Posted on 05/18/2005 10:06:08 AM PDT by qam1
Jan Murray believes boomers are right to demand your money.
I am having trouble empathising with the bleating about whose taxes will fund the ageing baby-boomer bunch in the near future. Such mean-hearted tripe. Such chutzpah - the high-chair set having a hissy fit just thinking about the load it's going to have to bear.
So, who started it and how do we stop it is what I want to know. I feel like digging out my pewter jewellery and hurling it at the next Generation-X pet who complains that his or her taxes will be supporting the likes of me because I haven't been clever enough to save for my Zimmer frame.
OK, so a decent slice of your taxes are going to have to keep us in the style we invented and will insist upon while there's breath in our used, abused (and increasingly refused) bodies. Pardon us for making up 39.76 per cent of the population.
Let's just hold that thought while I run through a few home truths.
Imagine a world without teenagers. Who invented the phenomenon? We did. The adolescent baby boomers were the social malcontents of the 50s who cut loose from the oppressive ruck and insisted on being recognised as individuals with a right to be listened to, marketed to and feared by a conservative Yesterday because we were Tomorrow - our own tomorrow, and yours.
Imagine if we had not rebelled. Elvis would have been sent back to his mum to have his mouth washed out. He would still be singing gospel in some clapboard church in Memphis, telling his grandkids how a rush of blood to his head a long time ago made him do some foolish things with his hips.
Look at it this way: the money you've been saving on dentistry - because we gave you flouride in your drinking water - is the equivalent of the tax rise you'll need to come up with on our behalf.
Between sorting my vinyls and renovating my sea-change home, I pause to wonder: why all the ingratitude and grumbling resentment? Should we have left off trying to make this a better world? Should we have just climbed the corporate ladders and left the multinationals to rip down the trees and put in their car parks?
I haven't even touched the 'f' word. This fight alone would be reason enough to drop a donation in as we pass the hat around. I'm not talking flares and fondue, either. Of course the boomers gave the world them. Just as we gave it fast-food, rock'n'roll, heart transplants, aerobics, tantric sex and the F-111. OK, so the Concorde proved to be a dud and the AK-47 was nasty, the multi-function polis never eventuated and body shirts were neither here nor there. But imagine a world without tampons, child care and equal wages.
Yes, I'm talking about feminism. Boomers went in hard on that one, and the Gen -ers who hold up half the sky today need to be reminded with each pay cheque. But that's an argument for another day. Why not just pay up and do it with a smile? Life's too short for hassles, man. Dig?
Dude, the Enterprise had eight reactors aboard, which did not require refueling for 20 years. The Eisenhower had six, more compact reactors, that operated along the same lines.
In the space between launch and initial refueling, both ships have steamed around the world multiple times and produced God knows how many billions of tons of compressed steam. They heated the water that provided for showers, cooking and maintenance of 5,600 people a day, not to mention launching aircraft 24/7, and all that machinery, 365 days a year for a couple of decades. Those reactors drive a vessel that displaces almost 100,000 tons of water (and several tens of millions of tons in actual weight) across the oceans at speed of 40+ mph. And they've both been refueled only ONCE.
Imagine if those vessels were powered by diesel oil, or compressed natural gas? How much oil or gas do you think that would require? How many cars could be kept on the road or homes heated with the energy created by all that oil that didn't get used?
For someone who claims to be in the nuclear power industry, you seem to be a) very down on your own business. I'd find a new line of work, if you feel that way, and b)incapable of discerning the difference between the energy created by 1 gram of matter (the size of 4 aspirins) and a 5,000 ton trailer truck of gasoline. There is no contest.
For every nuclear plant out there, I'd wager we could close two or three coal-fired or oil burning plants, minimum. We would automatically assume, of course (for the purposes of this argument), that any new plants would be more efficient and have better safeguards than ones built in the 1970's. I would hope we had better trained folks to run them too. In this case, adding newer, more efficient plants that operate on less fuel (and not carbon based, at that!) makes more sense than anything else.
How many billions of barrels of oil would that equate to over the lifetime of the plant? If that ever happened did we reduce the demand for oil or not?
P.S. As an aside - If you ask me, when it comes to the price of gas people have their priorities screwed up to begin with. How could anyone complain about paying $2-plus for a gallon gasoline and say nothing of paying $4.50 for a gallon of milk?
BTW. The only reason for the Eisenhower to even exist is to be floating airfield. Now tell me, did you plug in real long extension cords into those jets? Or did each of those jets go through more fossil fuel in one flight than the average driver will use in a year? The fact is, an aircraft carrier (the aircraft is the operative term) uses more fossil fuel than any other ship in the fleet. And how about all your escort vessels in the carrier task force? What did they run on, spare protons from one of your 8 reactors?
