Posted on 10/08/2012 8:11:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Retirees and near-retirees are leaving behind a devastated economy for their children ... but are we doing anything to fix it? Here, two generations debate who's really to blame for the wreckage.
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CRESCENT LAKE, Ore.--My father taught me how to throw a baseball and divide big numbers in my head and build a life where I'd be home in time to eat dinner with my kid most nights. He and my mother put me through college and urged me to follow my dreams. He never complained when I entered a field even less respected than his. He lives across the country and still calls just to check in and say he loves me.
His name is Tom. He is 63, tall and lean, a contracts lawyer in a small Oregon town. A few wisps of hair still reach across his scalp. The moustache I have never seen him without has faded from deep brown to silver. The puns he tormented my younger brother and me with throughout our childhood have evolved, improbably, into the funniest jokes my 6-year-old son has ever heard. I love my dad fiercely, even though he's beaten me in every argument we've ever had except two, and even though he is, statistically and generationally speaking, a parasite.
This is the charge I've leveled against him on a summer day in our Pacific Northwest vision of paradise. I have asked my favorite attorney to represent a very troublesome client, the entire baby-boom generation, in what should be a slam-dunk trial--for me. On behalf of future generations, I am accusing him and all the other parasites his age of breaking the sacred bargain that every American generation will pass a better country on to its children than the one it inherited.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Don’t blame all the baby boomers.
There are those of us who are industrious and then there are the former hippies and flower power idiots who ruin everything they touch.
1) rent and price controls cause decline of quality of housing and goods
2) minimum wage and pro labor and pro union legislation causes unemployment
3) chronic budget deficits that are unfinanced cause deflation and increasing national debt
4) lack of gold standard and fractional reserve banking, and the ability of the Fed to create money out of thin air, causes inflation
5) inflation to finance budget deficits causes less savings
6) confiscatory taxation to finance budget deficits causes less savings
7) government borrowing to finance budget deficits causes less savings
8) less savings causes less investment which causes less capital accumulation
9) the assault on the wealth of, spending by, and income of the rich is an assault on private property rights and an assault on the improvement of productivity of labor which causes both lower average real wage rates, and economic stagnation or decline. The assault on the rich also causes destruction of incentives to accumulate and maintain capital and to improve and maintain production. Losses in terms of innovation and the growth of major new industries would be substantial.
10) government redistributionism causes less capital accumulation
11) less capital accumulation causes economic decline
12) environmentalism's fear of and hostility to science, technological progress, and economic progress cause more regulations
13) liberalism's fear and hostility to the rich, businessmen, and capitalists cause more regulations
14) health and safety concerns causes more government regulations
15) excessive government regulations causes economic decline
16) antitrust legislation cause continued survival of inefficient producers, high cost producers, dull producers, and incompetent producers
17) government interventionism which leads to an assault on freedom of entry and competition causes the barring of capable sellers from the market and restricts the range of choice of suppliers to buyers
18) egalitarianism and the libtard assault on economic inequality causes the abolition of causality. Which means the abolition of the connection between and individual's efforts and his income and the abolition of cost in the spending of income. This leads to the incentive to do as little as possible and to spend as much as possible.
19) the decline of rationality and the increased acceptance of the libtard delusion that the government can provide benefits for which the citizens do not have to pay causes the destruction of traditional American values and loss of freedom which leads to all of the above.
No, I don’t begrudge anyone who follows the rules and hits the jackpot through the system—and that’s a lot of people of the older generations right now.
But you’re right, the system is broken.
Ditto for my wife and myself. We've paid maximum on SS for the last 35 years and have never taken a penny of government benefits. I really get tired of being tarred with the "baby boomer" label as a "taker" of government benefits when I've only been a producer and payer all my life.
This dude’s whole argument is off, considering that it is the younger generation voting in the socialist Democrats and their policies, while blocking conservative reforms.
