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Well - your not getting one because inflation was around -0-
Maybe in 2012, you'll get a COLA - for now, you'll just
have to suffer, like the rest of us
Wait, somebody on this board was telling us that inflation is thru the roof. That was just a week or so ago.
This is a quote from a book written in 2001 by Kotlikoff talking who wrote about the coming generational storm.
It discusses the potential for generational conflict over SS and other entitlements:
By the year 2030 . the midpoint of the baby boomer retirement years . the cost of elderly entitlement programs will be about double what it is today, relative to the national income. That means we will either have to double the payroll tax rate (currently 15.3 percent) or cut every benefit in half. If politicians refuse either to raise taxes or cut benefits, they will be forced to borrow . piling up a debt that will escalate each year. Beyond 2030, the financial crisis will continue to worsen indefinitely. One way to appreciate the emerging conflict of economic interests is to compare the young and the old today.
Seniors can forget about past taxes, since those are sunk costs. From here on out, they will receive far more benefits from government transfer programs (programs that redistribute resources among groups) than their share of the national tax burden. On average: A male reaching 65 years of age today can expect to receive $71,000 more in government transfer. benefits (of all kinds at both the federal and state levels, but mainly from Social Security and Medicare) than he will pay in taxes (of all kinds at both the federal and state levels) before he dies. A 65-year-old female can expect a net gain of more than twice that amount; she can expect $163,000 more in benefits than she will pay in taxes.
Small wonder that seniors continue to push for an expansion of the Social Security and Medicare programs! A far different picture confronts people entering the labor market today. In general, they will pay far more in taxes than they will receive from transfer programs, and any expansion of elderly entitlements will make things worse. For example: A 20-year-old female can expect to pay $92,000 more in taxes than she will receive in transfer benefits over her lifetime. The future looks more than three times as bleak for her male cohort, who can expect to pay $312,000 more in taxes than he will ever receive in benefits.
This is why people are worried and torqued off. It is not a trivial issue.
This is a quote from a book written in 2001 by Kotlikoff talking who wrote about the coming generational storm.
It discusses the potential for generational conflict over SS and other entitlements:
It is not a trivial issue.
No one thinks it is a trivial issue. But you and the author
fail to address where most of this country's borrowing/debt arises from: militarism
A single payer universal health care system in this country
would correct the cost escalation of Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare/VA/Federal/SCHIP, etc.
Everyone BUT the less
than 30 percent that receive no federals subsidy for health
care insurance premiums. We do not need an intermingle
of Private Insurance Companies involved in national
health care - it does not work at any profit margin level.
Our health care system failure and our militarism philosophy go hand in hand. Get rid of the latter first - it would be the beginning of solving half the problem
Well, I am glad someone noticed the 800 lb. gorilla....we were all too busy arguing with each other to see the obvious.
This is how the Romans and Normans always won their battles, tried to get the tribes to argue and not unite.
I agree, if we axed the military by 60% we could probably do much more for our people. Single payer healthcare would help too. I am will you on both parts.
The boomers have had power their whole lives. Their parents did all sorts of stuff for them (national parks, Medicare, Medicaid, federal highway systems), then they voted to lower their own taxes and expand services from Reagan onward, and now we have a huge deficit and they are fixing to move from the productive generators of government revenue to a huge expenditure, resource sink for decades to come.
How is it that we can pay for this through cutting taxes? The major commitments for eldercare come from the federal government. Country, state, and private or charity spending does not come close. We are forced with either throwing them under the bus at the end of their lives, or raising taxes in a proactive way to honor our commitments. Now we find ourselves in recession right when we should be paying forward for this huge slow-motion trainwreck.
Please don't provide sound bites, fingerpointing, or platitudes. They won't cut it. This is a huge issue that can only addressed with a sensible combination of lowered entitlement distributions and efforts to raise revenue in many different ways. However, I don't think the boomers are going to roll over. They are older, and they vote, and there is a lot of them. They will get what they can. The issue is whether there will be anything left for the rest of society.
