Posted on 08/13/2011 1:13:31 PM PDT by Publius804
Generation Xers and Gen-Yers like me have a hard time showing interest in what goes on in Washington. But we had better end our apathy -- and soon -- or we'll spend the rest of our lives paying for it. Members of the generation that came before us -- the Baby Boomers -- are trying to pull a scam under the guise of "protecting" Social Security. If they succeed, we -- and our children -- will be the poorer for it.
Everyone knows Social Security is in trouble (and President Bush's Commission to Strengthen Social Security released its report on reform yesterday). But few people understand what that trouble is and whom it will affect. Understanding that is the key to understanding the scam.
Right now, Social Security is in great health. This year, like so many before, hundreds of billions of dollars will pour into it from FICA and payroll taxes, and only some will go back out as benefits to retirees. The rest will be exchanged for government bonds, which the federal government will pay back -- with interest -- to Social Security in the coming years.
But things will change in the next decade, when the Boomers will retire and start collecting benefits. By 2016, so many people will be drawing Social Security that the money needed to cover benefits will be more than what we Gen-X/Y workers will be paying in taxes. Fortunately, the program will be able to cash in the bonds that it's now buying, and will use the repaid principle and interest to keep up the benefits
(Excerpt) Read more at cato.org ...
Ping!!!!
Current headline:
Generation X punishes innocent Boomers by electing Obama.
I’m a Boomer and I don’t take any blame for the disaster confronting SS.
Exactly!
Ha! Almost all Gen-Xers or Y-ers I know are MORE Liberal than Baby Boomers. Someone brainwashed them but good.
Well, you lazy Xers and Yers have gotten plenty of warning. So get on the stick and start working a little harder and socking away more of your money for a rainy day.
Maybe by now they'll realize it can't be saved. Bernie Madoff went to jail for a lesser scam than Social Security.
Obama got 66% of the under 30 vote, so I guess that whatever he says, is OK with them.
So the Xers and Yers think Social Security is the great financial problem? Lol, better take a look at this computation of unfunded liabilities: Medicaid $35 trillion, Medicare $23 trillion and SS $8 trillion. What they really need to be worried about are the welfare programs that are just as much an unfunded mandate as any other program until those laws are changed.
More class warfare.
Get the generations fighting each other while the real criminals in Washington keep screwing us all.
Thank you!!!!
Social Security is a scheme and I cannot excuse that. But I will say, had the politicians not raided the Social Security funds for all these many years, the funds would last much longer than they shall. There never was a lock box. It was just a big pile of money and, like flies to feces, the politicians could not but help themselves to the feast.
Exactly. It is the politicians and crooks in our society who have been robbing us blind for example paying for all these things including illegals who are not entitled to our money. They also have private slush funds. This is BS.
Generation X = unemployed = no future for SS.
And the real criminals in the states and counties, taking all kinds of officious bribes (fees, etc. against any homeowner building something) and prohibiting any young men from doing real work (e.g., new, small, domestic manufacturing operations on large, rural lots. There “property values” argument is dead.
“But I will say, had the politicians not raided the Social Security funds”
Unfortunately, during the 90’s when clintoon “ended welfare” most of the change was in name only - and in where the actually money came from.
With all the numbers crap that comes out of Washington, one figure you will never hear:
How much (as a percent) of Social Security is paid to people that have paid into the system their whole life, and how much is paid to people that never paid ANYTHING into the system.
Ditto for Medicare
You’ll never hear it because it would likely cause the second American Revolution.
If if you had those percentages for today and say 1994, you’d quickly see how we “ended welfare” in 1996.
Their property values argument, even.
More Boomers cast ballots for him though. Funny that.
That is pretty stupid, larger groups always do that, whites cast more democrat votes than blacks although whites vote republican, more Texans vote Democrat than people in Massachusetts do, more white Evangelicals vote democrat than Jews or homosexuals etc, etc, etc.
What we know is that 66% of the under 30 crowd of 2008 is hard core lefty and that is a future of liberalism that will not change.
