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How is this turning into a "I hate boomers" thread?
I'm an Xer, but even I can see Boomers paid into Social Security their whole lives and should be entitled to it, just like I should when I'm old. Whining and crying that Boomers will get it but I won't is stupid.
This isn't the fault of a generation, it's the fault of a short-sighted government that regularly makes promises it can't keep.
How is this turning into a "I hate boomers" thread?
I'm an Xer, but even I can see Boomers paid into Social Security their whole lives and should be entitled to it, just like I should when I'm old. Whining and crying that Boomers will get it but I won't is stupid.
This isn't the fault of a generation, it's the fault of a short-sighted government that regularly makes promises it can't keep.
This has turned into "I hate Boomers" thread because these ones always do. Usually fueled by members of your generation who don't quite understand that you have to work for what you want and not have it handed to you (not speaking of you here, by the way). You know the ones: changed majors 6 times and when they finally got a job they want the benefits of someone who's been working 20 or 30 years. And complain because due to their "exceptionalism" they aren't appreciated at work by being immediately becoming the boss.
What I find funny from hindsight's post is that the Boomers I know (including me) are mostly in the same houses they bought 20 or more years ago. The high end houses here were bought up by 30-somethings, not us 50-somethings. As far as giving up our jobs in the "conga line": why should we? We're in our 50s.
Now hindsight2020, your break is over, please get back to work as I plan to retire in about six years and I need to collect your money (just like the people now retired are collecting mine).
Not true, the glut of inventory was and is on boomer's hands. They needed the greater fool to buy up their paper wealth, since they put too much stock on housing as the poor man's ATM machine. They've also been holding up the conga line of high income jobs by sheer demographics alone, and are the first generation to go "from my cold dead hands" on the labor market. As such, they had no "bigger fools" to dump their overinflated price expecations on. So in comes lax credit policy, effectively manufacturing demand for the boomers, and among the boomers. Presto.
The collapse happens and everybody gets to hold an empty bag, except the boomers whose upper ranks just got the only win in the healthcare debate, the 55+ medicare provision. For the rest, to include their children, the late 20s underemployed sub-median-income child bearing household, it's mandate city to give your money to private hands for no change, with the government gun behind your head. Thanks grandpa, ya selfish $..k Boomers 1, the rest 0.
people who paid in to the system are not the problem, regardless of this new government spin on the situation.
if anybody should oppose giant government, it should be the young people but they haven't yet comprehended that it is their generation which is ultimately going to pay for government excesses down the road. did the young people turn out and vote for smaller government?- i don't think so.
young people need to start standing up for themselves and quit blaming other groups for what is going to happen to them. of course, this should all come as no surprise when you had the actual head of government blaming the previous government WHICH HE WAS PART OF for the problems in the first place. we have a whole society interested in assigning blame to "another group" instead of hitting the problem head-on.......
Your right, its worse. We know about it and we are still being screwed over.
exactly! no one is being mislead or scammed as happens in a ponzi scheme. the big problem is that unlike a ponzi, contributing to SS is mandatory for most everyone.
if anybody should oppose giant government, it should be the young people but they haven't yet comprehended that it is their generation which is ultimately going to pay for government excesses down the road.
Why should it be "young people" (whoever that is in the grand scheme of time) to shoulder the responsibility of refilling the coffers of a system that their parents and grandparents are emptying out? Why not just push the debt off onto the next generation? Seriously, stupid as it sounds but that's what you Boomers are doing, that's what generation X is fixing to do, so how about generation Y and every generation thereafter simply follow suit? To Hell with the future, live for the here and now. Don't worry about what's going to happen down the road, you'll be dead by then. So will I, so will she, him, that guy, her, them over there etc etc etc.
I think everyone posting to this thread should take the time to understand:
a) The components of social security and the funding projections for each part.
b) The difference between an actuarially funded program (with the whole concept of present value of future benefits) and that of a mandatory pay-go program.
Once you understand the merits and pro's\cons of these arrangements...and for some of you their basic mechanics, it will make for a much better discussion.
It's not that there "won't be anything left" when you get older....you will be paid by the current generation of workers. The problem is the post-war baby boom created an abnormally large group of people that are now entering retirement. This will continue to strain the ability of current workers to meet current benefit levels.
The medical component is the one with the growing problem.
If previous generations had only headed these wise words!
Quote:
"Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:455, Papers 15:393
Quote:
"We believe--or we act as if we believed--that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:357
Quote:
"Ought not then the right of each successive generation to be guaranteed against the dissipations and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our Constitution? And if that has not been made, does it exist the less, there being between generation and generation as between nation and nation no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued we shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will fall within the accomplishment of our own lives." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:360
Quote:
"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:457, Papers 15:398n
Why should it be "young people" (whoever that is in the grand scheme of time) to shoulder the responsibility of refilling the coffers of a system that their parents and grandparents are emptying out? Why not just push the debt off onto the next generation? Seriously, stupid as it sounds but that's what you Boomers are doing, that's what generation X is fixing to do, so how about generation Y and every generation thereafter simply follow suit? To Hell with the future, live for the here and now. Don't worry about what's going to happen down the road, you'll be dead by then. So will I, so will she, him, that guy, her, them over there etc etc etc.
That is exactly what bommersw did in the case of their parents many of which actaully put little intot eh fudn becasue of a depression;WWII and of course the fact that governamnt decided to cover more and more people besides those that actually put anything inot the fund<its a trust fund but lookig abck they really never expected that so many would live beyond 65. Now the present generatino are i many cases already collecting ;plus the fact that there are alot less X generation people. They raised the SS Tax once before on boomers, Its a trust fund that if any other were like it would actaully be illegal as the government is the only one that it can be invested in at a very low return.They had a presdiential commission that studied it just as the proposed one now proposed on the economy. They heard all the experts and where told SS is in trouble and that medicare and medicaid are in worse trouble but did not thiung. That is bedause they didn't ahve to and the choices would be politically unpopualr being either a large increase in SS taxes or reduction in benefits or combination of both.Bascially its called unfunded future mandates.Its that don't worry what is going to happen down the raod that has made it from a problem to a luming crsis in the near future.
Why should it be "young people" (whoever that is in the grand scheme of time) to shoulder the responsibility of refilling the coffers of a system that their parents and grandparents are emptying out? Why not just push the debt off onto the next generation? Seriously, stupid as it sounds but that's what you Boomers are doing, that's what generation X is fixing to do, so how about generation Y and every generation thereafter simply follow suit? To Hell with the future, live for the here and now. Don't worry about what's going to happen down the road, you'll be dead by then. So will I, so will she, him, that guy, her, them over there etc etc etc.
i think that young people shouldn't be stuck with this massive burden, but they are going to have to stand up for themselves- because no one else will do it for them.
i think the real problem is twofold, 1) government has gotten too big and has pulled too many jobs from the private sector, (look at the dwindling employment population ratio) and 2) people somehow starting expecting to make money hand over fist by doing nothing more than having money. What happened to the idea of working hard, having morals and ethics, and making sensible well researched investments and expecting a reasonable return on that?
that "problem" cannot be assigned to one particular generation.
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