Thank you for dying

Washington Times ^ | 4/1/07 | books

[qam1]

Few political topics induce boredom more quickly than Social Security reform. There's a reason few candidates make the issue a centerpiece of their campaigns -- it's one notch below sorghum subsidies on the Al Gore Dullness Scale.

Despite this, Christopher Buckley has managed to craft a thoroughly entertaining book on the subject. Granted, he did so by creating both a character who advocates mass suicide as a response to the increasing burden Baby Boomers are placing on the economy, and an America in which riotous youngsters set about destroying golf courses as a way of showing displeasure with their elders. It may not be the most realistic scenario, but as far as modest proposals go, Mr. Buckley's is a doozy.

"Boomsday's" America is crippled by stagflation, caused in no small part by entitlement programs for our senior citizens who, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, are living far longer than ever before. Into this morass swoops the young Cass Devine, an Ayn Rand-reading member of Generation Whatever who uses the tools she grew up with (and the tricks she picked up in the field of public relations) to fight the mounting indignities being heaped upon her age cohort.

Following the passage of a 30 percent payroll tax "augmentation," Cass fires up her computer and takes to the blogosphere, rallying readers of her Web site, CASSANDRA, to take "actions against gated communities known to harbor early-retiring Boomers."

Riots break out in Florida, Cass is thrown in federal prison, and voila, the story is in motion....

[Jaysun]

My generation has to pay for your social security...except that...there are more baby boomers than there are of us. So somebody is ganna get screwed and I'm guessing it's not ganna be the baby boomers since they hold office.

The number of baby boomers shouldn't matter. Don't you see? They've paid money in for more than 40 years. That means that the problem is the SS system itself. By the way, I'm not a baby boomer. I'm one of you.

[txroadkill]

LoL, didn't mean to call you old :-)

But I'm with you, the system is screwed, but it was the Dims spending it on everything but social security. Buying commemorative plates from Time/Life would have been a better investment than paying into Social Security.

I attended a Texas Work Force meeting for one of my PoliSci classes, it where they make people go who sign up for welfare (TANIF). I was surprised because the "teacher" told them that if they planned on SS for their retirement they were out of their minds.

I was pretty shocked, I assumed it would be a leftist love fest.

The government has known since the 60's that SS was broken, they just liked the ready cash it brought in. If someone ran a business like that, we would throw them in prison.

[Jaysun]

Okay, thanks. But the next big myth behind the “baby boomer myth” is the “they spent it” myth. The truth is that it could never work. And they did arrest someone else with a similar scheme: Charles Ponzi.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Here’s what should be done. Simply refund everyone whatever amount of money they have contributed into SS. The intial cost would probably be about $5 trillion dollars - but there is an immediate savings of several hundred billion dollars per year. Economic activity would surge, which would bring in more revenues and probably pay off the $5 trillion within 10 years.