As to Chicago, it in fact has been lit by nuclear power for more than 25 years, by those old 70s nuclear plants you don't care for like Dresden, Byron, Braidwood, LaSalle, and good old Zion which is now decommissioned. Just in the Chicago area, there is more nuclear generation capacity than every nuke power ship in the US Navy. But nuclear doesn't do a damn thing to move those cars around the Loop or get those jets off the ground at O'Hare.
We agree on the price of gas. At $2.50, it's cheaper in real dollars now than it was back when I started driving. And considering that demand has probably tripled since then, you should thank some greedy lazy, stupid, self-centered Boomer engineers who figured out how to find, drill, transport, refine and distribute all that oil at a fraction of the cost that it once took.
For someone who claims to be in the nuclear power industry, you seem to be a) very down on your own business. I'd find a new line of work, if you feel that way, and b)incapable of discerning the difference between the energy created by 1 gram of matter (the size of 4 aspirins) and a 5,000 ton trailer truck of gasoline. There is no contest.
I said I am in 100% support for more nukes, and you read that as being "down". Do you have comprehension problems? And again, what does the energy potential of nuclear fuel have to do with the demand for oil?
For every nuclear plant out there, I'd wager we could close two or three coal-fired or oil burning plants, minimum.
Virtually all the coal-fired plants built since the 1960s are approximately the same size as nuclear plants --- i.e. about 20 times more generation capacity as your aircraft carrier had. As to oil burnings plants, there ain't many. Only 3% of US electricity is generated from oil, and the vast majority of that is in locations where other generation options are not viable technically or economically. Utilities aren't stupid. They don't burn oil when they could make juice cheaper with other fuels.
So for you to spout that 1. your aircraft carrier could power Chicago for 25 years, and 2. that more nukes will cause a decrease in oil demand, shows me that the navy didn't teach you squat about the nation's energy supply.
More nukes would be a good thing because they are the cheapest way to make electricity, and cheep electricity is a good thing. But they do absolutely nothing to change oil use.
“Exactly what benefits have Boomers demanded?”
As a whole, Boomers are demanding more money from Social Security system when they contributed – making it a huge welfare program. Members from both the Republican and Democrat parties have said that the current system will be bankrupt by the retiring baby boomers.
We need to cut benefits, rise the retirement age and/or increase taxes. Unfortunately the boomers don’t want to do any of these things, but they are more then willing to make the younger generation suffer.
“Through all 229 years, the total count far under 1 million KIA.”
Not if you count the loss of the KIA potential offspring. They will have no children or grandchildren – their family line ended.
America’s greatest generation built this country from the economic ruins of the 30’s and 40’s and their hard work has held the boomers heads above water. Now the boomers are demanding another generation give them the lap-of-luxury in their old age.
Okay, one more time. It's simple math, so I don't see how you're missing it.
If you have a plant that burns 100,000 barrels of oil a year (for example), that translates into 1.2 milion barrels per year, correct? How much power is produced for that 1.2 million barrels is irrelevant for the moment.
Now let's say the operational life of that plant, not counting modifications and maintenance made after initial construction, is 30 years.
1.2 million barels of oil x 30 years = 36,000,000 barrels of oil.
So far are you following me? Good.
Now, let's say there was nuclear power plant of approximate size and output. However, instead of burning oil, it "burns" little pellets of uranium, and has the same service life as the oil-fired plant.
That's 36,000,000 barrels of oil that are not requred for that one plant alone. Multiply that by 100 or 1,000 and it begins to add up. That's a lot of oil that is not being used to generate electricity. How's that for reducing demand?
Of course, that's only the industrial and power-generation side. Your counter-argument would be to dance around the word "demand". As in "reduce demand in one sector and it rises in another". I.E. once we stop using oil for electiricty, people will just drive more.
If you want to make the case that once electricity is generated cheaply, cleanly and oil free that people will now take advantage of falling oil prices to drive 24 hours a day, you're making the assumption that because something is more readily available that people will always take advantage of it. And perhaps they would here, until all that cheap power made alternate forms of transportation more palatable than sitting in traffic jams half the day.
The real demand problem is in the more rural areas of the country that do not have access to mass transit or which are a long way from anything. In those areas, demands for oil and gasoline will continue to increase until civilization makes the great leap forward into Webbedfoot, Idaho and Inbred City, Montana.
And I never said that airplanes were nuclear powered, did I? Please be serious. All I said was that thanks to the nuc plant, we did not have to burn oil or gas in order to make all those other things happen. It also meant we didn't have to have tankers sailing around to top us off. Yes, the aircraft are a different story, but the ship itself was incredibly energy efficient. And those reactoirs, btw, were cycled through. While two were in use, the rest were offline for maintenace, etc. if all six of them were fired up at once, there was more than enough power to go around for a very long time.