How we react in the next 5 years, I fear, will affect the lives of millions in next 20-30 years or more. What should we do?
Two issues: SS should be means tested. If a senior's income is over a certain amount, no SS benefits.
Medicare is a much more sensitive issue than SS, but, current benefits have to be cut. I propose truncating expensive medical procedures like heart valve replacement, organ transplants, etc after a certain age. Also, there has to be real discussion about end of life options since over 77% medicare benefits are spent during the last two years of life. Boomers want to live forever. Guess what? We won't!
This is a quote from a book written in 2001 by Kotlikoff talking who wrote about the coming generational storm.
By the year 2030 . the midpoint of the baby boomer retirement years . the cost of elderly entitlement programs will be about double what it is today, relative to the national income.........
This is why people are worried and torqued off. It is not a trivial issue.
Great post. The same book could have been written thirty or more years earlier, when it was known that some day, there would only be two workers per Social Security recipient. How could any society possibly be expected to function with one out of three adults sitting in a rocking chair???
The obvious answer is to index the social security retirement age to demographics. The age should be set year by year so that the oldest one-fifth of us are eligible. That way there would always be four workers per recipient.
(As a byproduct, given the barbarity of human nature, we would "rationalize" health care for the elderly to make room for new recipients, know what what I mean?)
Two issues: SS should be means tested. If a senior's income is over a certain amount, no SS benefits.
Medicare is a much more sensitive issue than SS, but, current benefits have to be cut. I propose truncating expensive medical procedures like heart valve replacement, organ transplants, etc after a certain age. Also, there has to be real discussion about end of life options since over 77% medicare benefits are spent during the last two years of life. Boomers want to live forever. Guess what? We won't!
I'm a boomer, too.
Amen to all this. We do need to realize that pulling out the stops to keep a 85 year old alive is fine, but should not be paid for by all Americans. These are very tough decisions, of course, but discussions we should have. None of us are immortal, and throwing money at an insoluble problem only hurts our kids.
Two issues: SS should be means tested. If a senior's income is over a certain amount, no SS benefits.
Medicare is a much more sensitive issue than SS, but, current benefits have to be cut. I propose truncating expensive medical procedures like heart valve replacement, organ transplants, etc after a certain age. Also, there has to be real discussion about end of life options since over 77% medicare benefits are spent during the last two years of life. Boomers want to live forever. Guess what? We won't!
I'm a boomer, too.
Means testing was proposed in the 1980's. AARP cut its teeth on that one. And the members then sure weren't Boomers. The proponents backed down quick, fast and in a hurry.
And once again math skills are in short supply. The oldest of the Boomer generation just turned 65 this year. The people getting those procedures you listed and running up the tab to "live forever" are the venerated Greatest Generation, not the Baby Boom.
I agree that technically noone is getting any money "back." But it seems that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are intergenerational commitments that become tricky when due to numbers one generation is likely to bankrupt the system that was meant for all. Some ability to think into the future and to consider intergenerational parity seems important to me.
A critical flaw in our system is that when one demographic group has higher voting power, they can support systems that serve themselve, but screw others. The aging antitax tea party comes to mind. When one has a political advantage, it requires a high degree of generosity of spirit to avoid screwing over the minorities (in this case the Gen. X people who will likely support the boomers, but find the punch bowl empty when they arrive). Voting strict self-interest is understandable, but not sufficient.
The tea party? The group that comes to my mind is the unions, and primarily the union bosses. Trumpka rakes in 300k a year, plus plenty of perks. They hold businesses hostage thru intimidation. I just watched Dave Bego, who wrote a book called The Devil At My Doorstep about what the unions tried to do to his business. He succeeded in keeping them out, but it was a very expensive 5 years doing so. Money that could have been spent on his business and employees.
They retire early with nice fat pensions paid by slave wages of those earning much less.
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