Free Republic

Walter Russell Mead writes on the disappearance of jobs for non-Baby Boomers: An analysis of recent jobs figures at Investor.com reveals a disturbing development: the biggest beneficiaries from the economic recovery are Boomers, while everyone else is getting the shaft. Since the Obama administration took office, there has been an epochal shift. Young workers have continued to lose jobs and incomes, while older workers have actually gained ground. In fact, the Obama administration has seen a boom in the prospects of the 55+ crowd; their (I should say ‘our’) employment stands at a 42 year high. Net, there are 3.9...

This is a big story that you're not hearing much about. cites a forbidden source: This is nearly a half-trillion dollars that the Federal government is on the hook for, which might not be showing up in deficit numbers. Another "perfect storm."

Sorry, But Housing And Car Sales Just Do Not Show A Coming Recession New Deal democrat, The Bonddad Blog Oct. 6, 2011, 1:45 PM ECRI's recession call has justifiably gotten much coverage. On the other hand, many have noted the lack of transparency of their method, making reliance on them a matter of trust rather than testing. An alternative to their approach is based on the research of UCLA Anderson School Prof. Edward Leamer. Prof. Leamer made an excellent presentation (pdf) about the progression of business cycles at Jackson Hole in 2007. It is research I have relied on many...

Home prices are unlikely to recover before 2020 and mortgage defaults will persist for years, says a survey of bank risk managers out Friday. The survey conducted by the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association for FICO, found that 49 percent of respondents do not expect housing prices to rise back to 2007 levels for another nine years. Only 21 percent of respondents said they would. The findings, which authors called “a decidedly pessimistic outlook”, are a sharp reversal from cautious optimism the survey respondents expressed late last year and in early 2011. In addition, 73 percent of surveyed bankers say...

Even after an op-ed in USA Today and a strong exposition of his position in last night’s debate, Rick Perry still draws heat for his characterization of Social Security as a “monstrous lie.� A new CNN/ORC poll, for example, reveals that 72 percent of registered voters say Perry’s description of the program is “inaccurate,� while just 27 percent say it is “truthful.� More of the breakdown from WSJ’s Washington Wire: The survey also shows that 59 percent of tea party supporters disagree with Mr. Perry’s characterization.Still, 55 percent of those polled say there’s a serious problem with Social Security that...

Boomer retirement could slow U.S. recovery CNNMoney 12:02 PM CDT, August 22, 2011 The aging of the U.S. baby boom generation may slow an already weak recovery as boomers sell stocks to pay for retirement, according to research released Monday from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. Many baby boomers have already sold some assets in preparation for retirement, research adviser Zheng Liu and Mark Spiegel, vice president of economic research, said in the latest San Francisco Fed Economic Letter.

Baby boomers face of what used to be called the retirement age are offering 70 million members strong market for the legions of companies, entrepreneurs and plastic surgeons willing to take advantage of their “forever young” mode think, either through wrinkle creams, face lifts or training schemes. That adds to the potential bonanza. Market research firm Global Industry Analysts projects that fuel the boom in consumer base, “seeking to keep the dreaded signs of aging at bay,” will drive the U.S. market anti-aging products for about $ 80 million today to more than $ 114 billion by 2015. The baby...

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...

Richard Ben Kramer’s seminal work on running for the presidency, What It Takes, introduced the idea of the ‘looking in the mirror’ moment. It was the second when an individual awoke, looked themselves in the eye, and decided that running the rigorous gauntlet of a campaign was worth it. I believe we as a country, and more specifically those of us in the Gen X cohort, are looking in the mirror today. The question facing us is essentially the same: do we have what it takes? Folks should be forgiven for asking, “For God’s sake, what’s next?” For any number...