This broad could talk me into supporting mandatory euthanasia.
My eldest was born in 67. I was a WWII baby so just ahead of the boomers and I have been helped by that. Anything they do for themselves, and it is always alot, gets me too.
I think you need to get a mellow peaceful feeling about your status and try not to get mad. Things work out. BTW I don't see me as part of a whiny group of greedy bastards. Everyone I know is still working in their 60's to help out the kids who are being squeezed so bad. I feel for your generation,,yall are having harder times I think than we did. But at least yall don't have polio to worry about.
Please cite your source(s) for that charge. The AARP has always demanded more and more, but "as a whole", Boomers have been throwing the AARP letters they get on their 50th birthday in the trash. That's why you see AARP advertising on TV for more members touting their "discounts" which you can get anyway or their overpriced insurance policies. Boomers, "as a whole" are too smart for the old AARP con games. Their membership is dying off and it's already showing by how politicians no longer shake in their boots when AARP comes calling.
Oh, brother. So by that "logic" the Black Death must have killed more than the earth's total population.
America’s greatest generation built this country from the economic ruins of the 30’s and 40’s and their hard work has held the boomers heads above water.
Oh come on. Economic ruins? New Deal screw-ups for sure but the nation was not in economic ruins. Their "hard work" as you call it was the generation where 50% belonged to corrupt labor unions, attempts to eliminate feather bed jobs like railroad "firemen" on diesel-electric locomotives lead to major strikes, where guys regularly bragged about how much they didn't do at work each day, where contracts called for 13 weeks paid vacation, and young guys like me who entered the labor force around those people were told in no uncertain terms to "slow down on the job if you know what's good for you" while in the White Collar world, the 3-martini lunch (fully tax deductible) and posh Country Club memberships (fully tax deductible) were the given in every corporate environment.
It took that "Greatest Generation" about 25 years after WWII to nearly kill major industries like steel and autos. (And it only lasted that long because America wasn't destroyed by WWII)
It took the Boomers, who were willing to put in long hours, and willing to tell the mafia union bosses to shove it, to turn this economy around from what it had degraded into by the 1970s. (Double digit inflation with double digit unemployment) I was there and I saw all of it. Hat's off to the guys who fought WWII, but the truth is the work ethic of the "Greatest Generation" sucked big time and they had (and continue to have) the most over rated sense of entitlement I have ever seen. You won't find much in the way of a libertarian streak in any of the older generation. They were the generation raised from the Depression through WWII and taught to rely on Big Brother for support and solutions. If the Boomers had followed their lead, this nation would have had a complete Euro-Socialism economy.
Now the boomers are demanding another generation give them the lap-of-luxury in their old age.
Just repeating something over and over does not make it so. Show me some documentation on what luxury or free ride Boomers are demanding. It's in your imagination. You watch way too many movies. You think every Boomer is somehow like those dope smoking Hippie punks from the 60s. I got news for you pal. No one hated those worthless freaks more than their contemporaries who were struggling to get started.
any govt...police, firemen, teachers, etc....
don't stay in the private sector....
the govt is similar to the old Russia's ...as long as you play the game you get the riches......
But what you have absolutely no concept of is how the electrical system works, nor the scale of energy use in this country.
You could build 100 new nuclear plants tomorrow, and it won't replace even 1 barrel of oil. Oil is used for generation only when and where other sources are not possible (think remote Alaskan villages, cycling or peaking plants positioned either away from gas sources or within metropolitan areas where even the most pro-nuclear person wouldn't suggest building a nuke, emergency diesel plants for hospitals of factories.) Understand this. The US does not rely on oil for power generation. To my knowledge, there is not a single base-load oil-fired plant in this nation. (Nukes, BTW, are all base-load.) The amount of oil used for power generation is infinitesimal compared to the amount used for transportation and petrochemical production. Build all the nukes you want and it will not change the amount of oil we import by a drop.
You've now turned everybody younger then you into the new largest voting block ever. Don't think the boomers can steamroll the nation on this one. SS will change (likely become means tested) before it goes broke. This will affect you.
SS is a transfer program from the young and working to the old and rich now. Removing the rich old has got to be part of the solution. That means the rich old get nothing back, just like the young. Life ain't fair.
Florida has some convertable combined cycles that run on oil when they get their gas use forcasts wrong (the pipelines are constrained, fuel needs to be scheduled days ahead, number of days depends on how far south you are).
Hawaii also runs on mostly oil.
I now believe that SS most be indexed with those pensioners like the guy who is getting over $100,000 a yr and collecting Ss to be first in line....
infact, let's also have means testing for Medicare....
and we should raise the top category for workers from the current one up to say, at least $100,000 minimum....
