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 ...
I never blamed the Baby Boomers for the SS/Medicare mess. I blame them for having enough vocal and active members that were able to change the course of the country in the 60s. Also, I blame the “Greatest Generation” more for that. Like Dennis Prager says, they had great morals but failed to pass them on to their children.
The Greatest Generation was all for the too-good-to-be-true transfer of wealth that was the SS/Medicare Ponzi scheme.
"On our way!"
HOw many posts before this thread turns into the typical FR war zone of “I earned my Social Security and Medicare and I’m taking every penny” vs. “You’re a greedy old moocher”??? Pass the popcorn.
Why continually antiagonize them with this kind of meaningless blame fixing?
There is only one root to blame for the current economy - CREDIT. Credit has the government spending money it does not have. Credit has launched the housing bubble through the Community Reinvestment Act selling mortgages to people who can’t afford them. And likewise, a large majority of Americans are spending money they dont have - I know, I was one of them.
It was not till I took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace training (currently on week 4) that I realized how the nation’s views of credit have changed so radically since the 1950’s.
Well I may have been contributing to the problem before but no longer. I cut up the card and closed the account last week. I still have a lot of debt to pay back and I will do it. It may be a tad uncomfortable beween now and then, but it will be acomplished and I WILL live debt free from now on.
agreed.
It is only a matter of time before the checks simply do not come no matter what anyone thinks of the debate.
“Boomers will be the first generation of retirees to fully enjoy the Medicare prescription-drug benefit.”
Interesting. If this young man had any idea of how much Medicare is going to change under Obamacare, he would not be complaining of this. I lecture all over my state about Health Care. Folks currently over 55 are, by far, the hardest hit group by Obamacare.
Under Obamacare, by 2019, reimbursements to Doctors under Medicare will be LESS than Medicaid reimbursements. Medicaid is probably one of the worst medical programs in the world. What Obamacare accomplishes is to make sure seniors will receiving worse medical core than Medicaid currently gives.
It is going to be a huge shocker for seniors.
My grandfather always said “ Credit is the ruination of a nation.”.
My father, a wonderful man, a WWII vet, always said that he received more in SS & Medicare than he ever put in. He also said he wasn’t going to send the checks back, either, lol.
My baby boomer husband and I have been paying into these programs for over 40 years and have never been on food stamps, welfare, or medicaid.
In other words, there’s plenty of blame to spread around various generations.
Because enough of them sucked as parents to create brats who sent things to hell in a handbasket.
How many generations back shall we take that particular charge?
The younger generation whining and crying again....Endlessly blaming others.
It seems this is all they do.
The economy was destroyed by the Dems attempt to make home ownership an entitlement.
I remember a sixties where moms and dads were shocked and angered that everything they were trying to teach and hand down to their children was roundly and sneeringly rejected as being the BS of “the Establishment”. Families were being torn apart. There was NO “peace and love”. It was a violent decade in every respect. I hated the sixties.
Look at little closer at this generation, and you will find that most of the blame you sling at the Boomers, rightly belongs with the Silents.
All the way back. This is a problem that has been building since FDR instituted the first national transfer payment system in the 1930s. That is why it is unfair to say "the Boomers" are destroying the country by taking SS and Medicare. The Welfare State that was set up by the Dems in the 1930s and that was expanded in EACH generation since is what is destroying the country.
The answer isn't to cut off SS and Medicare but the answer isn't to let Boomers continue on with the program "as is" either.
My parents, in their 80’s, have raked in many, many times what they put into Medicare. Now early Baby Boomers are doing the same.
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