Meet the Greedy Grandparents

Slate ^ | Dec. 10, 2003 | Steve Chapman

[luckydevi]

When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn't take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a tedious interregnum between two long periods of comfortable dependence.

America's elderly have never had it so good. They enjoy better health than any previous generation of old people, high incomes and ample assets, access to a host of medical treatments that not only keep them alive but let them enjoy their extra years, and a riotous multitude of ways to spoil their grandchildren. Still they are not content. From gratefully accepting a basic level of assistance back in the early decades of Social Security, America's elderly have come to expect everything their durable little hearts desire.

They often get their way, as they did recently when years of complaints finally induced Congress and the president to agree to bear much of the cost of their prescription drugs. From the tenor of the debate, you would think these medications were a terrible burden inflicted by an uncaring fate. In fact, past generations of old people didn't have to make room in their budgets for pharmaceuticals because there weren't many to buy. If you suffered from high cholesterol, chronic heartburn, or depression, you were left to primitive remedies, or none. Today, there are pills and potions for just about any complaint—except the chronic complaint that many of them are pricey. It's not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free.

That's on top of everything else they get. Retirement benefits used to be just one of the federal government's many maternal functions. But in recent years, the federal government has begun to look like an appendage of Social Security. In 2000, 35 percent of all federal spending dollars went to Social Security and Medicare. By 2040, barring an increase in total federal outlays, they'll account for more than 60 percent of the budget. And that's before you add in the prescription drug benefit. Most of the projected growth is due to rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.

Why do we keep indulging the grizzled ones? The most obvious reason is that they are so tireless and well-organized in demanding alms. No politician ever lost an election because he was too generous to little old ladies. A lot of people are suckered by the image of financially strapped seniors, even though the poverty rate among those 65 and over has been lower than that for the population as a whole since 1974. But it's not just the interests of old coots that are being served here. Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won't be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it's nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today's seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It's not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice.

It's surely no coincidence that the new drug benefit is being enacted just as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. Nor can it be forgotten that the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired People—it's now just AARP—has lately broadened its membership to include all the boomers it can get its wrinkled hands on. AARP, to the surprise of many, endorsed the plan. And what a surprise it is that the prescription drug program, which will cost some $400 billion over the next 10 years, could balloon to $2 trillion in the 10 years following that—when guess-who will be collecting. You would expect taxpayers in their peak earning years to recoil in horror from a program that will vastly increase Washington's fiscal obligations for decades to come. In fact, they—make that we—can see that the time to lock in a prosperous old age is now, before twentysomethings know what's hit them.

Boomers have gotten our way every since we arrived in this world, and the onset of gray hair, bifocals, and arthritis is not going to moderate our unswerving self-indulgence. We are the same people, after all, who forced the lowering of the drinking age when we were young, so we could drink, and forced it back up when we got older, so our kids couldn't. On top of that, we're used to the best of everything, and plenty of it. We weren't dubbed the Me Generation because we neglect our own needs, Junior. If politicians think the current geezers are greedy, they ain't seen nothin' yet.

But responsible middle-aged sorts may yet be brought to their senses when they realize that their usual impulse to get all they can will sooner or later collide with another boomer obsession: the insatiable desire to furnish our kids with every advantage known to humanity. Load Social Security with more obligations than it can bear, and our precious offspring will be squashed under the weight. To fund all the obligations of the Social Security system, payroll taxes will have to more than double by 2040—on top of whatever it costs to buy all those prescription drugs. At that point, our children will realize the trick we've pulled and start to hate our guts. That would be a cruel blow to a generation that thinks of itself as the most wonderful parents in history.

To avoid that fate, boomers need to recognize the need to stop writing checks that today's youngsters will have to cash. With the eager help of our own parents, we've created an entitlement that is fast becoming unaffordable. To bring Social Security into conformity with reality, we'll have to resign ourselves to a higher retirement age reflecting our prospective vigor and life expectancy. We'll have to accept more stringent controls on Medicare spending and take more responsibility for our own medical needs. We'll have to abandon our assumption that the point of the health-care system is to keep each of us alive forever. At some point—don't worry, not anytime soon—we will have to embrace a duty to stop functioning as a fiscal burden on our children and start serving as a nutritional resource for worms.

[MEGoody]

"Memo to the baby boomers from Gen X: We have known how you are bankrupting us for a long time already. We already hate your guts, you greedy sons of b-tches."

Sweetie, the baby-boomers aren't even on social security yet. They've been paying into it a lot longer than you Gen Xers.

Now, go to the restroom and untwist your knickers.

[Glenn]

imagine how my generation feels, who will have paid into it for over FIFTY years, and won't see a single dime.

The government is playing you all for suckers. Your inter-generational finger pointing keeps the heat off them. They are the ones who took every dime they could from the fund and used it to finanance the "new world" we live in. They left an IOU. Had they invested the money, this arguing would be hypothetical.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Another wrinkle in the story is the meager fertility rates.

This why the politicians have no interest in ejecting the illegal aliens. They are paying into false SS accounts keeping SS solvent.

[MileHi]

Other than that, I want every effing dime, or there's going to be trouble.

ROTFLMAO! I like your attitude.

[Maria S]

I wonder if all of the little whinie-hinies who are cursing "old geezers" can even remember how hard their folks worked to get them those cars they thought they HAD TO HAVE the day they turned 16; or the $100 pair of shoes or jeans they couldn't live without; or the $500+ spent on graduation night for a limo, corsage, dress or suit; or all of the video tapes and CD's and computers and TV's...all of which you had to have in your VERY OWN room; or all of the stuff (amounting to thousands of dollars) that you demanded you 'needed' BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE HAS IT!