I've come to these conclusions becaused the govt as a whole has not protected private pensions with a venegence...witness Unitied and my hubby's company.....but at the same time has made govt paper shovelers rich .......with their outrageous pensions and bennies....
give them whatever money they contributed into SS , then cut them off .....
this is the attitude one gets when the separation between the have's and have-nots widens without a blink of the eye....
we in this household NEED out SS benifits, unlike some....
I take the Dave Ramsey attitude about giving....get enough money saved and invested so you can give it away...to my kids.....that's what I hope to be able to do...and to do it when they're young enough to really need it.....
I'll wait to hear what Shecky Green has to say about this before I form an opinion.
Without the aircraft, it's a cruise ship with a very large sun deck and very cramped cabins. ;~))
BTW. I'd have to kind of check this out, but I'd bet that the number of barrels of oil required to support a nuclear carrier task force today is far more than the amount required for old WWII vintage oil-fired boilers.
The value of nuclear power carriers is not based on fuel efficiency.
As I said, oil is only used when necessary.
Hawaii also runs on mostly oil.
Good point. I forgot about the island state. My former company regularly presented unsolicited proposals to Hawaiian Electric for a 600 MW nuke. Funny how the proposals were always personally delivered, in the winter, but several very senior, "Greatest Generation" executives accompanied by their spouses. (That BTW, is an absolutely true story. ;`))
Economic child rapists.
Grave diggers of Western Civilization.
8 posted on 05/18/2005 10:19:24 AM PDT by AdamSelene235
Boomers have perfected serial marriage, the break up of the family, and the distortion of
traditional religious values, though. I gotta give them credit for that. Thanks, guys.
16 posted on 05/18/2005 10:28:40 AM PDT by Gingersnap
Loved the angry replies from all the clueless dolts who just didn't get it.
36 posted on 05/18/2005 11:18:50 AM PDT by ozzymandus
My favorites…..
Fortunately for Gen X, the Baby Boomers are also the one's pushing for Euthanaisa,
Dutch style and maybe they won't be a burden for as long as people think.
44 posted on 05/18/2005 11:31:31 AM PDT by Tamar1973
Payback time.
The old fart boomers will just be "mercy killed."
Then they won't be a "drain" on society.
All for the common welfare, you know - the collective good.
Give peace a chance.
47 posted on 05/18/2005 11:46:56 AM PDT by XR7
To: qam1
The boomers are going to start paying for their irresponsibility...or we'll kill them.
70 posted on 05/18/2005 4:39:43 PM PDT by Maelstrom
To: qam1
I think I may be pro-euthenasia/murder.
I'm still trying to decide.
71 posted on 05/18/2005 4:41:57 PM PDT by mabelkitty
After reading this crap, I’ve come to several conclusions:
1. My sympathy for future generations is misplaced. How stupid of me to seek resolution to a problem when, in fact, it's probably not MY problem. You see, I get SSI AND my pension.
2. I need more ammunition.
3. Let's take the money now.
LOL
I like number #2.
You just may need it if SS bankrupts the U.S. treasury. What is your political solution for the future of SS. I think that we will have to do one or more of the following:
1. Raise taxes
2. Cut benefits
3. Raise the retirement age
Unfortunately, we will probably do all three and it will still go bust. I find it very frustrating that I pay such a high SS tax while at the same time Nancy Pelosi is telling me that I’ll be lucky to get 60-70% back. Not only that but people on this board are saying that it’s not their problem, but if we try to adjust their S.S. welfare, they will get their guns or even worse – VOTE THEMSELVES MORE MONEY.
Alexander Tytler warned in the eighteenth century, "a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by dictatorship."
It’s already happening with the minority population; the democrats are offering them access to the public treasury for votes. Now the boomers are going to pound the final nail in the coffin and vote themselves more money or as the baby boomers say "It's just what society owes us".
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
Point I'm trying so desperately, so desperately to make is that the verdict does not lie at "waaahhhh whose fault is this... It's the boomers, it's Gen X, it's the Great Generation". That is patently the stupidest argument I have ever read on this otherwise brilliant board. The stupidest. Ignorant. Non Productive. That WON'T work.
I believe that we can go to publicly authored options. I have no problem with raising the retirement age. I have no problem with limiting the amount of benefit you receive if you are a kabillionmillionaire. I mean, come on, Spielberg. I do, however, have a problem after a lifetime of work and dedication to my party being beotch-slapped in the face by some punk jerk-off poster who's disrespecting and broad brushing an entire group of people as leftwing liberal world destroyers and threatening, even in a joking manner, to put me out of my mercy at a predestined age. He'd better come early, pack his lunch and be well armed. Better watch out for the dogs. And I ain't voting him a retirement neither.
I'm plan on being one mean old granny. And I don't think I'm going to be lonely.
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