring people have more than younger people. Wealth gap is widest? What a dumb study. Of course it is and would be wider. Baby boomers have been working all their lives, saving money, own a house with no mortgage, are now going on SS, collecting pensions, their parents are dying, leaving them assets, homes, cars, savings.
Younger people have been working only 10 or 20 years, have 20 more years of mortgage payments to make, have a 'go in debt, spend everything' attitude.
Guess what- when the baby boomers die, the younger will inherit what the baby boomers inherited.
Are the people who did this eye opening study part of the envious 'spread the wealth' bunch?
Older people always have more wealth than younger people. That's not what the article was about. The article is about the fact that this gap is wider now than at any other time in American history.
While the boomer generation may have accumulated the national debt you'll find that the well-heeled retirees did not spend it on themselves. It was largely spent on two things: national defense and social welfare programs. Apart from the mortgage tax credit I suspect few retirees can point to a specific government program that benefitted them directly. The fault of the boomers, if there is fault, is to have listened to the politicians who promised they could create a "Great Society" by taking from the productive and re-distributing it to the unproductive and dysfunctional. In the process they have brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and have burdened succeeding generations with crushing debt. That's what I blame my generation for.
If by, "Unproductive and dysfunctional" you are referring to the private banking system, then I agree with most of what you said.
What drives this wealth gap is real estate and housing. The politicians and economists of the past 40 years have royally screwed up the housing market by pumping too much money into it. Expensive real estate is both the source of the boomers' wealth, and the problem that is killing millenials' budgets (high rent & mortgage payments).
Last edited by Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus; 11-08-2011 at 07:24 AM..
Another important factor that the geniuses who did this "study" appear to have ignored: Boomers are called 'boomers' for a reason. The sheer number of post-war babies have created statistical anomalies throughout the lifetime of this generation. They crowded schools and colleges. They crowded job markets and health care systems. And now they are beginning to crowd the retirement system. And, more to the point of the study, there are more boomers who have wealth than the trailing generations who are just now beginning to create wealth. The point is that demographics is likely the most important factor in causing wealth disparity than the effect of any governmental policy. Blame the greatest generation for having so many children. Or blame the boomers for having too few children.
I fail to see what the Boomers' size has to do with the rise in their median wealth.
Besides, the millenials are a huge generation , by your logic they should be doing great. The median net worth of young people has fallen by 68% since 1984; that's significant.
from the article:
Quote:
The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494. That is 42 percent more than in 1984, when the Census Bureau first began measuring wealth broken down by age. The median net worth for the younger-age households was $3,662, down by 68 percent from a quarter-century ago, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Net worth includes the value of a person's home, possessions and savings accumulated over the years, including stocks, bank accounts, real estate, cars, boats or other property, minus any debt such as mortgages, college loans and credit card bills. Older Americans tend to hold more net worth because they are more likely to have paid off their mortgages and built up more savings from salary, stocks and other investments over time. The median is the midpoint, and thus refers to a typical household.
The 47-to-1 wealth gap between old and young is believed by demographers to be the highest ever, even predating government records.
In all, 37 percent of younger-age households have a net worth of zero or less, nearly double the share in 1984. But among households headed by a person 65 or older, the percentage in that category has been largely unchanged at 8 percent.
Yes,but a lot of seniors are collecting pensions and SS,so of course they are going to have more money.
A lot of jobs don't even offer a simple 401k,mine doesn't.
You guys had it so much better.
After high school you could walk in any factory and support a family on one income. Try doing that now,it won't work.
You can't walk into any factory and get a job but the illegals are pouring over the border and do just that and they are having much larger numbers of kids than Americans.
Now you can't even drive a truck for a living because your president has just decided that foreign truck drivers will be much cheaper and he's allowing them to take over that entire industry.
Massive unlimited illegal immigration is driving wages way down - that's the whole purpose for it. Illegals have no trouble at all getting jobs.
No one is asking for a handout, because they certainly are not going to receive it. This generation is going to be cleaning up the mess left to them for decades to come. So many problems in this country have been ignored and had the can kicked down the road for decades.
This generation will fix the many problems being laid upon them, but it will take some time. They are going to have to do it in spite of being dealt by far the worst hand of any group of Americans since those coming of age in the 1930s.
It's hard to do it from the weathy older people's basement.
Yes,but a lot of seniors are collecting pensions and SS,so of course they are going to have more money.
A lot of jobs don't even offer a simple 401k,mine doesn't.
You guys had it so much better. After high school you could walk in any factory and support a family on one income. Try doing that now,it won't work.
That has not changed. What has changed is the expectation for a standard of living and the willingness to live within your means.
40 - 50 years ago people built 900 sq ft houses, never ate out, made their own clothes, never had cable TV, made one long distance phone call every 6 months, etc. That's how my parents survived on one income.
Today, people refuse to live in 900 sq ft houses, they eat expensive fast food, they must have cable TV and smart phones, etc. Then they wonder why they cannot support a family on one income.
You must remember that that those" kids" have college degrees while many in your generation didn't. So it would onyl make sense to expect to be paid more right?
Only if there is a need for all of those college educated kids. Education does not guarantee you a higher paying job.
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