Facts are stupid?
The fact that the boomers are such a larger demographic, is why it’s crucial for republicans to get solid support from them.
48/48 is not solid republican support from Boomers.
Boomers sold us down the river.
Xer Ping
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Hopefully you won't be blaming us younger folks for the means testing and the reduced benefits heading your way soon, either.
And it’s only getting worse.
Like many, I’ve paid into SS and Medicare for many years. I’m 65 and still employed and still paying into the system – never taking a nickel out.
I turn red when I hear SS and Medicare called ‘entitlement programs’… as if to somehow change the meaning of the words to ‘give-aways programs’.
If nothing more, the government that took the money needs to at least pay back every dime they stole from the people who’ve paid into the system. To do less is nothing short of robbery – a dangerous scenario that will not go down easy with its victims.
To Mr. Firey: Better get a second job, I’ll need your taxes when I retire.
What is stupid is for someone to be so liberal that they not only devote themselves to defending an age groups 66% vote for Obama, but they also try to keep conservatives from discussing it as it affects America’s future.
Generation Y is a dedicated leftist generation, which means that this country is going to get very ugly in about 20 years.
Wow ten years ago and the article predicted the future correctly! It is beyond obvious that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme about to collapse.
Corrupt politicians have fleeced generations with Social Security.
There already is means testing and reduced benefits. But no problem, just don’t blame me when you can’t start collecting your pittance until you’re ninety.
Yeah, what did we do?
Gen Xer’s as well as other mind numbed robots gave us “the won” who spent us further into oblivion. Bush tried to get a handle on SS but the nattering naybob’s screamed bloody murder.
We can’t fix it if nobody has the cajones to do so. The dims are useless and the GOP is spineless, what’s left???
I don’t remember ever having an opt out choice from having a portion of my salary confiscated to fund SS over the past 38 years. If there had been one I would have surely opted out. I just want my earned money back that was taken away by a federal government fuly involved in socialism, but I doubt I’ll see much of it returned to me, if any.
I think it’s pathetic that the boomers couldn’t even muster 50 percent support.
Probably because they thought that McCain was too old and they didn’t want to vote for somebody older then them. That’s been the boomer cry since day 1, n’est-ce pas?
Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare are considered welfare programs, because our illustrious leaders have expanded eligibility so much that many, many people on the programs have never paid into them in to any significant degree. As another FReeper mentioned, it isn’t the retirees so much as all the others who are getting a free ride.
Look at the present state of SSI programs. Why is ADHD so common now? How about payouts for alcoholism? Most Americans have no problem with taking care of the TRULY disabled, but we’ve expanded the definition of a disability way, way beyond the ability of taxpayers to pay.
Big government programs are inherently inefficient and full of fraud. I don’t understand the disconnect that most people have. They joke about how bad the post office is. They complain about having to fight the government to get anything done. Then they turn around and ask the government to do more things!?!? It boggles the mind.
Truth be told, a lot of these programs could probably survive if benefits were limited to the truly old and infirm, but the temptation to expand them is always there. That’s how politicians stay in office, by promising more benefits for more people, and they are very good at it. Once the constitutional firewall was breached and government seized roles it was never intended to perform, the die was cast.
Good luck reigning any of this crap in short of total economic collapse. That doesn’t mean we give up, but the chances of any serious reform are slim. They will probably have to break it before we conservatives can fix it.
I’m 63. SS that is easy to fix for politicians. First they will up the income limit. Second they will increase the age limit. And while they do that, the treasury and central bank will devalue the dollar. If I’m lucky enough (if you want to call luck)to reach 90, my SS check will just be enough to buy a cup of coffee. You X generation and younger, I got news for you, the biggie will be funding medicare. That’s the elephant in the room. Man are you going to get soaked for that bill.
What is childish and pro liberal is you wanting to divert a conversation from a determinedly leftist voting block to a voting group with a 50/50 split in an election where Obama won by a 7 point margin.