Baby boomers -- those born between 1946 and 1964 -- have been described as "the pig in the python" and the "sandwich generation." They lived well, grew up in relative abundance and, some say, expected their Social Security, health care and government support to be there as they grew old. Now, as the future of the country's economy is up in the air, is this group of 80 million aging Americans -- many of whom are sprinting toward retirement age -- the ones to blame for the nation's shaky economic system? (snip) Thomas Firey, a senior editor at the conservative...

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News. The Obama administration and many economists have

Great places to retire can be found outside of Florida and Arizona. In fact, many can be found outside of the U.S. entirely. Safe, attractive and affordable places to retire are scattered across the globe, from Latin America to Asia and even Europe. We've narrowed our list to eight overseas retirement hot spots. Two factors critical to retirees (and their wallets) shaped our choices: cost of living and health care. To make our picks we consulted several experts on travel, tourism and overseas retirement, including Jennifer Stevens, executive editor of International Living, and Kathleen Peddicord, publisher of LiveandInvestOverseas.com. We also...

Debt Reduction: The president happily announces "a very constructive meeting" with Republicans to resume debt-ceiling negotiations. Taxpayers should demand the one and only solution: huge spending cuts, period. Back during the Cold War, the left here and in Europe unsuccessfully peddled the notion of moral equivalency between the U.S. and the USSR, as if a regime that shot or starved tens of millions of its own people could be viewed through the same lens as the freest, most prosperous nation in history. On Thursday, the president presented himself and his fellow spendaholics as morally equivalent to the House's new Republican...

Reforming entitlements Should changes to the major federal entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) be on the table as President Barack Obama and Republicans negotiate to reduce the deficit? Yes No Not sure

One of my earliest memories of revulsion against war came from seeing a photograph from the First World War when I was a teenager. It was nothing gory. Just a picture of a military officer, in an impressive uniform, talking to a puzzled and forlorn-looking old peasant woman with a cloth wrapped around her head. He said simply: “Don’t you understand, madam? The village is not there any more.” To many such people of that era, the village was the only world they knew. And to say that it had been destroyed in the carnage of war was to say...

Bureaucratic InsanityFrom the June 20, 2011, issue of NR. Some federal-budget cutters claim that we have already picked all the low-hanging fruit. Those of us who work in Washington know better, although it is not considered polite to say so. One counterexample is SAMHSA, a federal health agency distinguished by the fact that the health of its clients would improve if it went out of business. The acronym stands for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a $3.6 billion component of the Department of Health and Human Services. It employs 537 people, who have an average salary of...

The subprime crisis has spread well beyond the victims of those loans. The residue of the crisis spread to the economy and began to affect those who had lost their jobs, their equity and finally their homes. All of us have been touched by friends and loved ones who had to leave their homes. The subprime crisis was caused primarily by the crash of real estate values and not by risky loans. Since then, several variables have contributed to the rise of record foreclosures. Loan modifications were widely marketed as easy solutions to homeowners facing payment default. As most discovered,...

The latest numbers show the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, with the pace of job growth slowing. When it comes to new jobs, 70 percent of those are coming from small businesses, but many of them are struggling just to hang on. Small businesses are often responsible for filling the summer job needs of America's teenagers. CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that many 16- to 19-year-olds are finding the going rough when it comes to finding work once school is out. Nearly 14 million Americans are looking for work The Labor Department says the unemployment rate for those...

Yesterday’s Case Shiller housing data was scary enough all by itself–housing prices have dropped a whopping 5% just in the past year. What nobody is factoring into the equation yet is one of the government’s favorite weapons of mass destruction–FHA loans. Taxpayer insured mortgages are all the rage as conventional loans have become harder to come by. Now that all of the cows have escaped and been run over by semi trucks, lenders have sealed the barn door shut and requiring borrowers to prove they can actually repay their loans as well as put up some kind of down payment....

I have often said to my mother, who is a baby boomer and liberal, that my generation (Gen X), would have to clean up the mess that her generation left behind. As time wears on, that statement rings more and more true.