There was the 30s and the expansion of government. Many of these folks then spent the early 40s with the government caring for them in a way via the military. Please don’t flame me. I saw a man on TV once that cried because when he went into the military in ‘42, it was the first time he had shoes to wear. Was very emotional to him. When the war was over, they could have help going to school, help getting houses etc... I am not condemning, I am just pointing out how that influenced later decisions by this generation. I also think they tried to pass on values, but like the other post, the values were mocked and rejected during the 60s.
This article is just another attempt to further divide the American People. We are also “Boomers” that have contributed against our will without taking for 40+ years.
This comes from THE ATLANTIC. No need to read any further. THE ATLANTIC is full of old wrecks, fish sh-t and crabs.
Considering the story of Col Crockett & farmer Bunce we need to go back alot further than that. In fact this particular problem goes ALL the way back.
I am also in week 4. My problem is not bad spending habits that caused our debt issues. 4 years ago, my wife and I were debt free (except mortgage) and had 6 months of living in savings. After two job losses and a healthy wage cut over the last 4 years, our nest egg vanished and we find ourselves in a sea of debt. The free-fall has stabilized but we are having to reduce our lifestyle AGAIN to compensate for a future that we have low expectations for.
I personally have given up on the American Dream for my wife and I. I doubt I will ever get to retire. Our goals are now to get our kids in a position to "beat the system" in their future. We are now trying to find a way to make their opportunities and possibilities attainable.
We are now reduced to keeping the American Dream alive for our children, excepting that our own American Dream is dead. We'll keep our sweating and bleeding to get ahead. But between my wife and I, we have 1 full-time job, 2 part time jobs and one small side-business we are trying to keep profitable.
(That's probably sharing too much now that I think of it.... Oh well...I'm not ashamed so I'll go ahead and hit post.)
There is enough blame to go around, we need to quit pointing fingers and fix the mess. All the finger pointing will do is divide us and make our forces weaker.
Anybody who voted for a Democrat is responsible.
He's skipping my generation, which is the smallest in history, that is between them and the baby boomers.
Everything was passed on to my generation and we are the ones that failed to smack the crap out of the baby boomers and give them a background for hard work and individual responsibility.
And this Oregon man who has probably voted for every liberal since his first vote complains that the baba boomers didn’t get his generation off of oil??? That’s his argument??? That baby boomers had a lively economy because (up until Nixon) the government was mostly non-interventionist in the economy and that housing costs were cheaper? Lord love a duck what a dolt.
Conservatives have been screaming about this for a long time. It is not the boomers as such... it is the lazy who want something for nothing; those who would buy a house beyond their means and then scream that the government owes them help when they go into default.
I am a boomer. After my divorce I no longer had a house. What I have lived in since then has been one room rented within my budget. My child’s education was paid for out of pocket not through government loans (just like my own education was). I feel no obligation to apologize to those little parasites (the author’s choice of words) who decided to get stupid degrees at great cost and now can’t find a job.
My only question to this author would be simple....Did you vote for O? Well then you got what you voted for.
False. According the Social Security Benefits Statement that I recently received, only 75% of the stated benefits that I have earned will be available in 2025 as a result of unfunded liabilities. But they also say that congress can change these laws to correct this.
I AM NOT KIDDING OR EXAGERATING, THE SS STATEMENTS ACUTALLY DO SAY THIS. I'm 39.
By the very definition of "Ponzi Scheme," it qualifies. When immediate wealth or monetary distribution is soley dependent on an increasing number of donators with an expected future return and no actual exchange or goods or services, it's a Ponzi Scheme. Or you could call it a pyramid scheme.
Anyway you look at it, the system is dependent on a growing population putting money into the system so that a smaller group of dependents can effectively draw from it. The problem is, the population of people contibuting to the system is not growing at a pace to keep up with those collecting from it. The last one in get caught holding the bag. That's the way Ponzi/Pyramid schemes work.
it was “The Greatest Generation” who voted themselves their grandchildren’s money (that would be you and me) decades ago.
The geezers are still up to it though... so I am beginning to question whether they were ‘fooled’ or not...
I wonder if he realizes the paradox of what he is saying and asking for?
Of course not. True liberal thought process.
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