Grow up, little kids. You've been raised in the richest country that ever existed, and you're not showing much appreciation...imho.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Most "greedy grandparents" paid through the nose for social security for forty years and more, and got back far less than if they had put the money in a private retirement account.

---

No kidding. However, those who are supporting them will get a far worse deal. Just because the current retirees merely got only somewhat more than their money back does not mean that they aren't living off the next generation who will never even break even, let alone come close to private investment growth.

[thoughtomator]

Social Security isn't the only program with which the elder generations have been using to rape the younger one. Also, were a boomer to suggest to me that they've been paying into it longer and therefore they somehow have more of a claim to be a judge of the system ignores the fact that the boomers are the last generation that can expect to receive a dime from it. Big deal, they paid in more. They will get something back for what they paid. Those of us who come afterwards will get absolutely nothing.

The boomers support the subsidies to seniors only because they expect to cash in on it themselves. So the boomers have in fact been stealing the money of the generations after them already, in order to pay for their own parents' retirement, when historically this is their responsibility and not their childrens'. For some strange reason the boomers are the only generation that assumes no responsibility to support their parents in their old age.

[Atlas Sneezed]

What nerve these geezers have living when they should be dead. Wonder what the expected age to die is today? Should the retirement age be 85 or 90 for today's workers so they don't drain their children

---

Your exaggeration aside, if the system is to be sustained, and generationally equitable, then the retirement age should be adusted annually to ensure that it is self-funding on an annual basis. No "trust fund" for Congress to spend. If you are in a boom generation, you retire a few years later. If in a bust generation, you retire a few years sooner. And since you know from birth whether you are in a boom or bust, you have ample time to save, if you prefer not to have a delayed retirement.

Retiring early is nifty, but not if it is enabled by stealing from workers who have no hope of retiring anywhere near that early.

[Atlas Sneezed]

We need to keep the 'promise' to them.

---

Why keep a promise that they can retire before 72 when those who are funding their leisure have no hope for retiring any sooner?

And there has been no promise made by current workers. The promise was made by those elected years ago by the geezers. Being soaked for 15% of your income is not "making a promise". (And the few geezers got soaked anywhere near that bad.)

[Atlas Sneezed]

Sweetie, the baby-boomers aren't even on social security yet. They've been paying into it a lot longer than you Gen Xers.

---

...at lower rates, with full vesting for lower earnings, and with much earlier anticipated retirement ages.

[Skywalk]

Moron S

Do you understand the difference between your parent or grandparent giving you money and sacrificing and a young person trying to start his/her own family being forced to pay for people who aren't even related to him/her?

[Atlas Sneezed]

I wonder if all of the little whinie-hinies who are cursing "old geezers" can even remember how hard their folks worked to get them those cars they thought they HAD TO HAVE the day they turned 16...

---

You are confusing family dynamics with government tax policy.

Just because some boomers screwed up their own kids by spoiling them does not mean that they also are justified in stealing from others of their kids' generation.

[thoughtomator]

Were my parents concerned at any time with actually raising kids rather than simply shuffling them off into government-indoctrination warehouses, more concerned with motherhood than feminism and the indulgent pseudomysticism of 'self-actualization', more concerned with fatherhood than with easy divorce, alimony checks, child support payments, and using their children as weapons against each other in decade-long custody wars, I might actually care what they think about how I grew up.

They'd probably be scandalized, if they cared to know anything (for which there is no evidence whatsoever). After all, many of us turned out to be conservative, proved to be perceptive enough despite the propaganda to understand that abortion is child sacrifice, and to love our country. The Vietnam generation would be frankly aghast to learn that the generations after them are nowhere near as indulgent of bleeding-heart liberalism.

I would care what boomers thought if there was a reason to do so. I see none. 99 out of 100 boomers care for nothing but their own self-gratification, so I really don't see how anyone else can be expected to give a whit about them.

[litehaus]

I tell my kids that they are just handing it over to Mom n Dad..Of course, God willing, we will leave them what they will need since they sure won't get from the defunct Ponzi scheme....

[Skywalk]

And another thing:

Appreciation for what, for whom?

If my mom needs me, I'll be there for her.

But why should I subsidize the WEALTHIEST SEGMENT of the American population just because they want cheap drugs.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have strict means testing where only the truly indigent had access to the drugs?

And you do know that with this prescription plan that the companies will actually make a killing now? ANd that private firms will start reducing retirement plans and health plans because they can just pawn it off on government(iow, US.)

[Skywalk]

She's apparently none too bright, as she compares parents providing, even indulging, THEIR OWN KIDS with government extortion and the ruination of the futures of millions of citizens.

That'd be like me being killed for my organs so that someone I don't even know can receive a transplant because once upon a time, I was "given life" and "supported."

[Joe Brower]

You miss the point that the politicians who were running the government were voted in by the generations that preceded mine, and thus were installed long before I was born.

Mine has been the non-pleasure of having to fight them all my life. And as you probably know already, being professional bureaucrats, they are quite hard to dislodge once they are in place. Especially when they just keep upping the offers of largesse.

[Joe Brower]

"Think it will happen?"

No. Unfortunately.

[Joe Brower]

I agree with your approach 100%. That's what my wife and I are doing for our kids. It's called 'self-sufficiency'. The way things used to be.

Real estate is very profitable right now ...

[thoughtomator]

I am simply astonished to see people try and defend the generation that brought us 40 million murdered American children.