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood and older Americans have never had much use for each other. The 50-plus crowd doesn’t go to opening weekends or buy popcorn; a youth-obsessed Hollywood has happily ignored them.

The World Won't Be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite. By Neil Howe and Richard JacksonSunday, January 4, 2009 The world is in crisis. A financial crash and a deepening recession are afflicting rich and poor countries alike. The threat of weapons of mass destruction looms ever larger. A bipartisan congressional panel announced last month that the odds of a nuclear or biological terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the year 2014 are better than 50-50. It looks as though we'll be grappling with these economic and geopolitical challenges well into the 2010s. But if you think that things couldn't...

... There have been many other instances -- too many to mention in this piece -- but I don't recall ever seeing the like of the disproportionate, unhinged attacks on Christine O'Donnell for her statements addressing the Establishment Clause in her Widener Law School debate with Chris Coons. The left couldn't possibly want that one Delaware Senate seat enough to match their vitriol. It's important to understand the context in which the Establishment Clause issue was addressed at the debate. Chris Coons said that only evolution must be taught in schools, and that intelligent design is prohibited from being discussed,...

Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57. But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again. College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job. But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who...

Let's get one thing straight, all of you millennials out there. If it weren't for us baby boomers, most of you wouldn't be here. Literally. We are your parents. You sprung from our wombs, from our love. We don't just deserve your respect; we deserve your eternal gratitude — for the food you ate, for the clothes you wore, for the roofs over your heads. By the way, we're still giving food, clothes and roofs to the more than 10 million of you who still live in our homes. And what have you millennials — the 50 million Americans born...

Jimmy Jet from Deluxe Reading Toy Commercial This toy from Deluxe Reading is one of the most highly sought-after toys from the baby boomer generation. Jimmy Jet was to die for in the mid 1960s, and today worth several hundred dollars in any condition.

The baby boomers. Born between 1945 and 1955, they are busy ignoring the biblical calculus that a man's span is three score years and 10. Having enjoyed a life of free love, free school meals, free universities, defined benefit pensions, mainly full employment and a 40-year-long housing boom, they are bequeathing their children sky-high house prices, debts and shrivelled pensions. A 60-year-old in 2010 is a very privileged and lucky human being – an object of resentment as much as admiration. I'm at the heart of all of it – guilty as charged. Born 21 May 1950, I'm the quintessential...

America's baby boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—face a problem that could weigh on the economy for years to come: The longer it takes for the economy to recover, the less money they'll have to spend in retirement. Policy makers have long worried that Americans aren't saving enough for old age. And lately, current and prospective retirees have been hit on many fronts at once: They have less money, they earn less on what they have, their houses aren't rising in value and the prospect of working longer to make up the shortfall has dimmed significantly in a lousy job...

ROCKVILLE, Md. — This suburb of Washington, D.C., inspired R.E.M.'s 1984 song about the soul-sucking blandness of a suburban adolescence that has been a staple of rock and roll. "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" described a town of empty houses, "where nobody says hello." But some experts in the real estate business believe that in the future, more and more of us will be going back to places like the revamped Rockville — quite happily, in fact. "They had a point at the time," Sally Sternbach, the head of Rockville's economic development arm, says of R.E.M.'s quiet anthem. "We got...

SANDPOINT, Idaho (AP) — About 50 trains chug through Sandpoint each day, night and day. Almost all carry cargo grain, windmill turbines, airplane fuselages, even Barnum and Bailey circus elephants. Near midnight, and then again at 2:32 a.m., Amtrak’s “Empire Builder” drops and collects passengers; Sandpoint boasts the only Amtrak stop in Idaho. “Railfans” from throughout the world travel to Sandpoint to train-watch and photograph trains roaring across the bridge over Lake Penned Aureole. It’s a magnificent meeting of water, mountain and machine. Sandpoint traces its vital beginning to the railroads, and the railroads might be one key to its...

