Posted on 11/05/2007 7:32:06 AM PST by American Quilter
O rend thy garments, America! Heap ashes upon thy head. We, the generation of generations--triumphant in our multitudes, invincible, indomitable, insufferable--have come into our inheritance. Hereby we claim our birthright. Give us all your money.
The pittance that is a current Social Security payment was intended to maintain the doddering retirees of yore in their accustomed condition of thin gruel and single-car garages. Such chump change will hardly suffice for today's vigorous sexagenarians intent on (among other things) vigorous sex, in places like Paris, St. Bart's, and Phuket.
How can present Social Security allotments be expected to fund our sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding and white-water rafting, our skiing, golf and scuba excursions, our photo safaris to Africa, bike tours of Tuscany and sojourns at Indian ashrams, our tennis clinics, spa treatments, gym memberships and personal fitness training, our luxury cruises to the Galapagos and Antarctica, the vacation homes in Hilton Head and Vail, the lap pools, Jacuzzis, and clay courts being built thereat and the his and hers Harley Davidsons?
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
“Be careful. I got lambasted and flamed to a char on here for expressing those sentiments.”
Much of what I say is supported by emprical evidence. And my opinion is my opinion, flame away.
I agree with you, the boomers have left America much worse than when they found it.
How in good conscience can you proclaim the “greatest generation” great if they begot and raised my pathetic and self-absorbed generation, the Boomers?
This sounds like typical liberal reasoning to me. Intentions and not results are what makes someone “great”.
And am I the only one who finds it odd that the only reason the “greatest generation” is so named is because they were drafted into a world war which they (thankfully) won? And that this moniker was awarded to this generation by a liberal boomer journalist who has worked against every military effort in which this country has been involved for the last fifty years unless there happened to be a Democrat in the White House?
Great? Good perhaps...but great?
I like everything he writes.
Nope, you're part of the Greatest Generation. The boomers were born between 1946-1964.
All the people who passed the federal and state laws with all the entitlements are the ones who have screwed the future generations. It is all the old farts in congress who won’t address SS reform or entitlements are all Pre-Boomies..so I don’t blame the boomers as much as them..plus their useful idiots who want to build a memorial to Woodstock.
“It is all the old farts in congress who won’t address SS reform or entitlements are all Pre-Boomies..so I don’t blame the boomers ... “
No, it is the boomers who won’t address SS. Boomers began in 1945, so the first of the crop is 62 years old. I’d say there aren’t that many pre boomers in congress at this point.
I didn't! (I assume your question was general and not specifically addressed to me.) And I agree with you about the "greatest generation" moniker. What did we call them before Brokaw got into the act? The WWII generation? The Depression/WWII generation? I can't remember.
Amen, brother! I am so tired of this boomer bashing. It’s all BS. Boomers working now are paying for all the greedy geezers currently getting the benefits. Boomers have paid more into Social Insecurity and Medicare than anyone, and they will receive nothing for it. Politicians are soon going to change the elgibility age for SS benefits to 106 and Medicare will consist of a bureaucrat standing on your air hose. These ponzi schemes should never have been started, and now they are collapsing under their own weight. To blame boomers for this is a load of dung.
Look at AARP if you want to see a real problem. Their motto ought to be, “Give us what we want now, and to hell with the future!”
I’m 40 and expect to receive either nothing from SS or a pittance compared either to what I put in (and could have built up in savings myself with that money) or what Boomers will receive. I’m resigned to having to save for mySELF.
But because I “count as gone” my SS taxes — down a rathole — I have to put aside EXTRA money for retirement.
In turn, that means forgoing things that the Boomers didn’t forgo. Things like a nicer home, a 2d car, a 3d child.
Obviously most of those Boomers who post HERE are not the problematic ones, but as a generation? They did not serve mine well.
It was general and not meant to be personal. And as to your question of what they called them before Brokaw got into the act, it depended on what the story was about and what liberal ideological point they were trying to make at the time.
YEP...what YOU said! Most Boomers have worked and paid into the “system” for 40+ years......it was the “Boomers” who helped vote in Reagan.....and... this country has had a 20 year economic boom.....fixing SS is a political problem, NOT a Boomer problem....as Boomers my husband and I do not look at SS as a major source of life funding.....we’ve planned our life that way.
I’m with both of you regarding the “greatest generation” . . . they were the first generation that voted in an outright “bread and circuses” type demagogue in FDR. Not so great.
The following is simply my opinion . ..
Don’t forgo the 2nd and 3rd child!!! I don’t see that; better they live, and you live a full life, than to salt away material things that can be taken from you anyway. Screw the financial planners, live with courage, and trust God to reward you for doing the right thing in terms of having more children. Hell, tithe 10% to your church as well. You’ll do fine.
Fishing seems to be one of the few fun activities P.J. forgets to mention.
Problem is, the only people with the power to fix the situation are the boomers. They seem unwilling to do it, at least the ones with D’s after their names, and many of the ones with R’s.
It was LBJ that sent the entire thing into the ditch. EVERYTHING got funded out of SS - Welfare, entitlements, etc. Nixon did a number on it too, by borrowing $11BB from SS that was never repaid to get us out of Viet Nam.
It was this big bucket of cash just SITTING there, and it became too tempting to leave alone.
The Great Society was anything but. Roosevelt got it going, but it took LBJ to really screw it up.
Maybe, but maybe not (do fine with so much less money), esp. considering my wife’s job must be in expensive SoCal.
This area is filled with people who had way too many kids relative to what they could afford. Such, in my opinion, was not the right move, either for them, for their kids, or for the other taxpayers who get to soak up the financial slack.
We disagree. I don’t think a child needs material things beyond the basics (at least as much as our society says they do); if there is love in the house the child will do fine even if the family can’t afford new cars and bedrooms for each of the kids. I had a good math teacher in high school that had to get a better paying job because he had 7 children . . . but he gave up the low paying career . . . not the children . . .!
I never understood the whole “greatest generation” nonsense anyway. Okay, the good guys won WWII and everyone sacrificed. Of course the alternative was to lose and live under totalitarianism. So really, they just did what they were supposed to do. WWII was no cake walk and there were countless heroic patriots fighting, but there countless heroic patriots in Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada (okay maybe not countless but still heroic patriots), Desert Storm and the GWOT.
They have become a very grasping and self-centered generation since then (there are notable exceptions of course), and, as someone mentioned earlier, gave birth to the worst generation.
I agree. I think it was Mark Steyn who said that the greatest statement of faith one can make in one's culture is to have children.
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