Posted on 08/19/2012 11:51:06 PM PDT by Abiotic
Baby boomers can’t expect retirement.
The good news is that I see this shitty market hiring 76 year olds over young upstarts.
Baby boomers are not the problem, we are the solution.
I feel awful for the young upstarts but their it is..
We funded our parents an grandparents retirement as well as our great grandparents.
It was crappy when We started out, and I expect young upstarts will do fine when I am in the ground.
My Father told me way back when “Nobody owes you a living”
I wonder - will the compromise involve greater government spending?
The problem in a nutshell is the Gubmint which is made up of 537 elected officeholders to the executive and legislative branch from both political party elites are LYING scum.
The population is INCREASING and the work foce is DECREASING yet the unemployment rate does not reflect that shift because the Gubmint be cooking the books by trickery such as adding 3.5 million to SSI disability in the Barry's socialist term of office.
The demographics of the babyboomers may be a problem, but the problem in a NUTSHELL is that the population is INCREASING while the workforce is DECREASING and that my friends is the CLASSIC definition of socialism.
>> the Baby Boomers (now ages 48-66) represent the most significant population wave in US history.
We were in like Flynn before abortion was in...
...and The Space Race, a half-dozen wars, the 'Great Society' and generations of the fattest, most pampered poor people on the planet.
But the chickens coming home to roost are the 50,000,000 Americans who aren't here, who never got a shot at anything, because they were removed from the economy before they were born.
Had abortion on demand not become a reality, the numbers would be different.
GMTA
amen.
Also, need to include those millions not conceived due to ‘family planning’. The destruction of the family as the basic unit of the economy, with lessons of faith and hard work are very apparent.
We now have a gangster economy where anything goes as long as you don’t get caught. Well, we should not be surprised that the government also operates on the same rules. IMHO, the government will simply print the money to cover these entitlements, and the CPI will continue to be manipulated to
remove the cost of living increases. Eventually a monthly SS check will just about cover a happy meal.
The farther we get away from original intent, the more we go in the hole.
Why, it's almost enough to make one think the founders might have known what they were doing...
Leftists, and I regret to say that a few conservatives, offer the solution of increased immigration. If the original Ponzi had said, "the only thing wrong with my scheme is that I didn't get enough new suckers", we would be outraged.
Waves of new immigrants which have more than doubled the population of America in my lifetime not only will not cure our Ponzi dilemma, they will force us into choosing between liberty and protection from our neighbors who intrude ever closer in upon our space. But worse, far worse, the wave of immigrants who do not share our language, culture, respect for the rule of law, understanding of democracy, historical legacy, and commitment to capitalism will vote us into irretrievable socialist bondage.
This is really what the argument over Ryan's solution to Medicare is all about. He is trying to save the Republic not just from fiscal insanity but from the loss of our representative democracy itself.
The problem will be solved by future Democrat administrations. After 2016 we will have passed the demographic tipping point which will ensure Democrat majorities in federal elections. In addition to higher taxes funding of Medicare and Social security will be handled as follows:
1). Means testing. If you have assets from savings you will be denied benefits or receive reduced benefits. Feds will begin requiring you to report assets annually with your tax return.
2). Increase age to be eligible for benefits. Age 65 for “early retirement”’ age 70 for full retirement. It will not matter that jobs won’t exist or some will not be healthy enough to work.
3). Denial of life extending and quality of life improving medical care past age 75. The healthcare system policies will be designed to shorten the life span of “non productive” elderly citizens.. To paraphrase Obama, “you may get a pain pill instead of a hip replacement.”
4). Aggressive “end of life counseling” and widespread euthanasia. A society that aborts children will easily justify putting to death the sick elderly. Likely bureaucrats will have the authority to arbitrarily deny services to the critically I’ll, particularly if there is no family member advocate. No doubt these bureaucrats, assigned to every hospital, will have newspeak titles such as “Patients Rights Administrator”.
5). Confiscatory inheritance taxes. Over time the state will end the outdated practice of allowing people to designate where property goes after death by gradually increasing the death tax rate to 100%. Annual filing of asset statements with tax returns will facilitate this process.. At death property ownership will shift to the government to be used for the common good.
6). Value added tax or national sales tax. It will happen within the next 5 years, possibly implemented on a temporary basis at a very low rate (say 2%) to address the overall deficit. With 50% of the population not paying taxes it will be the only way to extract taxes from lower income people. You’ll never get Congress to reinstate income taxes on the “working poor” and despite the rhetoric they will never soak the rich. The only answer to raising tax revenues in a stagnant economy is broadening the tax base. A broadbase consumption tax is easy to implement. Plus it can gradually be raised as required.
The answer to the Medicare and Social Security funding crisis is to reduce the number of recipients. Obamacare is putting in the framework to reduce the life span of senior citizens. Means testing and extending the age of eligibility for benefits will be coming soon and supported by both political parties. The next time the Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress, and the presidency, they’ll put in the rest of the taxes and take credit for solving the fiscal crisis.
On the one hand this is likely to collapse under its own weight. The interesting dynamic here, though, is that here in the U.S. we have entire industries built up around catering to retirees who have a steady, substantial source of income ... and these industries are going to fight hard to preserve the status quo even as the entire economy slides into the toilet.
YEP, Democrats say there is NO problem(that raising taxes on the rich wont cure) .
But Republicans wanting the senior vote say that there wont be a problem for another 15 years so that the gubment is flush with money NOW to hand out to the retired now, just later in the future is the problem. Oh, and the two are NOT connected. Money handed to seniors now does not affect Medicare later.
RE :”The population is INCREASING and the work foce is DECREASING yet the unemployment rate does not reflect that shift because the Gubmint be cooking the books by trickery such as adding 3.5 million to SSI disability in the Barry's socialist term of office.”
”The demographics of the babyboomers may be a problem, but the problem in a NUTSHELL is that the population is INCREASING while the workforce is DECREASING and that my friends is the CLASSIC definition of socialism”
Democratic Socialism.
It means that those NOT working can outvote those who do. And the Republicans party will be going for some of those non-working folks votes with spending $$$$ trying to get away with playing both sides, as the Dems do.
It's not clear in this poorly written article whether the writer is referring to actual welfare programs in that sentence, or if SS and Medicare are considered to be welfare programs.
But here we have another article bemoaning the SS and Medicare situation, while having little or nothing to say about the $1 trillion per year NOW BEING SPENT on the hodgepodge of welfare programs, the benefits of which are largely paid to working age Americans who don't work.
Based on recent articles stating that 100 million now receive benefits from various welfare programs, and 60 million are now on Medicaid (rising to 80 million if Obamacare if fully implemented), and 47 million receive food stamps (Swipe your EBT), it appears that around 20% of WORKING AGE ADULTS are now being supported by government welfare programs.
How does the future funding for all those welfare programs look? How much have the recipients paid into funding those programs?
There is the real problem that must be solved to put our fiscal house in order, and getting folks off welfare into jobs is the only solution. Again, these programs NOW cost a trillion per year, about 30% of the entire federal budget.
If we are going to be honest about 'social security', we'd have to admit that it is just another welfare program. I've been flamed on this forum before for making this simple, logical statement. It is apparently a truism that socialism is o.k. as long as you are the beneficiary of same. Here are the primary arguments used by alleged "conservatives" supporting welfare on FR and my answers:
More good news (for men) - "Not surprisingly, there will be far more women than men in the 65+ population.". That is, if baby boomer men can remember what sex is, and if it doesn't kill them.
LOL!
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