The entertainment industry is in the full throes of the changing of the generations; films and television are beginning to reflect the visions of Generation Xers like Jason Reitman, (Up in the Air), Judd Apatow, (Knocked Up), Brad Byrd (Up, The Incredibles), and other young artists who dare to buck the tired irony-cool cynicism that has shaped and stifled too much of the culture. Suddenly, after decades of being shut out, minimized, or mocked, film characters have room in their lives for optimism, and even something almost like faith. The Church, if it seeks to be relevant in the future,...

If you are suddenly feeling confused about whether to greet middle age with open arms or dread, it is understandable. In recent weeks, researchers reported that Americans in midlife are a remarkably contented lot, and that they also have the highest rate of suicide. So what is going on? Is middle age the best of times or the worst? First, the positive side of the ledger. A new study of a Gallup telephone poll that essentially took a snapshot of how more than 340,000 respondents felt on a particular day... --snip-- Myrna Weissman, an epidemiologist at the New York State...

About five years ago, travel companies began toying with the idea of rolling back senior discounts, and sometimes all a bad idea needs to take root is to get planted. As any older flier knows, nearly all airlines have wiped out senior fares. Many hotels require older customers to join clubs with steep fees to qualify for price breaks. And the value of AARP’s travel deals declines with each passing year. This year, for instance, members can get “up to” 20 percent off at Best Westerns or 5 to 15 percent discounts on the “best available” rates at Starwood-owned hotels—essentially...

godless righteousness Do you remember the 1960's social and moral revolution? The youth movement of the left were out to break all of the rules, and liberate society from the bondage of the past. As one of the anthems of the time proclaimed,"Whole world, whole world ,easy to see, that people every where just want to be free". Isn't it ironic that those same 'revolutionaries',now come of age , have created a society which is vastly more restricted than the one they worked so hard to undermine? We now live in a 'Brave new world' where every aspect of life...

THE problems faced by Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general, over his depiction of his military service are indicative of a broader disease in our society. The issues of integrity in business and politics that plague us today — the way elites are no longer trusted — are rooted in the dishonesty that surrounded the Vietnam-era draft.

Question Authority: A Commencement Address for Today’s Graduates By Deborah T. Bucknam I have not been asked to give a commencement address this year, so I have decided to impart my wisdom on the younger generation in written form: Nearly a half a century ago, young people of my generation—the Baby Boomers-- rebelled against what we called the "Establishment" with slogans such as "Question Authority" and "Don’t Trust Anyone over Thirty". We joined causes which transformed American society. You are the beneficiaries of those noble causes which helped to emancipate minorities and women from the racism and bigotry in American...

Young adults in the United States are being squeezed out of the labor force as older workers either delay retirement or seek jobs to rebuild nest eggs destroyed by the recession, a study showed on Wednesday. The size of the labor force fell 6.3 percent for young workers, but increased 8.5 percent for workers 55 years and older between December 2007 and January 2010, according to the study by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

They are the luckiest people in history: the richest, most secure and most powerful generation the world has ever seen. While their parents scrimped and sacrificed through the Depression and World War II, they basked in the long boom of an affluent society. ....................................................... Brought up in an age of surging living standards, they were not prepared to wait for jam tomorrow. They wanted it today, tomorrow and forever - and they raised their children in their own image. It was the baby boomers, with their 'me generation' values, who spearheaded the sweeping social changes of the late Sixties and...

If Millennials realize they're going to have to pay the fiscal price for baby boomers' sins, they might choose to leave the US for more financially friendly locations. BY TIM KANE What if they had a fiscal crisis, and nobody came? What if the chump generation figures out the Ponzi scheme? Bob Samuelson thinks the fallout will be political: ... As baby boomers retire, higher federal spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may boost Millennials' taxes and squeeze other government programs. It will be harder to start and raise families. Millennials [ages 30 and younger] could become the chump...