You clearly have some sort of identity politics agenda and conservatism is not part of that agenda.
All I can figure is that you are part of the age group that voted 66% for Obama, so in some misguided chauvinism, you feel compelled to defend that 66% to your dying breath which makes for very strange conversation on a conservative activist site like freerepublic.
For sure, ask any Russian pensioner how it works.
I’m really tired of boomers giving themselves a passing grade for 48 percent.
48 is pathetic, and just not good enough.
We hear all these stories about how the boomers voted for Reagan, etc, but the fact is that boomers let us down last election big time.
Without them, Obama would not have been elected.
As for my generation, I feel let down by my elders, because frankly, you’ve done a terrible job.
Should I not expect more from the generation that’s been in power for the last 20 years?
Man, you have issues.
Citizen slaves
20 years! Please!
You honestly believe that blaming young folks is going to make us feel better about righting the ship?
C’mon.
When am I going to get an admission from you that I’m not a liberal but I get tired of cleaning up boomer liberals messes...
Yup. These libs and their Pubbie co-conspiritors will have to collapse the economy before the ruling class can be goaded into action or replaced.Sad.
A 66% voting block will never become majority republican, and that is our under age 33 group, any one that refuses to even acknowledge that is no conservative, and is someone who wants to bury their head in the sand and let it continue unchallenged.
If we can’t make some change in the under 35 year old voter, and the Catholic voters, then we stand no chance at all in this nation.
Horsehockey.
The Boomer voting block dwarfs them.
You are right that the nation will eventually get to the point where the boomers are too small, but that point is over 20 years away.
There are more Boomers than either Xers and Ys, and more Boomer voters than both combined.
Boomers when they got the levers of power got more and more liberal, and continue to trend liberal. That long range trend isn’t likely to change because boomers have no reason to change.
The young folks on the other hand, this is our future that’s getting destroyed. I know many, many young conservatives. You want to know what angers us more than anything else?
The 50 million of us that are not here. 50 million! Think that might have defeated obama if the Boomer generation had actually stepped up and done their duty?
I agree and it starts with us. The notion that talk of politics and religion is taboo in the public sphere is hogwash. Any debased culture trash can be discussed but the two most important things in human relations can’t?
We have become disconnected and losing that social-capital that Alexis De Tocqueville noted about Americans. It was noted by Robert D. Putnam in, Bowling Alone.
IMO, the Church (youth groups) and Boy Scouts are great start.
You really don’t understand, the boomer vote did not elect Obama, and the democrats will never win the boomer vote again, ever, as rare as it was in the first place, this 50/50 split in 2008 was the last the democrats will see that.
The future that you see is the under 45 year old vote that is majority democrat, and the under 35 year old vote that is overwhelmingly, massively democrat.
You can’t seem to get it through your head that Generation Y and Catholic immigration, and the generation after gen. Y guarantees a permanent Democrat future after the older generations shrink in number.
I know that there is a hook, multiple hooks, that we can use to reach these groups to help remove the blinders from their eyes, and for them to look at things from a different angle, we just need to figure out what those hooks are.
Hogwash. The Catholics are not the problem, they are the only folks actually having children and keeping the whole train rolling.
The Boomers were 48/48 with Obama. How are they of any help at all to the preservation of the Republic? They need to shift at least 5 percent for the republicans to have a chance.
That means folks like you, need to actually help us younguns out who’ve never voted for Obama, and we’ll do our best to help you.
But we cannot do it alone. We need the boomers and we need them to repudiate Obama.
Catholics vote majority democrat, as do the under 45 year old voters, and the under 35 year old voters are astonishingly pro democrat, unlike anything that we have ever seen.
You cannot seem to get it through your head who elected Obama, the over 45 year old vote was AGAINST Obama, the under 45 year old vote was FOR Obama, it was by winning the majority of those younger voters that he won, for you to blame it on the groups that did not vote for him, because you want them to vote republican in such huge margins as to overcome that youth vote, is a weird argument and it sure doesn’t address the future which is a democrat population.
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