Political leaders and the mainstream media have been blindsided by the sudden mood shift of the country in the last few years. The reason they have been blindsided is they believe world history is linear. Liberals have now begun referring to themselves as progressives. These people think the world only progresses. The facts indicate otherwise. History is cyclical. History is replete with grand empires like Rome, Spain and Britain. It is also replete with Dark Ages, depressions and wars. Strauss & Howe have established that history can be broken down into 80 to 100 year Saeculums that consist of four...

MIAMI – In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana. Long a fixture among young people, use of the country's most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the massive generation of baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and '70s grows older. The number of people aged 50 and...

MIAMI - In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana. Long a fixture among young people, use of the country's most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the massive generation of baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and '70s grows older.....

Jobless? Retire earlyNew Social Security claims hit record as sour economy drives early filings; payroll tax drop By TONY PUGH First published in print: Sunday, February 14, 2010 WASHINGTON -- A surge of early retirements and a decline in payroll tax revenue caused by the recession have begun to cut deeply into Social Security's surplus funding. Led by aging baby boomers and older workers frustrated by the tough job market, record numbers of eligible Americans started receiving Social Security retirement benefits in 2009. According to government figures, more than 2.7 million new beneficiaries were added to the rolls in 2009,...

  For anyone who strongly identifies with traditional Christianity, the October 6-9 series on Fox News's Hannity, with Sean Hannity interviewing Michael Moore, was rich in irony and vaguely distressing. The occasion was Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story.   Two bright, likable, and deeply sincere married men of middle age passionately argued the positions of the liberal Democrats or progressives (Moore) and the conservative Republicans (Hannity). What generated some irony was that both celebrity worldlings revealed themselves to be regular Sunday mass-goers. They viewed their years in Catholic schools warmly and with pride, and readily associated some...

Boomers Have Their Backs Against The Wall By Bill Bonner 10/14/09 London, England Two important items in the news today: First, Bloomberg reports that retails sales fell 2.1% in September – the biggest decrease this year. Know what that means? It means the “Age of Thrift” is here…and that consumers really are cutting back – just like we said they would. And it means that the consumer economy is not going to return to robust growth anytime soon. And it means, too, that people will find it hard to find jobs for a very long time. Another thing it means...

The early baby boomers may be known as the generation of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But it turns out, they're hitting the bottle pretty hard as they age, as well. And that portends significant alcohol-related health problems ahead as those mid-lifers become seniors. A new study finds that among men and women 50 to 64 years old, almost 1 in 4 men and 1 in 10 women is a "binge" drinker -- meaning that at some point in the last 30 days, he or she has downed four (for women) or five (for men) servings of alcohol in...

Many baby boomers (Americans in the generation born between 1946 and 1964) are continuing to use illicit drugs as they grow older, causing the rate of illicit drug use to go up within the 50 to 59 year old age segment of the population. According to a new analytical publication produced by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), those aged 50 to 59 reporting use of illicit drugs within the past year has nearly doubled from 5.1 percent in 2002 to 9.4 percent in 2007 while rates among all other age groups are statistically staying the same...

There’s just no other way to look at it. President Obama is fleeing Washington D.C., and with good reason! Now, we could easily list the issues of the day and how he’s screwed up on each and every one, but that ignores the bigger, strategic problem he has: After 3 years of campaigning (of which he continues even after being elected), people are finally discovering Barack Obama’s lack of substance. Whether one describes that as inexperience, amateur, inept, as sizzle without steak, or as something else, the core argument against a President Obama has always been that he was making...

Remember the good old days, when one only had to watch out for the Federal Government’s twisted interpretation of the commerce clause to justify tyranny? Well those days seem to be long gone. The Obama Administration has been employing an old tactic lately – what some might call an imperial threat – and they’re not doing it overseas, either. The state of Oklahoma is now the target of a direct challenge from US Attorney General Eric Holder, who is using the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as justification to violate Oklahoma’s sovereignty as affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the...